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Sharing My Holiday World 25-12-2018
Here is my post for Melanie’s Share Your Holiday World. I always post these on a Sunday, but this one is quite topical so I thought I’d better get on with it! There’s even a special banner with a Father Christmas in his sleigh on it 🙂
I will answer the questions and then Google them and post the correct answer underneath.
What Christmas beverage is also known as “milk punch?”
That sounds like eggnog! Some people will go to great lengths for eggnog, as I wrote in my little story Eggnog Overkill.
And Google says… eggnog! Yay! 🙂
Before becoming tied up with Christmas what was Yule?
Yule was traditionally a log. Then the early Christian church decided to go on a mass recruitment drive and hijacked the pagan festival of Saturnalia for the purpose. As that slowly became a Christian celebration, so the Yule log was in its turn hijacked by early Christian chefs and became the tasty chocolate cake we all know and love today.
And Google says… a Northern European pagan festival at midwinter. I wasn’t even close 😦
Stollen is the traditional fruit cake of which country?
I’m pretty sure I have one, I’ll check the box, one sec… hey, where’s it gone? It’s been stollen!
Ha ha ha. Ha ha. Ha.
Okay then, it sounds German.
And Google says… “a traditional German bread eaten during the Christmas season”. Woohoo! 🙂
In what century was the first written use of Xmas?
It sounds very modern but Melanie posted an image which looks kinda old and traditional, so I’m going to take a stab at the 17th.
And Google says… the mid-1500s. So that’s the 16th century. So close! 😦
The modern Santa Claus is mainly a mix of what two figures?
We’ll have to try to work this out. “Santa”, presumably, is a misspelling of “Satan”. That ties in with Christmas’s pagan roots. “Claus” sounds a lot like “claws”, so something with claws… Freddy Krueger!
There you go. Satan Krueger. Freddy Morningstar. Take your pick.
And Google says… hmm, not an easy one to work out, this one! It appears to be a cross between St Nicholas and a salesman. And he’s been featured in Coca Cola ads since the 1920s! (Yes, I got this info from the Coca Cola website.) I wasn’t even close on this one 😦
Two out of five. Well, I was close with “Xmas” so I’m awarding myself half a point for that.
Merry Christmas everybody!
Bah Humbug. Already.
The neighbouring house is lit up like a Christmas tree. I noticed it because that means my bathroom is lit up like a Christmas tree too. Well, it is Christmas, I suppose.
No, wait a minute. Or a month. It’s November. I guess these are the sorts of people who hide Easter eggs around the house in February.
Have you read “A Christmas Carol”? No, neither have I. I have, however, seen “The Muppet Christmas Carol”, which I’m sure remains faithful to the original. Though perhaps featuring more urchins and fewer frogs.
Dickens would have been proud.
I’m also visited by ghosts every Christmas. The ghosts of bank accounts past, present and future. I’ve even given them names. “Marginal”, “Shocking” and “Bankrupt”.
Never fear. I’m sure in three weeks I shall be “in the Christmas spirit” :-).
Secret Santa and the Christmas Market
Secret Santa has been! We do that every year at the work Christmas Party, and here is what I got.
That’s a massive bar o’ chocolate and a “talking” Chewbacca. He makes Chewie noises when you squeeze him! The little tag is my work avatar, Christmas-ified as a present tag.
I also went to the Christmas Market in the village hall. As well as sausages, bread and such I also bought this, ideal for keeping my tootsies warm.
And also this – a dinky chocolate-coated one-man Christmas cake in a little box.
I don’t really like Christmas cake all that much 🙂 but I couldn’t resist the cuteness of the little cake, so I also bought a pot of Cornish clotted cream to mask the taste.
Yum.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
On the First Day of Christmas…
On the first day of Crizz-muzz, my true love sent to meeeeeeee,
A bill for a pretty pe-nneeeeeee.
Well Merry f*cking Christmas to you too, Water Company.
😦
Have any of you got home all excited to see mail on your doorstep right before Christmas, only to have reality come crashing back in?
