I do not have a great singing voice. I do not even have a good singing voice. My singing voice is the vocal equivalent of a lopsided gingerbread house made out of crackers. Every holiday season, I join a choir somewhere and immediately worry that the person in front of me will turn around, hear whatever sound just escaped my mouth, and think, "Gawd, who let her in?"

And yet, I love singing at Christmas. I love the communal lift of it. I love the way a room of humans can accidentally produce something halfway beautiful while half of them are panicking about whether they are the ones ruining it. Every year, I promise myself that this time I will relax, open my mouth, and not imagine a panel of judges hiding behind the poinsettias.

Which is how I fell in love with a Portuguese word that feels like a holiday miracle. Muvuca.

On my podcast, "Fifty Words for Snow," my Welsh cohost Emily John Garcés and I search for unusual and........

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