| Photo Information |
Copyright: JC Ramos (jramos)
![Silver Note Writer [C: 7 W: 1 N: 78]](http://i1.treklens.com/misc/n-n-s.gif) (389) |
| Genre: Places |
| Medium: Color |
| Date Taken: 2006-11-29 |
| Categories: Nature, Event |
| Camera: Canon PowerShot S30 |
| Exposure: f/2.8, 1/1000 seconds |
| Photo Version: Original Version |
| Date Submitted: 2007-02-11 0:29 |
| Viewed: 786 |
| Points: 6 |
|
| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
The Story of a Holiday Hymn
Fah who foraze, dah who doraze
Welcome Christmas, bring your light
Fah who foraze, dah who doraze
Welcome in the cold dark night
Welcome Christmas, fah who rahmus
Welcome Christmas, dah who dahmus
Welcome Christmas, while we stand
heart to heart and hand in hand
Of all the carols of Christmas, "Welcome Christmas" is one of the most joyful. This hymn inspires the most Grinch-like among us to welcome the Holidays with jubilant hearts.
Yet few know the history behind this song. It became widely known only in the mid 1960s, when Dr. Seuss and Albert Hague penned the popular partial-English translation. However, "Welcome Christmas" has existed for many hundreds of years as the beloved hymn of a tiny, forgotten village in northern Norway, the village of Hu (Whoville).
The inhabitants of this isolated community, nestled in a deep glacial valley of a tributary of the Tana river, call themselves the Hu. Their language, Huvian, has an unknown origin. It is certainly unrelated to the Norse languages of the region, and, like the Huvians themselves, seems to have developed in extreme isolation.
Hu was not entirely without visitors. Sometime during the Roman Pax, early Christian missionaries located the village and converted its inhabitants. Then war and pestilence came to the rest of the world, and the Hus were mercifully left alone throughout the dark ages, the renaissance and much of the modern age -- it wasn't until the late 1800s when the village was rediscovered.
When Norwegian officials found themselves unable to communicate with the Hus, they sent for famed linguist and anthropologist Allistair McGuinn of Scotland. After many years of living with and studying the Hus, McGuinn translated many of their myths, legends and hymns. Yet, after a few years of worldwide curiosity in this inexplicable community, the Hus were soon all but forgotten as the Industrial age forged on.
You can read more at: http://burtcom.com/kwantem/hu/index.html |
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