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Photo of a subset of Stonehenge, with green grass and some tiny flowers

Christmas Is Not a Word Substitution Puzzle, and Other Holiday Tips

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Photo of a subset of Stonehenge, with green grass and some tiny flowers

Stonehenge, UK, from a family trip in 2019 (closer to summer solstice than winter solstice, however)

In observing the December phenomenon that regressives call a war on Christmas1 and that I call common courtesy, I’ve encountered a kind of confusion about what it means to say “happy holidays”. I find that even friends sometimes misunderstand what I hope for in holiday wishes. So here is a detailed analysis, to clear up some misconceptions.

0. TL;DR:

Most basically, I want people to be inclusive as possible, be specific when they know, be generic when they don’t, and mean what they say.

1. Generic vs. Specific Holidays

A. Generic: If you don’t know which holiday(s) someone celebrates in December, then courtesy calls for you to wish them “Happy holidays” so that they have the broadest possibility of being acknowledged.2

B. Specific: If you know what holiday(s) they celebrate, then go ahead and wish them wonderful celebrations by name. Whyever not? It’s a great feeling to be recognized.3

C. If you want to switch from 1A to 1B, you can ask!

2. Generic vs. Specific Celebrations

Welcoming sign spelling out PEACE with holiday symbols

Welcoming and funny sign at the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

A. Generic: Similarly, if you are decorating a space or hosting an event that is public, or work-related, it is important that people who don’t celebrate Christmas not feel left out or invisible, and that they can see their reality reflected in the surroundings (and in the invitations).

This is important even if you don’t know in advance that non-Christmas-celebrating people will be there. Just as in disability work, accommodation becomes inclusivity when it’s already in place. Saying “happy holidays” to strangers or decorating a common space with multiple winter holidays or calling a vacation “winter break” means that anyone who would have to decide whether to ask, “Does this mean me?” can instead feel already acknowledged.

Pillar decorated with a banner displaying a kinara and listing the seven principles of Kwanzaa

Kwanzaa decoration at the COVID testing site on campus, 2022.

By the way, I’m not saying it has to be perfect; there are lots of December/January holidays you may not know about, or not know what’s appropriate; just be open to acknowledging this if it comes up. (However, PSA, I recommend against including Ramadan/Eid al-Fitr unless you’re at the right point in the 30-year Islamic solar cycle, which will next happen starting around 2030. Or unless you clearly acknowledge that the holiday is not consistently a winter holiday.)4

B. Specific: If you’re decorating your own space or hosting a party of your own, then please call it what you will, and celebrate as you want.

3. If you mean Christmas, please say Christmas!

This one kind of puzzles me. If you’re talking about Christmas, by all means call it Christmas! There’s no expectation that you use the word “holiday” instead, despite a growing popular belief to that effect: I’ve seen some people do this when trying to be cooperative, and some people who loudly refuse to do it, both without understanding that this is not the thing we’re asking for.

The people who claim there’s a war on Christmas apparently think they’re supposed to say “Happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” even when they know people are Christian, and that they’re expected to replace all public uses of the word “Christmas” with the word “holiday”.

If that were true, then no wonder they get defensive!

No, not at all. I don’t want you to substitute “holiday” instead of “Christmas” as if it’s some sort of euphemism. Plot twist, I actually want you to say Christmas when you mean Christmas. I want you to talk about Christmas, and to make plans for Christmas, and, when it gets close enough, to sing songs about Christmas!5

I just don’t want you to only mean Christmas.
I particularly want you not to mean Christmas when you’re talking about me.
Even if you hide it.
Especially if you hide it.

4. A linguistic note: saying “the holiday” in December confuses me a lot.

There’s a weird fallout from the substitution game, some sort of derivation wherein “holidays” (inclusive) and “holiday party” (inclusive) somehow generate references to “the holiday” (weirdly specific).

Or maybe it’s already a thing Christians do, and it isn’t to do with these changes?

