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What’s on your mind?
- Thread starter Gutwrench
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And may I take this opportunity to wish you - and everyone else on these fora - a Happy New Year, as well.
Happy New Year everyone. Enjoyed the New Year's Day Concert live from Vienna this morning. Something I enjoy every year thanks to @Scepticalscribe who recommended it.
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Yes, I watched it as well, and enjoyed it. Delighted that you enjoyed it, and I am very happy that I have been the means whereby you came to learn of it.
This is a New Year's Day tradition that my father, whom I adored, and who loved music, and who knew music, and who had music "in his soul", had introduced me to, when I was a child.
And, whenever I was spending Christmas at home, I used to watch it with him, - and take pleasure in watching it with him, and thereby, yes, bonding with him by sharing our mutual delight in enjoying this concert together.
And now, he is 18 years gone this year, and, on New Year's Day, whenever I watch (and listen to) the concert, I also think of him. On other days, I think of my mother, but today is his in my mind and memory.
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That’s nice to have happy memories of your Father. I share my love of football with my dad and F1 with my Mum. I guess those are the things I’ll remember them by one day.
Retirement is on my mind. More specifically, my SO’s retirement which was effective on New Year’s Eve, after 48 years in banking. It will be quite an adjustment having her not working 50 and 60 hour weeks, most of them from home during the past few years. I retired in October 2021, and I’m looking forward to not having to share her with that job.
Of course she has a list of things for me to do around the farm, and now will have time to properly supervise me 😬
Of course she has a list of things for me to do around the farm, and now will have time to properly supervise me 😬
There goes your free time! Enjoy your retirement. Not sure I’ll ever manage to retire, but Mrs AFB hasn’t worked in years.
Just got my 4th Covid shot, and we're expected to get the 5th before the summer.
Everyone wants to get back to normal, but this pandemic is stubborn and find new ways and forms to spread.
Everyone wants to get back to normal, but this pandemic is stubborn and find new ways and forms to spread.
Just had Covid for the first time. Had all the shots I am able.
But as for living normally I never stopped. I see no more or less people socially than at the height of the pandemic.
The striking contrast between the tone of the insane - and (to my mind) - utterly excessive nature of Christmas advertising (often starting the very minute Hallowe'en celebrations are over), an excess of commercialisation frequently running the risk of over-looking some of the older, deeper, rooted traditions - some of which are attractive - surrounding the seasonal celebrations - and the bleak, joyless and punitive nature of what we are supposed to welcome - and how we are supposed to live - in January.
I saw a news article about Easter eggs in some supermarkets before January even started. Seriously? What is wrong with this world?
What I dislike in addition to too-early, too-enthusiastic and commercialized Christmas promotions is when after Christmas is over, and New Years, too, people STILL leave their junky displays out in their front yards or their red-white-and-green Christmas lights festooning their houses or outdoor trees, and worst sin of all, the Christmas tree still up in the living room window!
What?
Good grief.
Absolutely insane and so totally unnecessary.
Actually, in keeping with the idea of the old traditional "Twelve Days of Christmas", I don't mind Christmas decorations (and trees) lingering until January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany. When I was a child, if memory serves, schools generally re-opened after January 6.
To my mind, the greater crime - by far - which leads to this suffocating saturation of Christmas imagery, along with its commercial imperatives - is to have them appear - anywhere, or in any form - before the 8th of December.
Personally, I could rest content with a world where anything to do with Christmas was confined to the period of December 8-January 6. If possible, - and now, I am channelling my inner curmudgeon, that private dictator - I would prohibit, outlaw, forbid, any reference to Christmas whatsoever outside of that time period.
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I’d be quite happy if Christmas just dropped off the calendar. Stopping in London and just popped into Tesco on the North Circular. I can confirm Easter eggs on the shelf.
Well, yes, it is not my favourite time of the year, either, for a variety of reasons.
Long before my mother's death, I detested winter, the dark, the cold, the lack of - and poor quality of - natural light, while the relentless insanity supporting the commercial imperatives of Christmas set my teeth on edge.
