Octopodial Chrome

Hey folks, enormity is a bad thing: it means something outrageous or wicked. I don’t think that Kiran Chetry quite meant that.

We’re all familiar with Christmas (= Christ’s Mass), but do we recall the other old names for holy days? Here’s a brief list:

Childermas

The Feast of the Holy Innocents

Celebrated on the twenty-ninth of December, it commemorates the murder of children by Herod the Great in his attempt to kill Jesus.

Candlemas

The Feast of the Presentation of Christ

Celebrated on the second of February, it celebrates Christ’s presentation at the temple. In the West, it marks the end of the forty-day Christmas season.

Hallowmas

The Feast of All Saints (All Hallows)

Celebrated on the first Sunday after Pentecost (on the first of November in the West), this feast commemorates all the saints.

Lammas Day

Celebrated on the first of August, Loaf-mass Day is a harvest festival celebrating the first-fruits of the wheat crop; it’s traditional to bring a loaf of bread made from the new wheat to church on that day. It’s possibly a pagan survival, but I think it’s a commendable feast.

Michælmas

The Feast of Saint Michæl and All Angels

Celebrated on the eighth of November (on the 29th of September in the West), it commemorates archangels Michæl, Gabriel, Raphæl, Uriel, Selaphiel, Jehudiel, Barachiel and Jeremiel.

Martinmas

The Feast of St. Martin

This is celebrated on the eleventh of November. Interestingly, St. Martin was a Roman soldier and is considered a patron saint of soldiers, and his feast day is more widely known as Veterans’ or Armistice Day.

Those were all I could find. Anyone else have others?

Today’s stupid phrase is undocumented immigrants, a replacement for the earlier illegal immigrants, itself a replacement for the earlier illegal aliens. The original phrase is the proper one: the people in question are aliens (i.e. citizens of one state in another state) and they are illegal. The phrase which followed tried to soften the blow by calling them immigrants; it’s not an altogether bad phrase. The most recent, though, is asinine. Their problem is not that they have lost their documents or failed to procure them: the problem is that they are illegal. To ignore that fact is asinine and obtuse.

Philosophically, I tend toward the open-borders argument (although there are some very strong practical arguments against it); however, playing word-games and inventing stupid phrases is just, well, stupid.