Sorry about the sparse week last week, I was on vacation. I’m sure you missed me! In Europe they call vacations “holidays.” Obviously, “holiday” is more or less a contraction of Holy Day, which I guess was the only kind of day anyone didn’t have to work for a while. Holy Days refer to certain dates of the year important in the Catholic Church which dominated Europe for hundreds if not a thousand or so years. Those include Christmas and Easter, of course, but also Epiphany (usually January 6), All Saints Day (November 1, which is why Halloween is on October 31), the Ascension (connected to whenever Easter falls), Sts. Peter & Paul Day, and several others.

Vacation is more of a French word that loosely translates from the verb meaning “to empty”, which is a little more apt when people in the U.S. talk about vacations. We empty the hell out of our house and head to the beach or the lake or the mountains or somewhere other than where we’re obligated to be by work or family for a few days or weeks. I think the word “vacation” is probably more commonly used in the U.S. because it shirks the Catholic term. Americans, in spite of the First Amendment, have traditionally had problems with Catholicism (and Anglicanism) and so any chance to depart from its nomenclature was usually welcome. That we adopted the French term is a little ironic, though, since France was so buddy-buddy with the Pope throughout most of its history, the Great Schism and See at Avignon excepted.

Anyway, those are words that supposedly describe what I did last week, which was eat too much, drink too much, and get a sun burn. On to the links!