Good Questions: Your Holiday Questions Answered
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Every Friday, Heather Brown takes a look at some of your Good Question submissions. This week, her mailbag resembles the ones for Kris Kringle at the end of "Miracle on 34th Street."
How often does Minnesota get a white Christmas?
After two years in a row of no snow on the ground, weather forecasts are predicting plenty for Dec. 26, 2016. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources defines white Christmas as at least 1 inch of snow on the ground. In the past 116 years, it's happened 72 percent of the time.
Phil from Stillwater asks: "Why do we celebrate Christmas with evergreen trees?"
According to David Landry, a professor of religion at the University of St. Thomas, trees were used during pagan winter festivals to celebrate the winter solstice and the eventual coming of spring. He says Christians likely changed the symbol somewhat and evergreen was associated eternal life with God made possible by the birth of Christ.
Barbara from Blaine wants to know: "Why do we say 'merry Christmas?'"
According to linguist Arika Okrent, merry and happy have different origins. Merry used to mean pleasant and happy meant lucky. Over time, those meanings changed as happy became more of an emotional state and merry became associated with drinking, dancing and carousing.
"People used to say 'merry Christmas' and 'happy Christmas' for a long time," Okrent said.
But, merry later became an old-fashioned word and fell out of use.
"It was stuck with Christmas because of Dickens and the 19th century," Okrent said. "All of our typical Christmas traditions come from that time period."
