At a “thank you” rally in early December, Donald Trump promised that he would Make Christmas Great Again.

“We’re going to start saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again!” Trump told the crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

“How about all those department stores?” he mused.

“They have the bells and they have the red walls and they have the snow. But they don’t have ‘Merry Christmas’.

“I think they’re going to start putting up ‘Merry Christmas’.”

Given this full-throated pledge, it might come as a surprise to learn that Trump Tower, the golden jewel in Trump’s property portfolio and the building where he is currently plotting his first term, has no signs saying “Merry Christmas” whatsoever.

Not one.

Visiting the Trump Tower on Wednesday, it was clear that holiday decorations have not been eschewed altogether. In fact, it’s the opposite. The interior of the building is festooned with festive frippery.

There is a 30ft Christmas tree. There are four-foot wreaths all around the entrance area.

There are scores of golden boxes, tied up with ribbons, laid around the place, as if Santa Claus gave up on his way to the Trump residence and dumped the presents in the lobby.

There are life-sized nutcracker statues, some holding trumpets.

But no Christmas signs.

The only mention of Christmas the Guardian could find in Trump Tower was in the gift shop, where a little Christmas tree bauble, which showed Santa Claus lying down on top of a yellow taxi, was described as a “Christmas ornament”. The ornament had been made in China.

Trump has promised that he will return Merry Christmas to common parlance before – most notably in November 2015, when he was gearing up for the Republican primaries.



It makes sense. The idea of a war on Christmas – that Americans are being forced to say “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas” because of political correctness – is a popular theory among some conservatives.

But outside Trump Tower, at least, the reaction to “merry Christmas” making a comeback – if you accept that it ever left – was mixed.

“I don’t think people are maliciously trying to tamp down Christmas celebrations,” said Bradley Bennett, 37.

“I don’t spend any time thinking about whether someone wishes me happy holidays or merry Christmas. They’re just trying to wish me well and wish me a good day.”

Bennett was with his three-year-old son Philip, who described Trump as an “evil man”.

The president-elect’s yuletide pledge was better received by Faye Schimek, 74. She was in New York City from near Houston, Texas, to visit her grandson and granddaughter.

“They want to be too politically correct,” Schimek said of those people who prefer the phrase happy holidays to merry Christmas.

“Our country was a religious country. That’s what it’s based on.”

Schimek was in the process of buying two political satire books from a man called Loren Spivack. Spivack, who uses the nom de plume “Mr Truth”, had written the books himself.

Both works poke fun at the Democratic party – specifically Barack Obama, who is portrayed as the Cat in the Hat, and Hillary Clinton, who is imagined as the witch from The Wizard of Oz.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying ‘merry Christmas’,” Spivack said.

“Not this emasculated, meaningless, neutered, ‘happy holidays’.”

Trump has four years to force “merry Christmas” upon the American public, so perhaps change will eventually come to the US. He could certainly start by using the phrase in his own building.

But anyway. Happy holidays.