Merry Christmas

General discussions on Wado Ryu karate and associated martial arts.
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wadoka
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Merry Christmas

Post by wadoka »

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, as with time zones etc some of you are already there.
claas
Posts: 186
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2011 4:39 pm

Re: Merry Christmas

Post by claas »

Merry Christmas!
We call Christmas "joulu" in Finnish and it's "jul" in Swedish. Wikipedia tells that the word comes here from Sweden and that our word for party, "juhla" comes from the same root.

Here's about this "Yule":
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule

Furthermore, our Christmas seems to be a combination of the christian Christmas and a lot of other traditions. Santa comes from Finland. We had some ugly and scary version back in the days. Then some guy from Ahvenanmaa/Åland (the small island between Finland and Sweden, part of Finland) designed the red Santa for Coca Cola. So we have double-dibbs on that one, if my vague Åland story has any truth in it. (North pole Schnorth pole.)

All of this, I wanted to say because for a Finn it feels strange to say "happy holidays", just to be politically correct. We don't have the "Christ" in "Christmas" to begin with, so we don't need to separately take it out from there either.

So, when I say Merry Christmas, I mean Happy Joulu and you can put there the movement of the earth, Jesus, Lemmy or whatever!

So I wish everyone a very merry Christmas and I give you this song from the Swede Jussi Björling (whose first name is Finnish). The song is "O helga natt" and some experts of opera think J. Björling was the best there ever was. Towards the end it is easy to imagine, not knowing anything about opera singing.

Merry Christmas from Scandinavia!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O9cSJel8RD4




The song is originally French ("Cantique de Noël" or alternatively "Minuit, Chrétiens"). Don't know about the rest of the world but at least among us Swedish speaking Finns this song is very well known. There is also a Finnish translation "Oi jouluyö" and it seems there is an English version "O Holy Night".
Lasse Candé
Helsinki, Finland
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