Every year around this time I start to think about the etymology of a lot of the holiday words we use all the time (and even a few that hardly get used at all), so let’s jump right into it.
I’ll start by looking at the names of some of the reindeer that help Santa deliver all those gifts to all those houses in just one night. He wouldn’t be able to go around the world in one night if it weren’t for his trusty reindeer, which are probably all females since they appear to keep their antlers year-round. (“Rein,” by the way, comes from an old Germanic word meaning “horn.”)
It’s from the 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (popularly known as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”) by Clement Clarke Moore that Santa’s “eight tiny reindeer” got their names.
In addition to “Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen and Comet and Cupid,” there are Donner, whose name originally had the Dutch spelling “Donder” (Thunder), and Blitzen, which is German for “Lightning.”
And let’s not forget “the most famous reindeer of all.” Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was born in 1939 thanks to the book written by Robert L. May for retailer Montgomery Ward. Rudolph is the English equivalent of Rodolf, which comes from the German word Hrödwulf, which means “famous wolf.”
Moving on to less high-flying (but just as spirited) words: For a number of reasons a lot of people have taken to wishing each other “happy holidays” instead of a “merry Christmas.” Another workaround for “merry Christmas” could be to wish someone a pleasant “Chrismahanukwanzakah,” which I just discovered at Dictionary.com. Obviously a mashup of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, the word is intended to be a lighthearted salutation for those who might suddenly find themselves in smack in the middle of unexpected holiday circumstances.
While that particular run-on word might be a new one (at least to me), the concept of combining the names of holiday observances is far from a recent one. Around 2003, the Fox teen drama “The O.C.” gave us “Chrismukkah,” which lagged by a quarter-century Tom and Ray Magliozzi’s coinage of “Hanumas” on NPR’s “Car Talk” weekend radio program in 1998.
But the so-called Tappet Brothers were far behind in the holiday nickname race to the Germans, who had coined the term “Weihnukkah” in the early 1900s. The word is a melding of “Weihnachten” (Christmas eve) and Hanukkah and was used to describe the occasion celebrated by assimilated Jews who observed both Christmas and Hanukkah.
It wouldn’t be Christmas (for me, at least) without eggnog, which probably got its name from the strong ale that had an egg mixed into it and was served in a wooden mug called a noggin.
And let’s not forget the many industrious elves, whose name likely derives from early German and at one time meant a “white being” with magical powers. A recently popular elf has been sitting on shelves around the world since the 2005 publication of “The Elf on the Shelf” picture book by Carol Aebersold and her daughter, Chanda Bell. It’s said that he goes to the North Pole every night to report to Santa and ends up on a different shelf every time he returns to his assigned home.
So, whether they sit on a shelf or toil in his workshop, let’s raise a noggin of eggnog to Santa’s little helpers, or as we writers like to call them, “subordinate clauses.”
Jim Witherell of Lewiston is a writer and lover of words whose work includes “L.L. Bean: The Man and His Company” and “Ed Muskie: Made in Maine.” He can be reached at jlwitherell19@gmail.com.
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