Mark's Notebook

'Happy Holidays' also has religious meaning

Chicago Tribune

By Nathan Bierma

While the White House, along with other government officials and retailers this year, opts to use the word "holiday" as its generic, non-religious alternative to "Christmas," linguists point out that the word "holiday" itself has religious etymological roots. In fact, religious references are buried in the histories of many words we now use without thinking about their history.

It's less than obvious that the word "holiday" has the word "holy" in it, as in "holy-day." It began in Old English as two words, "halig daeg" ("holy day") that were combined into one as early as 1,000 years ago, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

"The names of the days of the week commemorate the sun (Sunday) and the moon (Monday), and then five pagan gods: Tiw [Tuesday], Odin [or Woden, "Wednesday"], Thor [Thursday], Freya [Friday], and Saturn [Saturday]," Geoffrey Pullum writes. "If we were to start obsessively analyzing all of these names for religious links to object to, we would have our work cut out forever."

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Last updated Tuesday 13 May 2008