For Christ's sake

My father, who is 100 percent Jewish, has always been obsessed with Christmas. He grew up in Minneapolis, in an unobservant household, and he considers it part of his childhood. ''I remember the lights, the trees,'' he used to say to my little sister and me. ''It was magical.'' He decorates the mantel with Christmas cards and tapes mistletoe to the doorways, and one year he even tried to get my mother, also Jewish, with a much more observant upbringing, to allow an evergreen wreath on our front door. ''I can't live with that,'' she said. ''I just can't. Nothing on the outside of this house. We're Jews, for Christ's sake.''

Language Log, Conventionalized oaths