Trivia #13

B. No

If you’ve ever faced an assault from another by joyfully expressing the greeting “Happy Holidays” as opposed to “Merry Christmas,” history is on your side. Both “Happy Holidays” and “Merry Christmas” have religious roots, derived from Old English. Christmas comes from the Roman Catholic term, “Cristes Maesse,” or the “Mass of Christ,” the first usage of which (in 1038) described the Mass held to commemorate Christ’s birth. As for “holiday,” the word emerged in the 1500s as a replacement of the earlier medieval word “haliday,” which itself had supplanted the Old English “haligdæg,” meaning “holy day.”

D. Gelt

There are several reasons for giving gelt, according to Chabad.org. One of them is to reward children for studying the Torah. This is a reminder to them that the Jewish people had to be re-educated about the Torah after the Greeks were defeated and the Hellenist ways overturned. The word Hanukkah comes from the word for "education." Children also receive gelt to remind them to give part of their money to charity.

A. Francis of Assisi

When Christians today gather around a nativity scene (manger scene, crib, French: crèche or Italian:  presepio) in their homes they continue a tradition that began in the 12th century with Francis of Assisi. He brought a crib and animals into church so that everyone worshipping could feel part of the story. Thus a popular pietistic tradition was born. Many consider the genesis of the nativity scene the first dedicated symbol exclusively devoted to Christmas.

B. Cheese Blintz

After the Spanish expelled the Jews from Sicily in 1492, the exiles introduced ricotta cheese pancakes to the Jews of northern Italy. Potato latkes are a more recent Ashkenazi invention that gained popularity in Eastern Europe during the mid 1800s. A series of crop failures in Poland and Ukraine led to mass planting of potatoes, which were easy and cheap to grow. But before potatoes came on the scene, the latke of choice was cheese – generally referred today as a blintz.

D. Swahili

Kwanzaa is a seven day festival that celebrates African and African American culture and history. Kwanzaa takes place from 26th December to 1st January. The name Kwanzaa comes from the phrase 'matunda ya kwanza' which means 'first fruits' in the Swahili language (an Eastern African language spoken in countries including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and Zimbabwe). Kwanzaa is mostly celebrated in the USA.