Ok, Imagine this, close your eyes if you need to. It’s Mid-December, there’s a light snow on the ground, couple of inches of fluffy white powder. It’s lightly falling from the sky in BIG snowflakes the size of Maple leafs. You are sitting on the couch, wrapped up with the one you love, a crackling fire popping from across the room. Softly you hear a favorite Christmas song coming through the radio……”I’ll be home for Christmas,” Bing Crosby croons in his buttery smooth voice. “You can count on me, Please have snow and mistletoe, and presents ON the tree……..” SSSSSSSSSSSSSSCCCCCCCCCCCCCCRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECCCCCCCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Either Jam Master Jay just broke in with some waxy remix or you jumped up to see if you heard that one right…..Presents ON THE TREE? What the HECK?
Doing a little bit of research….are ya catching on to HOW I know things, I found out that….
Limbs of the Tree
• Although it is most popular for presents to be placed beneath the Christmas tree, earlier traditions included tying gifts to the limbs of the tree.
According to Robert Chambers, author of "The Book of Days, A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection With the Calendar," "In Germany, (in the late 1800's), Christmas Eve is for children the most joyous night in the year, as they feast their eyes on the magnificence of the Christmas tree, and rejoice in the presents which have been provided for them on its branches by their parents...every branch glittering with little lighted tapers, while all sorts of ornaments and gifts are suspended from the branches..."
Read more: The History of Presents Under the Christmas Tree | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_6623953_history-presents-under-christmas-tree.html#ixzz18ca53FqQ
Could this lyric be in reference to a potential German Tradition of hiding a glass pickle in the tree? Yes, you read that correctly, both times more than likely. There is a supposed German tradition of hanging a Glass Pickle ornament in the tree on Christmas Eve and the most observant child that would Find the ornament would receive an extra present from St. Nickolas. Problem with that is that German traditions say that St. Nick, not to be confused with Santa Claus would visit children on December 5th. Lending some support to the claim is that on Christmas Eve, Children would open presents from the Christkindl(Christ Child). Maybe St. Nick left that extra present behind? Note that the German Christmas holiday was basically a month long event that is referred to as the Advent, which starts the first Sunday after November 26th. The Advent tradition is actually rather new as far as time is concerned, starting some time after the end of WWI.
Well, that was a side note that went too far. Back to presents ON the tree. The custom of erecting a Christmas Tree can be historically traced to 15th century Livonia (present-day Estonia and Latvia) and 16th century Northern Germany. According to the first documented uses of a Christmas tree in Estonia, in 1441, 1442, and 1514 the Brotherhood of the Blackheads erected a tree for the holidays in their brotherhood house in Reval (now Tallinn). At the last night of the celebrations leading up to the holidays, the tree was taken to the Town Hall Square where the members of the brotherhood danced around it. In 1584, the pastor and chronicler Balthasar Russow wrote of an established tradition of setting up a decorated spruce at the market square where the young men “went with a flock of maidens and women, first sang and danced there and then set the tree aflame”. In that period, the guilds started erecting Christmas trees in front of their guildhalls: Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann (Marburg professor of European ethnology) found a Bremen guild chronicle of 1570 which reports how a small tree was decorated with "apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers" and erected in the guild-house, for the benefit of the guild members' children, who collected the dainties on Christmas Day.
Of course, everything evolves and money dictates most evolution these days. It’s hard to hang a 52 inch flat panel TV or a Sony Xbox from a branch of a tree in your living room. I’m sure that lead to presents UNDER the tree. But let’s take a look at what this song was about for a minute. This is a song about people being away from their families during the holidays…So, when you are enjoying your holiday with your family this year, remember your own loved ones that can’t be with you and more importantly, remember those serving our country in faraway lands that can’t be with their families and let’s pray for their safe returns.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Mele Kalikimaka
Mele Kalikimaka is the thing to say
On a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day
That's the island greeting that we send to you
From the land where palm trees sway
Here we know that Christmas will be green and bright
The sun to shine by day and all the stars at night
Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii's way
To say "Merry Christmas to you."
