A few years ago I encountered a strange expression from a friend for whom English was a second language. In response to some surprise (what it was is lost to the annals of history) she said “holy jumping!” I looked at my friend askance, presuming she had misheard or abbreviated another phrase. After all, of all the things we call “holy” in the name of shock
, awe or bemusement, “jumping” doesn’t seem a likely candidate.
Flash forward to this past week, and the phrase popped into my radar again during some web browsing. Remembering my first encounter I decided to investigate further. It turns out, the expression DOES exist, and (big surprise) it appears to be a Canadianism.
Googling “holy jumping” or “holy jumpin” yields all the more common, and not so common, expressions people have created that begin that way. Among them are tried and true religious epithets like “Holy Jumping Jesus Christ,” and “Holy Jumpin Jehosaphat.” Then there are the more descriptive “Holy jumping Christ on a pogo stick!” or a favourite of mine “Holy jumping Jesus Christ on a cracker!”
Often — but not always — the phrase is adorned with addition of “Batman” at the end, a cultural reference to the caped crusader’s sidekick Robin in the 1960s TV series who was fond of similar expressions.
These colourful phrases might be blasphemous and shocking to some, especially in earlier times. But while they might not refer to anything in the real world, they do conjour up a ridiculous image. The idea of the solemn Christian saviour leaping in the air, pogoing, or doing either on a cracker is amusing, surprising and conveys that sense to the listener or reader.
Other versions of the phrase lose some of the religious reference, while keeping the saltational aspect intact. See: “Holy Jumpin’ cats,” “holy jumpin jellybeans,” and another personal favourite “Holy Jumpin weasel fritters on a hot cross bun!“
These versions use that classic comedic method of surprise: the listener expects some kind of blasphemous incantation upon hearing “holy jumpin” but then — BOOM — the lord’s name is replaced with cats, candies or weasel fritters. The effect is funny and ridiculous, or at least this seems to be the intent.
So then, what is the deal with “Holy Jumpin!” being used as an expression unto itself. It’s not particularly funny or surprising, it evokes no specific image of ridicule, and lastly it’s grammatically bizarre. Is the act of jumping supposed to be holy? Why not holy swimming? Holy boxing? Or holy dillydallying? There are plenty of funnier verbs out there.
But alas, language does not develop along rational lines, or based on what I find funny and clever. I found numerous examples of “Holy Jumpin” online, all of which, upon inspection were from Canadian denizens of the web. Darren Pang, a former NHL goalie from Ontario has a blog about the Phoenix Coyotes called the same. There is also Canadian female blogger who writes about the exciting world of US reality TV shows, and seems to like the phrase quite a bit.
Most appear from pretty random sources, like this Canadian Idol blog comment, or a post on Livejournal by a Vancouver-based cartoonist.
The one that made me doubt my Canadianism theory was a post on a site called Winds of Change.net, which seemed to be very American in it’s political subject matter. I ran a check on the author, a certain Jon Katzman, and lo and behold, he is very much Canadian and lives in Toronto.
So without definitive evidence, my theory that this is a kooky Canadian expression appears to be holding up. My question remains . . . WHY? It must be a derivation of the Christ-referencing epithets above. Could it be that prudish, Protestant Ontarians wanted to shorten the phrase to keep the borderline blasphemy of “holy jumpin . . .” without the pay-off of the noun at the end? Perhaps!
Occasionally the phrase appears as “Holy jumpin . . .” with the ellipse indicating the missing punchline. Maybe this is in the vein of other semi-complete phrases such as “what the . . .”; the latter also hacked by self-censorship to avoid the use of religious or profane language. But whereas the missing words in “what the . . .” are obvious, “holy jumping” seems to have taken on a life of its own, at least in these parts.
However it came to be, in the opinion of this not-so-cunning linguist, it’s a really, really crappy expression. Give me weasel fritters on a cracker any day.
