Viral Mail
Consisting of anything that arrives in my in-tray and seemed worthy of posting to the web site. Anyone who has any such emails they'd like to add here, please send them to: robin at robinbloor dot com. I'll post those I think have merit:
- Xmas Words You Don't Know: #4 Dulocracy
The Battle of Lake Trasimene, the biggest ambush in military history, took place in June of 217 BC. An army of 30,000 Romans, led by Consul Gaius Flaminus, was lured by Hannibal into the trap of marching across the northern...
Xmas Words: #5 Pohutukawa 5. Pohutukawa. The pohutukawa is the Christmas tree, in the sense that it is the only tree that is actually named “Christmas tree.” But of course it isn’t the original Christmas tree, it’s a Johnny-come-lately-Xmas-tree available only in New Zealand. The...
Xmas Words You Don't Know: #3 Protomartyr If you are a deeply committed Christian you will possibly know this word, but if you were just raised a Christian, as I was, you are less likely to. 3. Protomartyr. We can begin explaining this with another Christmas carol, which...
Xmas Words You Dont Know: #6 Hagiolatry So why do we decorate the Christmas tree? 6. Hagiolatry. When I was working for a US insurance company in Italy a couple of decades ago, a secretary I worked with used to practice her English on me. One day, around...
Xmas Words You Don't Know: #1 Hweolor-tid Rather than 12 days of Christmas, I’m giving you 12 words of Christmas; essentially 12 words you are unlikely to know which have something to do with Christmas. However, I’m posting them one-by-one because most of them proved far more...
Xmas Words You Dont Know: #2 Brumalia Continuing with the 12 words for Christmas, the second word in my set of obscure terms that may help to understand how Christmas evolved to its current form is Burmalia. 2. Brumalia. Many of the trappings of Christmas; the tree, the...
Xmas Words You Don’t Know: #8 Prolicide 8. Prolicide. Americans are right to refer to this time of the year as a “holiday season.” December is packed solid with days that are holidays (or holy days). It starts on December 6th (if you don’t count Thanksgiving) and...
Xmas Words You Don't Know: #10 Kenosis 10. Kenosis. Nimrod was one of Noah’s great grandsons. His mother and wife (God’s will be Gods) was known by the name of Semiramis, but was also called Ishtar by some and Isis by others. Nimrod also had an alternate name....
Xmas Words You Don't Know: #12 Parepochism 12. Parepochism. A parepochism is an error in assigning a date or historical time period. The holiday period is a complete agglomeration of parepochisms. For the sake of simplicity lets have a list to prove the point, and let me...
Xmas Words You Don't Know: #9 Apophoret 9. Apophoret. There are many traditions of gift giving associated with the close of the year. For fun, I’ll list all that I’ve managed to unearth in order by day of the year: The Druids exchanged branches of mistletoe (a sacred plant)...
Xmas Words You Don't Know: #7 Sinterklaas It’s about time we got to Santa Claus and here we are. 7. Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas is Santa Claus in Dutch. In fact it’s the Middle Dutch name for Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children, who evolved into the jolly red-suited...
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