Time:
“Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl
This song came into being after Elvis Costello bet The Pogues’ lead singer Shane MacGowan that he couldn’t write a decent Christmas duet. The outcome: a call-and-response between a bickering couple that’s just as sweet as it is salty.
Food Wishes
Published 22 Dec 2015Learn how to make Homemade Eggnog!
I’ve never been a big eggnog person, and that’s putting it kindly. It’s too thick, too sweet, and way too artificially nutmegy. I even did an anti-nog tweet recently, just for a few cheap, seasonal laughs, but then I realized I was being unfair to this iconic Christmas drink.
I was basing most of my hating on the stuff in the carton from the supermarket, which features no booze, and a nutrition label you seriously don’t want to read. The homemade stuff I’ve had was significantly better, and so I decided to film this rather easy process, since I get so many requests this time of year.
Go to http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2015/1… for the ingredient amounts, more information, and many, many more video recipes! I hope you enjoy this easy Classic Christmas Eggnog recipe.
… the man who did more than any other US citizen to shape the American Christmas. I am not sure how many people read Washington Irving these days, but I would wager that a large proportion of those who don’t are still vaguely familiar with his creation Rip van Winkle — and, if only through his memorialization in institutions like the New York Knicks, his fictitious Dutch historian Diedrich Knickerbocker.
An even larger number may be unaware of how much they’re honoring Mr Irving in their Christmas jubilations. He it was who, in the 1812 edition of his History of New York, threw in a whimsical vignette in which St Nicholas flies over the treetops in a wagon while puffing on his pipe. No reindeer, but all the other elements of the American Santa are there.
Washington Irving loved the great village revelries of the old English Christmas, which the Puritans had left far behind them when they landed at Plimouth Plantation. The parlor games and community feasting and the notion of the Saviour’s birth as a cause of merriment all appealed to him. In his famous and bestselling Sketch Book of 1819-1820 five chapters are devoted to lovingly detailed scenes from an English family Christmas as observed by a young visitor, and they proved so popular that half-a-century later (by which time almost all the elements had been imported into American life) they were published as a stand-alone book.
Mark Steyn, “Dangling Hares and Rosy-Cheeked Schoolboys”, SteynOnline, 2021-12-20.
But First, Coffee
Published 3 Dec 2017Want some tips for wrapping your Christmas presents? Struggling to wrap all your gifts? My life hacks for wrapping are gunna change yo life! Learn how to use the diagonal wrapping method to use less wrapping paper, make a pillow box out of a toilet paper tube, and more!
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This, the most enduring of the many works of Frank Capra, became the Atlantis myth of post-war America. That is, those who, over the course of the last half-century, saw It’s a Wonderful Life on television, knew well that the age of community and connection depicted on their screens had already passed into the realm of legend. Moreover, to add injury to insult, they also knew that, if they wished to enjoy the fruits of a middle-class existence, they would have to live in the manner of vagabonds.
In the movie, slum-lord Henry Potter tries, but fails, to turn the provincial paradise of Bedford Falls into a run-down haunt of spinsters, drunks, and floozies. In the real world, it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who put the kibosh on the original Main Street, USA. To be more precise, the principal achievements of America’s greatest tyrant, the Great Depression and the Second World War, undermined the financial, legal, and cultural foundations of the “wonderful life”. Thus, by the time this process had run its course, inflation had made a fool’s game of simple thrift, the replacement of law with regulation had hobbled private enterprise, and people who had left home for the sake of college, work, or military service found themselves lost in a sea of strangers.
In response to these changes, colleges and universities stepped up to the proverbial plate, happy to offer substitutes for the things that had been lost. They gave young people a chance to obtain certificates that would attest to both their suitability for service in the ranks of corporate minions and their social respectability. At the same time, these institutions gave older people a way to convert their value-losing cash into an asset that promised to pay dividends that would benefit their children (and, indeed, their grandchildren) for decades to come.
Thus arose the people I have come to call the MICE (Mobile, Individualistic, College Educated) people. Bereft of regional accents, productive property, and deep connections to friends and relations, they wandered the world, building networks, acquiring degrees, and padding resumés. However, after two generations of such peripatetic solipsism, the age of the MICE people is coming to an end.
Young men of parts, who realize that college has nothing to do with either liberal learning or vocational training, are simultaneously taking up skilled trades and stocking their MP3 players with learned podcasts. At the same time, young women of quality are beginning to think that the traditional troika of Kirche, Küche, und Kinder offers better odds of deep satisfaction than life as a hormone-hobbled, Starbucks swilling, girl boss.
So, if you know young people like the ones I’ve just described, do posterity a favor, and put them in contact with each other. After all, they deserve a life as wonderful as that of George and Mary Bailey.
Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson, “College, Class, and Christmas”, Extra Muros, 2023-08-06.
