News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
Stories concerning holidays and seasons
Christmas tree with electric 12-21-19 William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 12-21-19
OK Miranda, who was Edward Johnson? He was the New York City gentleman who in 1882 was the first person to light his Christmas tree with electric lights.
The Littlest Angels
By Mary Hickey
“Ethan? In the Christmas pageant? He’s already two! He can’t be the Baby Jesus, can he?”
The church’s early grades activities coordinator assured Lauren that wasn’t what she had in mind. Nor the part of a shepherd. She doubted, for good reason, that Ethan could keep a straight face around the children crawling on all fours dressed as sheep.
“And anyway, giving Ethan and his friends shepherd’s crooks might lead to a scene better suited for Bruce Lee’s Revenge,” added Lauren.
“We’d like Ethan and a little girl his age to be the littlest angels,” the director explained. “He’ll walk down the center aisle with little Mandy Carrington. When they reach the manger, they’ll kneel and present silver and gold gift-wrapped boxes to the Baby Jesus. They’ll have one line to say, but if they forget it, nobody will ever know.”
“I’m sure he can manage that,” Lauren told her. “Frank and I look forward to his performance.”
When the big night arrived, Lauren helped Ethan into the long white terry-cloth robe Frank’s mother had made for him. At the school, Frank helped him put on his cardboard and tinfoil halo and wings. Then he stood back and examined Ethan with a critical eye.
“It looks like he’s wearing a nightgown,” he said. “I hope he doesn’t fall asleep!”
While the actors prepared for the pageant, several volunteer parents laid out refreshments for after the program. Several shepherds, angels and even sheep began craning their necks longingly toward the table. The three kings and their camel seemed briefly to be considering a detour, but apparently thought better of it.
The house lights dimmed, and the assembled parents scrambled to their seats. The young actors walked (or in the case of the sheep, crawled) to their appointed places on and around the stage. Then the pageant began.
After the arrival of a cooperative, sound-asleep Baby Jesus who looked at least five months old, the two littlest angels began their walk down the darkened aisle. Lauren beamed at Frank as they heard the complimentary whispers of other parents in the audience.
“Oh, aren’t they sweet!”
“You could almost believe they’re angels, couldn’t you?”
“Looks are deceiving!” snorted Frank.
Just then, something caught the eye of the other littlest angel. She poked Ethan’s shoulder, and then mutely pointed off to the left. Ethan followed Mandy’s finger with his eyes, then turned to regard her quizzically.
They both stopped walking, and made a quick decision. With a whoop of delight, both angels dashed toward the refreshment table as fast as they could run. Mandy tripped on her robe and almost fell, and Ethan lost his halo, but within seconds both of them were stuffing their mouths with candy and Christmas cookies.
The audience tittered, and then began to howl with laughter. The director gamely guided the remaining actors through to the end of the pageant. Mandy and Ethan continued eating, oblivious to the sporadic shrieks of uncontrolled mirth from both on stage and off.
When the pageant ended, Lauren and Frank searched out Mandy’s parents in the crowd heading for the refreshments.
“Actually, it was pretty funny,” Mandy’s mother was saying. “We can teach them about the real meaning of Christmas when they’re older.”
“Are you taking Mandy caroling at the church tomorrow night?” asked Lauren.
“Oh, no. We have too much last-minute shopping to do, and I also have to cook part of our Christmas dinner ahead.”
“We can’t make it, either,” said Frank. “Our tree is up but not trimmed yet. And I want to put up a few more outside lights.”
“It’s too bad we didn’t make it to the special Advent service last Saturday, either, but we had to take Mandy to see Santa Claus” said Mandy’s father. “After we fought our way home through the traffic snarl at the mall, it had been over for at least two hours.”
“I guess we’ll all be lucky if we have time for just the morning service on Christmas day,” Frank responded. “Say, we’d better hotfoot it over to that refreshment table right now, if we want to get our share of the goodies!”
