Donald Trump has consistently emphasized the significance of saying ‘Merry Christmas’, yet internet detectives have uncovered how he once addressed the nation during the holiday season.
Trump has often criticized the idea that Christmas is being undermined by Democrats because of the preference for ‘happy holidays’ over ‘Merry Christmas’.
However, internet users have highlighted a contradiction in one of his old posts on X.
At a Georgia rally in December 2020, he expressed his discontent to the audience.
He stated: “Let me begin by wishing you all a very merry Christmas. Remember the word?
“Remember? We started five years ago, and I said, ‘You’re gonna be saying ‘Christmas’ again. “We say it proudly again. Although they’ll be trying to take that word again out of the vocabulary.”
The subsequent year, Trump boldly claimed to have sparked a revival of ‘Merry Christmas’.
As reported by the Irish Star, during a 2021 Newsmax Christmas special, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee commended Trump for ‘reviving’ the phrase.
Reflecting on the period just before the 2016 presidential election, Huckabee remarked: “America had [been] going into a long period where people quit saying ‘Merry Christmas’.
“You deliberately changed that.”
Trump concurred, asserting that America had become ‘woke’.
He elaborated: “It was embarrassing for stores to say ‘Merry Christmas’. You’d see these big chains, they want your money but they don’t want to say ‘Merry Christmas’. And they’d use reds and they’d use whites and snow but they wouldn’t say ‘Merry Christmas’.
“When I started campaigning, I said, ‘You’re going to say Merry Christmas again’. And now people are saying it.
“That was a big part of what I was doing, I would say it all the time during that period … I tell you, we brought it back very quickly.”
Amusingly, X users found that in December 2010, Trump himself used the term ‘happy holidays’.
Oh shit pic.twitter.com/SHO40oiFNl
— Andrew—#IAmTheResistance (@AmoneyResists) December 27, 2025
On December 23 of that year, he posted: “Wishing everyone a very Happy Holiday season.”
This stood in contrast to Barack Obama, who on December 25, 2013, simply wrote: “Merry Christmas” and did so on various occasions.
Some users defended Trump, pointing out that his post wasn’t on Christmas day itself.
Others found it ironic that Trump was guilty of the very behavior he has criticized in recent years.