The Magic of the Holiday's

[n2ize]

The heartwarming feeling I get on Thanksgiving is intense. I can feel close contact with friends , family, and relatives , past and present, living and deceased.. And a religious closeness to God and all that is sacred. This is the reason I adhere to tradition and, to an extent, religion. This is the reason I celebrate Christmas in traditional style and fashion. It's too beautiful to surrender. I hope others out here can relate to what I am saying and enjoy this most precious and sacred time of year.

[kc7jty]

Your talents are manifest
put them to use
aid the Obama shitfest
promote the abuse

[KA5PIU]

Hello.

Thanksgiving does nothing for me.
The day after is when all the sales kick in!. ;)
Christmas is where I get together, in Mexico.

[kf0rt]

The sales kicked in yesterday.
You should see my in-box.

[WØTKX]

'IzE is trippin' on turkey!

[kf0rt]

I can't believe I'm still awake.

[VE7DCW]

Hello.

Thanksgiving does nothing for me.
The day after is when all the sales kick in!. ;)
Christmas is where I get together, in Mexico.

You've been on a Mexican rant the last few days have'nt you Rudy??? :yes:

73

[N2CHX]

The holidays have lost most of their magic for me. I decorate but try to keep it simple. The beauty I see in it is the time spent with my children. Everything else is lost to me. The fantasy that family comes together in peace and harmony and the world somehow becomes a better place on December 25th is just that. I know I sound cynical, and I probably am. That's what happens when you grow up in a family steeped in holiday and religious traditions and then you lose all of that and become an outcast because of your "lifestyle choices."

[PA5COR]

No decorations, no tree, no gifts here since 15 years.
I do remember my passed parents, friends and other people i knew.
Back to basics, not the glorified spendthrift it became, nor an excuse to stuff yourself with food and gifts on the creditcard to complain later you are so deep in debt.

I always finish the year having money in the bank and no debts.
My mistake.

[kb2vxa]

'IzE is trippin' on turkey!"
You spelled it wrong.
"I can't believe I'm still awake."
You didn't eat enough.

Tryptophan, nature's sedative.

[W2NAP]

I tried to sleep all day thursday.

[W7XF]

I tried to sleep all day thursday.

Not hard with a belly full of terrestrial avian.

[N2NH]

Honestly? I'm Christmased-out already. Yep, Black Friday was like a preview of Apocalypse here and enough bad Christmas muzak to give you a saccharine overdose. And that was without playing a single Carpenters or Barry Manilow song. If you don't believe in Evolution, just go to a store on Black Friday. There's enough people throwing stuff all over the place to cure you of the delusion that any other theory has validity.

[WV6Z]

Dad passed away on Christmas Day a few years back now. The irony in it all is this was his favourite time of year. That being said, due to our uncertain schedules, my mum who has been driving for all of about one decade now, hit the roads between Albany, GA and Anderson, SC, and via the assistance of TomTomONE, her 7 hour trip, although quite the adventure for her as she starts her 72nd year, was uneventful, other than the obvious facts that she both made it here and back home again, safe and sound.

We all partook in entirely too many goodies at the in-laws over in Charles' neighborhood and are all quite well rested, with a little extra baggage around the middles added for good measure.

I guess all I am saying is that even though this time of year has lost a lot of the original impact it once had on my family, it still drives us to remain close.

I for one will be keeping an eye out for this recent history classic as it immediately became Dad's favourite. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Story

[WX7P]

I find it hard to get amped up over a holiday based on a religion and a person I don't believe in.

Christmas was fun in the 60's. All of the relatives were still alive. Most of my Dad's aunts and uncles were all born pre-1900. They were all native Californians from the Northern rural coast. It was truly a history lesson talking with them. Yes, they repeated themselves constantly, my grandfather told me about seeing Babe Ruth in San Jose in 1930 about a jillion times, but their stories were still interesting. My mother's family was younger and mostly out of state.

The last remnant of that was the passing of my maternal grandmother, Edna, in 2006 at the age of 96. "Boy, get me a beer!" was commonplace for her up until the end. She would have been 100 years old this year. I still miss her.

We don't do the tree thing anymore. We stopped after Carone left for school. Since almost all of the family is dead, we don't do the big extravaganza as in years past. We will visit my parents in Fremont, but Sarah's parents are long dead, so no reason to go to San Diego.

I do like giving my wife and daughter presents. In Sarah's case, the geekier the better.

[WØTKX]

http://forums.hamisland.net/showthread.php?14673-Dreaming-of-a-Black-Christmas

[KG4CGC]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFtb3EtjEic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFtb3EtjEic

[W3MIV]

Indeed, Christmas has lost the luster it once had for many of us.

My departed Irish mother would have been 101 last April. Her two older sisters would be 106 and 110; the youngest of the five would be just settling into the fourth score. All are now long dead, of course. "The Hurley Girls" as they were affectionately known far and wide were a holy terror on big family holidays, of which the max were T'Day and Christmas. Irish = Catholic. Irish = beer and booze. We often had dinners of forty or more, all trying to balance plates on stair steps or the arms of sofas or even sitting right down on the kitchen floor leaning against a wall. Big turkeys; no leftovers. Half-keg of beer on my grandfather's old coil-box would be blown, and a few quarts of Jameson and Wild Turkey would suffer visibly. The house was a brawling cacophony; you couldn't hear yourself think with all those "Irish" mouths yammering at the same time. Yeah, the stories were always the same -- mostly; tiny variations crept in with the years as memories faded -- or became more selective. The house would be a wreck after, but cleaning it up was never the chore it seems now.

