Name: MERRY CHRISTMAS! Learn English idioms & North American customs for the holidays
Uploaded: 2025-07-23T18:25:46.000Z
Duration: 29 min 1 s
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I want to discuss today some Christmas idioms that you may hear your English colleagues or friends using and might be confused by, but today you're going to become a master of merriment and learn about Christmas idioms.

Well, ho, ho, ho is said by a very famous guy in...

In North America, we call him Santa Claus.

In England, they call him Father Christmas or you might say the British Cycle of Father Christmas.

He's known by many names, but with this gentleman who's a little bit rotund, sort of like myself right now, and wearing a special hat, come a few things, a few, you might say, activities that we do from trimming a tree, decking the halls, and you're like, what is he talking about?

So, we're going to go to the board and what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you what these things are and I also want to give you a little bit of history and that way you can appreciate some of the culture that you find in people who speak English or I wouldn't say European, but English speaking peoples.

The first thing I want to look at is stocking stuffer.

It's really weird because stocking stuffer is almost nothing like it is today.

When you go to somebody's house, if they have a fireplace, you know, so here's some fire, yay for fire, they will have these giant socks here.

Well, in the old days, socks used to be referred to as stockings.

Not socks, but stockings, because you would put them on your feet and you would pull them, there we go, yeah, like that, all the way up, see?

Now, stocking stuffer is a little present.

For instance, if my watch is coming here, if I got something this small and I put it inside the stocking, it's very small.

Usually, stocking stuffers are not big and not expensive, but there is an interesting story that goes with a stocking stuffer.

A long time ago in Germany, where this originates from, Germany, there's a story about three young girls, or an old...

A man who had three daughters, and he really wanted his daughters to marry and be happy, but he had no money to give them to help them get married.

So, he prayed and he prayed, and Santa Claus...

I really should draw a picture of him, but I'm sure there'll be a picture of him right there.

Santa Claus overheard this man talking about, I cannot get someone for my daughters to marry them, so what I want to do, I don't know what I'm going to do.

And Santa Claus knew that this man did not accept charity.

In other words, this man would not take anything for free, he always wanted to work for it.

So, he decided instead of giving presents like he normally did, he was going to throw three bags of gold down the chimney one night so the man could receive them, and each bag would be for the daughters.

The daughters were unaware of this, and they were wearing their...

Remember we talked about stockings, these things?

They put their stockings to dry at night by the fireplace because they had washed them.

So, of course, when they woke up in the morning, their stockings, the three of them, were filled with gold.

And that's why you find a lot of times when people have stockings, they get chocolate coins that are covered in gold inside their stockings.

And they're like, I know some things you do.

So, the first one I talked about is the stocking stuffer.

Little presents that go inside the stockings that used to be on fireplaces, but maybe if it's not by a fireplace now, you'll find them on the wall or by people's stairs, and they'll have their names on it, and people will put chocolate inside of it, or markers or pens or something small that somebody might have fun with, but not expensive.

The second one I want to talk about is to trim the tree.

If you ask any North American about trimming the tree, or English person for that matter, they will tell you trimming the tree is putting, as you can see, I have some balls up here, and this would be called tinsel.

They would say putting balls and tinsel on the tree to make it look very nice.

Trimming the tree came from, actually, sailors.

Nautical sailors a long time ago, and it was to be trim and in fighting shape, which meant to get rid of the fat, not be fat, but be slim and muscular and fighting shape, to be trim, to cut.

I know, you're very smart, and you're saying to me, how does trim a tree, a sailor, have anything to do with each other?

A long time ago, most people didn't have artificial trees.

In fact, when I was a child, most of the trees that I knew were real.

People would go out and actually cut down a tree and put it inside their house.

Yes, you heard me right, you new people, you new kids.

We'd actually go outside, cut it, pick it up, carry it into the house, put it in.

And really far back, they actually used to put candles, yes.

They used to put fire in the tree in the house.

Hey, I don't know how humanity has made it this long, but you know, whatever.

So, trimming the tree was, when you had the tree, sometimes there would be an extra branch sticking out that could poke you or hurt you, so you would cut this off to make the tree perfect to put in your house.

I'll give you another little thing that you're going to like a lot as well.

Sometimes you'll hear people say, I want a turkey dinner with all the trimmings.

No, they're not asking for the pieces of the tree that fell down.

So, when you get turkey dinner, you get turkey, and then you get potatoes.

Okay, that's like a normal meal, and maybe some carrots.

With the trimmings, you're going to get cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing, and some other stuff that people like to eat that I think is disgusting, but whatever, I don't know.

But all the trimming means all the extra.

In fact, people even say outside, they'll go, I want all the trimmings.

When you get a haircut and you say, I just want to trim, they're only going to cut a little bit of hair.

Not only did you learn an idiom, you've learned about verbs.

So, trim the tree means to decorate the tree, but before that, it meant to cut the tree properly, so you could decorate the tree.

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MERRY CHRISTMAS! Learn English idioms & North American customs for the holidays

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