Religion and ritual

Most of this list describes what happens inside a church, a synagogue or a parish office; one entry has left the building. Zu Kreuze kriechen is what a newspaper says of a minister who withdraws a bill after a week of defending it, or of a firm that apologises to the regulator it spent a year attacking. English would say they ate humble pie or made a climb-down, but the German picture is harsher: somebody on their knees, crawling towards the cross. The phrase is fixed in every part. Kreuze keeps an old dative ending that ordinary German has dropped, the person one gives in to is introduced with vor, and only the verb moves, taking sein in the perfect: Die Partei ist vor ihren Wählern zu Kreuze gekrochen. It is never meant as praise, and nobody says it of themselves without irony.