Simple things like wrapping presents can prove to be quite challenging and stressful this season.
Below are two tutorials on how to handle this task:
Are you ready for the holidays? 😊
🎥 IG: roswell_weenie https://t.co/b4edQqPQ2P pic.twitter.com/RaiHh8ckUf
— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) November 30, 2022
For the Canadian Armed Forces, Christmas is always a time to be remembered, sometimes for all the wrong reasons.
Throughout its glorious history, Canada’s military has often been put to the bloodiest of tests during the season of goodwill.
In the strangest of times, the strangest of festivals. Dulled by familiarity, piled over with good food, buried in torn wrapping paper, drowned in good drink: can we see Christmas again for what it is?
In days that seem unprecedented, we cling to the familiar. I do, anyway, and Christmas has been familiar to me all my life. The excitement and the anticipation that I felt as a boy is felt now by my young son, and I can live vicariously through him: the lack of sleep, the mince pies for the reindeer, the presents waiting, if he’s lucky, under the tree. Christmas has its rituals, and we don’t have many shared rituals left in the modern West.
If the coming week or so becomes a rather interminable and indeterminate blur, then perhaps frequent recourse to singing The Twelve Days of Christmas may serve as a reminder of what day it is and when to take the decorations down. It might even bring some spiritual instruction along the way.
This popular and much-parodied song first appeared in 1780, in a children’s book entitled Mirth Without Mischief. It seems originally to have come from France, where earlier versions exist, and it is perhaps significant that the partridge, which appears as the final gift sent by the true love, was introduced into England from there in the 1770s. Although on the face of it a simple memory game for children, scholars have suggested that it may have contained hidden messages, rather like other nursery rhymes — Sing a song of sixpence referring to Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, and Ring-a-ring o’ roses to the Great Plague of London in 1665, for example.
The Queen has delivered her most emotional Christmas message ever, paying tribute to her ‘beloved’ late husband Prince Philip and revealing how the Duke of Edinburgh’s ‘mischievous, enquiring twinkle was as bright at the end as when I first set eyes on him’.
The monarch described that there was ‘one familiar laugh missing’ during the festive season this year as she made her most fulsome public tribute to her husband of 73 years and the nation’s longest-serving consort since his death in April aged 99.
Hi All! Welcome back and I hope you enjoy the carols. Leave your faves in the comments and we’ll play them Christmas day along with the others we have yet to get to. You’ll likely see two to three installments of Reader Fave Carols Christmas Day. I can’t recall how many years we’ve been doing this, no matter it’s always fun.
From PaxCan
From Huge Fan Auroras & HotSprings
From BlueCanuck
From Norman in NY
From Dana Garcia
From TruthSerum
From Curt Henderson
From Kiki982
From bargogx1
From Burgess Shale
Santa rides tomorrow and I’m guessing his list is set. He knows who is a true American and he knows who the pinkos are. Let’s take a look at some of the worst “Marxist Americans” currently polluting our country.
Some local news I thought you might enjoy – Steubenville is across the Ohio River from us and the nearest ‘big’ town. The closed steel mills mentioned are on our side of the river, in Weirton; my grandfather and many of my friends worked in those mills. Grandpa’s job was so important that he was declared an essential employee and exempted from the WW2 draft, to his everlasting shame because he wanted to serve. My dear friend and next door neighbor, Betty, was the quality control inspector for the big shells the battleships used when the steel plants were converted for wartime and women became the workers. What stories she had! Back then, people flocked to this area for good jobs, but since the 70s and cheap overseas steel it’s been a dying region. It’s good to see something positive happening.
Hello again! Hope you enjoy this evening’s selections, please add your faves in the comments and we’ll play em!
PS – the pic – Beatrix Potter: Christmas cards to go on display at V&A
From Truth Serum
From Surele Surele
From Norman in NY
From NoBamaYoMama
From Kiki982
From Rosenmops
From Dana Garcia
From Grainger
From Malcolm Y
Welcome again! It’s day 4 of Reader Fave Christmas Carols. Hope you enjoy the selections. Leave your faves in the comments and we’ll play them all!
From Huge Fan Auroras & HotSprings – and yes she dances still.
From Osumashi
From Ingenui
From Mal
From Bargogx1
From Mr_bigstuff
From Dana Garcia
From Norman in NY
From MartinB
From Barbara Campbell
