At this point in the season, various versions have already aired more than a few times, but tonight marks the first time for me to sit down and popcorn out on A Christmas Carol (by any other name). And sometime this week I’ll read the online version at Gutenberg. It’s one of my all-time favorite stories!
Today also marks the beginning of the one-week Christmas Countdown. Each day brings a short controversy-free, technology-free, gluten-free, fat-free, sugar-free, chemical-free free range Christmas post with a link back to a post from the Christmas Cycle in 2012. Considering the viewing schedule tonight, the link can only be to A Christmas Carol. (You can watch the Mr. Magoo version there!)
Of twelve. It’s hard not to notice how Christmas peeks out from under the covers earlier and earlier every year. One of my more recent seasonal traditions is noting how soon the first signs appear. The commercial opportunities of Halloween run interference in the fall; this year I found Christmas spoor on November 1st.
How Thanksgiving managed to escape heavy commercialization escapes me. Maybe people are spent out due to those two spendiest of holidays bracketing either side. Attics now store as many boxes of Halloween decorations as they do Christmas ones!
I guess the long foreplay is a good thing considering the instant exit once the deed is done.
May you — and all those you love — have a Merry, Happy, Joyous, Delightful, Wonderful, Warm, Delicious, Safe, Fun (yet Solemn), Sugar-Cinnamon Hot Cookie-Scented [insert appropriate holiday here].
It’s been quite a while since the last Brain Bubbles. What can I say, work has been sucking the bubbly out of me these last months. It’s like when all the oxygen is removed from water. No bubbles, and the fish all die. But being, in my own weird fashion, a cynical optimist (or am I a naive pessimist…I can never keep them straight), bubbles still do happen.
It’s also the end of that whole 12 days of Christmas thing. It’s now truly all over, and you can take down the decorations and toss out the tree.
It’s time to move on to the new stuff! Today’s edition of Brain Bubbles looks at some new things…
At this point it seems safe to say the Earth continues to orbit the Sun, and that life on the planet also continues. Either the Mayans were wrong, or all those people thousands of years later, working off little (or no) knowledge of the situation, were not correctly interpreting the situation.
Ya think? 😁
In any event, it sounds like a good excuse to throw a party! Let’s make it a good one!! We’ll decorate extensively (I’m thinking a red and white color scheme), and maybe there should be some gift-giving.
Merry Christmas! The day our inner child has been awaiting is finally here. It’s Christmas Day, the first of The Twelve Days of Christmas! I have a series of 12 intensely Christmas-y posts planned for the next 12 days. Each post keys off its respective line in that immortal song.
I’m sure you will enjoy my essays on the political ramifications of Leaping Lords, and I have a shocking Dairy & Hotel industry exposé concerning certain Milking Maids. Earlier in the series, you may enjoy the article about the bizarre biology and genetics of so-called “Turtle Doves.” There’s also a travel article; we’re going to France to see some Hens.
Yes, of course I’m kidding. This is a lazy Christmas Day post of random (sometimes silly) thoughts and memories of Christmas Passed.
A couple of funny things happened on the way to today’s post! The first thing is that — apparently due to having unknown Time Posting powers (or perhaps there was a passing Christmas Time Warp) — the post posted today tunneled back in time two days!
And while I’m pleased with this new-found power (I am a bit puzzled on how to wield it in the Name of Goodness), the point of posting a “Night Before Christmas” parody on the night before Christmas is — in fact — that you are posting it on the night before Christmas. (Naturally, my ruling star of Irony would insure that, with great power comes great befuddlement.)
But combined with the other thing that happened today, I choose to take this as a sign to write a new Christmas Eve post. You see, today I was Freshly Pressed!
Yesterday I tendered a generic, obligation-free, all-inclusive, organically raised, specially filtered, gluten-free, pesticide-free, steroid-free, high-fiber (but high fructose corn syrup-free) Winter Solstice greeting to one and all.
And then I went and either ruined, counter-pointed, offset or highlighted that greeting by playing you out with a Stevie Nicks version of a venerable Christmas Carol (wearing the fake beard, nose and lens-free plastic glasses of a “Solstice Hymn”… I’m guessing you weren’t fooled).
Clearly this “Christmas meme” has not only gone viral but appears likely to be with us for a while. Therefore, straddling the gap between High Holy Holidays and a world-embracing non-centrist view, I offer you this version of The Twelve Days of Christmas (not to be confused with the actual12 days of Christmas):
December is a dark month. It has the shortest day of the year (thankfully behind us now), and it comes at the end of a string of months — six of them — where the days have been getting shorter and shorter. By now, many of us drive to work in the dark and drive home in the dark. And for some there is snow and ice as well.
Sounds like a good time to throw a huge, everybody’s-involved, party! (So add all the present purchasing and party preparation to the mix with the cold and the dark.)
Hopefully at this point the work is behind you and it’s all fun for the next two days. As we wait for the party to start, here’s another politically corrected version of an old favorite. In this case, that poem about the night before…
So now we’ve established that Santa Claus is a magical being possessed of unknown gender, amazing abilities and a stable of cryptofauna. We can be thankful such a powerful being is not just friendly, but apparently an annual giver of gifts (at least to those who have been “nice” per this being’s magical “list”).
Certainly, a large portion of the Earth’s children — held in thrall to this unknowable annual alien — have sought his favor by sending him petitions through the mail. (The word is that His Jolliness has agents planted in postal services throughout the world to intercept these missives.)
Even the famous plastic couple, Barbie and Ken, have felt the pull of this fur-trimmed creature lurking at the top of the world…
At this point in the season, various versions have already aired more than a few times, but tonight marks the first time for me to sit down and popcorn out on A Christmas Carol (by any other name). And sometime this week I’ll read the online version at Gutenberg. It’s one of my all-time favorite stories!
Of twelve. It’s hard not to notice how Christmas peeks out from under the covers earlier and earlier every year. One of my more recent seasonal traditions is noting how soon the first signs appear. The commercial opportunities of Halloween run interference in the fall; this year I found Christmas spoor on November 1st.
It’s been quite a while since the 
At this point it seems safe to say the Earth continues to orbit the Sun, and that life on the planet also continues. Either the Mayans were wrong, or all those people thousands of years later, working off little (or no) knowledge of the situation, were not correctly interpreting the situation.
A couple of funny things happened on the way to today’s post! The first thing is that — apparently due to having unknown Time Posting powers (or perhaps there was a passing Christmas Time Warp) — the post posted today tunneled back in time two days!
Yesterday I tendered a generic, obligation-free, all-inclusive, organically raised, specially filtered, gluten-free, pesticide-free, steroid-free, high-fiber (but high fructose corn syrup-free) 
December is a dark month. It has the shortest day of the year (thankfully behind us now), and it comes at the end of a string of months — six of them — where the days have been getting shorter and shorter. By now, many of us drive to work in the dark and drive home in the dark. And for some there is snow and ice as well.
So now we’ve established that Santa Claus is a magical being possessed 
Logos con carne 