Historical Blurbs. That’s what we get most of the time, in our news threads, or on the evening network news. If something is of note — say Washington crossing the Delaware — we are usually given a one-sentence “capture” of that event, such as “Washington crossed the Delaware, December 25-26, 1776.”
So when I read these “blurbs,” I immediately become curious about all sorts of things. Was George wearing sensible shoes? Who was with him? Did they pack lunches, or were there simply snack foods, like nuts and berries? Who rowed the boat? Was it Michael?
Today, one of those blurbs sparked my interest, mostly because I have seen a reference to it, in some way or another, so many times.
The event? December 26, 1492 — The first Spanish settlement La Navidad in the New World is founded by Christopher Columbus. This is the modern Môle-Saint-Nicolas in Haiti.
I don’t really care a lot about Chris Columbus. And I’m not overly interested in Haiti either. But it is the name of the place. La Navidad.
Now, when I was in grade school, and we had to sing in the 7th and 8th-grade choir — the choir that went to the Salem Mall at Christmas time to sing carols for the public in prime time — we had to learn a lot of songs. One of them was “Felice Navidad.” Sister Sharon, our music teacher, explained to us that “Felice” means “happy” in Spanish. And “Navidad” means Christmas.
So. All these years, I’ve believed this to be true. Why in the world would I ever doubt the authenticity of Sister Sharon, after all? She was stern, but I liked her. Anyway, this was my belief until this morning, when, once again, I saw the first Spanish settlement being called La Navidad. The historical blurb sparking my curiosity.
As I investigated, I found that two days before, on December 24, 1492, he sailed around the island of Hispaniola during his first voyage, and Columbus called the port Puerto de la Navidad the day he landed there.
And I’m wracking my brain, wondering what in the world the old meaning of Navidad could be. Or why in heaven’s name would he be naming these places Christmas Port and The Christmas?
Then, like a ton of bricks, it hit me. And. Of course, you all are probably screaming through your screens, trying to tell me the correlation. Polly, you dumb girl. He was sailing to these places at Christmas time, and he named them as such. Like Easter Island, doofus.
So here I spent half the morning, using Google translate, and conducting multiple searches, trying to find —— the meaning of Christmas. But in a much different way than everyone else tries to find the meaning of Christmas. I was even searching Catholic registries to see if I could locate Sister Sharon to shoot her an email. And of course, now I just feel dumb that I didn’t understand the premise from the very beginning.
But that happens to all of us, sometimes in life. We fail to see the obvious. Or, we can’t, for the life of us, understand something. Perhaps it is a result of tunnel vision. And once we get the simple explanation, we feel pretty silly that we were slow on the uptake.
But that is one of the great things about being human. We don’t know the most of it. This place, this Universe, is pretty large. We don’t even know a thimbleful in comparison. But if we choose to, we can learn. If we are lucky, we have the freedom, and the means, to explore ideas and concepts. Or learn facts and truths and information.
Like this. A year on Venus is shorter than its day. It’s true. Venus is the slowest rotating planet in our Solar System, so slow it takes longer to fully rotate than it does to complete its orbit of the sun. Which is 225 days, our time. And then 243 days to rotate once. So, keeping track of Navidads would be a challenge, I think.
It all reminds me of my everyday wish: To learn something new each time the blue ball spins around once.
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“For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. ”
― Robert M. Pirsig
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“Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”
― Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth
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“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
― Albert Einstein
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The true meaning, once it hits you in the head.