The problem isn’t that “holiday” is singular: When I hear “have a nice holiday,” that sounds fine. It’s the article “the”. “The” implies conversational agreement about what follows.

So when people ask me what I’m doing for or whether I’m ready for “the holiday,” I am genuinely baffled. Am I supposed to assume they mean my holiday? Do they assume it’s the same as their holiday? Why only one? Do they actually mean, in the British sense of “on holiday,” the set of holidays to follow, or the upcoming winter break?
Or … do they mean Christmas? 6

It’s disconcerting, because I never know, and I always feel compelled to ask for clarification so I can give an accurate answer, even though the speaker clearly thinks it’s unambiguous. And I always feel awkward asking, lest I come across as too suspicious, or too pedantic. It feels like breaking the fourth wall, or questioning a gift, by making something casual into a big deal.

I need to work on the casual ask.

5. Timing

I should mention that December greetings feel much easier to navigate for me in years such as this one, when the 25th of December is near the 25th of Kislev (the start of Chanukah), instead of later on. Somehow, in years where Chanukah arrives much earlier than Christmas, there seems to be a bigger surge of all-Christmas, all-the-time, with people who are challenged on it kind of annoyed, even weeks before Christmas, that we’d still want inclusion in December celebrations once Chanukah is already over.7

A lit menorah filled with blue and purple candles, reflected in a silver plate, next to a little model Christmas tree, next to a gift bag with snow people wearing scarves and hats

Celebrating together with friends when holidays coincide!

HOWEVER, in another exciting twist, I’m okay with you randomly wishing me a “Merry Christmas” on the day or evening it’s actually Christmas. I may even say it back! (Though this year I might say “Happy Chanukah” instead.) This is because I’m not upset that people want to wish everyone their favorite holiday greetings; I’m upset with the way it takes over the season: as majority holiday, Christmas demands and takes up SO MUCH mental energy for weeks and sometimes even months before it happens. You may think this is only true for Christians, but no, it affects just about everyone.

6. The Wrap-Up

Okay?
So to be clear:
I don’t want you to substitute “holiday(s)” when you actually mean “Christmas,” because that’s misleading.

I want you you to say “holiday(s)” without using it as a substitute for “Christmas”.
I want you to say “holidays” and mean more than Christmas and New Year’s.
I want you to say “holidays” and mean, instead, a big swirl of winter solstice-timed-or-related celebrations, including (and not limited to) Christmas and Chanukah and Kwanzaa and St. Lucia Day and New Year’s Eve and Solstice itself!

More holidays!

Winter Solstice (in the northern hemisphere), which I also call midwinter, is itself celebrated in many ways: for example, scientifically, as the astronomical moment of the sun “standing still,” or ritually, as the Pagan sabbat Yule. Other winter solstice celebrations include Toji in Japan, Dong Zhi in China, and Yaldā Night in Iran. (Note: Inti Raymi is a winter solstice celebration in the Andes, so it happens in June instead of December.)

I’m curious what celebrations happen around the December solstice in the southern hemisphere.

Other Christmas-related holidays include Las Posadas in Mexico, Ganna in Ethiopia, and St. Nicholas Day in Europe (which mystified me when I first read about it in Anne Frank’s diary; but…isn’t she Jewish…? And why December 6?) And St. Lucia Day. Also, the twelve days we hear so much about, concluding with Epiphany on January 6.

Then there’s Junkanoo, a Caribbean festival I learned about from a quiz presented in my kid’s social studies class. It’s apparently celebrated multiple times a year, including December 26.
From the same quiz I also learned about the Swedish Gävle Goat!

There’s the Buddhist holiday of Bodhi Day, or Day of Enlightenment, observed on the 8th day of the 12th month of the year. In the lunar calendar, this will be January 7, 2025, but in Japan, which uses the Gregorian calendar, it is celebrated consistently on December 8.

The Japanese New Year, or Shōgatsu, is thus celebrated on January first, with poetry and music (including Beethoven’s 9th!) and separate old year and new year parties.

Going farther into January (and often February), there’s the Lunar (technically lunisolar) New Year, which feels like a different season to me — and the Chinese students I’ve spoken to tend to talk about it separately from the solstice holidays. I think of it as more clustered with Brigid and Tu B’Shevat, as a turning point between winter and spring.

Reaching in the other direction, I always kind of want to include Diwali, because it’s a festival of lights itself … but since its range is October-November, it seems really far from the solstice for that. Opinions from those who celebrate?

And finally: happy holidays to all who celebrate! Wishing you well in both the comforting darkness and the returning of the light!


———
1 This supposed war is not new, or anything: I wrote a scathing letter to the Inquirer back in 1995 when they published an op-ed from someone who said, among other things, that the next person to wish her “happy holidays” would get punched in the nose. Oh! and she also said that Christmas parties used to be sweet and wholesome, and once they were called holiday parties, they became drunken and raucous.

2 It is, of course, possible that someone doesn’t celebrate any winter holidays at all, or that they don’t celebrate until, say, the lunar new year in late January or Early February. I’m not sure what is most appropriate here. Thoughts?
I still think it’s probably good to avoid exchanges like this one (though we worked it out):
Chinese undergraduate student to me: Merry Christmas!
Me, surprised, but willing: Oh! Merry Christmas!
We look at each other, nonplussed.
Me: …Do you celebrate Christmas?
Student: No.
Me: I don’t either.
Student: I thought all Americans celebrate Christmas!
Sigh.

3 I had an excellent illustration of this from an 11th grader when I was in 9th grade. Her family was hosting a party for the marching band in my very Christmassy town, and she was greeting people as they arrived. I heard her wish some people Merry Christmas and some people Happy Holidays, and I was relieved she was making that distinction. And then when it was my turn, she wished me Happy Chanukah. And I was astonished at how seen I felt.

4 Though I was at a holiday party this month where (I learned later) students said they wished Eid had been included. People who celebrate Muslim holidays, what is your take on this?

5 I’m actually fond of Christmas songs. When it’s actually Christmastime.

6 Okay, possibly they actually mean my holiday(s) and are laboring under the belief that I don’t want them to name holidays out loud. But how am I supposed to KNOW that?

7 I guess I should mention here the bit about how Chanukah is a minor holiday. I know a number of people who say they wish people didn’t make such a big deal about it, that’s it’s become some sort of Jewish version of Christmas. And in some respects this is true: the American celebrations of Chanukah are definitely outsized because of its proximity to Christmas.

But gifts and light have been part of the holiday for a very long time. In my case, I grew up thinking of Chanukah as an important holiday, with presents and candles and singing, and to me it was a Jewish thing-that-is-not-Christmas, rather than a Jewish version of Christmas. (For this reason, I have never understood the idea of a “Chanukah bush”.)

And as a grown-up, I think of all these northern winter holidays as a light-and-dark-filled recognition of the winter solstice, and I want to honor them. (See also my footnote to an earlier post about Chanukah’s darkness-and-light timing.)

Some Holiday Lunacy! Equinox, Purim, Passover, and Easter

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Lunar Phase Calendar 2019Today (in the northern hemisphere) we welcome the Vernal Equinox — a time of balance — along with the full moon that heralds the arrival of Purim.*

Purim occurs at the mid-point of the Hebrew month of Adar, or in this case Adar Sheni (“second Adar”), the second instance of Adar in what is a leap year in the Jewish calendar. The leap years sprinkled along the 19-year cycle ensure that the lunar calendar keeps pace with the solar calendar, instead of traveling along the year like the Islamic calendar. Indeed, if we skipped the repeat of Adar this year, we’d be getting ready right now for Passover, which begins, also on the full moon, just a month later.

