Holiday Homophones

In prose, the interjection “oh” is spelled with two letters; it’s often followed with an exclamation point.

Oh!

As a poetic interjection, "O" is a capital letter. It is not followed by a comma.

Musical note: Can you play a C major scale on the piano? If so, If you can play Joy to the World. Just go backward instead of forward, in the rhythm of the tune. It works in all 12 major scales and on any musical instrument.

Holiday Etymology

Do you know people who are bothered by seeing Xmas instead of Christmas? The word Christmas is a shortened version, flipped around, of "the mass of Christ." It dates back to at least 1038, if not earlier.

By the 1500s it was sometimes abbreviated as Xmas, because X is the Greek letter for chi, which is the first letter of Christ.

Holiday Spelling

Hanukkah and Chanukah are two common spellings for the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights. There are around a dozen different spellings because there's no exact English translation for the Hebrew word "dedication."

Hanukkah was observed Nov. 28-Dec. 6, 2021. In 2022, Hanukkah begins at sundown on Dec. 18 and ends at nightfall on Dec. 26.

Holiday Timing

New Year’s Eve is the last day of the year.
New Year’s Eve 2021 is Dec. 31, 2021.

New Year’s Day is the first day of the year.
New Year’s Day 2022 is Jan. 1, 2022.

These two dates happen within a second of each other, at midnight. In the preceding days, talking about a New Year’s party doesn’t really need a year mentioned because we all know where we are in the moment. It’s for the years long ago and the years in the future that we need a consistent rule for the holiday date.