Podcast: The Allusionist: Winterval

I love podcasts, and one that I quite often find charming is The Allusionist, a series about language, etymology, verbiage, puns, and other wordy pursuits.

The most recent episode is a bit of a holiday special.

It’s all about Winterval, a portmanteau invented in 1997 in the British city of Birmingham to market all of their winter and winter-holiday events together in a grand festival. Of course, someone took it the wrong way, someone was quoted out of context, and a poisonous myth was born about “political correctness gone mad.”

This is an interesting entry in the history of Christmas, culture, and a timely example of how repeating a story doesn’t make it true, but it can make people believe it.

All that in 15 minutes. Check it out at: http://www.theallusionist.org/allusionist/winterval