I’ve always been fascinated by the connections between the world we live in and the systems and words we use to describe and organize it. So I remember being completely stunned to learn in college that I could find the Jewish holidays by looking outside at night. I’d grown up learning and celebrating the holidays, and I’d always known that the Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar, but I thought that was an ancient thing. I hadn’t understood that those connections between the names and counting and the real world would still be intact — after all, our months aren’t like that. But calendars are designed, whatever their focus, to keep going, as best they can. So unlike Gregorian months, which only approximate the moon cycles that inspire their name, Hebrew months begin, every time, with the first new sliver of moon.**

I also knew that Jewish holidays have specific dates (as do holidays in any calendar): Chanukah on 25th of Kislev, Tu b’Shevat (as named) on the 15th of Shevat. I hadn’t paid much attention to the others, and so now I had the pleasure of learning that most of the major holidays occur on the 15th of their month … and coincide with the full moon. Tu B’Shevat. Purim. Passover. Sukkot. Because full moon is a great time to celebrate.***
(Begin 5/4 time full moonlight dance here!)

So. And then, some years later, I found myself looking through a list of Easter dates**** and wondered what was up with the one Christian holiday that traveled around as much — in fact possibly more — than Jewish ones.

And I was most charmed to learn that it combined everything: Easter comes on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

So, okay, here comes the equinox, timed for 5:58 pm Eastern Daylight Time (9:58 pm UTC, 10:58 pm Central European Time); when exactly is the moon full? As it turns out, just about four hours later!

So why isn’t it Easter week right now?

Because, as I just learned in the last week, there is an Ecclesiastical rule that declares Equinox unequivocally to be March 21.*****

…Interestingly, those same ecclesiastical rules state that the vernal equinox is fixed on March 21 (for European longitudes), even though from the years 2008 through 2103 the equinox will occur no later than March 20. In fact, in the year 2020, for the first time since 1896, spring will arrive on the 19th across the entire United States, and in 2048, that will happen across the whole of Europe.

So, while in an astronomical sense, March 20 marks the first full moon of spring, so far as the Christian church is concerned, we must put the Paschal Term on hold for a month until the next full moon, on April 19. That also occurs on Good Friday, and at sundown that same day, Passover begins. Two days later will come a rather late Easter Sunday, on April 21.

An even more extreme situation will take place in 2038. In that year, the equinox will fall on March 20 with a full moon the very next day (a Sunday). So, astronomically, Easter should fall on March 28 of that year. In reality, however, as mandated by the rules of the church, Easter in 2038 will be observed as late as it can possibly come, on April 25!

So. Many things to ponder. And a month to wait, for both Passover and Easter. In the meanwhile, I wish you a time of great balance, patience, and equilibrium, on the day that everyone gets the same amount of daylight, no matter where they are, all over the world.


______

*Also the equinox-related Eostara, Holi, Norouz/Char-Shanbe-Soori, Higan, the Autumnal Equinox in the southern hemisphere, and more … including the many cultures that celebrate the vernal equinox as the first day of Spring.******

**What I learned next, from posters in the campus center, and from the meetings they echoed, was that this first day of each month is known as Rosh Chodesh, head of the month, as Rosh Hashanah is head of the year. And it turns out that Rosh Chodesh, which I had never heard of, is celebrated as a women’s holiday. Amazing that I didn’t learn this in Hebrew School. (Hmm.)

***Chanukah is a notable exception. It’s not a major holiday, except in that it coincides with so many (other) Solstice holidays. And a number of years ago, it was pointed out to me (thank you, Otter) that Chanukah, known as the Festival of Lights though its name means “Rededication,” doesn’t just occur during the darkest time of year; it also neatly covers the darkest time of month. Starting a few days before the end of the month of Kislev, and ending a few days after, the holiday takes us into the darkness and then back out again, while the lights of the Chanukah menorah grow ever-brighter.

****Possibly this was when I was confirming that my first cat’s birthday was even earlier than I’d thought. We were told she was born on Easter. And so we (okay, I) looked it up and thenceforward celebrated her birthday on March 25 … until discovering that I’d remembered wrong, and Easter that year had actually been March 23.

*****It’s not clear to me what time or time zone is relevant here, or whether the moon must follow the entire day or just its beginning.