“Next year, no doubt they’ll remember not to put the eats too close to the infant Jesus’s cradle,” noted Lauren as they filled their paper plates. “Maybe they’ll put them off in another room or something.”
“You know, we ought to do that at our house, too,” said Frank thoughtfully. “Our outdoor manger scene is swamped by megawatts of reindeer, sleigh bells and light strings. The wise men would be lucky if they could see the guiding star through all that.”
“It’s the same at our place,” Mandy’s father agreed. “You’d never smell the hay in the manger if we had one. It would be overpowered by fruitcake and mistletoe.”
“And our ‘Silent Night’ is shattered by rock-and-roll Christmas music blaring out of the boom box,” his wife added. “You’d be nuts to try to pray or study the Bible over all that racket.”
The four parents looked at one another in silence for a few moments.
“They’ve been feeding their faces long enough, don’t you think?” Frank finally asked.
“They certainly have!” agreed Mandy’s father. “Let’s get them out of here. Will you be going to the caroling tomorrow?”
“You can count on us,” the other three responded. “How about you?”
This is among the stories that can be found in Nice Stories About Nice People available at the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore.
Would it rock your world if you learned that the first colonial Thanksgiving was not held by the Pilgrims in New England but by the 38 English settlers at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia, who concluded their arrival in 1619 with a religious celebration as dictated by the group’s charter from the London Company. It specifically delcared “that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned … in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”
The poem below, Landing Of The Pilgrim Fathers, was written by Felicia Hemans, an Englishwoman who lived from 1793 to 1835. Happy Thanksgiving.
Landing Of The Pilgrim Fathers
The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed;
And the heavy night hung dark,
The hills and waters o’er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.
Not as the conqueror comes,
They, the true-hearted came;
Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
And the trumpet that sings of fame;
Not as the flying come,
In silence and in fear;
They shook the depths of the desert gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer.
Amidst the storm they sang,
And the stars heard, and the sea;
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthem of the free.
The ocean eagle soared
From his nest by the white wave’s foam;
And the rocking pines of the forest roared–
This was their welcome home.
There were men with hoary hair
Amidst the pilgrim band:
Why had they come to wither there,
Away from their childhood’s land?
There was woman’s fearless eye,
Lit by her deep love’s truth;
There was manhood’s brow, serenely high,
And the fiery heart of youth.
What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
They sought a faith’s pure shrine!
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found —
Freedom to worship God.
Halloween in 1984 “As told to” Mary Hickey
So this wasn’t that weird a day until right after dinner, when two kids from the neighborhood knocked on our front door. That was normal enough, since they sometimes come to play with my brother and me. But this time, they were dressed in strange clothes and had second faces over their real faces. Scary looking faces, too! I only knew who they were from their voices.
Then instead of staying to play, they asked for “trick or treats”, and Mom and Dad gave them each the choice of a book or an old tennis ball. They took the tennis balls, which is what I would have done also. But then, I’m only ten months old and I can’t read yet.
Dad wanted to go “trick or treating”, but he’s too old for it. I guess this is just for kids, though I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because they need to have the grown-ups hand out the trick or treats? Dad asked my brother if he wanted to go out with him, but he said no, he’d rather watch all the kids come in their costumes.
So what does Dad do? Put me in a brown sleeper and a groundhog face cover that he called a “mask”. They bought them for pictures in case I was born on Groundhog Day, which was my due date. I wasn’t, I got here early, which hasn’t been my habit since then—more about that some other time.
Then we went outside and he carried me around from house to house, telling people, “Look, I caught a groundhog!” They all laughed and threw candy and other treats into a bag he was carrying. It got dark quickly, but we kept on going until his bag was almost full. Then we went back to the house, but Mom said I shouldn’t eat anything from Dad’s bag. She mashed up a banana for me, which I ate because I like those things even though I haven’t figured out how to peel them yet.
