The REAL meaning of Christmas

Hi everyone.
Last time I talked about the invasion of England by the Germanic tribes, the Angles, the Jutes, and the Saxons. You might remember how the word "England" actually comes from "Angle land", because so many Angles settled in England.
Of course these tribes spoke a language similar to German - in fact English, German and Dutch (the language of Holland) all come from the same language. So, for a long time after the Anglo Saxon invasion, people in England mostly spoke this version of German.


Around this time, most people in the North of Europe were not Christian. They followed a religion we call Paganism. Paganism is a little similar to Japanese Shinto; there are many gods and people worship nature and their ancestors. Paganism actually varied from place to place, with people in different areas worshipping different gods, or using different names for the same gods. In England people often worshipped the Germanic gods, also called Teutonic gods, which were also worshipped in Germany and Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden). These gods still leave their mark on the English language today. Let's have a look at some of the gods, and where their influence can be found in our language.


The gods at that time were all part of a family; the head god was the father of the family, his name was Odin, also called Wodin, or Wotan. Have you ever wondered why we spell the day Wednesday with a "d" before the "n"? Why Wednesday? This is because it comes from the word Wodin. Wednesday is actually Wodin's day.
Wodin's wife was called Freya. Many other gods are sons and daughters of Freya. If you go to Scandinavia, you can still find women named Freya. (I met a beautiful Norwegian Australian woman in a bar called Freya once) The word Friday comes from Freya's day.


Wodin and Freya had a son called Thor. Thor was the god of thunder; during thunderstorms people believed he rode across the sky banging a hammer, and that is what they thought made the sound of thunder (in fact, Thunder is another name for the god Thor). Thor's day is Thursday, so if there is a thunderstorm on a Thursday is very appropriate!
Last, Tuesday comes from the god called Tyr (pronounced by the Anglo Saxons as "Tiw"). Tyr was the god of war and had his hand bitten of by a wolf called Fenrir. The Anglo Saxons said Tiw, so Tuesday is actually Tiw's day.


So, we can see the old religion still partly remains in the English language today. Gradually this religion became overtaken by Christianity, and at that time the language of Christianity was Latin. The priests spoke Latin and the Bible was written only in Latin for many years. Why did people give up their traditional religion and change to Christianity? What effect did the new religion have on English? For these answers and more, you will have to read my next blog!


Thanks everybody!




▼▽▼▼Eddieの過去の記事を読む━━━━━━━━━━━
・【A Short History of English】2008.10.10 (Fri)
・【The Anglo Saxons invade!】2008.11.14 (Fri)

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