Reclaiming Xmas

[Note: I was thinking I shouldn’t post this, since I’m afraid it seems “snarky,” but Sue convinced me to post it. She thinks most people really do not know this stuff!]

Hey, folks! I’ve decided I’m tired of people getting all worked up about the word Xmas. The Facebook campaigns; the chain e-mails: “No more ‘Xmas’! Let’s put Christ back in Christmas!” Et cetera, et cetera.




I’ve been suspicious of these complaints, first, because my grandma used “Xmas” as an abbreviation, and by cracky, there wasn’t a more Christ-loving woman you could ever know. I don’t think for a minute that she meant to belittle Jesus with “Xmas.” My folks use it, too.

So here you go: Look it up in a reputable dictionary, such as Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate. There, you’ll find:

Etymology: X (symbol for Christ, from the Greek letter chi (X), initial of Christos Christ) + -mas (in Christmas)

Date: 1551.

Whoa! Check it out: 1551 is waaaaay before even Grandma was born! “Xmas” has a long, long history! The sixteenth century? That was during the Renaissance! “Xmas” wasn’t something a bunch of hippies and atheists invented in the sixties!

A word’s etymology is its linguistic history; it tells you how the word developed over time, and usually, it gives you a hint to its nuances of meaning, its connotations. So: “Xmas” literally does mean “Christmas.” No one is being “exed” out here. It’s just an abbreviation that a lot of us are quite grateful for during this, one of the busiest times of the year.




There are bona fide, completely appropriate uses for Xmas. Like when you’re in a rush. Or when you’re writing on the side of a box. Or when you’ve only got so many letters and so much space on the sign.




(Or! When you’re texting!)

So let’s quit judging and punishing innocent people for using a time-honored abbreviation! (’Tis not the season for punishment!)

The “-mas” part, by the way, comes from the Old English mæsse, which means “mass” or communion service. So Christmas literally means “Christ’s mass”—the feast day where we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. If there’s one part of the word “Xmas” that’s askew in our culture, it’s the second part: Because it seems most American Christians (well, at least the Protestants, anyway) don’t take communion on Christmas Day. Seems they’d rather spend the day with their families.




Another thing: Christmastide is, by definition, “the festival season from Christmas Eve till after New Year’s Day or especially in England till Epiphany.” (The weeks prior to Christmas constitute the season of Advent, which is characterized by waiting, wanting, expecting, hoping. Google “Advent candles” and “Advent calendar” for more insights.) (Honestly: Christmas means more, if you celebrate the season of Advent before it.)

Now, let’s review what Epiphany is, because it will clear up another common holiday misconception. Epiphany has a specific meaning in the Christian religion, plus it has a generic (lowercase) meaning.

The generic meaning of epiphany is “appearance” or “manifestation”—with a connotation of “illuminating discovery” or a striking new understanding or perception. It’s a kind of revelation, a sudden grasp of an idea.

The Christian Epiphany is an official church festival day, commonly celebrated on January 6, to commemorate the arrival of the Magi (the Wise Men, the Three Kings), who had been seeking the Christ child. See, it doesn’t make sense to think of the Wise Men arriving at the manger scene only minutes or even hours after the birth. You know the song: “We three kings of Orient are; Bearing gifts we traverse afar. Field and fountain, moor and mountain, Following yonder star.”




There have been years when I set the Three Wise Men far away from our Nativity Scene in order to represent this idea: The babe is born, and the kings are on their way!

See Matthew 2:1–12; no dates or specific travel routes or times are given. (Thank goodness! One less thing for Middle Easterners to fight over!) Indeed, Matthew doesn’t even say how many “wise men from the East” there were—we just infer that there were three because three gifts were mentioned. (Pretty flimsy evidence, methinks! But it makes for a tidy story, doesn’t it, with none of the complication or awkwardness that arises when two people accidentally bring the same gift! “Oh, you brought myrrh, too? Dang, that’s what I brought!”)

Anyway, by tradition, January 6 is the day to commemorate their arrival in Bethlehem, their beholding the infant Jesus, and their giving the very first Christmas presents.




