"Jesus Christ," recalls Powell, who frequently peppers his talk with profanities. "I have to come to New York City to answer questions about a cat."
Can anyone explain to me how the name of a Palestinian Jew/Son of a Carpenter/Son of God/Savior of the World (depending on your perspective I suppose) became a profanity with which to pepper one's conversation?
I know people who use it all the time. Most often, they are people who have no personal affiliation with Christianity. Sometimes they add a middle initial of "H."
Why don't we have people walking around saying "Buddha" or "Moses" or who knows what else? Seriously people, where does this come from? Just curious ….
And for the record, my conversation is by no means profanity free although I do try. I gave up swearing one year for Lent. This was a few years ago and it wasn't going so well, so I amended the rules to where I had to spend $1 on food for our parish food pantry every time I swore. Many hungry people were fed, and I also cleaned up my language a bit through the exercise. A bit. When I'm mad, say, at a nameless leader of our country or truly annoying coworker or when I stub my toe, some not so nice words somtimes still sneak out. But no JC. I save that one for prayer.
My Dad had a whole string of words he'd use, mostly when working with tools. My siblings and I can each recite the entire string verbatim ....
8 comments:
I actually knew a guy who would say, 'Mother of Allah!' So it seems that everyone says 'Jesus Christ!' because that's the prevailing deity in our culture.
If you're interested, the H. is for Jesus middle name. He's named after his father, Hal.
Our father, who art in heaven, Hal would be thy name...
*ducks & runs*
;-D
In Quebec (and perhaps France, I don't know) they use the names of various religious objects as curses. There are also associated euphemisms, like "colline" (hill) for "calice" (chalice).
I suppose it's just a way of letting off steam; swear words seems to target those areas of life that we are particularly nervous about. Now that I think about it, they seem to be at opposite ends of some scale: words to do with our animal nature (bodily functions) and words to do with our spiritual nature (religion). Maybe we aren't quite comfortable with either reality.
Perhaps a sign that we aren't totally materialistic is that we don't use financial terms as curses. Visa! PIN! PayPal! Eeeeeeeee-bay!!!
It's not just Jesus who's turned into a curse - the British adjective "bloody" (as in "this bloody team lost again") comes from "by Our Lady."
Financial jargon as curses is VERY promising and a much better fit with our cultural realities.
Thanks everybody for your (very funny and enlightening) comments.
Susan, I had no idea about the origin of “bloody”. Fascinating!!!
Likewise the info about our french canadian friends.
I think I’m going to start saying “Master Card”. It is much more fitting to my situation in life as I pay off that darned debt.
Talmida ... I had a friend who could have "sworn" it was "hollow be thy name."
just last night, my 12-hoping to make it to 13-year-old daughter said "Jesus!" out loud - i looked at her, eyes bugged out of my head and jaw on the chest and said, "what did you just say?" as my eyes narrowed.
she said "oh, i meant to say "jeez" -
"molly kathryn, now you know better - what does Jesus have to do with whatever just happened?"
(it's bad when i, like my mother, use the middle name.)
"i mean to say Jesus was a great, great man..."
**sigh**
When I hear people use "Jesus Christ" as an expletive, what I've always wanted to say...but never quite managed to do...is something like "How wonderful that you're turning to prayer in this difficult time."
Personally, I am so glad to finally know what the "H." stands for....
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