Word.ws English Dictionary

holly-lily

holly-lily adjective: attending church during Christmas and Easter, and almost never for any other time of the year.

Adjective

holly-lily (not comparable)

  1. Attending church during Christmas and Easter, and almost never for any other time of the year.
    • People who go to church only on Christmas and Easter sometimes are called "C and E" or "holly-lily" Christians, or even "Easter bunnies."2003 April 21, Adam Silverman, “Unfamiliar faces fill churches on Easter”, in The Burlington Free Press, →ISSN, page 3B
    • In church circles, when pastors and staff and church members plan for the Holly-Lily influx (printing extra bulletins, for example, or preparing the overflow room off of the sanctuary), the feeling is usually less than affectionate. To congregants who support the church Sunday after Sunday...2013 December 17, Rachel G. Hackenberg, “In Defense of the Holly-Lily Crowd”, in The Huffington Post, archived from the original on 20 Apr 2025

Examples of holly-lily in a sentence

  • To congregants who support the church Sunday after Sunday, Holly-Lily folks can be easily stereotyped as slackers who want a good church without the hassle of participation.2013 December 17, Rachel G. Hackenberg, “In Defense of the Holly-Lily Crowd”, in The Huffington Post, archived from the original on 20 Apr...
  • I've always heard of them as the holly-lily crowd.2015 April 6, u/planecrazy11, Reddit, archived from the original on 20 Apr 2025:
  • We call them Holly-Lily Christians where I’m from2021 December 24, “As a Christian who regularly goes to church: cristers (people who only seemingly go to Christmas and Easter services)...

Forms of holly-lily

alternative formholly lily

Origin of holly-lily

From holly + lily, after the plants associated with the two holidays.

Questions about holly-lily

What does holly-lily mean?
Holly-lily means attending church during Christmas and Easter, and almost never for any other time of the year.
How do you use holly-lily in a sentence?
To congregants who support the church Sunday after Sunday, Holly-Lily folks can be easily stereotyped as slackers who want a good church without the hassle of participation.
What part of speech is holly-lily?
Holly-lily is an adjective.

Words near holly-lily in the dictionary

  1. holly-boy
  2. holly-leaved barberries
  3. holly-leaved barberry
  4. holly-leaved cherries
  5. holly-leaved cherry
  6. holly-lily
  7. hollyberries
  8. hollyberry
  9. hollyboy
  10. Hollybush
  11. Hollydeen

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: holly-lily (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “holly-lily.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/holly-lily. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.