First Christmas in heaven

HUCKER

BEST EVER of EVERYTHING

Colleges Crack Down on Christmas Displays

Curses ...

TWO THINGS

Decoration Rustler

A Belated Major Award

Full Circles

Merry Christmas

Town Of Bethlehem Bans ‘Merry Christmas’ Signs A plethora of stories like that have percussion-capped me into feeling like we're reliving ground zero AD when observant Jews had to put up with not only vicious rule by a foreign Obama occupation but its Hollywood Sanhedrin lackey client.  Next, the slaughter of innocents and then, once again, Bing Crosby.

Inflatable Jesus

Two Christmas Hilarity Things And then this cat broke in and ....

Eric Erickson's Christmas Special

“

Christmas Special I didn't spend much time on-line the past few days so I missed  Erick Erickson's Christmas From Eve to Mary.  Never mind; it's timeless and some of you will enjoy it. As we wind down for the holidays and I gear up to fill in for Rush Limbaugh (12/26, 12/30, and 1/2), I will be doing a special presentation on WSB Radio for Christmas Eve. Putting my seminary learning to good use, I spend an hour tying Eve to Mary, explaining the significant of the smoking pot to Abraham, and breaking down why in 200 AD the early Christians set December 25th as Jesus’s birthday. I invite you to listen to an hour of radio and from my family to yours, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

”

What the Dickens

Christmas Village Perfected  It only took the grandkinders 3-4 hours to improve my initial layout.

Nutcrackers

Christamas, The Run-up

A very busy yesterday, and no posting.  Had to finish the Christmas village I've been doing for 2 3 weeks.  This year I had the genius to—instead of stacking it on a tabletop, as in the last 30 years—stage the fireplace that we never use.  Why is this genius?  Because; 1) it allows der kinder to play with it; 2) it looks good, and 3); when Christmas is over I replace the black glass fireplace screen, and it's ready for next year.  No packing the Dickens Village away! We also attended the annul Nutcracker Suite that my 7 yr-old granddaughter had a junior role in. This year my aged three grandson had a walk-on role too.  As usual my mind dances around.  I had a notion to stand up in the aisle and prance about.  So strong was this emotion that had I been the least bit under the influence I'd have done it and ruined forever  my reputation as the staid, wise grampa, father, and husband.  Indeed, I'd have been committed.  Also, I had just watched again the delightful Scrooged, where Bill Murry made this inappropriate demand .  So there was that. Anyway, it was great fun and put me in the holiday mood.  The only downside was the program began at 2 PM, the exact time my Terps tipped off in Stillwater against the Cowboys. But that's why God gave us the DVR, wot? I tried to get Merrily to bet with me, but she was unwilling to accept the consequences of winning, and even less eager to be the loser.  This game was a very important test for us; the first real road game this year, and the bookies made us 9.5 underdogs, even though we are ranked 17, and the Cowboys are not at all.  And, we take very seriously our new responsibility to the B1G and wished to help atone for, well,  these embarrassments.  Turns out it was a piece of cake, and I have finally accepted that this team have the ability to contend nationally. Eggnog all around!

Progressive Christmas Carols

Progressive Christmas Carols Merrily

Christmas Eats

Down Home Christmas

As Christmas day approaches, I want to talk less about people whose guts I hate, and more about them I find pleasure in.  Vivian Howard ( PBS series, "A Chef's Life") is one.  I am not making this up.  Earlier in the week I thought a good post would be about how parents should start teaching their chilluns how to prepare raw food  Especially meat.  Like, shoot, skin, and gut a squirrel.  Or Chickens.  And lo!.  This episode.  It's warm, fuzzy, and full of good cheer.  Aside.  This Chicago boy learned about such stuff because gram and gramps had a farm in Indiana where me & sister-sue spent  part of out summer.  At age 8 I was harvesting and cleaning  chicken, rabbit, and squirrel for gramma's pot.  Gramps had pigs, but trucked them to an Indianapolis abattoir.

Why Christmas is ...

