Words of the Month - Happy Khanike and Merry Xmas

         This month as I was once again dutifully attempting to correctly spell the holiday my Jewish neighbors were celebrating, I finally did a little more research into the issue and discovered some interesting wrinkles.  First of all, transliteration causes problems right from the get-go.  The Hebrew alphabet doesn’t map directly onto the English pronunciations spelled with the Latin alphabet, so already there are choices to be considered.  Derived from a Hebrew verb meaning “to dedicate,” the two most common versions in English are Hanukkah and Chanukah.  Some sources, however, claim as many as twenty different possible “correct” spellings, although admittedly those include versions back to the seventeenth century before the spelling of even normal English words was standardized to our modern expectations.

        There are four primary points of variability: the initial letter (H or CH - or even KH), one N or two, one K or two, and whether or not to add an H at the end.  The confusion of the initial letter is  based on the fact that the Hebrew letter doesn’t have an exact English equivalent.  The CH spelling reflects an attempt to capture the uvular fricative like in loch, while the H is how most people pronounce the word in English.  But here’s the wrinkle: the ancient Hebrew pronunciation was actually closer to an H, albeit a throaty one, while the CH version is more modern.  This means that Ashkenazic Jews generally prefer the modern pronunciation and CH spelling, which is consistent with lots of other Yiddish and Hebrew words, while Sephardic Jews generally prefer the older pronunciation and H spelling.

        I’ll skip next to the question of how many Ks to use.  This point of variability is based on the fact that the Hebrew letter in question has a diacritical mark making it geminate: doubled.  This would be pronounced like the double K in bookkeeper, and thus spelled with two Ks.  Once again, however, modern Hebrew pronunciation has shifted and the majority of Jews don’t pronounce a geminate K anyway, making it perfectly fine to use a single K in the spelling.  So to return now to the question of how many Ns to use: unlike the K, there is no reason to use two Ns, either historical or otherwise, in the transliteration.  Versions of Hannukah are sometimes seen and may even be considered acceptable, but there’s no justification for them.

        As for that final H (or not), it’s simply a question of which version of English spelling seems to capture a final vowel sound better.  For example, do you prefer to spell “Oh come, all ye faithful,” or “O come?”  Sarah or Sara?  To add one final wrinkle to the whole crumpled mess, Yiddish academics actually favor the spelling Khanike, on the theory that this is the most accurate transliteration of modern Yiddish pronunciation.  I’d argue, however, that this is not how to spell the holiday in English, and therefore can be ignored by the average English speller.  I think going forward I’m going to go with Hanukkah.  What’s your spelling of choice?

        Meanwhile, what about Christmas?  The OED does include a number of different spellings, including such gems as Cristesmæsse and Kyrstemes, but since these are simply obsolete, we can ignore them.  The only real competition for Christmas is Xmas, so what’s the deal with that?  Many people think Xmas must be a modern version, and possibly even a secular one, but neither charge is true.  In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written around 1100 (when English was still Middle English), it was on at least one occasion written Xres mæsse.  Here the X is not Latin but Greek Chi.  Chi rho are the first two letters of Christ in Greek and were often used as an abbreviation both standing alone and in other words such as Xpian and Xpmas.  The X (chi) alone as an abbreviation for Christ dates back to at least 1380, and the exact spelling Xmas in English is first recorded in the early 1700s.  So definitely neither modern nor secular.  I still think it’s hideous, though, and will stick to Christmas, myself!  Only 338 days until Hanukkah and 359 days until Christmas, but I’m ready!

[Picture: December, woodcut by Wharton Esherick, 1923 (Image from Wharton Esherick Museum).]

Merry Christmas!

         Today in celebration of Christmas here’s a rather unusual block print of the Holy Family.  A multi-color piece that involves both woodcut and screenprint, it’s by Sadao Watanabe (Japan, 1913-1996).  He was aiming for “unpretentious honesty of purpose” and used crumpled handmade paper, with screen printing for the blocks of color while the black is printed from a wood block.  The style of these people is inspired by Buddhist prints, while obviously the subject is Christian.  I can’t say I love this one, but it does make for interesting variety, which is always fun.  I do like the flowered hill and trees of the background.

