Rudolph the Famous Wolf

You have to admit that Rudolph is famous but 'wolf'? Being as it is near to Christmas I thought that I would have a quick delve into the etymology of some of the festive lexicon. A good place to start would be 'festive' which hails from the Latin meaning feast. Advent also springs from the Latin for 'arrival', which is actually always what my advent calendar means to me; arrival of a little chocolate or even more extravagant gifts! Sounds like a sensible plan. It also makes perfect sense that Christmas derives from the Middle English Cristemasse and before that the Old English Cristes-messe. They were obviously not fans of the 'h' which is actually not a surprise if you spell phonetically. I am not sure why the archaic term for Christmas, 'Yule' which comes from Old Norse is still needed but at least it means that you can put a plastic sprig of holly on a chocolate swiss roll and call it 'Yule log'! This segways nicely into holly and ivy, best known nowadays from the infamous carol. Both words come from Old English, originally holly meant to prick or puncture and ivy was Old Germanic for hay, so that is some semantic change!

So sliding swiftly into the more materialistic side of the holiday period. We know that Coca Cola reinvented him and transformed his suit of green into one of red in order to improve their advertising but where does Father Christmas originate? Better known in the olden days as Santa Claus his name stems from a blended version of St Nicholas, whose day job was and possibly still is the patron saint of children. This leads me back to Rudolph which if you had not guessed means 'famous wolf'. I have no idea why. However, I do know that reindeer is Old Norse for an animals horn and when you think about it reindeers are one of very few animals where both the male and female have antlers.

My mind is blown! I will leave it until tomorrow to figure out the 12 days of Cristemasse!