However, it is an ancient feast, and one that predates Christianity; many of the cultures that faced darkness - or striking differences in the length of the day as the seasons changed - found a way to mark the time of the longest night, which was also usually a time when nothing grew, and so, it made sense to take stock of time, and celebrate the victory of light over dark.
I have no quarrel with that, not as long as Christmas (a Christian feast grafted onto pagan predecessors) keeps to its own month. The old Twelve Days is a sensible stepping back; a world where one is supposed to be "on" and "available" 24/7 strikes me as both ludicrous and unnecessary.
But, but, but....
The appearance of Easter eggs when we haven't even acknowledged the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6), - which used to be the formal end of the Yuletide Season, at least, in the western Christian world, or, the fact that the Orthodox Christian world does not even begin to celebrate Christmas until January 7.
This strikes me as a little premature.
And greedy.
To my mind, we don't need to salute Easter (a season I usually love, for, I adore spring) until the equinox approaches.
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Look no one wishes it was Spring more than me, but putting Easter eggs on a shelf will no more make it so than me putting Halloween decorations up will make it October (like I ever would!).
Anyway hopefully Spring will be early.
Amen to that, and completely agreed.
From the time of the Equinox, I welcome (warmly) the sight of Easter eggs; but, not before then.
Anyway, why not allow each season their own celebration, rather than have these great seasonal feasts, or celebrations, leach, or seep, into one another in a completely incongruous and unsettling manner?
EASTER EGGS??!!!! NOW?? In JANUARY???? That's totally nuts!
Unfortunately I don't think many people are aware of the earlier traditions of the Christmas season and instead they put up their decorations before Thanksgiving and leave them up long after the middle of January.....
I so agree with the start of everything Christmas being around December 8th and I fervently wish that the end of it would be around January 3rd or 4th at the latest..... I'm sick of seeing stale Christmas decorations in February!
Unfortunately I don't think many people are aware of the earlier traditions of the Christmas season and instead they put up their decorations before Thanksgiving and leave them up long after the middle of January.....
I so agree with the start of everything Christmas being around December 8th and I fervently wish that the end of it would be around January 3rd or 4th at the latest..... I'm sick of seeing stale Christmas decorations in February!
Currently on my mind: Some way to get these last 12 minutes of work to go by quicker. Today has been a day.
Christmas in the shops wasn't too bad this year. It didn't start till late in December, and I can only remember one instance of carols being played over a shop's sound system.
There were, as usual, too many hams, but no turkeys. Partly this is because nobody in this part of the world has an oven big enough to hold a turkey. They should bring back geese, though. They are smaller and fit in the oven, and you only have two weeks worth of left-overs.
I just found out that Charles Dickens, in "A Christmas Carol" is responsible for turkeys at Christmas. Up until then, a goose was the standard Christmas fare. Then Scrooge gifts a turkey to Bob Cratchit, and the rest of England followed.
There were, as usual, too many hams, but no turkeys. Partly this is because nobody in this part of the world has an oven big enough to hold a turkey. They should bring back geese, though. They are smaller and fit in the oven, and you only have two weeks worth of left-overs.
I just found out that Charles Dickens, in "A Christmas Carol" is responsible for turkeys at Christmas. Up until then, a goose was the standard Christmas fare. Then Scrooge gifts a turkey to Bob Cratchit, and the rest of England followed.
Turkey was a lot more economical for (large) families, as it contained considerably more meat than was found on a goose, which had been the traditional fare at Christmas.
Geese also take up plenty of room in an oven, with a large, bony carcass, but surprisingly little meat to show for it.
However, the fat of a goose is sublime, and superb for stuff such as roasted potatoes.
We tend to put our decorations up in the very last week of November for three reasons. One, we are not religious, two, the kids are beyond excited and Christmas is already part of the school curriculum, and finally three, I don’t have a free weekend in December to put them up due to it being such a busy month. They do come down between Christmas and New Year though as we want our house back to normal by then and are fed up with seeing it all lol. We never display Christmas cards as it send my wife mad as she thinks they look messy. The cat also likes demolishing them too if a few get put up briefly.