Word of the Week – X-mas

Word of the Week – X-mas

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. 😉
Word of the Week – Yule

Word of the Week – Yule

In Old English, Christmas day was called geol (not to be confused with gaol, which is jail–ha ha ha), taken from Old Norse jol. Jol was a heathen feast day, taken over by English so long ago that no one’s sure exactly when it happened. Though we do know that “jolly” comes from jol. 😉
Origianlly, geol, or yule, meant solely Christmas Day. It also happens that there was a cognate, giuli, that was the Anglo-Saxon name for a two-month midwinter season of feasting, so the two got mixed together. When English first borrowed the word, it meant the 12 Day Feast of Christmas–December 25 through January 6, the Epiphany. It was largely replaced by the word Christmas by the eleventh century, except for in Danish-settled parts of England.
Writers, however, revived the word in the 19th century to capture the particular charm of Christmas in Merry Ol’ England. Oh yes, it’s always the writers, LOL.
Yultide (literally yule time or Christmastime) was recorded in the 15th century, and the first written mention of the yule log is from the 17th century and was a ceremonially chosen log (sometimes and entire tree)  picked to have an enduring burn for Christmas.
Can you believe there’s less than a week until Christmas?? I hope everyone is enjoying this yuletide season!
~*~
And today I’m on Go Teen Writers! It was a fun interview, so be sure to check it out to learn what I would do if captured by kidnappers. 😉
Word of the Week – Memorial

Word of the Week – Memorial

No thought at all went into selecting this week’s word. =) Given that today is Memorial Day and all, here we go!
Memorial. Memorial is a word straight from the Latin memoriale, so it’s been in English approximately forever. Since the late 14th century it’s been used exactly as it’s used now – something by which a memory is preserved.
But the interesting thing is in Memorial Day. It’s been used generically, as any day of memory, since the 1830s. But after the Civil War it became a national holiday to commemorate the fallen Northern soldiers. It started unofficially in the 1860s and became recognized by veteran groups in 1869. 
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t realize it was a Civil War thing! Pretty interesting.
So, everybody have big Memorial Day plans? My family is combining the M-Day picnic with my grandmother’s b-day party. So in honor of that, I made this cake, which I’m calling my Hydrangea-in-a-Basket cake. =)
Hope everyone has a fun, relaxing, rejuvenating holiday, and that we use it to memorialize those who have fought and fallen for our wonderful nation.