Why is it 'Merry Chirstmas"?

So the phase originally was just only meant be pleasing and delightful, no bubbling over with holiday spirits added... With all the add-ups later on, I think John Lennon's "Happy Chirtmas" might be closer to my ideal spirit of Christmas..

Here is what I yahooed..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_Christmas
"Merry", derived from the Old English myrige, originally meant merely "pleasant, and agreeable" rather than joyous or jolly (as in the phrase "merry month of May").[2]

Though Christmas has been celebrated since the 4th century AD, the first known usage of any Christmastime greeting, dates back to 1565, when it appeared in The Hereford Municipal Manuscript: "And thus I comytt you to God, who send you a mery Christmas".[2] "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" (thus incorporating two greetings) was in an informal letter written by an English admiral in 1699. The same phrase is contained in the secular English carol "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", and the first Christmas card, produced in England in 1843.

Also in 1843, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol was published, during the mid Victorian revival of the holiday. The word Merry was then beginning to take on its current meaning of "jovial, cheerful, jolly and outgoing".[2] "Merry Christmas" in this new context figured prominently in A Christmas Carol. The cynical Ebenezer Scrooge rudely deflects the friendly greeting: "If I could work my will.. every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding".[3] After the visit from the Ghosts of Christmas affect his transformation, Scrooge exclaims; "I am as merry as a school-boy. A merry Christmas to everybody!", and heartily exchanges the wish to all he meets.[4] The instant popularity of A Christmas Carol, the Victorian era Christmas traditions it typifies, and the term's new meaning appearing in the book, Dickens' tale popularized the phrase "Merry Christmas

http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/2/messages/243.html
"Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William and Mary Morris (HarperCollins, second edition, 1977) "Merrie England. England of the Anglo-Saxon period and the Middle Ages was not a very happy place to be, let alone 'merrie.' So why this phrase indicating revelry and joyous spirits, as if England were one perpetual Christmastime? The answer is that the word 'merrie' originally meant merely 'pleasing and delightful,' not bubbling over with festive spirits, as it does today. The same earlier meaning is found in the famous expression, 'the merry month of May.'"