Have a Red Christmas

Communists for Christ.

This article was originally published in 1999, while long time American Communist leader Gus Hall was still alive, and is therefore even more remarkable. There have long been Christian socialists -- my former wife had a book titled Quotations from Chairman Jesus -- but to hear a religious message coming from the once militantly atheist Communist Party USA is quite astounding to those of us who remember the Cold War era.

Seasons greetings to all, whatever color your stripe may be.

Why is this post in English?

There are more descendants of Germans in the United States than descendants of English, yet we speak English not German.

Presumably, we speak English because the English spoke English. But unless I misremember, Britain was the only major province of the Roman empire in which a Germanic language came to be generally spoken, most of the former western provinces retaining a Latin-derived language despite invasion and conquest by Franks, Lombards, Goths, or other Germanic peoples. The Visigothic kingdom of Spain lasted from the fifth century until the early eighth, when it fell to Arabs; yet Spain retains its Romance languages today and no trace of Gothic survives. Yet in Britain, Latin was replaced quickly by English, and not even three centuries of rule by French-speakers after the Norman conquest would change that.

In the east, where the empire survived the era of Germanic incursions, Greek not Latin became the dominant language in the areas that were not lost to the Arab conquests of the seventh century. But Iran, which fell to the Arabs at the same time, still speaks Persian.

Yet in one eastern Roman province -- Dacia -- the Latin language survived to become modern Romanian, a Romance island surrounded by Slavs and Magyars.

Weird, huh?