So, using the dates for Christmas and Epiphany, let’s count how many days elapse before the Wise Men’s arrival—December 25 to January 6 . . . Twelve days!

Hey, it’s the Twelve Days of Christmas! Holy smokes—and here all these advertising weasels and media numskulls have been leading you to believe that the “Twelve Days of Christmas” are the last twelve shopping days before Christmas!




See, now the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” makes more sense—you can see how it could be a tradition to dole out your Christmas presents over the days leading up to the Wise Men’s arrival, since they’re the ones who brought the frankincense, gold, and myrrh.




So now that we’ve had our own little epiphany, here’s a modest proposal: How about all the people who are so het up over the use of “Xmas” turn their energetic indignation against the horribly materialistic distortion of the Twelve Days of Christmas, also known as Christmastide, the time between the birth of Jesus and the arrival of the Magi?

Yes! Feel free to spread this post around. I’d love for this to “go viral.” Let’s reclaim Xmas, and reinstate the Twelve Days before Epiphany as the “real” Christmastide!

(And while you’re at it? Next year, don’t put up your Xmas tree so early: If you leave it up through Epiphany, maybe the Wise Men will get to see it!)

The Abscission Wind

For several years, now, I’ve been trying to think of a good name for it, that wind that comes and sweeps “autumn” off the trees and gives us the winter landscape.




It doesn’t arrive at any set date—although around here it happens in late October or early November—but when it happens, it’s usually a distinct and noticeable event. It’s that cold front that drives through, with wind and rain, that puts an end to “fall color” and knocks off nearly all the leaves.

Other times of year, and other distinct seasonal weather events, have special names. We have the “dog days” of summer and “Indian summer” in fall. Of winds, there are Chinooks and siroccos, mistrals and haboobs, Santa Anas and williwaws . . . and many more. And then there’s that occasional, deceptive “January thaw,” giving us a taste of sweet warmth only to crush us with more grim winter.



But I haven’t found a name for this cold front that usually, and cleanly, divides autumn and winter. And I think we need one.

So I have some ideas I’d like to propose.

How about “the Exfoliator”? I know, I know: An exfoliator is something—a goo or an abrasive—used to remove dead skin cells, and it has little to do with tree leaves. Yet the “leaf” root word is there, and because it has to do with sloughing off structures that are already dead, it is better than “the Defoliator.” Defoliation has to do with leaves, but then it also implies a chemical that dispatches leaves before they’re ready to die. It’s a leaf-killer. So “the Exfoliator” sounds pretty reasonable, don’t you think? Especially if you capitalize it to make it look official.

Do you think we should add a word to make it clearer? The Autumn Exfoliator? The Exfoliating Wind?




Or what about “the tree sweeper,” “the branch cleaner,” “the canopy clearer”?

Or we could focus on the action on the level of the twig and leaf stem, the break that occurs when the leaf is ready to let go, and the breeze or the rain that catalyzes the separation. Maybe we could call it “the leaf render.” Or, from what happens when the leaves go flying, “the scattering wind.”

Or we could be a bit nerdy and use some slightly fancy botanical lingo. There’s a precise name for that stiff bit of tissue that develops between the base of a leaf stem and the twig it’s growing from. This tissue is called the “abscission layer.” As it develops at the end of the leaf’s “life,” it cuts off nutrients to the leaf, and the leaf “dies.”

(Realize: leaves aren’t organisms, so they don’t die. Yes, unlike our hair and fingernails, leaves are living tissues, but they’re meant to be sloughed off at some point. Even on evergreen trees, the leaves are expendable. Perhaps a better mammalian metaphor would be the process of menstruation.)

Abscission. Per Webster’s: “the act or process of cutting off: REMOVAL”; “the natural separation of flowers, fruit, or leaves from plants at a special separation layer” (meaning the aforementioned abscission layer).




I kind of like the word; despite the fact that you don’t hear it used much, I think it’s perfect. And it’s not a tough word to learn: “ab-SIH-zhun.”

