Christmas Cheer

I woke up this morning pondering the difference between a Yule log and a chocolate Swiss roll, surely except for a tiny sprig of plastic holly the connotation is all that separates them? So now I have a theme! The origins of Christmas words.

So 'Christmas' itself is not tricky to fathom, the clue as they say is in the word, 'Cristemasse' in Middle English and 'Cristes-messe' in Old English, this in turn comes from the Latin 'missa', which is rather beyond me when it comes to translating. Let's go sideways to 'Xmas' which in fact is not a way of getting rid of Christ but just a nod to the Greek where the X is an abbreviation for Christ which can be traced back to as early as 1100AD. It turns out that 'Christmas' is also of fairly recent origin and the earlier term used to refer to the feast of the winter solstice is in fact 'Yule'. Not Swiss roll you will be pleased to learn.

So I am back to my original thought so will end there so that I can create my own Yule log.