Holidays

Christmas 2015

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Newgrange  is  an ancient structure in Ireland so constructed that the sun, at the exact time of the winter solstice, shines directly down a long corridor and illuminates the inner chamber. More about Newgrange  here  and  here.

Grim  has an Arthurian passage about the Solstice.

Don Sensing has thoughts astronomical, historical, and theological about  the Star of Bethlehem.

Vienna Boys Choir, from Maggie’s Farm

Lappland in pictures…link came from the great and much-mourned  Neptunus Lex

Snowflakes and snow crystals, from Cal Tech. Lots of great photos

A Romanian Christmas carol, from The Assistant Village Idiot

In the bleak midwinter, from King’s College Cambridge

Rick Darby  has some thoughts on the season. More  here.

A Christmas reading from  Thomas Pynchon.

The  first radio broadcast of voice and music  took place on Christmas Eve, 1906.  (although there is debate about the historical veracity of this story)

An air traffic control version of  The Night Before Christmas.

Ice sculptures  from the St Paul winter carnival

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, sung by  Enya

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Jeff Sypeck  on a winter garden

Mona Charen, who is Jewish, wonders  what’s going on with the Christians?

Christmas Reflections

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The long pre-Christmas market marathon is finally complete this last weekend was our last event, and possibly the most strenuous, involving as it did two days in Boerne (three, if you count set-up on Friday afternoon), with the pink pavilion and all the gear the tables, display racks, two strings of Christmas lights and an extension cord not to mention my books and my daughter’s origami earrings and bead bracelets. We have had a market event every weekend since early November, save for the weekend after Thanksgiving, so our state of exhaustion is nearly total. This was compounded (1) by both of us having caught (in sequence) a filthy cold/cough/flu and (2) a mid-week overnight trip to Brownsville to tend to the project of one of the Tiny Publishing Bidness’ clients. The client covered the costs of the hotel stay and gas, and treated us to a perfectly magnificent lunch at an Argentine steakhouse, so there is that. But my daughter felt perfectly awful for one week, and then the cold hit me on the return from Brownsville and I have been barely able to function ever since. Monday was the first day that I could really succumb to how awful I felt, and crawl into bed for much of the morning. Until some robocaller (curses be on their head this Christmas season, and all their stockings be filled with lumps of coal) on the cellie woke me up and set the doggles to barking about mid-afternoon.

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Yes, Santa Claus is Real…

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… And in fact, he is a winter Texan, spending the cold months of the year in the Snowbird Nesting sites in the Rio Grande Valley.
Breakfasting Santa

He was eating breakfast at the table next to us at the Marriott Residence Inn, in Brownsville on Wednesday morning, and kindly allowed us to take a picture to prove it.

USAF Band – Museum ‘Flash Mobs’

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https://youtu.be/-cKE8pyfcZc

7/8

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Hanukkah Candles