Merry Christmas! A Tombstone Tuesday Perspective

Merry Christmas!  It's a greeting we in the tri-state hear A LOT this time of year.  However, its a holiday sentiment you don't normally come across while strolling through a cemetery.  Well, unless of course you're strolling through one of the many cemeteries that provide a final resting place for quite a number of people with the name Merry or Mary Christmas!  

Wikipedia, of all places, has some pretty interesting information on the use of 'Christmas' as a surname.  It is definitely not a common surname by any means.  However, you can find the greatest concentration of Christmases in Essex and Sussex Counties, England. Some believe its origins stem back to the 1100's when 'Christmas,' spelled various ways, was a byname given to those people who were born on Christmas day. 

Also according to Wikipedia, the earliest known record of someone being named 'Mary Christmas' dates back to 1837 when Mary Canon married a man by the name of Christmas in Alton. It is believed that 50+ women named Mary have gone on to marry men with the surname of Christmas...but the article doesn't mention anything about women who are born with the name Mary Christmas...or the women and/or men whose name take the Yuletide season a step further with the 'Merry' spelling of their first name!  For example:

Photo by Find-a-Grave Contributor Dianne Wood

Sergeant Major Merry Lawrence Christmas was born May 21, 1929 in Arkansas.  He served in World War II and in the Korean Conflict, and I'm sure his military buddies had plenty to say about his unusual, yet festive name! Sergeant Major Christmas passed away in 1999 and his tombstone can be found Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Newnan, Georgia.

Sergeant Major Christmas isn't the only fella whose parents produced a son they named Merry Christmas, though.  Merry Franklin Christmas was born on November 5, 1848 in South Carolina.  He passed away on July 13, 1914 at the age of 65. He is buried in the Bowden Cemetery in Drew County, Arkansas.

Photo by Find-a-Grave Contributor Leslie Acord

Find-a-Grave, a great website devoted to categorizing and documenting cemeteries and burials only has a few entries for people named Merry Christmas...but it actually has quite a few for MARY Christmases...120 entries to be exact!  I don't want to leave anyone out, but there's no way I can feature all those Marys on here...so here's just a couple who were first to pop up!

Mary Van Christmas was born on Christmas Eve, 1910...but she wouldn't receive her unique holiday name until her marriage Grandison Christmas!  Mary passed away in 2000 and is buried in the Coley Springs Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery in North Carolina.

Photo by Find-a-Grave Contributor Margaret Gagliardi

This next and final grave I'll be featuring is a sad one. It is the grave of little Mary Agnes Christmas, born January 22, 1931.  Unfortunately, Mary did not live to see her fifth birthday.  She is buried in Ephesus Church Cemetery in Jackson County, Florida. 

Photo by Find-a-Grave Contributor Mary Greer Thomas

I hope you've enjoyed this Christmas edition of Tombstone Tuesday!  I love the beauty and history of tombstones and am always eager to share the more unusual and fascinating examples of funeral art.  I also love to preserve the history of the people beneath the stones, and let their stories be told one more time. Haunted cemeteries are a lot of fun, but even those that aren't can be still be absolutely awesome! I hope you're continuing to have a wonderful holiday season and are enjoying all the Christmas-themed posts here on the blog and over at Theresa's Haunted History Facebook page.  Stay spooky...and I'll catch ya on the next one!