        If you want to see a variety of Christmas and nativity block prints, you can find many of them linked from this post.

        To all who celebrate Christmas, may yours be full of love, light, comfort, and joy.  And really, I wish all the same things to you regardless of what holidays you observe!

[Picture: Flight Into Egypt, woodcut and screenprint by Sadao Watanbe, 1971 (Image from The Cleveland Museum of Art).]

Snow Queen

         It’s an unseasonably warm, windy, rainy day here, and all our snow is gone.  But we can still be in the seasonal spirit by considering the Snow Queen.  Hans Christian Andersen’s is the most famous, and today I have a couple of illustrations of that fairy tale, by Dugald Stewart Walker in 1914.  There are many illustrations of the Snow Queen, but I’ve picked these as being closest to the block print vibe, even though they’re presumably pen and ink.  At any rate, here’s the Snow Queen materializing from a snowflake.  I particularly like the snowy city below and the background of the sky.  Then I also have a tailpiece illustration which shows little demon babies falling with the snow, which obviously would be scary, but kind of amuses me because it’s so different from my usual image of snowflakes as fairies or butterflies or something happy-pretty.

          As for Andersen’s tale, I’ve never much liked it (I’m afraid I’m not a big fan of most of Anderson’s stories), although it does have some interesting imagery, such as snow-bees, and the shards of distorting mirror.  However, Andersen’s is not the only Snow Queen in fiction.  The Disney movie “Frozen” was vaguely inspired by Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” but takes the character in a completely different direction.  (You can read my review of the movie here.)  Then there’s C.S. Lewis’s White Witch from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, who may also have been inspired by Andersen’s Snow Queen, and is certainly very similar in being a cold, heartless antagonist who rides in a sleigh and freezes people.  I feel sure there must be others, and I feel sure the general idea must predate Andersen, but I can’t cite any characters.  Can you?

        Finally I have a somewhat strange color woodcut by Andrea G Artz from 2024.  This represents a figure sculpted of snow, which was part of a large project that apparently included digital work, video, etc.  I don’t know that this Snow Queen has anything to do with Andersen or other folklore, but I can see the figures in the background as trolls!  It’s certainly a very different style and emotion.

        Maybe next time we have snow I’ll have to build a snow queen of my own.  But I wouldn’t want mine to be a mere cold-hearted villain with all those stereotypes.  No, I think she’d be gently blanketing all the roots and burrows to keep them safe through the winter, and she’d be all about sparkling and shining light.  How do you imagine a Snow Queen?

[Pictures: “The biggest snowflake became the figure of a woman,” illustration by Dugald Stewart Walker from Fairy Tales from Hans Christian Andersen, 1914;

Tailpiece of “The Snow Queen,” illustration by Walker (Images from New York Public Library, Internet Archive);

Snow Queen, woodcut by Andrea G Artz, 2024 (Image from Ghost Weight Fine Art).]

First Snow

         We’ve had our first snow of the season (more than just flurries, anyway), so here’s a block print to celebrate.  This one is by Abigail Rorer (USA, b. 1949) and is interesting in having a completely white foreground.  This is interesting firstly for the composition of making nearly half the piece simply empty white, and turning that negative space into the positive snow.  It’s also interesting because this is a wood engraving, and since engraving is done with finer tools it’s unusual for them to have so much pure white space instead of fine texture everywhere.

        I picked this piece today because of the beautifully detailed, snow-glazed branches all across the top.  Our snow was certainly not deep enough to give us huge areas of pure white, but it did highlight every twig in a filigree of sparkling white, which is one of my very favorite scenes.

[picture: Fresh Snow, wood engraving by Abigail Rorer (Image from The New Leaf Gallery).]

Deer That Know How to Fly

         “The Christmas Song,” aka “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” written in 1945 by Robert Wells and Mel Tormé famously asks “if reindeer really know how to fly.”  The popular idea of Santa Claus riding in a sled pulled by flying reindeer goes back to the 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”  It’s unclear where credited author Clement Clark Moore came up with this concept - Santa Claus/St. Nicholas had been known to use goats, donkeys, and horses in various other traditions.  There is an illustration of the sleigh with one reindeer in an American children’s booklet from 1821, so perhaps publisher W.B. Gilley or his anonymous

writer made it up.  At the very least Moore certainly popularized the idea of flying reindeer.  To brush up on this enormously influential fantasy poem, revisit my prior post about “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”  Rudolph, by the way, didn’t join the team until 1939, the invention of the Montgomery Ward department store’s marketing team.