******I don’t, though. I consider this to be mid-spring, in the midst of the winter-to-summer transition process that is spring. But that’s another post. Oh, wait; it actually is another post.

Literally Hysterical Signs from the Women’s March

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Here’s an important thing to know, if you are interested in language and gender: the word “hysterical” (along with “hysteria”) comes from a Greek root meaning “uterus,” as in the word “hysterectomy”.   I was in college when this was pointed out to me.  I learned then that for millennia, women were diagnosed as “hysterical” under the belief that one’s uterus could travel around the body and cause trouble with other organs, as evidenced by symptoms as varied as coughs, depression, nervousness, and general troublemaking.*  Recommended “treatments” varied from marriage and pregnancy to genital stimulation to complete bed rest.

A quick search produces many discussions of the Wandering Womb fallacy,** including this long and brilliant essay by author and teacher Terri Kapsalis, who pulls together Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,”*** ancient diagnoses and current politics, and so much history, and even a women’s march (last year’s) at the end.

I have slowly been removing “hysterical,” with its historical image of women out of control (or deemed out of control by others), from my repertoire of words that mean “funny,” a task that became much simpler once I realised “hilarious” filled exactly the same connotative slot for me.****

However, I found these signs from last Saturday to be, indeed, and appropriately, hysterical:

Sign "Don't Tread on Me" with uterus and fallopian tubes as snake  Sign "Public Cervix Announcement: I'm Not Ovary-acting"

Sign "Grow a Pair" with ovaries

——–

*It’s possible that my remembered image of a uterus supposedly traveling far enough to throttle one’s brain was satire, or exaggeration on my part, or possibly even just a misplaced Douglas Adams quote.  …But maybe not.

**Or, if you prefer, “phallacy”.

***With the vital takeaway that anyone who reads or assigns “The Yellow Wallpaper” is contextually obligated to read or assign the 1913 essay entitled “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”.

****Thanks to Adam Rex for this marketing comic, which kind of settled the word “hilarious” in my active repertoire, and for the eponymous book, The True Meaning of Smekday, an adventure both hilarious and thought-provoking, and one of my favorite middle-grade books.

On Specificity

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rooibos

rooibos flowers (mightyleaf.com/organic-rooibos.html)

A new colleague of mine introduced me to rooibos tea a couple of weeks ago*. Since several people in the office were wondering how to pronounce it correctly, I took to the internet to find out more. And there I was on the Rooibos Wikipedia page**, where I checked the pronunciation:

“Rooibos (Anglicised pronunciation: /ˈrɔɪbɒs/ ROY-bos; Afrikaans pronunciation: [rɔːibɔs], meaning “red bush”; scientific name Aspalathus linearis) is a broom-like member of the Fabaceae family of plants growing in South Africa’s fynbos.”

And then it continued: “The generic name comes from the plant Calicotome villosa, aspalathos in Greek…” And I thought, ha ha, generic name: what’s next, the brand name? And then I thought, wait, this is the scientific naming system we’re talking about, which means that “generic name” is referring to … the genus. And so it immediately follows (as it does right there on that Wiki page) that the next thing should be the “specific name,” or, in fact, the species: “The specific name linearis comes from the plant’s linear growing structure and needle-like leaves.”

I have known the word pairs genus/species and general/specific for a long, long time, but how often have I thought about them together? And now it turns out they’re relatives. Click, click, and now these words will be forever linked in my head. Thank you, rooibos tea!  (Or, thank you, Wikipedia.)

This also brings to mind the time I was trying to create a word puzzle*** by coming up with two separate words that matched the irregular plural pattern -en (singular) and -ina (plural) but were not themselves related. Alas, I no longer remember the original words that demonstrated this plural pattern****. But I do remember how excited I was when I thought of the words “stamen” (part of a flower) and “stamina” (endurance) … which lasted for about five minutes, until I looked them up and discovered that “stamina” actually is the plural of “stamen”.

Well, phooey.

Except that now, whenever I hear the word “stamina,” I think of flowers.

