Ifs and Buts and Candied Nuts

A middle school teacher in Flower Mound, Texas, responds to students’ protests and excuses with if all our buts were candied nuts, we’d all be fat for Christmas. It’s probably a variation of a phrase popularized by former Dallas Cowboys star turned sports commentator Dandy Don Meredith, who often observed, “If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts, wouldn’t it be a merry Christmas?” The practice of using ifs and buts as nouns goes back at least 900 years. This is part of a complete episode.