The Christmas Dictionary

Advent is the lead up to Christ’s birth. It starts on the first of December and ends on the twenty fourth, the day before Christmas and Christmas Eve. In Latin the part of the word ‘Ad’ means forwards and ‘Vent’ means arrival, altogether meaning moving forwards to the arrival of Christ. From the start of advent to Christmas it is roughly four weeks so people have advent wreaths with four candles. They light one every week on the Sunday. There are three purple ones, (for the first three weeks) one pink one (for the fourth week) and sometimes a white for Christmas day. In Germany 1908 a man named Gerhard Lang created the first printed advent calendar it had little doors and you opened a door each day. Now people have chocolate advent calendars. The most expensive calendar cost £500,000 (half a million). It was made by a luxury goods company named Mont Blank. It had many goods such as a golden fountain pen engraved with diamonds costing £82,000. The advent calendar was on sale at Harrods in London.

Annunciation, the feast of the annunciation is on the twenty-fifth of March meaning announcement in Latin when the angel Gabriel visited Mary. He told her she would give birth to Gods son and she was to name him Jesus. Angel meaning messenger in ancient Greek.

Boxing Day is on the twenty-sixth of December. This is the feast day of St Stephen. Box in Latin is buxos. The word Boxing day celebrates the tradition of opening the church alms-boxes in churches servants, milk men, paper boys and girls, dustmen and post men received the Christmas boxes on this day. But that doesn’t happen as much as it did some time ago.

Cards – (Christmas) were invented in 1843 by a man named Henry Cole. He paid an artist named JC Harsley to design a card in black and white and then it would be hand coloured. They then came out in the shops and cost something like one shilling which was a lot of money then. The invention was a big hit as the penny post and envelopes had just been invented too. Now every Christmas about 140,000,000 are sold and they co about two pounds.

Carol – (Christmas) these are song about Christmas many are about the birth of Jesus. In old French and Greek it translates to the same word as chorus. Many of the first true carols are associated with Saint Frances as Assisi. Noels are a different type of carol that came from France. There are four different types of Christmas carol these are jolly, serious, lullabies and non religious.