        The Christmas reindeer fly by purely magical levitation, since they don’t have wings or any other physical means of flight — but reindeer are not the only deer that know how to fly.  Let’s consider the peryton, a winged deer described by Jorge Luis Borges in his Book of Imaginary Beings (1957).  (You can read my review of The Book of Imaginary Beings in this post on Creature Collections.)  Borges claimed that the peryton was mentioned in a medieval manuscript, and you will occasionally find it listed in various sources as genuine medieval folklore.  There is a

fourteenth century depiction of a winged stag in an armorial list, but in fact, however, Borges seems to have made up the peryton himself, slyly slipping it in amongst the genuine mythical and metaphysical beasts he was discussing.

        If a peryton were simply a winged deer, however, that wouldn’t be anything too remarkable in the realm of fantasy creatures.  (Read my post on Flight to consider how slapping a pair of wings on any normally earthbound animals immediately makes them a fantasy marvel.)  Perhaps the strangest thing about the peryton is that despite being shaped like a bird-deer hybrid, its shadow is shaped like a human.  That is, until it kills a human, after which its shadow becomes a proper winged-deer-shape.  This makes it sound considerably more sinister,  and Borges claimed they were mortal foes of humans.  Many fantasy worlds, such as Dungeons & Dragons, have cast the peryton as a monster.  Much better to have reindeer than perytons landing on your roof in the night!

        The exact appearance of this species is somewhat in question, however.  Although many sources depict it looking like an ordinary deer with ordinary wings, some give it the front half of a stag and the back half (including wings) of a bird, like the hippalectryon.  Borges’s own description gives it the body of a bird, with wings and tail, but the head and all four legs of the stag.  I actually couldn’t find any illustrations that seemed exactly right to me.

        Finally, perytons’ original native habitat was Atlantis.  They escaped the destruction of Atlantis (about which you can read in this prior post) by flying, which makes me wonder what other flying Atlantean wonders might also have survived.

        Are there any other magical flying deer species in the Realms of Imagination?  I can’t think of any - except the 20th century (now retired) winged springbok* logo of South African Airways - but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised to learn of some.  Can you think of any creatures that fit the category?  (*Yes, I know antelope and deer belong to different families, but I think they play similar ecological and cultural roles, so I’m counting them as the same broad category for purposes of fantasy!)

[Pictures: Santa with his reindeer, postcard from 1906 (Image from Sandra Lee’s Shoppe on ebay);

Santa and his reindeer, colored engraving by Arthur J Stansbury(?) from The Children’s Friend, Number III, 1821 (Image from Yale University Beineke Library);

Winged white stag of Charles VI, illumination from Songe du vieil pèlerin by Philippe de Mézières, c. 1390 (Image from La France pittoresque);

Perytons, image by BlueFrackle(?) (Image from Fandom);

Flying Springbok, South African Airways logo, 1948.]

What's New, OR How Is It December Already?

         I’ve got a couple more new pieces I'm excited about... except that they’re going to be illustrations in my upcoming book Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, so I’m saving the whole posts about them until spring when I’ll be promoting the new book…  (By the way, I’ll be turning off the Late Pledges feature on my Kickstarter campaign by the end of the month, so if you missed the campaign back in September you still have one last chance to check it out and get the various nifty pledge rewards.)

        This weekend I’ll be doing my once-a-year Holiday Sale schedule of two shows in two days: complete set-up, sale, and take-down two days in a row, with restocking all evening between.  It’s brutal, but the Holiday Sales are when they are, so if I’m going to participate I don’t have a choice.  On Saturday I’ll be at the Arts Wayland Holiday Marketplace, and on Sunday I’ll be at the Celebrate Newton Holiday Craft Fair.  Needless to say, I’d love to see you if you’re in the area!

