Saturday, January 22, 2011

xmas hit or myth? (4CE reprint dec 2010)

"Christmas Hit or Myth"


√ Plum pudding once contained plums.


Maybe it still does, if you dig around in there, you might find some? Nope, this is a myth. In Merrie Olde England, "plum" meant dried fruit in general, almost universally raisins, since they were the most affordable. Even "currents" were small imported raisins,"raisins of Cornith." If you could afford it, you could use dried apricots, figs, dates, even prunes, but basically plums were raisins. Little Jack Horner's Christmas pie was mince-meat, the plum on his thumb a raisin. Sugar-plums were candies made from dried fruits. Fruit-cake was often called plum-cake. But then the French call French-fried potatoes "pommes frites," literally fried apples, so there you go. Plumb interesting if you ask me.



√ The 4 calling birds in "The 12 Days of Christmas" are mynah birds.


Or parrots, or magpies, or some other loud-mouthed budgies? Nice try, but no dice. Originally, it was "colley birds," also spelled colly or collie, meaning blackbirds. Collie was Scottish for black, from coal, and indeed the original Collie dogs were black, not Lassie-colored. Also, the 5 golden rings do not refer to jewelry but to ring-necked pheasants, so the first 7 gifts are all birds. And what was a partridge doing in a pear-tree? It's believed the original line was "a partridge, un perdrix," French for partridge, pronounced pear-dree. Partridges may perch in a tree occasionally, but they are primarily ground-dwelling fowl, and build their nests there.



The 12 Days of Christmas do not include Christmas Day.


This is a festive hit, because the 12th Day of Christmas is the Epiphany, Jan. 6th, and if you include Christmas Day, that's 13 in all. The idea in olden times was that the 12 Days of Christmas were a time of celebration, merry-making, and especially on the Epiphany, playing practical jokes. These activities were inappropriate to the holiness and solemnity of Christmas Day itself, so the revelry started the next day, St. Stephen's Day, Dec. 26.


What throws people off today is the celebration of Twelfth Night on the night of Jan. 5, the eve of the Epiphany. After all, what comes after the 12th Night? The 13th Day, and since there are only 12 Days of Christmas, the Epiphany must be out. Counting back, the First Day would then be Christmas itself. What's being forgotten is this: the 24-hour calendar day used to be reckoned differently than it is today…it didn't start at midnight, but rather approximately 6 hours earlier, at sundown the previous day.


So 12th Night was not followed by the 13th Day, but by the12th Day. In the same way, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were the same day, not 2 consecutive days. Ditto New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, which is why New Year's Eve is sometimes called "First Night," but that's the first of 365, not 12, of course.



√ Poinsettias are poisonous so don't eat them.


I agree with the "don't eat" part, but the poisonous part is a complete myth. Poinsettias were introduced to the US in 1928 by Joel Poinsett, Minister to Mexico. In the wild, plants grow up to 16 feet tall. The actual flowers are small yellow or green bits, surrounded by large red bracts, specialized leaves designed to draw in pollinating insects. No one seems to know why poinsettias are thought to be toxic. Over the years, public displays of poinsettia consumption haven't seemed to convince anyone. According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, you could eat 500 bracts with no ill effects.




√ During the dance scene in "A Charlie Brown Christmas," the 2 twins in purple, and the kid in orange with the buzz-cut, doing those side-to-side shrug moves, are no-name extras, thrown in to simply fill out the crowd.


Good Grief, Red Baron! Wrong, wrong, and wrong. They debuted in the comic strip in 1963, and the boy is named 555 95472, or 5 for short. His twin sisters are 3 and 4. He explained: "My Dad says we have so many numbers these days, we're losing our identity. He's decided that everyone in our family should have a number instead of a name." Lucy asks: "This is his way of protesting?" 5 replies: "No, this is his way of giving in!" After a month of numbers-for-names gags, the siblings did fade into the background, used only when extra kids were needed. By the way, 95472 is the Zip Code for Sebastopol, California, north of San Francisco, where Charles Schulz was living at the time, which pretty much settles of question of where the Peanuts strip takes place.




√ The 7th of Santa's reindeers is named Donder, not Donner.


That's technically true, but if you correct someone who says "Donner," don't be surprised if they tell you to go sit on a pine-cone. Here's the history behind the myth-tory…

1823, "An Account of a Visit from Saint Nicholas" is published in the Troy Sentinel newspaper on Dec. 23, anonymously. The 7th and 8th reindeer are named Dunder and Blixem, a Dutch exclamation, literally "Thunder and Lightning!" This makes sense, since we're in Rip Van Winkle country, and the poem sets out the traditional Dutch image of St. Nick, jolly fat elf, pipe in mouth, etc. The poem is popular, and printed annually.


1837, For the first time, Clement Clark Moore, a Bible Professor at a New York City Seminary, is credited as the author. Also, publisher Charles Hoffman has changed Blixem to Blixen, to rhyme with Vixen, and Dunder to Donder, closer to the English pronunciation.


1844, Moore publishes his own version, retaining Donder, but changing Blixen to Blitzen, and this is the standard version generations of children grew up enjoying.


No one knows precisely when the switch to Donner occurred, but Snopes.com found the New York Times' earliest use of that name was in 1906, and the paper explains: "[they] were originally given Dutch names, Donder and Blixen (Blicksem), meaning thunder and lightning…it is only modern publishers who have rechristened them with the German Donner and Blizten." And indeed, Donner is German for thunder. Then in 1949, Gene Autry's recording of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" pretty much fixed Donner in the public's mind, and ear.


Interestingly, in 1947 a German author translated the poem, naming the reindeer: Renner, Tanzer, Flieg and Hitz, Sternshnupp, Liebling, Donner and Blitz. In English: Racer, Dancer, Fly (the insect) and Heat, Shooting Star, Darling, Thunder and Lightning. Near as I can parse it, Blitz is "lightning," Blitzen is "flashes of lightning." Vixen would be Fuchsin in German, but it's replaced to make a rhyme. And yes, the German botanist who named the Fuchsia plant was Mr. Fox. Till next time, Merry Christmas, y'all...see you on the net…stolf.wordpress.com and stolfpod.podbean.com…and rock on!