A Candy on the tongue with the scent of Christmas, today, friends of words. Yes, because what is the scent of Christmas? No, it’s not the turkey with chestnuts, what gourmands! It’s the tree, let’s see! As soon as this incredible smell of the tree invades the house, It’s a Proust madeleine of childhood memories that invites itself, and all the holiday atmosphere that takes hold.
This weekend, at my house, as in many houses in France, it’s Christmas tree operation. The opportunity to respond to several listeners who have sent me angry messages in recent weeks to complain, like Jean-Marc, on Facebook, of having heard on the RTL antenna – and even, horror, in the mouth of Peter the gardener, it seems – to evoke pine thorns. Or this other listener, who clarifies, annoyed: “For me, who comes from Haut Doubs, where we find a lot of fir trees, it has always been a question of needles…”
They are right, of course! According to Larousse.fr, a thorn is a “spicy that appears on certain plants: [On parle des] thorns of a rosebush, of a cactus.” In short, thorns sting strangely, and they are made to keep bad guys away.
fir needles are actually the leaves of these trees
Conifers, these trees which bear cone-shaped fruits – like pine cones, they are also called pine cones in certain regions – conifers, therefore, do not bear thorns but needles. The word needle comes from the Latin acuculaliterally “small (pointed) thing”which designated the pine needle, we learn from the Historical Dictionary of the French Language. Which means that it is the needles of conifers that gave their name to our sewing needles, and not the other way around, as one might believe.
Quite logically, the needles of pine, spruce and fir trees are in reality the leaves of these trees. Evergreen leaves, which do not fall every autumn like those of trees called “deciduous”. This is what allows conifers to live in often poor soils, particularly at altitude.
Their leaves have become very thin, very narrow, to adapt to the most difficult conditions, and are often covered with a kind of wax. They resist better than the leaves of other trees to the cold and snow of winter, but also to the drought of summer, because the needles also lose less water by evaporation.
Needle, acute, sharpen…
But back to our Christmas tree… The tradition of the Christmas treewhich has not always been a conifer, comes from a pagan practice of Nordic origin. We celebrated at the time of the winter solstice, the time of the year when the length of the day is shortest, i.e. around December 21, the return of the sun… since this time is also the one when the days begin to lengthen (a way of seeing the glass half full rather than half empty!).
The tree is a symbol of life, and in particular an evergreen tree, of course. Our traditional Christmas tree is generally a spruce. But for several decades, the French have been choosing Nordmann fir trees more and more often, which have the advantage of being nicely bushy, and above all the good taste of not losing their needles on the beautiful carpet in the living room… Disadvantage: they do not They don’t have that delicious Christmas smell which is characteristic of spruce.
But since we’re talking about needlesI would like to take this opportunity to mention a word from their family with a surprising spelling: acute. Yes, it’s quite logical, acute, sharpen, all that, it’s from the needle family. Acute, in the masculine, it’s easy: ACUTE. But in the feminine, like G + U + E it sounds “gue”, don’t forget the umlaut, the two little dots on the final E… the same as on the Christmas E – except that in acute in the feminine, they n do not indicate that the E is pronounced “è”, as in Noël, they just allow, by convention, that we pronounce “acute” instead of “acute”.
Well, by the way, this convention is so weird that the spelling reform of 1990 proposes to place the umlaut on the U. So if the Christmas music is too high, you can place it on the E or on the U, as desired, but don’t forget the umlaut !
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