_Hockey_, a game played by boys with a stick bent at the end, is very
likely derived from _hook_, an Anglo-Saxon word too. But we cannot
suppose that anything else was derived from that, and especially when we
come to words apparently more genuine than that. It seems natural to
connect them with a hock-tide, Hoch-zeit (German), and Heoh-tid (A.-S.),
a name given to more than one season when it was usual to have games and
festivities. Now surely this is nothing else than _high_ tide, a time of
some high feast; as we vulgarly say, "high days and holidays." So in the
Scripture, "that Sabbath day was a high day." So high Mass. We
Protestants have no conception of the close connection between the
superior sanctity and the superior jollity of a particular season. Among
the heathen Romans, _festicus_ is derived from _festus_.[3] We say high
romps, high jinks.
See Wachter, who applies Hoch-zeit to Christmas, Easter, and
Whitsuntide, and says it may be derived either from high, or from
_Hogen_, "gaudere," which also see. He says that the lower Saxons "hodie
utuntur '_Höge_'" to mean "gaudium privatum et publicum convivale et
nuptiale." See also Hohen. See Lye, who has also heah, freols summa
festivitas, summum festum.
Ihre (_Lex. Suio Goth._) says _Hugna_ is "to make glad." But in Hog-tid
he observes, that gladness is only the secondary meaning of
_Hogen_,--"_Hokanat_ vocabatur a Borealibus festum quod media hieme
celebrabatur;" and he shows that hawks were formerly sacrificed at it.