Why "Merry" Christmas?

I checked the archives but didn’t find this asked previously:

Why (in American English, at least) do we say “Merry Christmas” and not “Happy Christmas,” “Fan-tab-u-lous Christmas,” or some other variation? How far back does this go? OED to the rescue?

My subject line got truncated somehow. Could a moderator please change it to read “Why ‘Merry’ Christmas?” Thanks!

[gotcha covered. -manhattan]

[Edited by manhattan on 12-27-2000 at 05:22 PM]

Why not?