OK, to say I've been listening to too much Christmas music is like saying that William Shatner is too dramatic. But when it's forced upon you for 10 hours a day it begins to sink into your brain like listening to Jim Jones on a subliminal track. I'm freaking DREAMING Christmas music. I don't even decorate my house anymore because to live in Christmas 24 hours a day would surely be called cruel and unusual punishment by the supreme court. Not that I don't like the holiday, not that I don't believe in the holiday, but I just don't believe that 99% of people actually KNOW What the holiday is about.
But that's just not what this Blog is about. The above song is for one ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS. And for two it just makes me wonder about the Hawaiian language. It all sounds the same....So of course I had to find out why.
To start with, Hawaiian is a Polynesian Language that took it's name from the largest island of the chain that became known as the State of Hawaii. It originally had no written language other than petroglyphical symbols. The modern Hawaiian alphabet, ka pīʻāpā Hawaiʻi, is a variety of the Latin alphabet. Hawaiian words end only in vowels, and every consonant must be followed by a vowel. The Hawaiian alphabetical order has all of the vowels before the consonants, as in the following chart.
Aa Ee Ii Oo Uu Hh Kk Ll Mm Nn Pp Ww ʻ
/a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ /h/ /k~t/ /l/ /m/ /n/ /p/ /v~w/ /ʔ/
This writing system was developed by American Protestant missionaries during 1820–1826. It was the first thing they ever printed in Hawaiʻi, on January 7, 1822, and it originally included the consonants B, D, R, T, and V, in addition to the current ones (H, K, L, M, N, P, W), and it had F, G, S, Y and Z for "spelling foreign words". The initial printing also showed the five vowel letters (A, E, I, O, U) and seven of the short diphthongs (AE, AI, AO, AU, EI, EU, OU).
In 1826, the developers voted to eliminate some of the letters which represented functionally redundant allophones (called "interchangeable letters"), enabling the Hawaiian alphabet to approach the ideal state of one-symbol-one-sound, and thereby optimizing the ease with which people could teach and learn the reading and writing of Hawaiian. For example, instead of spelling one and the same word as pule, bule, pure, and bure (because of interchangeable p/b and l/r), the word is spelled only as pule.
Interchangeable B/P. B was dropped, P was kept.
Interchangeable L/R. R was dropped, L was kept.
Interchangeable K/T. T was dropped, K was kept.
Interchangeable V/W. V was dropped, W was kept.
A modern Hawaiian name for the symbol (a letter) which represents the glottal stop is ʻokina (ʻoki 'cut' + -na '-ing'). It was formerly known as ʻuʻina ('snap'.
For examples of the ʻokina, consider the Hawaiian words Hawaiʻi and Oʻahu (often simply Hawaii and Oahu in English orthography). In Hawaiian, these words can be pronounced [hʌˈʋʌi.ʔi] and [oˈʔʌ.hu], and can be written with an ʻokina where the glottal stop is pronounced.
As early as 1823, the missionaries made some limited use of the apostrophe to represent the glottal stop, but they did not make it a letter of the alphabet. In publishing the Hawaiian Bible, they used it to distinguish koʻu ('my') from kou ('your').In 1864, William DeWitt Alexander published a grammar of Hawaiian in which he made it clear that the glottal stop (calling it "guttural break") is definitely a true consonant of the Hawaiian language. He wrote it using an apostrophe. In 1922, the Andrews-Parker dictionary of Hawaiian made limited use of the opening single quote symbol, called "reversed apostrophe" or "inverse comma", to represent the glottal stop. Subsequent dictionaries have preferred to use that symbol. Today, many native speakers of Hawaiian do not bother, in general, to write any symbol for the glottal stop. Its use is advocated mainly among students and teachers of Hawaiian as a second language, and among linguists.
Not sure if all that helps any at all? I actually had to read through most of it twice to fully understand. Just a quick comment, the glottal stop thingy. Is basically when you bounce the back of your tongue off your uvula and it makes a sort of pause in sound. So Hawaii sounds like Hawai-EE. So basically for all the grief the English language takes for how to properly spell and pronounce words because of the way they are written, they tried to fix those issues with the Hawaiian language....yet we still managed to push our American ways into their language and screw it up. Oh well, three more weeks until Christmas and then I wont have to listen to this dreadful music any more.
On a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day
That's the island greeting that we send to you
From the land where palm trees sway
Here we know that Christmas will be green and bright
The sun to shine by day and all the stars at night
Mele Kalikimaka is Hawaii's way
To say "Merry Christmas to you."
