Happy Birthday!
Noel grows from the same root as “natal”, referring to that which is “born”. From that same root springs “nation”(our birthplace), “natural” or “nature” (meaning born that way), “innate” (what we were born with). According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary; “English speakers borrowed the word “Noel” from French. It can be traced further back to the Latin word natalis, which can mean “birthday” as a noun or “of or relating to birth” as an adjective. (The English adjective natal has the same meaning and is also an offspring of natalis.) Noels were being sung in Latin or French for centuries before English-speakers started using the word to refer to Christmas carols in the 18th century.”
C. S. Lewis, a Fellow and Tutor in English Language and Literature at Magdalen College, tells us:
“Those who wish to go further back will notice that natura shares a common base with nasci (to be born); with the noun natus (birth); with natio … It is risky to try to build precise semantic bridges, but there is obviously some idea of a thing’s natura as its original or ‘innate’ character. If we look forward, the road is clear. This sense of natura, though soon to be threatened by vast semantic growths of another origin, has shown astonishing persistence and is still as current a sense as any other for English nature. Every day we speak about ‘the nature of the case’ (or of the soil, the animal, the problem).”
– Studies in Words. HarperCollins.
When old English carol “The First Noel” was arranged as a coral work by Ralph Vaughan Williams in 1958, he was penning “The First Christmas”, or “The Premier Birthday”
The first Nowell the angel did say
Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay;
In fields where they lay, keeping their sheep,
On a cold winter’s night that was so deep:
Nowell, Nowell, Nowell, Nowell,
Born is the King of Israel.
Happy Birthday – Merry Incarnation Day
KP
