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The economy this year.
The TV and major news outlets have been
rife with gloomy stories about the
abysmal state of the economy this year
in general and during this Christmas
season in particular. I’ve also read
that Neiman Marcus and other retail
stores that cater to the snob trade are
reporting a big dip in sales this year.
While I don’t dispute everything they’ve
been saying, things can’t be as bad as
they say, judging by the time it takes
to find a parking place near the
building at Wal-Mart. I stopped at the
Gainesville store the other day to get a
box of sugar-free cookies—one of my many
vices. The actual time in the store is
normally five minutes. I spent twenty
minutes circling the parking lot looking
for an empty slot. While I have a
handicapped placard, there were no empty
handicapped slots. I thought half the
employees must be physically disabled
and hogging all the parking places.
Eventually I got lucky and found a spot
a mere hundred yards away from the front
door. When playing the parking game,
most of the time when a car vacates a
space, I’m on the other side of the lot
and someone who just drove in gets it.
Boxing Day.
If this paper comes out on time, it will
be the day after Christmas, or Boxing
Day as countries of the British
Commonwealth call it. It is also known
as St. Stephen’s Day. In
Feudal times,
Christmas time was a reason for a
gathering of extended families. All the
serfs
would gather their families in the manor
of their lord, which made it easier for
the lord of the estate to hand out
annual stipends to the serfs. On 26
December, after all the Christmas
parties, the lord of the manor would
give practical goods such as cloth,
grains, and tools to the serfs who lived
on his land. Each family would receive a
box full of such goods, hence "Boxing
Day". According to this tradition, the
lord of the manor did not volunteer, but
was obliged to supply these gifts.
In churches, it was
traditional to open the church's
donation box on Christmas Day, and the
money inside was to be distributed to
the poorer or lower class citizens on
the next day. In this case, the "box" in
"Boxing Day" comes from that lockbox in
which the donations were left. Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org
According to
friends and in-laws living in England
and Australia who are by no means lords
of the manor or people who employ
servants; Boxing Day is observed by
giving a box of something to people who
provide a service, such as the postman
and the “dustbin men” (garbage truck
crew). This is, I suppose, for not
putting your mail in the neighbor’s box
or dribbling garbage in front of the
driveway
Happy holidays
nonsense.
More and more, we’re seeing the
traditional term “Merry Christmas”
replaced with “happy holidays” and the
Christmas season being called winter
festival, the holiday season or some
other term clearly designed to leave
Christmas out of things. Of course if
there was no Christmas, then there
would be no celebration or buying or big
profits for merchants. At the same time,
there are no such title changes for
Hanukah, Kwanza or the major Muslim
holidays. The justification for this
perennial assault on the word Christmas
is said to be in order not to offend or
exclude those of other faiths.
I’ve worked in
numerous Muslim countries over the years
and they make no excuses for calling
their religious holidays by their
traditional names. They aren’t worried
about offending anyone of different
faiths. We should be the same way. We
have been a Christian country from the
beginning and we should not care if
someone from a different culture might
take offense to our celebrations. But it
isn’t those of other religions or
cultures who are behind the “War on
Christmas.”
As Fox News
commentator and Cooke County resident
John Gibson wrote in his book, The
War on Christmas, “The wagers of
this war on Christmas are a cabal of
secularists. So-called humanists, trial
lawyers, cultural relativists, and
liberal, guilt-wracked Christians…” The
ACLU and similar villains are included
in this definition. Buy his book. It’s
an interesting read.
And so with nothing
else to complain about, Merry
Christmas and I hope you can find a
parking place for the after Christmas
sales.
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