Fact Check: Did Republicans Misspell 'Merry Christmas' on Party Posters?

A promotion for "It's a Wonderful Nation," a Christmas party set to be hosted by the Republicans for National Renewal group on Sunday, December 19, has been shared widely on social media - but not necessarily for the reasons the event's organizers anticipated.

The source of controversy is the invitation card for the festive bash, scheduled to be held in downtown Phoenix and to include Blake Masters, Rep. Madison Cawthorn and Rep Louie Gohmert among speakers and attendees.

The Claim

An image of the GOP Christmas party invitation circulating on social media appears to show a typo. The festive card is stylized after a poster for the 1946 film It's A Wonderful Life, including the same drawing of a man holding a woman.

The wording at the top of the invite card, done in a similar font and color to the movie poster, says: "We're saying 'Merry Christmas' again at the best reception of the weekend."

The invitation to what the card refers to as a "populist reception for the season" was originally posted last Saturday by the group's Twitter page, @RNRenewal, and received around 130 likes at the time of publication.

A near-identical image was shared on Twitter by the verified account of Alexander Nazaryan, the White House correspondent for Yahoo News and a former Newsweek staff writer. It was posted by Nazaryan on December 9 under the caption: "They misspelled 'Merry Christmas.' h/t ⁦@willrahn."

The image shows the same poster, but the word "merry," has been misspelled as "marry." The Yahoo News reporter's tweet has been liked nearly 3,000 times at the time of publication.

The Facts

Posters for the event were shared widely on social media and online, including on @RNRenewal, with the initial invitation post on the account dating back to December 4. The image currently appearing on the post by that Twitter account does not have a typo.

The invitation also encourages readers to purchases "early bird tickets" and links to an external site on Eventbrite. The external page carries more information about the event, saying: "Join Republicans for National Renewal for a Christmas reception with leading VIPs at the forefront of national-populist politics today."

While some social media users initially pointed out that the image used on the Eventbrite page also had the wrong spelling, the banner no longer contained the typo at the time of writing.

The group's website, designed for "assisting activists in taking over the party apparatus and pushing Republicans in Congress to back our President's agenda," a reference to Donald Trump as per the rest of the statement, shared a post about the upcoming Christmas party on December 6.

It featured the same It's a Wonderful Life-themed invite, with "Merry" spelled correctly.

However, as Mark Ivanyo, the Executive Director of Republicans for National Renewal, told Newsweek, the original post did indeed contain an image with a typo: the word "marry" was initially written instead of "merry."

"The designer who produced the original version of that graphic did make a typo," Ivanyo said.

"However, as conservatives, we strongly support the institution of marriage, so we encourage everyone who is not yet married to consider getting hitched this festive season as well."

The Ruling

True.

The claim is true: the Republicans for National Renewal did in fact misspell "Merry Christmas" on its party invitation posters, the group's Executive Director revealed. While the image tweeted originally has since been replaced with a corrected version, the erroneous image has been saved and since shared by other social media users.

FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK