It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
There’ll be much mistletoeing and hearts will be glowing when loved ones are near.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
— Eddie Pola and George Wyle –
All my favourite holiday Quotations: Christmas Quotations
Christmas is very nearly here, and I’d like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas, and All the Best in the New Year. As you can see from this photo of my Christmas tree, I’m all ready for Santa to visit. I anticipate one very nicely wrapped medium sized gift of the hair drying appliance variety!
For better or for worse, Christmas is a time for gifts and giving. Who knows that better than Santa – and Wal-Mart, Costco and Tesco, to name just a few of the larger retailers!
While it is easy to walk into the familiar brick and mortar stores in communities around the world, it is quite impossible to visit Santa’s establishment. There are several reasons for this. First, of course, is the fact that Santa is not a retailer. He is the owner of a factory and distribution outlet. His business model simply does not include on-site sales.
Then there is the issue of the location of his facility. It is, according to lore, at the North Pole – a place that isn’t even located on a land mass. It is nearly in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, and is almost permanently covered with constantly shifting sea ice. So, even if you could get to the North Pole, you might find Santa’s factory at the designated GPS location or it might be miles (kilometers) away in an undetermined direction.
The North Pole, in the winter, is a very cold place. Winter temperatures can range from about −50 to −13 °C (−58 to 9 °F). It is quite inhospitable. Despite that, several countries have laid claims to these icy high seas (Canada, Norway, Russia and Denmark.) It could be decades before their claims are scrutinized by the United Nations and one of them is declared the owner. When that happens, Santa, Mrs. Claus and all the elves will have to apply for citizenship, I suppose. The paperwork will be monumental…
While you may not be able to visit Santa at his home, you can certainly mail him a letter. Canada has assigned the North Pole a Postal Code, so letters to Santa can be mailed to North Pole, H0H 0H0. Finland says Santa’s official office is in their country and his address is Tähtikuja 1, 96930 Arctic Circle. There is place called the North Pole in Alaska, USA. Letters to that Santa can be mailed to North Pole Postmark Postmaster, 4141 Postmark Drive, Anchorage, AK 99530-9998. In the UK, Santa’s letters go to Santa/Father Christmas, Santa’s Grotto, Reindeerland, XM4 5HQ. In Australia, letters may be mailed to Santa, NORTH POLE 9999. Santa has other addresses in other countries and these can be found at a site called Letters to Santa.
I’ll end this post with a burning question – should the North Pole become part of any country at all? By extension, should Santa have to become a citizen of any country, and if yes, which country do you think it should be?
One of the things on our Christmas wish list this year was a gift for our TV set.
Television – in my lifetime, I’ve ‘seen’ it all! Our first TV had rabbit ears which were enhanced with wire and tinfoil. In later years we had roof top antennas, then big satellite dishes, little satellite dishes, and cables. Our first TV gave us one station. In later years we had dozens of stations, then hundreds of stations. Our TV screens were sometimes as small as a laptop computer, sometimes big boxes that took two men to lift, and finally flat screen lightweights that hung on the wall.
We wanted to see if we could ‘cut the cord’ on our Satellite TV service. To do that, we needed a digital antenna that would pick up free Over the Air (OTA) television. The Car Guy chose a TERK omni-digital antenna for 1080 HDTV broadcasts.
Like children who peek at their presents before Christmas morning, we opened this gift a few weeks ago. The installation was very easy once The Car Guy had finished exploring all the possible ways not to connect the cable. We were pleasantly (okay ecstatically) pleased with the crystal clear High Definition picture we now receive thanks to an uncompressed signal.
The antenna cost just a little more than the price of one month’s satellite TV and gives us free TV from 6 local stations: GLOBAL, CTV, CITY, CBC, YES and OMNI. Three of these stations broadcast the seven shows we like to watch each week. What a great Christmas present!
Have you ‘cut the cord’ on your TV service? Discontinued the phone land line and gone cellular? Turned off the internet for more than a day? Moved out of your parents basement? Finished your Christmas shopping? Do you anticipate doing any of these things?
November marked my 7th Anniversary of blogging. Celebrating this milestone by writing this post turned out to be very hard. I’m mesmerized by the American election, and can’t seem to move on until I’ve digested what happened!
I’m not an American, but I have strong ties to both my American friends and a community in Arizona (where I spend the winter.) Then there is the not insignificant influence that the United States has on my country, Canada. Research associate Simon Palamar explained this relationship by saying “We’re sleeping next to an elephant, so when they shift in bed, we feel it.”
If I had been an American voter, and a Republican, I don’t know if I could have voted for Donald Trump. Of course, the same thing can be said about the Democrats and Clinton. Neither candidate seemed particularly worthy if you believed everything the media reported.
Watching the election night coverage on three different stations felt a bit like an indoctrination into why I should have got a college education (so I would know how to vote for the right party.) After the election, there were violent protests; the accusations that all Trump supporters are racist, sexist, homophobic bigots; the demand for the immediate suspension of the Electoral College, petitions to secede from the Union, etc. It reminded me of a small child throwing a temper tantrum, not a free society where one side might be unpopular with the other side, but that’s okay.
Would the words have been softer or the backlash less if the Democrats had won? No one can say for sure, though I’m sure there are media pundits who can generate a few thousand words to convince their faithful.
I can finish this post now because of hope. I hope people will start to question the value and veracity of all media. I hope people will look at the world through a lens of optimism instead of the lens of fear. I hope people will remember that a democracy is a political system of free and fair elections, and it is impossible for everyone to achieve everything they want all of the time. I hope Americans will give their President-Elect a fair chance.
Last, but not least, I hope people will be more tolerant. There is more than one religion, more than one political party, more than one way to think about just about anything, more than one way to do just about anything.
Trump is what happens when you spent the last 7 Thanksgiving dinners lecturing your angry uncle from your Vox index cards.
– Clarice Feldman, American Thinker, November 13, 2016 –
What makes your way always right, and the other person’s way always wrong?
Amusives 