        And of course I’ll be carving new blocks while sitting in my booth each day.  I’ve got one block half-carved from the last sale, plus another prepped, plus a small third which I was hoping to use as the demo at my Printmaking Workshop on Dec. 13…  But I fear that I’ll need to start it this weekend unless I get inspiration for another block TODAY.  Inspiration on demand is the hardest job in preparing for shows.  Yes, I make myself lists of ideas throughout the year in the hope of being able to grab an idea off the shelf when I need one… but sometimes nothing seems to entice me, and while I can brainstorm, I can’t force excitement.  So yeah, I hope I don’t run out of carving!  Any ideas for another block I should prepare to carve this weekend?

        December 13 will also be back-to-back events: first the aforementioned Block Printmaking Workshop at the library, after which I’ll rush home and jump right onto the Strong Women-Strange Worlds zoom for their annual Holiday Extravaganza.  It’s six whole hours of bookish fun with authors of speculative fiction.  There are MadLibs, Improv Storytelling, and more.  I’ll be participating once again in Speed-Date a Book, in which Bitterweetness & Light will try to win a date with readers.  It’s free, it’s available to anyone in the world with a zoom connection, and you can attend for as much or as little as you want.  Plus, the Digital Swag Bag includes a brand new Round Robin anthology, a new Small Bites collection of flash fiction, poetry, art, and recipes, and downloads including coupon codes, ebooks, postcards, and coloring pages…  And I’ve contributed to all of them!

        Meanwhile you should check out my most recent poem… which isn’t really my poem, because it’s crowd-sourced from contributions by 90 people in my town.  I took all the bits and pieces people contributed, came up with the organizing principle and some connective tissue, and wove everyone’s words together into another poem for the town: “The Sidewalks of Needham.”  You can read it here.

        And as soon as my December art activities are over, it will be time to clean the house for holiday guests!  But for now, one step at a time.  So I ask again: any ideas for another block I should prepare to carve this weekend?

Words of the Month - Gratitude

         Today will be a quick and belated Words of the Month to look at the roots of gratitude.  The adjective grate, meaning “agreeable, pleasant,” is now obsolete, but gave us quite a few words in which its spirit lives on.  First grateful, which now is used entirely for thankfulness, but you can see the earlier “pleasant” usage in Milton’s “Sweet the coming on of grateful ev’ning mild,” for example (1667).  Grateful is an unusual word because grate was already an adjective, so it didn’t need -ful to be turned into one.

        You can see it very clearly in ingrate, which was originally an adjective in the 14th century, and originally meant “unfriendly, unpleasant.”  The connection between pleasant feelings and thankfulness for the pleasantness is a recurring one, which I think is telling.  By around 1670 ingrate had come to mean the person with that quality of being unpleasant and simultaneously failing to be thankful for gifts.

        You can see the same Latin root that gave grate in congratulate, which essentially means  showing pleasure with someone.  Gratify comes from the idea of bestowing pleasure upon someone.

        Another suite of words that come from the idea of giving thanks includes

gratis - meaning something done for thanks only, rather than payment

gratuitous - which originally meant the same as gratis, but by about 1690 (some 40 years later), meant “uncalled for, done without good reason.”

gratuity - the idea being that it’s money you didn’t have to give in payment, but rather bestowed in thanks

        And speaking of thanks, that’s from all the way back in Old English, and seems to be related to think.  Again, isn’t it suggestive that thinking of the things and relationships we have is so closely related to giving thanks for them?  That’s why it’s important to count our blessings, even when there’s also so much to be concerned about.

[Picture: Mexican Fruits, wood engraving by Leon Underwood, 1927 (Image from The New Woodcut, by Malcolm C. Salaman, 1930).]

Giving Poems

         One of my family’s most beloved Christmas traditions is that we write poems to give along with the gifts under the tree.  Here’s how it works.

        1. When you give a gift, you write a poem to go with it.  In theory the poems hint at the gifts, but since they always seem to give it away outright, the giver reads the poem aloud at the same time as the gift is being opened, so as not to spoil the surprise.

        2. While serious poems are certainly acceptable, they’re very rare – wonky rhythm and grammar are tolerated, ridiculous eccentric rhymes are applauded, and references to in-jokes and family lore are gleefully encouraged.  Gift poems can be as short as limericks or even haiku, they can spoof famous poems or song lyrics, and they’re most often just a few couplets of doggerel.