Lofty Pursuits
Published 19 Dec 2016Public displays of Confection use a very old ribbon candy machine to finally make some nice ribbon candy just before Christmas 2016. This batch was cherry, but we’ve made tutti frutti, and peppermint too. Lofty Pursuits makes candy on equipment made from the late 1800’s until the modern day. We concentrate on finding and restoring old candy equipment and re-learning the dying art of hard candy making.
http://www.pd.net to see the candy we sell.
Food Wishes
Published 8 Dec 2011Learn how to make a Roast Smoked Goose Recipe!
Visit http://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2011/1… for the ingredients, more recipe information, and over 650 additional original video recipes! I hope you enjoy this Christmas Roast Smoked Goose Recipe!
Ontario Regiment Museum
Published Dec 17, 2023Merry Christmas from the volunteers and staff of the Ontario Regiment RCAC Museum and our friends at World of Tanks. Please enjoy this festive message and get a look into Santa’s Tank Workshop!
This segment originally aired in the TANKMAS 2023 – LIVE Stream on 8 December 2023. Hosted by The Tank Museum (Bovington), and sponsored by our friends at World of Tanks.
https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/live…Full video and stream can be found on The Tank Museum YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/_5cMsW5Z…Meet our hosts from World of Tanks and Wargaming.net:
Nicholas “The Chieftain” Moran and Cmdr_AFMeet our Executive Director: Jeremy N Blowers AKA Tank_Museum_Guy
Wishing you and yours a Very Merry Christmas, and a safe and Happy Holiday season.
PLAY NOW at www.worldoftanks.com
FREE to play and build your own “Tank Museum” garage.Thank you to Wargaming.net for the video production and sponsorship of this museum centered Christmas streaming event.
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 10 Dec 2021
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The folks at the World War Two channel on YouTube posted this to their community page on Christmas Day:
On Christmas Day, 25 December 1943, the 1st Canadian Infantry Division is still engaged in brutal urban combat against the 1. Fallschirmjäger-Division for control over the town of Ortona. But among the rubble of the “Italian Stalingrad”, soldiers of the Seaforth Highlanders of Canada, along with other units [of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Brigade], manage to keep the Christmas spirit alive.
Colonel S. W. Thomson will recount this most unusual Christmas celebration many years later:
“I knew that we would be fully engaged with the enemy on Christmas day. However our most enterprising Quartermaster, Captain Bordon Cameron, was anxious to provide something special for the men at Christmas. Three companies were in the line with one in reserve, often the norm. We decided to feed the reserve company first and feed the remaining companies in relays. as one company finished it would go forward some 300 or 400 yards and relieve the next. Tables, linen, chinaware and candles were scrounged by the reserve company. The tables were set up in rows in our great church Santa Maria with four foot thick walls and my rear H.Q. What a picture, what an appropriate setting for a Christmas dinner on Dec. 25.
“Soup, roast pork, vegetables and Christmas pudding along with a bottle of beer for each of the tattered, scruffy, war weary soldiers was served by HQ and B echelon staff. The Q.M. boys excelled themselves, the impossible had happened. There was a spirit of good-fellowship throughout the church. The signals officer Lieutenant Wilf Gildersleeve played the organ, and our much loved padre Roy Durford led the carol singing. Pipe Major Esson played his pipes several times during the meals drowning out the odd enemy shell burst outside.
“Christmas in Ortona, the meal, yes, but the spirit of the occasion, the look on the faces of those exhausted, gutsy men on entering the church is with me to-day and will live forever.”
To all our followers, readers, and viewers: We wish you a Merry Christmas!
From: Canadian Military History, Vol. 2 (1993)
Picture: Canadian soldiers celebrate Christmas in Ortona, Italy
Source: Canadian Armed Forces
English Heritage
Published 7 Dec 2016Mr Lincoln, the butler, is very busy with Christmas preparations, so Mrs Crocombe is making some Christmas gin punch for the servants in the kitchens of Audley End House.
INGREDIENTS
250g Brown Sugar
7 lemons
750ml Gin
750ml Ginger Wine
250g Honey
A Pinch of Cloves
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Nutmeg
Hot WaterMETHOD
In a large bowl, add the sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, lemons, honey, gin and ginger wine. Add some hot water to your taste and give everything a good stir. You can then decant your punch into a decorative bowl and serve.
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Brain: THERE’S STILL CHEESE LEFT, PUSSY!
Body: But I hurt.
Brain: EAT MORE CHOCOLATE NOW!
Body: *cries*
Brain: WASH IT DOWN WITH A PINT OF BAILEYS.
Body: I’m begging you. Please stop.
Body: SNORT THAT PURPLE QUALITY STREET, BITCH.Amanda (Pandamoanimum), Twitter, 2018-09-13.
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 16 Dec 2022
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Time:
“Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl
This song came into being after Elvis Costello bet The Pogues’ lead singer Shane MacGowan that he couldn’t write a decent Christmas duet. The outcome: a call-and-response between a bickering couple that’s just as sweet as it is salty.
Amanda (Pandamoanimum), Twitter, 2021-12-24.
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