Who would have thought that even something as relatively straightforward as Christmas could come with some linguistic pitfalls.
Consider, for example, that if you ask Germans "What date is Christmas every year?" they will inevitably say December 24th, whereas people in majority English-speaking countries would almost always say December 25th. The German term for Christmas, Weihnachten, has more or less two meanings. It can refer specifically to what English speakers call Christmas Eve, or it can be used to refer to the multi-day celebration of the Christmas holiday. Etymologically, this makes sense. Weihnachten basically means "blessed/consecrated night", which refers to Christmas Eve, also known as Heiligabend, literally "holy evening". What English speakers refer to as Christmas, or Christmas Day, is for Germans the rather bureaucratic sounding "first Christmas holiday" - in reference to the first of the full public holidays in celebration of Christmas. The 26th, known in the US as "back to work" or in other English-speaking countries as Boxing Day or St. Stephen's Day, is for Germans the "second Christmas holiday".
My other favorite Christmas linguistic pitfall has to do with Chris Rea's 1986 Christmas hit single "Driving home for Christmas". I don't think I'd heard of this song before moving to Germany, so it might be some European thing. In any case, just around this time every year (but NOT this year, ideally, if we're obeying Covid guidelines) my facebook and instagram feeds are filled with images of Germans on trains heading back to their hometowns, with "Driving home for Christmas" inevitably inserted as the musical accompaniment of choice. Which makes NO SENSE in English - these Berlin hipsters are never the ones driving the train. But that's because the two languages describe motion in very different ways. In English "go" is an all-purpose verb describing motion from one place to another. The German "gehen" means "walk", and the German "fahren" roughly means "to move/be moved via some mechanical means", a specification we don't really make in everyday English. When Germans learn English, however, "fahren" is usually translated as "drive", which it also means, but very few ever catch on that "drive" implies that you are the one doing the driving, and that you don't really use it as a passenger, and definitely not as a passenger in a train. Whew, complicated! But this year, stay home, keep yourselves and your loved ones safe, and let's all hope that we're all vaccinated by this time next year! Happy holidays to all!