Happy Holidays!
It’s nearly Christmas! Woohoo!
I’ve switched on the snow on my blog, so it must be nearly here.
Join with me, if you will, in appreciating the most awesome Christmas rhyme of all time…
“‘Twas the night before Christmas,
and all through the house,
not a creature was stirring,
except… the four assholes coming in the rear in standard two-by-two cover formation.”
…taken from the most awesome Christmas film of all time!
Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.
Well, it’s set at Christmas time anyway. So tuck yourself up on the sofa with drinks and snacks and enjoy an evening of mayhem with Bruce!
Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to everyone 🙂
[Copyright note: Die Hard theatrical poster taken from Wikipedia, in which it strongly implies “fair use” when using the whole image to describe the film (copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, the publisher of the film or the graphic artist).]
That time of the year
It’s “that time of the year”. Christmas has come and gone, and a new year has begun. They’re calling this one “2013”. It’s as good a name as any I suppose, and it’s handily one higher than last year, which makes it easy to remember.
I once wrote that I hate Thursdays. Well, I hate January as well. So you can imagine how I feel about Thursdays in January.
Anyhoo, January always seems like a bit of a let-down. All the anticipation, decorations and what-not have gone and we’re left with nothing but yet another whole new year to get through. There’s nothing at all between now and Easter, unless you count Valentine’s Day, which is just depressing if you’re on your own.
The problem with the year these days is that the whole thing is exactly the same. Once upon a time you could at least see the seasons change. A few years ago that stopped, and now we get:
Spring in the UK. And Summer, Autumn and Winter.
Picture by Tony Atkin (geograph.co.uk, Creative Commons licence) taken near St. Austell, Cornwall.
- Spring – raining
- Summer – raining and warm
- Autumn – raining and windy
- Winter – raining and cold
To be fair, it snowed a couple of winters ago, but that was quite unusual. Many years ago summers could get quite hot for long periods (in Cornwall that means temperatures in the mid to high twenties) and you could go outside in a T-shirt and shorts (well I couldn’t on account of my big fat legs), but last year all it did was rain.
Well, I guess too much rain all year is far better than no rain for years.
So let’s lift a glass to 2013 and see what it has in store!
(Could it be exactly the same as 2012…?)
Here we go again
The chap on the left has no use for money. Not so the chap on the right.
Well, we’re well into 2012 and Christmas is but a distant memory. However, it’s not time for me, personally, to hit the yearly reset button just yet (financially speaking, that is).
Christmas is, of course, is an expensive time for many people (by “many”, I mean pretty much everyone who celebrates Christmas). So now that it’s a distant memory, surely that’s a good time to start your own financial year afresh?
I have a massive clump of expenses, starting near the start of December and lasting until the end of January. There’s Christmas, of course. Then there are the membership dues for the two professional organisations I’m a member of. It’s not even as if I still work in the same field as these two organisations, but I still like to keep up with events and advances in my old field. Plus, of course, my ego likes the associated letters after my name. Then there’s the car. For some reason, whenever I decide to change cars I always do it in the first couple of months of the year, which means that the service is always due just after Christmas. Good timing, huh.
So my yearly reset currently lies in February. I can’t help feeling that I work all the year before in order to pay for all this stuff. Or, considering that I pay for it all courtesy of Mr MasterCard and Mr Visa, I guess I work all the year after in order to pay it back.
Star Trek has an interesting take on money – they don’t have any. Captain Picard explains this at some point during “ST- The Next Generation”. This is a great idea, but I certainly don’t see it happening even by the 24th Century (the century in which I believe it is set). It would require a quantum leap in thinking, and the whole world would need to do it at once. And some races still love money in the show – where would the Ferengi be without their gold-pressed latinum?
Well, I started off moaning about money and ended up showing my geekiness. Christmas may be over, but Easter eggs are already hitting the shops (whhhhhaaaat!). Yes, it’s true! So we have that to look forward to.
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