So now it’s much later, and I’m in my crib. I have time to wonder now why every time I think I’m getting things figured out, something odd happens as if to tell me I may never know it all. Maybe life is like that for my brother, too, and even for Mom and Dad, who knows?
I’m feeling a bit sleepy now, so I guess I’ll sign off. Good night, and Happy Halloween!
Autumn 2019 Starts Now — The 2019 autumnal equinox is right now 3:50 a.m. EDT, Sept. 23 according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac as the sun crosses the celestial equator. Fall has arrived in the Northern Hemisphere, and the days are now shorter than the nights and will continue to be so until the spring equinox.
The celestial equator is a circle concentric with the actual equator that extends infinitely to space. As the Earth has a 23 degree tilt the the northern half tilts towards the Sun during half its orbit and away the other half. The equinoxes occur when tilt switches.
Summer 2019 Starts Now — Summer 2019 starts 11:54 a.m. EDT, June 21, which is right now if our internet service provider’s clock is accurate.
This means that tilt of Earth’s semi-axis is most inclined to the sun in the Northern Hemisphere which is a solstice.
The axis will in a few moments slowly start reversing itself until it is the Southern Hemisphere that is most inclined to the sun.
This would be the start of our winter (and Argentina’s summer).
Today is the longest day of the year.
Christos Voskrese 2019 — Christos voskrese, which means Christ has Risen, is the Easter greeting in Church Slavonic which brings the response Voistinu voskrese or Indeed, He has risen.
Easter, of course, celebrates the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus and the salvation of Man. The date for Easter is the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox, which is always reckoned, regardless of astronomical observations, to be March 21 as per the Western churches that use the Gregorian calendar, so Easter always falls between March 22 and April 25.
The dating for Easter correlates with the means the Jews once used to set the date for Passover, which correlates with Scripture since Scripture indicates that the Crucifixion of the Lord occurred as the lambs were being slaughtered for the celebration of that holiday. In fact, in most Western languages the name for the day is a cognate of the Pesach which is the Hebrew name for Passover. In Latin it would be Pascha so Paschal lamb would be Passover lamb.
In English and German, the word comes from Eostre month, which was basically April, and which the pagans who spoke Germanic languages had named for the goddess Eostre much as our own March and April are named for the Greek god and goddess Mars and Aphrodite, respectively. In Slavic, the holiday is called “Great Night” (Velikonoce in Slovak) or “Great Day” (Velikden in Ukrainian). There are some caveats regarding the date. The Eastern churches that use the Julian calendar set the equinox at April 3, and, of course, the spring equinox is based on that of the Northern Hemisphere.
So, Christos Voskrese 2019.
Spring 2019 Starts Now –According to our server’s clock it is now 5:58 p.m., EDT, March 20, which means the vernal equinox just happened and Spring 2019 has begun.
Equinox is Latin for “equal night.” Days and nights are approximately equal everywhere and the Sun rises and sets due east and west, explains The Old Farmers Almanac. At the equinoxes, the tilt of Earth relative to the Sun is zero, which means that Earth’s axis neither points toward nor away from the Sun.
Vernal comes from the Latin vernalis which means spring.
Winter 2018 Starts Now — Today, Dec. 21, is 2018’s winter solstice which is the day with the fewest hours of sunlight during the whole year.
If this website’s clock is properly synched it is 5:23 pm EST. and that means winter has started.
The word solstice comes from the Latin words for “sun” and “to stand still.” As per the Old Farmer’s Almanac: In the Northern Hemisphere, as summer advances to winter, the points on the horizon where the Sun rises and sets advance southward each day; the high point in the Sun’s daily path across the sky, which occurs at local noon, also moves southward each day.
At the winter solstice, the Sun’s path has reached its southernmost position. The next day, the path will advance northward. However, a few days before and after the winter solstice, the change is so slight that the Sun’s path seems to stay the same, or stand still. The Sun is directly overhead at “high-noon” on Winter Solstice at the latitude called the Tropic of Capricorn.