Somehow, it ain't the same any more. I remember the thrill of walking slowly down Howard Street, gawking in wonder at the fantastic displays in the department store windows. The B&O put up their big Christmas garden in the old headquarters building on Charles Street -- all American Flyer S-gauge with real, working automatic block control and whistle signals triggered by a wonderful series of electrified rails and wipers attached all but invisibly to the locomotives -- most of which were steam. Back then, the adults set a limit of $3 for gifts to each other, thus avoiding busted budgets for the kids' gifts. Now you'd be lucky to get two candy bars for that, and small ones to boot.

Nobody left now. The xyl insists on putting up a tree every year, and we have only one small child -- a neice (actually, she is my nephew's daughter, which I guess makes the kid a grand-neice) and she will be nine in Feb -- so she ain't so small anymore.

You make the best of it. You can't go home again.

[NA4BH]

Christmas had lost it's luster here too, until the Grandchild came along. I have spent more hours in the store looking for neat toys and such this year than I have in a long time. As kids get older and they figure out (cover your ears Charles) that Santa isn't a real dude, the holiday seems to become more of a gathering instead of a magical time of year. But for the next "X" number of years, it is GAME ON !!!!!!! :yes:

[NQ6U]

The grandkids are ten now, they know that there's no Santa so, as far as I'm concerned we could go back to ignoring Christmas altogether. It's not gonna happen until the M-I-L passes on, though.

[W2NAP]

Not hard with a belly full of terrestrial avian.

didnt happen. i got woke up to bitching. smoked a pack of ciggies and ended up just in a bad mood

[KG4CGC]

When I was 5 years old, my Dad used the "you're almost 6" ploy. It was only 2 more months to my 6th birthday when my Dad said, "You're almost 6. You know there is no such thing as Santa Clause."

Well, it did kind of make sense ... in my fragile eggshell mind.

Did I mention that is was about 10 more days to Christmas when this happened?

[KA5PIU]

Hello.

I did real well and put my hours in on the tractor, so I got my little "Santa" reward, a box of chocolates.
A few hours later I was out and about, and nuts, not that I was not anyway. ;)
I did not know, or understand, what liquor chocolate was.
The whole box. ;)

[NA4BH]

Hello.
I did not know, or understand, what liquor chocolate was.
The whole box. ;)

Turn her over, you are licking the wrong side. :monkeydance:

[KA5PIU]

Hello.

Had our little safety meeting.
The higher ups got the snazzy conference room and they wanted to give us this TV set and a VCR.
I decided that clearly this would not work so I got the OK to do a sort of stage production in the garage area.
With a little (lot) of help from my friends, we set up 2800 watts of audio and 2 LCD projectors as well as a 3 laser light show.
All for a 4 hour production.
We had everyone but the supervisors and up
.The company agreed to buy the popcorn and coke.
It was to start at 8 but we were set up and running at 6 so we ran 30 minutes of music videos and than 30 minutes of safety videos spaced by requests.
by 10 it was clear that the other group was not going to make it but we were just about finished with the English production, and production it was, think Disco Christmas Spanish safety theme!
At 10 we kicked it into high gear and finished Spanish by 11:30.
Everyone in our group was able to complete all safety modules and do well over the required 70 to pass!
The other group will need to come back, the bulb in the projector died.
By noon we boxed it all up and have the rest of the day off!
I was asked to host the Christmas party, the production was that good.
Everyone who attended said this was the wildest and most fun safety seminar, bar none.
What can I say, Disco Christmas Spanish!

[KG4CGC]

Turn her over, you are licking the wrong side. :monkeydance:
OH! RIMSHOT! OH! DOUBLE RIMSHOT!

[KA5PIU]

Turn her over, you are licking the wrong side. :monkeydance:

Hello.

I do not do that.
The closest thing to that would be to do the Clinton. ;)

[KG4CGC]

Hello.

I do not do that.
The closest thing to that would be to do the Clinton. ;)

And thus answers the question of why you don't have a girlfriend.

[KA5PIU]

Hello.

No, minimum standards. ;)

[N2NH]

Hello.

No minimum standards. ;)

Despite that.

[n2ize]

And thus answers the question of why you don't have a girlfriend.

What defines a "girlfriend" ?? I have several "girlfriends" but my relationship with most of them is platonic...free from desire. Thus are they really "girlfriends' or merely "acquaintances" ?

[W3MIV]

Thus are they really "girlfriends' or merely "acquaintances" ?

Why not grope one and find out? It's probably the fastest way to the truth. Ask Kelli.

[n2ize]

Why not grope one and find out? It's probably the fastest way to the truth. Ask Kelli.

I never "grope" or "touch". So then the term "girlfriend" implies desired/mutual intimacy. Okay, so then I don;t have any 'girlfriends", I have acquaintances. That actually does sound aboout right.