• Robin (unregistered)

    It's not "jumper day", it's "Christmas Jumper day". Bit of an important distinction. I guess we can add Christmas jumpers to the list of things that we Brits didn't know that Americans don't understand.

  • Olav (unregistered)

    Since when did Christmas become an Anglo-American phenomenon?

  • Brian Boorman (unregistered)

    Add to the list of Brit things that Americans don't understand: Why is it called a jumper and not a sweater? Is this what British people wear when they go play on the trampoline?

  • (nodebb) in reply to Brian Boorman

    And Americans wear it when they want to sweat? 😄

    But it is actually an interesting question. In our Latvian language it's also called "džemperis" which is pronounced almost like "jumper". Coincidence? I think NOT! Yet on the language tree these languages are nowhere close. And I've no idea where the word has come from... 🤔

  • The Shadow Knows (unregistered) in reply to Robin

    Deliberately buying an ugly jumper for Christmas misses the point, it should be a celebration of the ones you've been bought as unironic presents by people who think they're nice and that you'd look good in.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Vilx

    If you are wearing it inside for too long, you can really start sweating. Around this side of the Atlantic, we tend to call it "Ugly Christmas Sweater day."

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    "So does this mean the error has an error which has an error?" reminds me of a crazy problem i had with one of my old PCs: Windows developed a fault in the subroutine that handles illegal operations. so every time any program did an illegal operation, Windows would go into an endless loop, trying to shut down it's own shutdown routine over and over! it took a "nuke and pave" to fix it. (that's a term i got from an old website, meaning full reinstall of windows)

  • Barry Margolin (github)

    Is a simple typo in the temperature really worth of a WTF?

  • (nodebb)

    I suspect the temperature of “288C” is a simple typo by someone not pressing the Shift and Option keys well enough on their keyboard.

  • jay (unregistered)

    "most of the various holidays obviously originated in some summer event" I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a joke, in which case I'm missing the punchline, or a serous statement, in which case I'm left scratching my head. National holidays here in the US are: Christmas, New Years, Martin Luther King, Presidents' (winter); Memorial Day, Juneteenth (spring), Independence Day, Labor Day (summer), Columbus, Veterans, Thanksgiving (fall). So the score is winter: 4, spring: 2, summer: 2, fall: 3.

    If you mean the "true origin" of these holidays is mostly a summer event ... no. New Years is clearly a winter event. Memorial Day celebrates the end of the Civil War, which happened on April 9, spring. Likewise Veterans Day celebrates the end of World War 1, which was November 11, fall. Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery, June 19, spring. Christmas, MLK, and Columbus are on the birthdays of famous men. Presumably we're not really celebrating their birth but their lifetime accomplishments. Not sure one could argue those accomplishments all happened in the summer.

  • jay (unregistered)

    Now here I was thinking "Christmas Jumper Day" was a day when people who get depressed on holidays jumped off a bridge to commit suicide. Apparently the true meaning is much more boring.

  • (nodebb) in reply to jay

    I think that the Christmas Jumper Day you're thinking of happens on or after 25th, not before. Christmas jumpers are definitely a WTF though, glad I live in the hemisphere where they'll never become a thing.

    The summer holiday comment had me scratching my head too. Admittedly Jesus' birth could have actually been in the northern summer, but the decision (centuries later) to start celebrating it around the time of the northern winter solstice would still have been before "Anglo-American" could possibly have meant anything. As for the rest... this is the first time I can recall wondering if the writing of the article was a bigger WTF than the WTF it was about.

  • Dlareg (unregistered) in reply to Robin

    Like taxes and the importance of tea?

  • (nodebb) in reply to Paddles

    glad I live in the hemisphere where they'll never become a thing

    I was aware it was Christmas Jumper Day on Friday because lots of my colleagues turned up to our morning call wearing them. I've just looked it up and it turns out to be a fundraiser for Save the Children. Sounds like a worthy cause to me.

  • Neveranull (unregistered)

    This comment does not exist.

  • Daniel Beardsmore (unregistered) in reply to Gurth

    Funny … as I scarcely use Macs these days, that never occurred to me, and I suspect that your comment will be lost on many more. In my case, I liked that binding so much, I have AutoHotkey set to do the same in Windows: AltGr+8 = •, AltGr+Shift+8 = °, effectively the same as the Mac, I think. I could never fathom the sense in Apple’s approach to quotation marks, however: I have AltGr+[ / ] as ‘ / ’ and AltGr+Shift+[ / ] as “ / ” as it should be. Apple’s bindings were a bit iffy, but much better than nothing! I still try to type AltGr+G for copyright even though it’s AltGr+C on my computers (Apple bound cedilla to C I think). (I don’t actually use AltGr, as I find that inconvenient; I almost always use Ctrl+Alt instead which broadly equates to the same.)

  • Hasseman (unregistered)

    Should it be Fahrenheit 451?

  • John Doe (unregistered)

    "the Anglo-American tradition of a wintertime Christmas" "Anglo-American"

    Huh?

  • (nodebb) in reply to Vilx

    "Nowhere close"

    It depends on the definition of "close". Both are Indo-European languages believed to have a kind of Sanskrit as the common ancestor. Take Estonian, for example, this is not in this group and are "nowhere close" as you put it.

    I am sure you can find similar words in English/German and Latvian.

  • (nodebb) in reply to jay

    I believe it is believed that Jesus was born during the summer or at least early fall. However, when religion is more about politics than actual deep introspective reflection, they saw that the winter solstice was a nice holiday celebrated by the non-believers like the Vikings, they hijacked the event. (I guess he was not happy when he had to start celebrating at the end of the year.)

  • Read some history books (unregistered)

    @jonhaug It was not "hijacked" from Vikings. What kind of pop pseudo-history have you been reading? Why do people feel compelled to spread such blatantly incorrect statements with such nonchalance?

  • (author) in reply to Read some history books

    Presumably he's referring to Yule, from which festival we still get references such as Yuletide and "Yule Logs", adornments like holly wreaths, mistletoe and candlelit pine trees. If you'd like to find some more of this "pop pseudo-history", you can start with that bastion of fraud and fake news, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule

  • (author) in reply to jay

    I'm surprised how certain you are that New Year's is "clearly a winter event." Perhaps someone from Rio, Tel Aviv, Sydney, Beijing or Egypt would like to comment on when New Year's is, and whether or not it's a winter event.

  • (author) in reply to Barry Margolin

    @Barry, you are 100% correct that it's a dumb typo and not really some great WTF. I just thought it was funny, and so did Peter. That's all.

Leave a comment on “Some Like It Hot”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article