Merry Christmas 2024. Can't we let politics and backbiting go, for just one day ??
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Saturday, December 28, 2024 04:06
VIEWED: 1077
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And Happy New Year 2025!
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And now for something funny ..
protest against the rampant stress and commercialization of Christmas
“The War on Christmas cannot end until Christmas stops its illegal occupation of November. I am calling on the Claus regime to return to the borders agreed upon in the Black Friday Agreement.”
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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I essentially stopped shopping around the time they started playing Christmas music at Halloween.
I think people need to reject Christmas. Not the real Christmas if you celebrate that, but this commercialized crap we're inflicted with every year.
Americans going into the Christmas of 2024 season were $1.17 Trillion in credit card debt.
What do you think that number will be next time they update it?
We already know that we can celebrate anything with people whenever we want to because over half the country is divorced and we've been moving everything around because of it for generations now.
Skip Christmas and get together with everybody on the 3rd week of January. That's deep enough into the winter to really have something positive to look forward to, especially in the north-midwest states where everything is dead and miserable 3 months out of the year.
Christmas always comes too early, and then there's just 60 to 90 more miserable days after it depending on how bad the year is, with nothing but the spring to look forward to.
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"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
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I personally think there should be something mid-February. About then, winter wears pretty thin. 
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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I guess we can argue about the sweet spot. 
By the end of February I'm good. I know it's almost over. But yeah... depending on the winter mid-February can still feel like ages from the end of February.
Been lucky around here for a few years now. I think I put my gutters up in 2019, so of course our last bad winter was immediately following that and we had so much snow with nearly 2 months of temps too low to melt any of it. That didn't stop my barely insulated attic from allowing the heat to melt it though. The insides of my 5" gutters were end to end cold-rolled ice, and I was taking a broom out my back windows and knocking down 3 foot icicles. I remember the hillbilly neighbors down the street had icicles from their 1st floor gutters all the way down to their driveway that year.
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"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
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I know some people who love the music, I kinda have a love hate relationship with it the whole thing being so commercial, if you were ever in sales, retail! end of year madness! if you ever seen it ever worked in sales on the phone in a store was a mania time of year in t he West and having to listen to those silly annoying pop tunes, same movies on tv, every stressed some family argue. Meet ups they get drunk or stoned or even more drunk and say something offensive and start an argument, people having heart attacks this time of year from the stress.
but there is something nice about the festivity, the lights, the sculptures, the music and the smells of food
'O Radiant Dawn' 'Good-will to men, and peace on Earth' 'Bethlehem Down' 'In Dulci Jubilo' the 'Wexford Carol' that whole Ding Dong Merrily on High toast to Handels merry stuff or Baroque composers
some of the war era subject is interesting Joyeux Noel a movie featuring a moment of peace with Scottish, Germans, French in the trenches or Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten
Long before Romans decided to mark that Christmas thing, long before Emperor Constantine the Great changes faith
there were possibly a lot of old tunes and festivals marking that time of year
Pagan, the Winter Solstice marked by Vikings, Chinese, Native American tribes, Stonehenge, England...getting through t he winter was important
when was Jesus born?
Well that's hard to say because the more you go back in time the more murky history gets, but there possibly was a 'Star of Bethlehem'. Some think supernova but the only supernova that was visible from Earth around the time of Christ's birth actually happened in the year 185 A.D seen by Chinese, it could have been a Comet and Comets are known for their bright, glowing tails and it just never came back
it could have been when planets line up, significant conjunction took place in 7 B.C., when Jupiter and Saturn had three close alignments, there were other ones in August or March but that's not the correct time of year, in 3 B.C., a particularly striking conjunction occurred between Jupiter and Venus and other dates but nothing really goes back to exactly that 25th day of December 0 AD or 0 BC or Common Era as those Atheists call it a lot of people in physics and astronomy suggested the Star of Bethlehem may have actually been a "great conjunction" of bright planets
Others speculate Rome simply moved the date of the Birth of Jesus to be the same time as the Pagans and Celts and Germanic tribes they were trying to defeat
In the Far East a Dongzhi Festival, ancient Egyptian temples are aligned with the winter solstice sunrise, people of Scandinavia which Greeks calls Thule wrote down the events and said Sandinavia held their greatest festival shortly after the winter solstice, to celebrate the return of daylight and it was probably Germanic types or Celt Druids before them who began the tradition of the yule log.
