Merry Christmas, Yule/Winter Solstice, Newtonsday!

It's not just being plural. Consider "from the European Union" or "from the United Kingdom", which are (grammatically, at least) singular. I suspect it's more that "the" is used with country names formed as adjective + common noun, but not those that are formed as proper nouns, even if they also tack on an adjective: "from the United Kingdom" but both "from Britain" and "from Great Britain". I don't understand why "from Scotland", though, especially in view of "from the Netherlands". Some other place names to consider: "from Tierra del Fuego"; "from the Ivory Coast"; "from Costa Rica"; "from the Isle of Man"; "from Newfoundland"; "from the Middle Kingdom" but "from China"; "from Gibraltar" but "from the Rock of Gibraltar".... /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B