“ Why Christmas is on December 25th [...] In Egypt, less than 300 years after Christ’s death, some Christians celebrated his birth in the spring. As the Biblical Archeology Society has noted, the earliest references to Christmas come at about 200 A.D., at a time Christians were not incorporating other religious traditions into their own. By 300 A.D., many Christians were celebrating his birth around Dec. 25th. Within 100 years, Christmas was on the calendar record. Christians looked to December because the early church was far more interested in Jesus’s death. His death and resurrection is what matters to the Gospel, and that was the date the early church focused on. “Around 200 A.D., Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan in the year Jesus died was the equivalent to March 25 in the Roman calendar,” said Andrew McGowan last year at the Biblical Archaeology Society. That would be the day of Crucifixion. The math from there is rather simple. Nine months later would be Dec. 25. Early church history held as fact that the prophets and martyrs of the church were conceived on the day they died. So if Christ died on March 25, it was also the anniversary of his conception. Separately, and more directly from the Bible, Luke 1 tells us Zacharias, John the Baptist’s father, was in the priestly division of Abijah. Based on a calculation of this and the division of priest in the temple in 70 A.D. when the temple fell, a number of early Church historians presumed Zacharias would have been in the temple in early October. Later historians, however, speculate it would have been June. The Gospel of Luke tells us when Zacharias left the temple, his wife conceived. “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazaerth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David,” Luke 1:25-26 notes. Six months after Zacharias left the temple would be March as Mary’s time of conception. Fast forward nine months and again we find ourselves in December. With the very earliest Church fathers settling on March 25th as Christ’s death and believing fully that Christ’s death would occur on the anniversary of his conception, the early church reinforced its belief well before there is any written accusation or evidence of the church incorporating Saturnalia or Sol Invictus into its celebrations. It is important to note, however, that most scholars reject setting Christ’s birth to Zacharias’s temple service because of problems related to really knowing when he was there. [Full Article] ”

Our Men in Brown

Holiday Dinner Party

Metzger

A Christmas Story

Catharsis

“ FAMOUS CHRISTMAS-STORY AD STIRS CONTROVERSY ... exactly 100 years ago this Christmas, the British troops, worn and weary in their midnight trenches, heard a familiar tune come wafting over the battlefield. It was the German troops, just a few yards away in trenches of their own, singing the traditional Christmas Carol, “Stille Nacht.” English speakers know the song better as “Silent Night.” One by one, the enemy combatants of both armies rose from their trenches and carefully crossed into “no-man’s land,” an unexpected and uneasy truce beginning to form. As dawn broke that Christmas Day, the men who only the day before sought to slay one another were exchanging gifts and engaging in a friendly game of football upon the deadly battlefield. In a retelling of this amazing true story, the United Kingdom’s third biggest supermarket, Sainsbury’s – together with the Royal British Legion and the ad agency AMV BBDO – created a moving advertisement depicting that holy night and fictionalizing a gift of a chocolate bar from a British to a German soldier. Sainsbury’s now sells that vintage-looking candy bar in its stores, with half the purchase price donated to the Royal British Legion charity. But using the famous World War I story to promote a grocery store, many have argued, was a dirty trick. Hundreds of complaints poured in to the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority claiming the ad “offensive” or claiming it was “misleading” for not immediately revealing itself to be an advertisement. The U.K.s advertising regulator, however, has now announced it has no plans to launch an investigation, much less ban the advertisement.  And, I think, told the blighters to go bugger themselves with a dildo shaped replica of Prince Charles.  [Full] ”

Church, Pie and sleep

CHRISTMAS 2013      Hope your Christmas was as nice as ours.  After two days of frenetic preparations, me and mo sup were crapped out on Christmas day. We did visit  the little grandkids to see what they got* from santa, and drove Greep and Joe to the airport.  The rest of my day was  eat  pecan pie and  nap.  Wake, whiz, eat some pecan pie; nap. We both did manage to watch a delightful movie,  that everyone else has already seen, called Fever Pitch; then it was back to pie and sleep.  I have bed head. * (this was interesting)

Christmas at Home

It's On!

As seen

Santa's Pit Stop

What I See                                                 HO HO-HO

Traditional Christmas

One Stop Hummers

Get to use the same card this year

The Johnson's Annual Greeting