519
12/18/2023 (#26 this year)
This is the last English News for 2023. We finish for the winter vacation at the end of
this week. Are you excited? It's going to be a fun week. We have to get all of the stained
glass ready and then put it up in the windows. That is a lot of work, but it is beautiful
when we finish. Then we have to practice and get ready for the Christmas pageant1.
That will also be wonderful. I love this time of year. Then, next Monday, one week fromtoday, is Christmas!!!! What presents will you get? What presents will you buy? Will
Santa come to your house? How good have you been this year? Haha. Santa is going tovisit my daughter, although, I don’t know if she still believes in him.
10 differences

Last week’s answer

Whamaggedon
Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day, you gave itaway. This year, to save me from tears, I’ll give it to someone special.
Do you know this song? It is called “Last Christmas” and it was sung bya group called Wham in 1984. Since its release, it has become one of the mostpopular Christmas songs. It is not number one. The most popular Christmas
song is “All I want for Christmas is you”, by Mariah Carey. However, if you ask
people to name a Christmas song, most of them will probably name Wham’s
Last Christmas. It is played everywhere. Any shop you go into will probably beplaying the song. And that is what Whamaggedon is.
Whamageddon is a combination6 of the words “Wham” and“armageddon”. It is a Christmas challenge that was started in Denmark in
about 2010 and it has since spread around the world. It is a challenge that runs
from December 1st to midnight on December 24th. I have only just heard about
the game, so we are all going to have to start playing from today. Here are therules:
1. The aim7 of the game is to go as long as you can without hearing Wham’s“Last Christmas” song.
2. The game runs from December
1st to December 24th.
3. Only the original song counts.
Covers8 of the song or people inyour class singing it don’t count.

Something you didn’t know about Christmas
1. Santa Claus is based on2 the story of St. Nicholas. He was a bishop3 in the 4th centuryAD. He was renowned for4 giving gifts to people who had nothing. The name Santa
Claus comes from the Dutch version of St. Nicholas. In old Dutch, it was Sinter
Kiklaas ,which became Sante Klaas in modern Dutch, and then Santa Claus in English.
2. The first Christmas trees were decorated in Germany in 1539.
3. The English word “Xmas”, which is short for Christmas, comes from Greek. In Greek,
X is the 22nd letter of the alphabet and is “chi”. X is the first letter of the Greek wordfor Christ – Χριστός. In English, the church started using X as an abbreviation5 for
Christ from 1100. It was first used to shorten Christmas in 1551.

4. You have lost the second9 you
recognize10 the song.
Have fun and Merry Christmas.

1.pageant 時代劇 2.based on～に基づいて 3.bishop 主教 4.renowned for～であることで有名である 5.abbreviation 省略 6.combination 組み合わせる 7.aim 目的 8.cover 曲のカバー9.the second。。
。の瞬間 10.recognize 認識する

One thing we can do to help the environment

World record
It is nearly Christmas, so, here are some
Christmas world records for you. The tallest
chocolate Santa was 5 meters tall. It wasmade in Italy in 2011. The most lights on aChristmas tree is 194,672. Kiwanis
Malmedy managed to get all of those lights
on the tree in front of his house. I don’tknow how long it took him or how much hiselectricity bill1 for that month was. The
largest model of Santa is 20 meters tall. It
was made in 2013 by a shopping mall inBrazil. The largest gathering2 of Santas wasin India in 2014. 18,112 people dressed as
Santa turned up for the event. The world’s
oldest Christmas tree was bought in 1886.
It is not a real tree and it doesn’t look like it
has many branches3 left. In 1950 theworld’s tallest Christmas tree wasdisplayed in Washington DC. It was 67.36
meters tall!

When somebody does something good,applaud ! You will make two people happy.
4–Samuel Goldwyn#11 Turning off devices5
This is something I have never really thought about. Very often, I leave mycomputer and my TV on standby6 mode. I didn’t think that standby usedmuch electricity. However, it turns out that standby power is about 40% of
the power that a device uses. If you leave a device on standby, it always has
to be ready to react when you need it to. That means, the screen might beoff, but the device is still running. We have our devices on standby for a longtime and that power usage7 starts to add up8. Not all devices have standby
mode, and some devices, like the fridge, we need to leave on all of the time,
but standby power can be over 10% of your family’s electricity bill. That cancost a lot, but it also means each family is adding 1000 kilograms of CO2 tothe atmosphere9 every year, just by using standby mode. There are a few
things we can do. First, we can switch off devices when we are not using
them. Second, we can buy new devices that are far more efficient10,
although this still isn’t as good as switching devices off. Let’s try!

1.bill 請求書 2.gathering 集まり 3.branch 枝 4.applaud 拍手を送る 5.device 機械 6.standby
待機 7.power usage 電力使用量 8.add up 重なっていく 9.atmosphere 大気 10.efficient 効
率的な