and the Roman festival by way of propaganda used this new Christian festival to get into the Northern troublesome tribes not yet under control of Rome.
or if you believe in stuff it wouldn't be a UFO but a 'Miracle' and that is a matter of faith
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Can Astronomy Explain the Biblical Star of Bethlehem?
https://greekreporter.com/2024/12/07/astronomy-biblical-star-bethlehem/
From Jupiter to Jesus: unraveling the mystery of the Bethlehem Star
https://cybernews.com/editorial/bethlehem-star-explained/
Gloria in Excelsis Deo! What was the Star of Bethlehem?
https://www.thebostonpilot.com/article.php/special/Pilot_20240202_Barb
osa/special/article.php?ID=198770
Leontovych was shot by a Soviet chekist named Afanasy Hrishchenko, shot the composer, and robbed the family.
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JAYNZE, my memories of Christmas are almost magical, a mashed- together conglomeration of Baby Jesus, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, and Christmas lights shining thru the snow.
So, the parts that stand out in my memory:
As maybe a 5 year old, creeping downstairs in the dark with my two sisters, and plugging in the Christmas tree lights and trying to guess what was in the boxes, not giggling too loud bc mom and dad were still asleep. (When we were little they would put up the Christmas tree Christmas eve night, when we were asleep. When we were REALLY little, they would put the tree in the playpen, I was told).
As we got older, helping decorate the tree. Dad would cut off a half inch and stick the tree in a bucket of sand in the basement until it was time to put it up in the livingroom. The smell of pine thru the house. Setting up the manger scene under the tree. Lights, ornaments, and tinsel.
Anxiously waiting for snowflakes for Christmas.
Waiting to be old enough to go to Midnight Mass. Seeing a bright moon thru bare tree branches in a dark midnight sky, small clouds scudding across its face. Quiet, quiet stillness.
Helping bake Christmas cookies. Family get togethers. Fancy desserts.
And especially... taking our evening stroll with dad, Christmas lights on nearly every house, shining on (and sometimes thru) the snow. Strings under the eaves, or maybe around a door and porch railing, or wrapped around a shrub. Not a competition but because that's what one did at Christmas: make the neighborhood pretty. Maybe I over interpreted as a child, but what that told me was that people cared. Enough to go thru the effort of putting up something pretty.
To this day, I can't let Christmas go by without putting up a string of lights. Colored lights, mind you!
I could never get behind the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, triumphalist mentality, but the story of Baby Jesus, Silent Night ... THAT resonated.
Every western child should have lovely memories like that.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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That's a nice memory.
I have one good Christmas memory. My younger brothers don't even have that.
Chrismas for us was spending it at a different place every year, custody battles, drama and bullshit.
Just give me my video games and leave me the hell alone until I go back to school. Both of you do it for the 364 other days of the year, so it shouldn't be too hard for you to today. Thank you. Bye bye.
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"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
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Oh, that's too sad, SIX.
Of course, those are my best memories. And a lot was colored by the fact that I was a happy, placid child. My one sister has a bad case of ADHD, and her memories are very different, because what she mostly remembers is a lot of mental noise that kept her from enjoying the moment, and a lot of frustration and emotional turmoil from being criticized for things she couldn't help. That was before they knew about ADHD.
And of course I didn't remain a happy child, I fell intomone of those deep, existential Eastern European depressions when I was younger than 10, bedeviled by questions like "what if this reality is just a dream, and not even my dream but someone else's? ". Feeling feelings I was too young to understand and axking questions I was too young to answer. (Turns out I recapitulated a lot of modern western philosophy without knowing it.)
And by the time I was 12ish, mom started drinking pretty heavily (and didn't stop until I was about 25, married and out of the house already), dad was suffering from hypoglycemic episodes (as well as PTSD) and often looked like a volcano ready to erupt, and things were pretty tense and miserable.
But still. I have lovely memories, and that's what I remember most.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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