“Christmas” in Chinese is, of course, 圣诞节, but in the spirit of my previous Character Creations, I’ve created two new single characters that mean “Christmas.”
Character Notes: some radicals in the creations above were chosen for semantic reasons, but many elements were chosen for purely visual purposes. In some cases I purposely shunned a more obvious option (such as 木 for “tree” or 星 for “star”) because they didn’t have the visual effect I wanted. In the case of 光, it not only looks more like a traditional star-shape than 星, but it has Biblical meaning as well.
Other Christmas fun on Sinosplice:
- Chinese Christmas Song Album [direct download]
- Ding Ding Dong: Hakka Jingle Bells [direct download]
- Christmas Classics in Cantonese
- All Christmas posts
Have a very merry Christmas, everyone!
um, john? are those characters Simplified or traditional?
December 22nd, 2007 at 5:46 pmjw chen,
Um, neither. If you had to classify them, it would be something like “unorthodox” or “heretical” or “nonexistent.”
December 22nd, 2007 at 6:03 pmAwesome. I love every bit.
December 22nd, 2007 at 8:29 pmJohn, good job. I couldn’t find them in all my dictionaries including 康熙字典.
December 22nd, 2007 at 8:50 pmawww….I was hoping you said simplified then make those words freakier/over the top.
December 23rd, 2007 at 6:22 amLove the shephards and angels.
December 23rd, 2007 at 10:22 amlol. It took me 5 mins to understand what you wanna express dude. They are SOOOOO graphics! (esp. the commercial one) I was thinking of the implication at first sight… btw, for the commercial character, you don’t need to hang more gifts in the tree? :P
December 23rd, 2007 at 7:45 pmhmmm, 古 亻又女
natural birth :)
December 23rd, 2007 at 7:54 pmhey John, I made a 篆书 character for this after dinner, check it out :)
I didn’t use 光, cause 光 itself is 火+人. To indicate dear God, my inspiration was from 天 - 一+大, 一 in that case is heaven above.
December 23rd, 2007 at 10:43 pmhttp://img136.imageshack.us/img136/5305/xmashn9.png
December 23rd, 2007 at 10:43 pmand if you are interested, the modern script should be in this way (according to my little knowledge how characters evolve)cough
http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/8973/xmas2vf0.png
December 23rd, 2007 at 11:25 pmI wonder if you’re setting a precedent with 3 horizontal strokes of differing widths, it’s not easy to write. Is that the chair that the shopping mall santa sits on? Much easier to remember than 椅.
December 24th, 2007 at 9:56 pmJohn, all you have to do now is come up for one for Hanukkah….why not throw in Kwanza while you’re at it.
December 24th, 2007 at 11:56 pmMerry Christmas, PJ & SS in Shanghai, China, from HK & WT in Concord, California, USA!
December 25th, 2007 at 1:20 ammerry Christmas & I’ll be by on the 30th.
December 26th, 2007 at 10:25 am