And these are the holidays of the Gentiles: Kalenda, Satarnuna, and Kratesim, and the celebration of [the coronation of] kings, and the birthdays and death days [of kings].

So we read in first chapter of the Mishnaic tractate of Avodah Zarah or “Idolatry,” which deals with the precautions that Jews must take to avoid participating, if only unintentionally, in the religious rites of the non-Jewish inhabitants of the Roman empire, in whose province of Syria Palestina the Mishnah was compiled in the 3rd century CE. Although each of these three holidays disappeared along with the empire itself, the first two, and possibly the third, are connected, each in its own way, to the New Year’s, Hanukkah, and Christmas that are celebrated this week. Let’s take a look at them.

The Roman calends or calendae, the Kalenda of the Mishnah, was the first day of every month of the year. All the calendae were holidays in Rome and its territories, the most important of them being the calends of January. This was the Roman year’s first month, named for the god Janus, the keeper of doors and portals who ushered in the new year. Celebrated with sacrifices to him and public feasts, the calends of January are described in the Gemara, the Talmud’s commentary on the Mishnah, as taking place eight days after the winter solstice, that is, at the end of December—and it was the proximity of January 1 to the solstice, on which the daylight hours begin to lengthen again after growing progressively shorter from June on, that made it the new year’s first day, as it has continued to be ever since.

The Mishnah’s Satarnuna is the Roman Saturnalia. Originally a one-day holiday dedicated to the god Saturn that took place on December 17, Saturnalia had by the 1st century BCE become a seven-day festivity. Its carnival-like atmosphere featured gift-giving, gambling, and the lighting of candles—and if this reminds you a bit of Hanukkah, which takes place at the same time of the year, it’s no coincidence. It is generally accepted by historians of the period that Saturnalia influenced Hanukkah, the celebration of which began in the 2nd century BCE with the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Greeks but acquired new customs later on when the Jewish communities of the eastern Mediterranean passed from Greek to Roman rule. One of these was the lighting of Hanukkah candles, which appears not to have been part of the original holiday.

Which brings us to Kratesim, spelled קרטסים in traditional editions of the Mishnah and Gemara. As modern scholars have pointed out, this is the result of an ancient or early medieval scribal error, the correct form of the word being קרטסיס or Kratesis. (The Hebrew letters ס and ם, samekh and final mem, are easily confused.) A Greek word formed from the verb krateo, to rule (think of “democrat” or “autocrat”), kratesis means “coming to rule” or “acquiring power,” and was the name of a holiday, observed only in the eastern or Greek-speaking regions of the Roman empire, that fell annually in late summer.

Two explanations have been given of its origins. The first, the gist of which is backed by a rather fanciful account in the Gemara, is that Kratesis commemorated the day on which “Rome seized the kingship from Queen Cleopatra”—to wit, September 2, 31 BCE, the date of the battle of Actium, in which the naval forces of the queen, the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, were defeated by the Roman fleet of Augustus Octavian, thereby paving the way for Rome’s conquest of Egypt. A second explanation, advanced by recent scholarship, is that the battle of Actium account is purely legendary, and that Kratesis was an eastern Mediterranean holiday celebrating the coronation of Roman emperors, of whom Augustus was but the first.

At this point, you may ask: Cleopatra or coronations—what does either have to do with our current holiday season?

To which the answer is: it’s not the holiday of Kratesis that has to do with the season but its garbled Mishnaic version of Kratesim—or, as it might also be pronounced, given that the Mishnah and Gemara are traditionally printed without vowel signs, Kratsim or Kretsim. This is because in Orthodox Jewish circles in America, especially but not only among Yiddish-speaking Haredim, it is now common to refer to the holiday of Christmas as Kratsmikh.

Kratsmikh (the kh is sounded like the ch in “Bach”) is a jocular pun, although one whose overtones are not entirely pleasant, on “Christmas” and Yiddish krats mikh, “scratch me.” It’s an expression that is clearly native to the Yiddish of America, since the pun only works with the English word “Christmas,” and the rationale for it is not jocular at all. Indeed, it’s very much the same rationale as that given for the many prohibitions in Avodah Zarah, namely, that by taking part in an aspect of Gentile religion—in this case, calling Jesus “Christ,” a word that comes from Greek khristos, “anointed one,” a literal translation of Hebrew mashiah, “Messiah”—one is committing, however unwittingly, an act of idolatry. As a haredi blogger writing in Yiddish has put it:

In these days when the Gentiles are celebrating their holiday [of Christmas], a Jew is strictly warned against calling it by its name. Rather, it is customary to refer to it pejoratively as Kratsmikh. There are those who hold that this is a madly narrow-minded practice on the part of hyper-religious fanatics. “That’s not at all how I use the word when I converse with a Gentile and wish him a Merry ——,” thinks your “enlightened” individual. But the Shulhan Arukh [the authoritative codification of Jewish law] explicitly rules that one must not utter an idolatrous word in the name of a Gentile holiday, which should be referred to by a jesting alternative. “Kratsmikh” is not some hasidic or extremist invention. It’s a cut-and-dried halakhic practice mandated by rabbinic tradition.

The reference to the Shulhan Arukh is accurate. One can find the passage in question there in Yoreh De’ah 147. How, though, did the st of Christmas turn into the ts of Kratsmikh? Possibly, it did so by natural inversion. Quite possibly, too, however, this inversion was suggested by the ts of Avodah Zarah’s קרטסים. The tractate of Avodah Zarah is one that practically every Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jew studies. Some, in studying it, may have thought that קרטסים, the name of a holiday whose exact nature no one was sure of, designated Christmas. Even those who knew better may have been inspired by the word’s sound.

There are of course Orthodox Jews, perhaps even Haredim, who don’t have a problem with “Christmas.” Those who do, though, can always part with a Gentile acquaintance by saying “Happy holiday.”