My family had a Christmas tradition — I guess one could call it a tradition. It involved a set of candle holders that spelled out ‘Noel’ that my mother had. These are common in the US. ‘Noel’ is an Old French word that means ‘Christmas’. One might wonder why the Old French is common; keep in mind that the German version is ‘Weihnachten’, which doesn’t lend itself to candleholders.
I should point out that my mother decorated for Christmas HARD, by which I mean she decked the halls until they got dizzy and tied ribbons around everything that didn’t run away fast enough. The Noel candleholders always sat on a piece of furniture that took up part of the living room.
My father, on the other hand, had a peculiar sense of humor. And dyslexia. And a colleague named Leon. All of these came together, and my dad would rearrange the letters NOEL to spell LEON. The trick was to see how long it took Mom to recognize that the letters now spelled Leon.
I adopted the practice of rearranging the letters. This made two generations of letter-swapping, and my mother had to be extra vigilant that her decoration was not declaring ‘Leon’ She was not vigilant enough; she never caught us.
One year for Christmas, I found a cute set of block candles that spelled out ‘Noel’. I unwrapped the packaging carefully and rearranged them, then had my niece smuggle them under the Christmas tree (wrapped, of course) to Mom from Leon. This niece got the joke, because she herself started rearranging the letters, making three generations to adopt the trick. My mother also got the joke and laughed hard. The next year I got a bottle of homemade wine for a Christmas present — named Vin Leon.
My parents are gone now, but my husband and I bought a set of letters spelling out NOEL, and we rearranged them for our tree. The Christmas tree proclaims LEON.
Words Like Me 