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In recent years every Christmas season has been accompanied a number of stories about the so-called War on Christmas, a term which refers to supposed efforts by government, businesses, and non-religious groups and organizations to disassociate the celebration of Christmas from Christianity and instead focus on its secular aspects (or to replace the celebration of Christmas with a generic winter holiday). Although it is much less common and it doesn't have a catchy name, the reverse phenomenon also occurs: attempts are made by Christians to infuse secular elements of Christmas with religious symbolism and meaning they did not originally possess. Thus every Christmas season also brings the circulation of apocryphal tales about how candy canes were created to symbolize Jesus, and how persecuted Catholics secretly encoded tenets of their faith into the song The Twelve Days of Christmas. Another example in the latter vein is the claim that the Christmas carol God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen originated in the 15th century as a reaction to the dark, somber [Christmas] songs usually written in Latin of the time, and that its title phrase would more meaningfully be rendered in modern English as God make you mighty, gentlemen: Although God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen has always been an undeniably religious (rather than secular) Christmas carol, the additional elements that are now claimed of it are not supported by textual and linguistic analysis: There is at least one small element of truth to these otherwise inaccurate claims, though: The song's titular phrase is often mispunctuated as God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen rather than God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen thereby mistakenly implying that the gentlemen of note have made so much merry that God need ease them to sleep:
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