#12 TATWTD: WORDS & MEANINGS
Meanings matter. Word meanings matter most when attached to beliefs or when robbed of resilience.
Take “Lent,” for instance. I recently meant to, but got sidetracked by wordplay that led me to seriously consider what significant words can do to those of us of strong beliefs. Unexpectedly, I thought of Christmas and my maternal grandmother.
Popular of late, rife among some, is the idea that that “Christmas,” at least as a merry greeting, is being, has been, swiped, banned, or despised.
But, way before an era of fighting over a holiday phrase, my deeply Christian and strongly anti-Roman Catholic grandmother rejected the word and, consequently, the holiday.
Granny was a lover of words, of meanings, and origins. She was smart enough to recognize the “mas” attached to “Christ” in “Christmas,” and resented it. She knew that Mass means dismissing. She knew that, at least since the 4th century, Mass referred to the Eucharist (another word she wouldn’t use), which honored and celebrated death; the death of Jesus, the Christ. So, hello, why would any good Christian use the word to celebrate birth? She preached the question. Word meanings mattered.
As 16th century Protestants had, Granny eschewed Popish words, recognized “Christmas” as unfound in Scripture, a dangerous construct that did not cross her Baptist lips. So, rejecting the word’s resilience, language purist that she tended to be, student of scripture that she was, but for the tradition of making my father’s favorite chocolate cream pie, and giving children those bulky silver boxes of LifeSaver candies, she shunned Christmas entirely.
But get this — when Easter rolled around, she made herself a new dress, placed baskets at the ends of sleeping children’s beds, boiled, colored, and hid eggs, attended sunrise services, and feasted with family, come noontime.
Mind you, she didn’t, wouldn’t, touch the term “Lent” (Which I will do with fun in the next blog) but she took no offense at the term Easter, a non-scriptural, Latin, German, pagan-borrowed, goddess-suggesting, Norse/Saxon, Roman Catholic sanctioned word of meaning, strangely embraced by my grandmother. Whatever is it about us that we accept or reject words like favored or despised foods?
Here’s what I’m thinking along the way to dying: It might be wise to be aware that not our words, or our protection of them, but our deeds and our practices of them, matters most when it comes to matters of life.
Lent, Day Eight: Coming soon; how the word “Lent” lent laughter. But I promise, I won’t wander in this field for 40 Days.