        3. Each giving unit writes one poem for each receiving unit.  In other words, even if you give someone more than one gift you don’t need to write more than one poem; you can just pick one gift to write a poem for.  If the gift is for 2 people together, it’s still just one poem, and likewise if you’re giving gifts jointly, only one poem is necessary.  (My husband is happy to leave all our poem-writing to me, while my brother and his girlfriend sit down and write their poems together, and my children divvy up their gift list and each write half the necessary poems.  Whatever method people are happiest with is the right way to do it.)

        4. All poems are gratefully accepted with cheering and acclaim, no matter how simple or silly.  Just have fun with it!  It’s not a competition, and nor is it to be taken seriously.  Does it add to the holiday stress?  Well, perhaps a little, because it is one more thing you have to find time to accomplish — but it definitely shouldn’t be adding anxiety.

        As I said, these holiday poems are never in competition, but it’s still the case that over the years I’ve written some I was more pleased with than others.  Here are just a few that have given me particular satisfaction to present (and which are actually intelligible to people who don’t know all our family in-jokes).

        A Bundt cake pan for my sister-in-law

Consider the circle, a wonderful thing.

Without it, no wheel – and no tire swing.

We need it for zero, without which: no math;

We need it for lids, and the drain of the bath.

We need it for hamster wheels, bagels, and bowls,

For Christmas wreaths, bracelets, and anything that rolls.

Without any circle there’d be no letter O,

Which we need for October, oolong, and oboe,

Not to mention Ohio, O’Keeffe, and o’clock.

Yes, losing the circle would be a bad shock.

Just image the losses sustained when we bake:

Without any circle there’d be no Bundt cake!

        A set of prints of a rooster and chicken for my father

I know an old man with some chickens,

Whose heart at the sight of them quickens.

       He demands with a scowl,

       “Who says chickens are foul?

“Such bigoted speech simply sickens!” 

        A pair of shorts for my mother

The Greeks performed athletic feats untroubled by attire.

They thought a dash of olive oil all that modesty required.

But our mother’s far more modest when she's working to perspire;

She considered all the angles and deduced what she desired.

 

She wanted something comfy: cotton fabric, stretchy waist;

And washable plus sturdy, as her regimen's fast-paced;

Yet nothing too revealing, as her fashion sense is chaste.

What could I find to clothe her in accordance with her taste?

 

In careful consultation I examined all reports,

Considered the demands of her activities and sports,

And contemplated what would be the best as she cavorts.

At last I settled on this gift.  Spoiler alert!  It's shorts.

        A bicycle rear view mirror for my brother

Philosophers are fond of stating

How terrible it is to focus

On things behind us, advocating

Our minds dwell on the current locus.

 

I disagree with the cognoscente;

It’s wise to look in each direction.

This gift gives hindsight 20-20

And the opportunity for reflection.

        You get the idea; now it’s your turn!  Everyone’s holiday traditions are different, of course, so by all means adapt these ideas to your own circumstances.  Whether your circle is large or small, whether you can be with people in person or have to use Zoom or mail, the important thing is to reach out to the friends and family for whom you’re most grateful, and show them that you spent a little extra time thinking about them - not to mention sharing a laugh!  Whether poetry sounds like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, or like Hallmark, or like a mangled limerick, it can draw us together in shared appreciation of the gifts we give each other, our presence in each other’s lives, and what we mean to each other.

[Pictures: Festive Gift, digital collage of block print bits by AEGNydam, 2025;

Chanticleer and Hen & Chicks, rubber block prints by AEGNydam, 2009, (about which the limerick was written!)  Originals sold out.]

Japanese Radish

         It’s been another of those days when I had no time to put together a proper blog post, so here’s just a very pleasing and deceptively simple woodblock print by Kōno Bairei (Japan, 1844-1895).  Bairei was a master of depicting birds and flowers, and he opened an art school in 1880.  This delightful radish seems quite simple and straightforward, but remember that those seemingly spontaneous lines were carefully carved and those subtle washes of color had to be carefully inked and printed.  For whatever reason, I’m just finding this piece is making me very happy today!

[Picture: Japanese Radish, woodblock print by Kōno Bairei, 1868-95 (Image from Harvard Art Museums).]