Sunday, December 24

Filis Pasgua

floral ChristmasMerry tropical Christmas from Guam -- or as they say in Chamorro -- "Filis Pasgua."

We're still trying to figure out how Pasgua became the word for Christmas. In Spanish, which heavily influenced modern Chamorro, the word Pascua means Easter -- borrowed from the Latin (Pascha), which got it from Greek (Paskha), which took the word from the Hebrew for Passover (Pesach). So how did the word for Easter become associated with Christmas?

Apparently, in an older version of Spanish they used Pascua for both Easter and Christmas. Anyone have insights on this?

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