Our favorite Christmas tree is a blue spruce. The needles are super poky, yes, but the branches are sturdy enough to hold pretty much any ornament…and I have some heavy ones! Because of my love for the spruce family, I perked up when I saw spruce on a list of Christmas words with surprising history. And I was definitely surprised!

Did you know that Spruce used to be an English name for the country of Prussia?? I didn’t! Apparently, it was an alteration of Pruce…which now begins to make sense. 😉 Pruce and Prussia have some clear similarities, and adding the S to the front had something to do with it meaning “from Pruce.” Up until the middle of the 1600s, English speakers called the country Spruce, and hence, goods exported from Prussia bore that name too–spruce canvas, spruce iron, spruce leather…and spruce trees, which were very tall and straight, their trunks desirable for ship masts. By the time we began calling the country Prussia in the mid-17th century, spruce was such a common name for the tree that it stuck

Do you get a real tree for Christmas or use an artificial one? If you get (or have ever gotten) a real one, what variety is your favorite?

Regardless of your choice of conifer, I pray you have a very Merry Christmas!

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Word Nerds Merch!

Did you know that gingerbread actually has no relation to bread, when we talk about the history of the word itself? It’s true! The original word from Medieval French was actually gingebrat (also spelled gingembrat), and referred to a ginger paste that people used to cook with, which obviously came from ginger.

So where did that –bread ending come from? Well, when gingebrat came into English, its suffix was changed to –bar, still referring to that ginger paste. But over time, what etymologists call “folk etymology” took over–that’s when people change words to make them more familiar. By the 1400s, it had evolved into gingerbrede (earlier spelling of bread) and then to gingerbread and was used in reference to things one might make with that ginger paste–cookies, cakes, and breads especially.

In my family, gingerbread cookies are the fave, but I do enjoy a nice gingerbread cake, like what would have been popular in the day of Christmas at Sugar Plum Manor. Have you tried out the recipe I have for it here on the website?

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Word Nerds Merch!

Given the release of Christmas at Sugar Plum Manor this year, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about what sugar plums really are…and what sugar-plums are too.

The original sugar plums are exactly what they sound like–sugared plums. You take dried or preserved plums, roll them in sugar, and bake them at a low temperature for 2 hours. Then take them out, let them cool enough to handle them, roll them again, bake them again…and repeat for a total of 6 or so times, until they’re dense and chewy and covered in crystallized sugar.

This treat has been so popular historically that by the 1600s, the word sugar-plum came to mean ANY sweet treat or confection! So in “The Night Before Christmas,” when visions of sugar-plums are dancing in your head, this could be any candy or holiday treat, not necessarily sugared plums. Same goes for the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Have you ever had actual sugared plums? What’s your favorite holiday sweet treat?

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Word Nerds Merch!

My son shook my world last year when he got in car after youth group and pronounced, “Did you know ‘Jingle Bells’ is actually a Thanksgiving song?”

Whaaaaaaaaaat?

Mind…blown. I sputtered. I gasped. I thought he was pulling my leg.

So of course, I had to look it up. And sure enough, the song was not written to be part of the Christmas season, despite it now being the most ubiquitous of Christmas songs. Nope. James Lord Pierpont, a native of Medford, Massachusetts, wrote the song to commemorate the annual sleigh races held in his hometown around Thanksgiving.

It’s believed that he originally composed the song around 1850, but it wasn’t published until 1857, with the title “One Horse Open Sleigh.” By that time, Pierpont had relocated to Savannah, Georgia…so maybe he wrote these snowy lyrics in fond remembrance of something he no longer got to participate in. 😉 The public was quick to adopt the song…and to change its name. That phrase from the refrain was just too good to resist!

“Jingle Bells” was first recorded on an Edison wax cylinder in 1889…which means people have been listening to recordings of it for 135 years now!

Do you know all the verses of “Jingle Bells”? It tells quite a fun story of a couple in the sleigh race!

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Word Nerds Merch!