Merry Christmas

I'm off to visit the fam... I hope you all have the ability to spend the holidays with the ones who mean the most to you: even if those are friends like Solid Snake or Rikku, or actual family. Merry Christmas to you all, if you made a good haul this year from the fatman, feel free to share.

I'll be working for 12 hours.

[AdamJ]

The moral of this story? Go to college.

loot! w00t! sorta....

[knewter]

So my mother tells me that I shouldn't expect much for Christmas. This is fine, I guess I can understand if she leaves it at that, because they built a house and all that jazz. But then she gives her reason:

"The (new) pool table and basketball goal are your presents!"

I hate to mention it to her (no, I enjoyed it), but I live in flipping Ireland and the only time I get to play with the pool table is for the next two weeks of my vacation. And the basketball goal isn't here yet! So she got really mad at me for pointing that out as annoyingly as I did (I would much prefer honesty to excuses; if it's not my gift, don't 'give' it to me as a token gift).

That said, I still got three new shirts, a pair of trousers, some candy, and $150. Go me!

Merry christmas!

I bought my girlfriend a flatpanel monitor...

[teaserX]

I was afaid she might think it was like getting her a bowling ball with my name on it but she dug it. Chicks *DO* dig linux.

Re:Merry Christmas

[AsylumWraith]

I'm dead serious. I work a gas station at night (Full Service here in Jersey) for extra money. This guy in a pickup truck comes in, fills up, and gives me a $5 tip.

About a half an hour later, he comes in and asks if I want a turkey. Someone gave him one, and he's already got like three in his freezer, so he wants to offload it on me. I figure what the hell... dunno what I'll do with it, but I'm sure I can figure something out. Even if it's just turning it over to the local St. Vincent DePaul Society, so they can give it to someone who *really* needs it.

True story though, and definitely one of the strangest things that's ever happened to me. Something to tell the grandkids about someday, I guess...

Re:Merry Christmas to all

[Jucius Maximus]

Since many folks here are talking about what they got for Christmas ... I'll do something different and say what I gave.

1. A photon light [photonlight.com] for my mom. It was a turquoise photon II.

2. A Sarah Brightman CD for my dad as well as a micro-tapemeasure so he won't have to lug one of his big ones around anymore when he wants to measure something at a store. I can hear the CD playing right now.

3. A set of nice gel pens for my sister as well as this really fancy popcorn she'd been eyeing. She was more pleased with the popcorn, haha.

4. Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed for my brother. He was more thrilled by the new drum set our parents got him ;-)

Weird in Toronto too

[JediTrainer]

Looking out my window, I see green grass. REALLY green, like it's spring. I live near Toronto, Canada.

We haven't had ANY snow this year, although everything to the north, south, east and west has gotten some. Maybe a few snowflakes a few days ago, but nothing that stayed on the ground for longer than a couple of hours. I don't even know if the snowthrower works yet (haven't started it up at all). Shovel hasn't left the wall yet. It's like we live in a bubble around here. Sorta throws the Canadian weather stereotypes in the trash, I suppose.

Merry Christmas to all!

Solstice, Christians, Pagans, and good music

[namespan]

A couple of years ago I ran across this song by Dar Williams [darwilliams.com] called "Christians and Pagans [bungalow.com]". It's hilarious (+1) and insightful (+1), and it's been my favorite "Christmas" song ever since (except, perhaps, for John McCutcheon's "Christmas in the Trenches [worldwar1.com]").

So back in 1998 my brother and I started to throw "solstice" parties. We looked into various holiday and solstice traditions around the world. No real attempts at sorcery, bachannals, or blood, which I suppose some might expect. We wassail an apple tree, we make radish and butter carvings, we light and extinguish and light candles and talk about what we've done the last year and what we hope to do again. We have the "Urn of Fate" assign friends for the year. We sing "here comes the sun" and "christians and pagans". I'm sure any serious pagan would laugh at us, but it's our little chance to do things a little bit differently, remember there's other cultures and traditions in the world, and perhaps find magic/life/spirit in an unexpected place or two.

I'm still a reasonably solid Christian. OK, I occasionally go for bouts of rational agnosticism, but for the most part, I've found that Christianity as a spiritual practice seems to have something to it. So still I'm a little uncomfortable singing that line from Dar's song "sending hope for peace on earth to all their Gods and Goddesses". But I like this new tradition of looking at other traditions and fashioning new ones from it, and we're going to keep it up, as well as gathering on Christmas day and reading Luke 2 [night.net] (stopping before we have to explain circumcision to the kids :). Plus, what's not to celebrate about the days getting longer.

Re:Happy Winter Solstice!

[Nicolas MONNET]

Yeah, mod me down, but there are some people in this world who will always believe celebrating the anti-pagan birth of Jesus is quite the opposite of 'fanatic' and 'superstitious'.

I'm sorry dude, but believing in an invisible, super powerful, flood creating, virgin impregnating (depending on your local flava'), fig tree slaying, water-walking friend qualifies to me as "superstitious".

By the way, do you know the difference between god and santa?

Santa claus, it's true.

(Courtesy Dominique Colucci).