What’s in a word?
A lot, as I was reminded during my first holiday trip to Bethlehem, Pa., last year.
A day in historic Bethlehem during the Christmas season is an experience that bears repeating. The shops, the lights, the horse drawn carriage rides around the 240 year old city while Christmas music fills the air were all steps back in time. While wandering in and out of book stores and gift shops, we were treated to marvelous decorations, wonderful smells and shop keepers dressed in the period costumes of Bethlehem’s original founders, the Moravians.
I also discovered a tradition unique to the Moravian culture—putz. Signs for ‘putz’ were everywhere, both in the stores and outside along the streets. Unfortunately, I had no idea what ‘putz’ meant.
So, in one particular Christmas shop which seemed to have an overabundance of ‘putz’ signs, I leaned over the counter where a slender, silver-haired lady with shaky hands stood next to a tall, dashing gray-haired gentleman and rang up the purchases of a line of shoppers.
“May I help you?” the lady asked with a bright smile.
“I was just wondering if you could tell me what a putz is,” I asked, pronouncing putz with an ‘uh’ sound.
She hesitated, “I think you mean ‘pootz.’ ”
Always happy to be corrected in front of a dozen people, I forced a smile. Suddenly, the dashing gentleman chimed in matter-of-factly, “Yes, it’s pronounced pootz, because putz is a Yiddish word for a certain part of the male anatomy.”
Unfortunately for the silver-haired lady, he then punctuated the sentence with ‘the word’—penis! She quickly turned a stunning shade of red. The chortles from customers around me seemed much louder than they probably were and my traveling companion could barely keep her composure.
The distorted look on my face took hold as an image of a street poster flashed through my mind: This year’s tour also features an extraordinary display of 150 putzes in the Sisters house on Church Street.
“Yes, that would certainly be extraordinary,” I thought, pursing my lips to maintain control.
I wasn’t asking any more questions. I thanked the gentlemen for the explanation and we left the store with a memory that keeps us laughing even today. Later that evening I did some research and discovered that Moravian Putz was actually the building of miniature scenes to retell the nativity story, and that the word putz comes from the German word putzen which means to decorate.
Interesting certainly, but, for me, the whole experience was more than a language lesson. It was a reminder of something I was always told as a child: watch your words.
Words are like my friend Ruthie—always pregnant; always full of life and potential, including the potential to hurt or heal.
What we do with them is up to us.
“Words, once they are printed, have a life of their own.” Carol Burnett
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