Christmas with Spellzone
Here are our favourite Christmas posts from over the years:
Three Popular Christmas Characters
In this article we look at how and when the characters Rudolph, Scrooge, and the Grinch entered popular culture. Both ‘Scrooge’ and ‘Grinch’ are now used as words to describe people who share the same qualities as the famous characters, and you can read about other words that derive from the names of people or characters here.
What the Dickens?
Christmas isn’t Christmas without a little Charles Dickens. If our Christmas Characters post wasn’t detailed enough for your taste, in this article we take a look at words and expressions from Dickens’s novels that have now entered the English language. Did you know that Dickens coined the words ‘flummoxed’, ‘butter-fingers’, and ‘slow-coach’? How many times does Ebenezer Scrooge actually say ‘Bah, humbug!’?
Grottos, Caverns, and Curses
At this time of year, here in England, you can find a ‘grotto’ almost anywhere. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Christmas Grottos – they are rooms (or sometimes entire floors) in places like department stores, shopping centres, or Christmas fêtes, where an actor dressed as Father Christmas gives out small gifts to children. But what does the word actually mean? In this article we look at the origins of the word ‘grotto’ and of three famous magic spells.
Christmas Games
At Christmas time, you can definitely expect a game or two. If you’re hosting a party, why not use the information in the above articles and entertain your guests with a Christmas-themed quiz? You can also fill a bowl with slips of paper, each slip with a different Christmas-themed word on it (carols, characters, food etc.) and, on their turn, ask each player to draw a slip from the bowl and either describe whatever is written down without saying any of the actual words on the paper, or act out whatever is written down without saying anything at all. Instead of slips of paper, you could write Christmas-themed words on Post-it notes to stick on your guests’ foreheads. Each player must then ask Yes/No answer questions until they manage to guess what is written on their Post-it note.
In this article, we look at five different word games. Some are fun to play alone, while others are better in groups.
Christmassy Words for Wednesday
No Spellzone round up is complete without a mention of Word for Wednesday. Each week, on the blog, we feature a different word. In our Christmas editions so far, we’ve looked at the words advent, pudding, and reindeer.
From all the team, we’d like to wish you Merry Christmas and we hope you have a relaxing break. See you in the New Year!
20 Dec 2015
blog home
