Fêted

Fête

1. A festival or feast.

2. a. An elaborate, often outdoor entertainment.

b. An elaborate party.

tr.v. fet·ed also fêt·ed, fet·ing also fêt·ing, fetes also fêtes

1. To celebrate or honor with a festival, a feast, or an elaborate entertainment.

2. To pay honor to.

 

My aunt pulled out a real, hardcopy of a dictionary to give us this definition. We were discussing the English language at Christmas dinner (it makes us sound like nerds, but my cousin was teaching English in Korea, and I am learning French in France, so language acquisition was a bit of a hot topic last night). Fêted came up as a homonym... its partner being "fetid (having a stale nauseating smell, as of decay)". They make a pretty impressive pair of homonyms. I probably don't need to point out that "fêted" is a loanword. You already knew that because of the "accent chapeau".

 

One of the positive things about having divorced parents is that I have been fêting Christmas for days, and I will not be finished until January 1st. It's been a busy few days, and fortunately we aren't exchanging gifts until the 28th, because I haven't wrapped anything yet. This week has been full of eating, family and church (I've attended four services this week!). Fortunately, I am not yet cloyed, nor do I expect to be by the end of my Christmas season.

 

I was happy to be playing harp in church today because the hospital and nursing  homes in town are closed to visitors because of influenza, so my tradition of playing of Christmas day had to be broken. I really enjoy Christmas music and I had a couple of new songs that I was working on this year that I wanted to share with other people. I was sitting in church and the wheels in my head started to spin about how much I love Christmas music, and how I would like to record an album of Christmas music (my friend did one this Christmas and I'm always listening to it in the car). Then another recurring idea joined forces with this Christmas album idea in my head: I've been thinking for a few years that it would be a good idea to have music programs in prisons. I just did a quick google and apparently this does exist in some places, but I'm sort of thinking that I could sell my album as a fundraiser to buy guitars or something for prisons. This is all in pipe dream stages, but already I'm pondering the practical considerations that would take this idea from a pipe dream to an album to some money to some form of realization of this idea.