OK, to say I've been listening to too much Christmas music is like saying that William Shatner is too dramatic. But when it's forced upon you for 10 hours a day it begins to sink into your brain like listening to Jim Jones on a subliminal track. I'm freaking DREAMING Christmas music. I don't even decorate my house anymore because to live in Christmas 24 hours a day would surely be called cruel and unusual punishment by the supreme court. Not that I don't like the holiday, not that I don't believe in the holiday, but I just don't believe that 99% of people actually KNOW What the holiday is about.
But that's just not what this Blog is about. The above song is for one ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS. And for two it just makes me wonder about the Hawaiian language. It all sounds the same....So of course I had to find out why.
To start with, Hawaiian is a Polynesian Language that took it's name from the largest island of the chain that became known as the State of Hawaii. It originally had no written language other than petroglyphical symbols. The modern Hawaiian alphabet, ka pīʻāpā Hawaiʻi, is a variety of the Latin alphabet. Hawaiian words end only in vowels, and every consonant must be followed by a vowel. The Hawaiian alphabetical order has all of the vowels before the consonants, as in the following chart.
Aa Ee Ii Oo Uu Hh Kk Ll Mm Nn Pp Ww ʻ
/a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ /h/ /k~t/ /l/ /m/ /n/ /p/ /v~w/ /ʔ/
This writing system was developed by American Protestant missionaries during 1820–1826. It was the first thing they ever printed in Hawaiʻi, on January 7, 1822, and it originally included the consonants B, D, R, T, and V, in addition to the current ones (H, K, L, M, N, P, W), and it had F, G, S, Y and Z for "spelling foreign words". The initial printing also showed the five vowel letters (A, E, I, O, U) and seven of the short diphthongs (AE, AI, AO, AU, EI, EU, OU).
In 1826, the developers voted to eliminate some of the letters which represented functionally redundant allophones (called "interchangeable letters"), enabling the Hawaiian alphabet to approach the ideal state of one-symbol-one-sound, and thereby optimizing the ease with which people could teach and learn the reading and writing of Hawaiian. For example, instead of spelling one and the same word as pule, bule, pure, and bure (because of interchangeable p/b and l/r), the word is spelled only as pule.
Interchangeable B/P. B was dropped, P was kept.
Interchangeable L/R. R was dropped, L was kept.
Interchangeable K/T. T was dropped, K was kept.
Interchangeable V/W. V was dropped, W was kept.
A modern Hawaiian name for the symbol (a letter) which represents the glottal stop is ʻokina (ʻoki 'cut' + -na '-ing'). It was formerly known as ʻuʻina ('snap'.
For examples of the ʻokina, consider the Hawaiian words Hawaiʻi and Oʻahu (often simply Hawaii and Oahu in English orthography). In Hawaiian, these words can be pronounced [hʌˈʋʌi.ʔi] and [oˈʔʌ.hu], and can be written with an ʻokina where the glottal stop is pronounced.
As early as 1823, the missionaries made some limited use of the apostrophe to represent the glottal stop, but they did not make it a letter of the alphabet. In publishing the Hawaiian Bible, they used it to distinguish koʻu ('my') from kou ('your').In 1864, William DeWitt Alexander published a grammar of Hawaiian in which he made it clear that the glottal stop (calling it "guttural break") is definitely a true consonant of the Hawaiian language. He wrote it using an apostrophe. In 1922, the Andrews-Parker dictionary of Hawaiian made limited use of the opening single quote symbol, called "reversed apostrophe" or "inverse comma", to represent the glottal stop. Subsequent dictionaries have preferred to use that symbol. Today, many native speakers of Hawaiian do not bother, in general, to write any symbol for the glottal stop. Its use is advocated mainly among students and teachers of Hawaiian as a second language, and among linguists.
Not sure if all that helps any at all? I actually had to read through most of it twice to fully understand. Just a quick comment, the glottal stop thingy. Is basically when you bounce the back of your tongue off your uvula and it makes a sort of pause in sound. So Hawaii sounds like Hawai-EE. So basically for all the grief the English language takes for how to properly spell and pronounce words because of the way they are written, they tried to fix those issues with the Hawaiian language....yet we still managed to push our American ways into their language and screw it up. Oh well, three more weeks until Christmas and then I wont have to listen to this dreadful music any more.
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