http:\/\/downloads.raileurope.com\/holidayCard\/06_christmas_card.html<\/a><\/p>\nAnd this brings me to another point– about the origin of the word turkey. We owe this of course to the British who mistook the guinea hens which they saw in the country of Turkey (and labeled them accordingly turkeys) for the sort of fowl they came across in America that seemed similar. Of course they were actually different birds. Our fowl did not come from Turkey, nor are they really related to the critters from near Izmir, but there you have it. Our Christmas dinner is mislabeled thanks to the Brits.<\/p>\n
While I am at it, they also mislabeled the ottoman. The empire was actually the Osmanli Empire, not the Ottoman empire, and so the furniture should also be called osmanli by rights, but of course the Turks are by now used to the British mangling their language. <\/p>\n
So if you celebrate the twelve days of Christmas (and indeed we are coming up on the proper Orthodox Christmas day), you will enjoy the greeting card appended above. Just sit down on your osmanli and have a guinea hen sandwich whilst watching the little charade provided by the train folks of Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ah yes Christmas in Europe, complete with Boxing Day in the U.K. (no it has nothing to do with pugilism) and the pope’s Urbi et Orbi speech, and Christmas crackers (no you don’t eat them). My ever jovial sister sent me this Christmas card from Rail Europe— Be sure to click on the bit that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n
Christmas in Europe - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2008\/01\/christmas-in-europe.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christmas in Europe - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ah yes Christmas in Europe, complete with Boxing Day in the U.K. (no it has nothing to do with pugilism) and the pope’s Urbi et Orbi speech, and Christmas crackers (no you don’t eat them). 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}