Christmas Eve in the Anglosphere is a curious concatenation of Christian iconography, pagan indulgence and excess (including in some cases the illicit practices described in my last post) and quaint folk custom. The tradition of the excruciating pun, still to be found inside the Christmas cracker, but now a staple, too, of waggish posts on social media, puts language centre-stage. A quite different shared language is the repertoire of terms used to tell the Christmas story itself: ancient, resonant words originating in the gospels and coming down to us by way of re-translation and reinterpretation, but so familiar as to pass unexamined.

This year I took a look at both varieties of Christmas language in this article for The Conversation…

https://theconversation.com/uncovering-the-language-of-the-first-christmas-70686

…and more on those awful cracker jokes here:

https://theconversation.com/the-victorians-gave-us-the-christmas-cracker-but-are-also-to-blame-for-the-terrible-jokes-inside-70745?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox#link_time=1482486752

…and here are thoughts from a believer on the name(s) of Jesus:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2016/12/the-name-of-jesus-3/