——

*I quite like it.  Hat tip to Nick Mancuso.

**Which, by the way, is worth reading. The history and economics of the plant are fascinating.

***Long-ago hat tip to Susan Garrett for suggesting this puzzle type.

****I suspect, since I was working as a medical editor at the time, that they were something technical.

About About: An Introduction

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Welcome to Word Matters!

end-tufted brush, in packageIn my medicine cabinet, alongside my regular toothbrush, I keep a special “end-tufted brush,” good for focusing gently on my gumline and the backs of my front teeth. I recently found myself looking at the packaging and finding that the name in French is “brosse à bout touffu”. Which is to say, “brush, at the end, tofu” – or…well, something like that.

Anyway, while looking at the French name of my special toothbrush*, I noticed the phrase “à bout” and how similar it was to the word “about”. I found myself wondering whether it might be cognate or share history with the English word. In a sort of “what is this story really about, in the end?” way.

So I looked up the etymology of “about” and learned the following:

from Merriam-Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (NI3):
Middle English abuten, aboute, going back to Old English abūtan, abūton, from a- + būtan “outside, without” –More at but

from Online Etymology Dictionary
Middle English aboute, from Old English abutan, earlier onbutan “on the outside of; around the  circumference of, enveloping; in the vicinity of, near; hither and thither, from place to place,” also “with a rotating or spinning motion,” in late Old English “near in time, number, degree, etc., approximately;” a compound or contraction of on + be “by” + utan “outside.”
By c. 1300 it had developed senses of “around, in a circular course, round and round; on every side, so as to surround; in every direction;” also “engaged in” (Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?), and gradually it forced out Old English ymbe, ymbutan (see ambi-) in the sense “round about, in the neighborhood of.”

In other words, “about” descends from words and roots that mean around, or outside of a center. Physically, I can picture this: a room, for example, with chairs scattered about.

Meanwhile, my searches online and in my little French-English dictionary tell me that “à bout” is “at the end” or “to the limit”. And “bout” itself translates to “end, tip, butt, stub”.

So, as it turns out, I’m wrong about about**. I was thinking that the focus of a story, what it’s about, might be something you’d end up with. Instead, the story centers around, or about, that focus.  But I learned some things. And I have a new picture in my head, of a story gathering, or maybe dancing, around its focus. And I love that moment of wonder, when I sense a connection between or among words, and new worlds of possibility and imagery open up in my view.  That moment, with the exploration that follows, is one of the foci of this blog.

About this blog

I am
(nouns): parent, writer, editor, singer, songwriter, lesbian, reader, feminist, linguist
(adjectives): female, Jewish, secular, white, left-handed, cisgender, Ashkenazi, American

I love
cats, music, chocolate, language, the woods, the city, puns, working toward peace and justice***

I write about
word origins and history. False cognates, true cognates. Language development and parenting. National politics and identity politics. Framing of arguments. Books and songs. Punctuation and pragmatics. The occasional grammar guide. Truth in advertising. The power of words to separate, or denigrate, or accord new respect. Dialect differences and language change.

*which I highly recommend, by the way, if you tend to get tartar in specific places. Hat tip to Terry, my dental hygienist!

** with the following two notes:
1) It’s kind of funny that “about” means encircled and close by, while “à bout” means to the farthest limit.
2) It’s also funny that “about” is related to “but,” while “à bout” is related to “butt”. False cognates indeed!

***Plus some other stuff. Here’s what I said I love when I was 13 and introducing myself to my diary: “reading, writing, singing, cats, unicorns, mythology, science-fiction, all animals that aren’t cats or unicorns, life, puns and other jokes, Doctor Who, other British humor, talking, chocolate, other food, being extremely weird, gymnastics, swimming, most of school, traveling, the idea of World Peace, nature, enjoying myself, and getting along with other people.” I’ve clearly changed some since then, in that … I don’t so much do gymnastics anymore.  (Also, I have taken the liberty of adding a comma between “cats” and “unicorns,” as I’m fairly certain I meant to have one there.)