by Roseanna White | Dec 12, 2012 | Holiday History, Remember When Wednesdays
I thought I’d share a short little Christmas tradition today. =)
Every year, my mother-in-law takes my kids shopping for a Christmas ornament. And for the first couple years of this tradition, she would always get them one of the glass pickles you’ve no doubt seen. I’d never seen really paid attention to these before, but the kids thought they were awesome and of course asked for the why of it. My MIL explained that you kind of hide the ornament on the tree, and whoever spots it gets to open the first gift.
Some sites I’m scrolling through this morning claim that the tradition started with a real pickle. Kinda believable, since back in the early days of Christmas trees, food was used as decoration. Fruits and candies especially, but why not a shiny green pickle? (Okay, I hate pickles, so that wouldn’t be a treat for me, LOL.) Interesting possibility though, eh?
But that only partly explained the why, right? I just looked up where this came from and found that it was a Victorian tradition. The story goes that back in the medieval days, a dastardly innkeeper trapped two poor (an apparently bothersome) children in a pickle barrel on Christmas Eve.
St. Nick came along and heard them in there so set them free. They ran home and arrived just in time to share their family’s feast. Perhaps with a pickle or two?
Regardless, my daughter’s favorite ornament is her ballerina pickle. =) She loves it so much that it hangs in her room all year round.
What’s your favorite Christmas ornament?
by Roseanna White | Dec 10, 2012 | Holidays, Word of the Week
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| 1922 ad in Ladies’ Home Journal |
I remember, as a child, writing stories and assignments for school around this time of year and occasionally using the abbreviation “X-mas” for Christmas. I remember teachers telling me not to use abbreviations in my assignments, and I remember someone else (can’t recall who) telling me not to use that one for Christmas because it just wasn’t right to take Christ out of Christmas (or something to that effect) and replace it with an X.
So in my middling years, I refused to use it, thinking it somehow mean to Jesus…then later I actually learned where it came from.
Pretty simple, really. The Greek word for Christ is Χριστός. You might notice that first letter. Our X, though it’s the Greek “chi.” No paganism here, no dark, dastardly scheming to remove Jesus from his birthday. Scholars started this as a form of shorthand. The first English use dates to 1755 in Bernard Ward’s History of St. Edmund’s College, Old Hall. Woodward, Byron, and Coleridge, to name a few, have used it to. And interestingly, similar abbreviations date way back. As early as 1100, the form “Xp̄es mæsse” for Christmas was used in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
So. It’s still an abbreviation and oughtn’t be used in formal writing and more than w/ or b/c, but it’s also perfectly legitimate as what it is. Always nice to discover something like that. =) And I hope as everyone gears up, they have a truly wonderful one! I’m happy to say we survived the crazy Nutcracker weekend around here. 😉
by Roseanna White | Dec 6, 2012 | Thoughtful Thursdays, Uncategorized
I’m happy to say that this year (as opposed to most years), I’m nearly done my Christmas shopping already. I have a few things yet to pick up, but all the tricky ones are handled. I’m feeling on top of things there. Mostly. 😉 And as I talk with my kiddos about the real meaning of Christmas and all that fun stuff, I can’t help but think about the gifts I’m most grateful for.
I totally neglected to post on Thanksgiving (though I’d meant to, LOL), so I figured I’d take a few minutes now, halfway between the holidays, to give thanks for those gifts that make my life worth living.
Sometimes it just hits me anew how blessed I’ve been in my family life. God put me in a loving, amazing family growing up. One that protected without being overbearing. One that nurtured without stifling. One that provided fun as well as life-lessons to remember. My parents taught me to love God and follow Jesus, to chase after my dreams, and to always be myself. They somehow raised me to be secure in exactly who I was, so long as I was following the path the Lord wanted me on. I am so, so grateful for my family.
Then I happened to meet the man of my dreams at a very young age. Oh, that caused some nay-saying back then, to be sure. In this day and age, it just isn’t expected that you meet your soul mate at 15 and get married at 18 (by choice, not by shotgun, LOL). But David and I knew what we wanted and needed, and I don’t regret a moment of the last eleven and a half years of marriage. I am so, so blessed to have a husband who not only loves me but understands me. Who supports my every dream and encourages my every goal. No matter what comes and goes in this life, I know he’ll be beside me every moment he can be. And I am so grateful for that rare and precious gift.
And then the children God has given me! Goodness, I know most parents think the exact same thing, but these little people are just
amazing. Sure, I get frustrated with them. But when I take a step back and really look at who they are, I can’t believe the sweet hearts they have, the
Joy, the delight. They really are the lights in our lives, and I’m so, so proud of them. And grateful for every hug and cuddle, for every grin and giggle.
Then I look back over the years I’ve traveled to get to where I am, over the tears and letdowns in an attempt to build a career, and then at the place I’ve ended up. Not that I’m now a best-selling, raving success or anything, but I’m here. Where I’ve always wanted to be. I’m working with an editor who believes in me, with a house that believes in me, on projects that excite us all. I’m working as an editor with amazing authors whose stories leave me breathless. And I’m finally “supporting my habit,” as I call it. 😉
I have so much. So much to be grateful for, so many gifts that I’ve received, gifts that I never would have put on my list for Santa, but which far surpass that bike I had to have or the doll that was utterly necessary at age 7.
Don’t get me wrong, I love that new Dyson vacuum cleaner that just arrived yesterday, and all the other gifts my family blesses me with each year. 😉 But at the end of the day, when the new pots are in the cabinet and the new shirt is stained and worn, I can settle on my couch with the man I love and think, “Wow, Lord. You’ve given me love. You’ve given me family. You’ve given me my dreams. Please show me what I can give back to You to show You that Your love is what I prize above all.”
by Roseanna White | Dec 5, 2012 | Remember When Wednesdays, Uncategorized
I’m under serious deadline right now, so I thought I’d fill the blog today with some fun Christmas images. =) Enjoy! (And FYI, these are all free images, so you’re welcome to borrow!)
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| Victorian Christmas Card, 1885 |
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| Victorian Christmas Card, 1870 |
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| Christmas Comes But Once a Year by Charles Green |
by Roseanna White | Dec 3, 2012 | Word of the Week
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Estes Park, Colorado, Whyte’s Lake by Albert Bierstadt, 1877
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Happy December, everyone! I don’t know about you, but with small kids in the house, the Christmas spirit has descended around here. Yesterday was spent making salt-dough ornaments, and this coming weekend my little girl will be in The Nutcracker. Gotta love it. =)
For today’s Word of the Week, I bring you another one that surprised me in some respects when I, for some reason or another, thought to look it up. Park, as a noun, has been around pretty much forever, at first meaning an enclosed area for hunting. There’s some speculation that its root comes from the word for the fencing, rather than the land enclosed. But by the 1600s, it had taken on its now-traditional meaning of a place in a town or city for public recreation.
What got me was the verb. It derived from a particular form of the noun that was reserved for military vehicles, and so became “to arrange military vehicles in a park” in 1812. So late! I kinda thought that as long as there were vehicles, there would be a word for parking them. But apparently it wasn’t park for quite a while, LOL. And it didn’t get extended to non-military vehicles until 1844.
Not surprisingly, the application to cars is more modern still. As a transmission gear, park made its debut in 1949. (Anyone know what they called it before that? Anyone? I have no clue…) And park-and-ride joined the scene in 1966.
And now that I’m firmly parked in front of my computer, it’s time to get back to trimming
Whispers from the Shadows. Hope everyone has a lovely week!
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.