We’re talking about the cold front, the wind and rain, that makes the leaves become abscised. So how about “Abscission Front”? Or “Abscission Wind”?

Let’s try it out in some sentences.

“Well, the Abscission Front came through last weekend, and now the leaves are mostly off the trees.”

“The Abscission Wind usually blows around Halloween, giving a stark and spooky look to the clawing branches of trees.”

“The Abscission Wind opens the canopies, making for sunnier woodland hikes.”

“Don’t put off enjoying the fall color—you know the Abscission Wind is just around the corner.”

What do you think? Start using it!

Let’s see if we can get it adopted into standard American English!

Ha Ha Tonka: On the Name

In my previous post I told you about Ha Ha Tonka State Park, which is perhaps the most popular of Missouri’s state parks. Today, I want to zero in on a subject that’s been bothering me a while: The name.

From what I’ve been able to learn, a Colonel R. G. Scott, one of the first white men to own and/or write about the area, said that Osage Indians (basically, the “previous owners”) had told him they called the land Hahatonka, which supposedly meant “laughing water” (some sources give the purported translation as “smiling waters,” or some other variation).

Many sources repeat and repeat this etymology, which I think bears serious questioning, given the cultural sensitivity Americans have cultivated nowadays to partially rectify the injustices and cultural tramplings of the past.

Are we to take it that -tonka (used so often in tourism-associated names) means “water,” and that haha- means “laughing”? Come on.

Sure, in all languages, some words (like smack, slither, and plop) are onamatopoetic, but I remain skeptical about the Indians saying “haha” when they wanted to say “laugh.”

Honestly, I know very little about Osage or any other Native American languages, but something seems fishy here. From what I’ve been able to learn from Internet sources, tonka means “great” in the language of the Dakotas—as in Wakan-Tonka, “Great Spirit” (the adjective great follows the verb Wakan/spirit). And Minnetonka (a city name in Minnesota) is supposed to mean “great water.” (Minnesota, by the way, is supposed to mean “sky-tinted water”; mni- or minne- would be the “water” part.) This is in the Dakota language. I don’t know about the language of the Osage.




Tonka can also refer to a type of bean, a tonka bean, the fruit of a tree from Guinea. (Which is completely different.)

On the specific naming of our beloved state park, I’ve looked at several sources, and the one I’m most inclined to trust is Robert L. Ramsay, Our Storehouse of Missouri Place Names (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1973). Ramsay was a scholar who specialized in the study of place-names and constructed his book from painstaking and exacting historical research. And on page 42, he states: “Often the white man simply made up an Indian sounding name which actually means nothing at all, as he seems to have done in Hahatonka, Mendota, Mineola, Owasco, and Wasola.”

He mentions the place-name again in his section “Coined Names”: “The man who owned the land around Winnetonka joined what he supposed to be an Indian suffix -tonka to his own name Winn. Perhaps he modeled it upon Hahatonka, whose founder mistakenly thought he had derived it from Indian words meaning ‘smiling waters’” (116).

Maybe Colonel Scott, or whoever he learned it from, had simply heard it wrong or spelled it clumsily, or—this seems more likely—someone back there in history flat-out made it up.

In my recent ponderings, it’s occurred to me that new information might have arisen on the Ha Ha Tonka name. I asked a longtime member of the Missouri Board on Geographic Names, and he told me that Ramsay has not yet been superseded on this matter.

I’m absolutely not suggesting we discard this long-established, beloved, and honestly, rather silly place-name as “culturally insensitive” (the way I generally support the replacement of “squaw” place-names, which many Native folks find deeply offensive).

Instead, I contend that the name “Ha Ha Tonka” reflects an important historical fault line* in the region’s history: the acquisition of Osage lands by whites, and the collision, confusion, appropriation, and misappropriation of Native language and culture and territory—whether intentional or accidental—and all the “development” and marketing that has followed. It’s like the rubber toy tomahawks decorated with dyed turkey feathers that they used to sell at souvenir shops on the Bagnell Dam strip. Let’s just accept it for what it is.




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* Pun intended, indeed.