Who the heck is Santa Clause ?

Ok. I understand this Saint Nicholes guy was a european nobleman who every christmas gave presents to the children of this town he owned and was lord of.

So how did we get from there  , to this coca cola swilling fat ugly beared old man selling everything from cars to sun tan lotion  , neither of which are likely to be of any use to someone puported to live at the north pole where there is little sun and no roads , and he already has a magical sleigh that can travel across the world in seconds.

When did this transformation happen , exactly ?

The answer is , slowly , and in gentle steps.

Jolly old Saint Nicholas lived in southwestern turkey in the 4th century. He was apparently a bishop of Myra and did a number of miracles involving sailers and children.


It should probably be noted that in the 4th century , a date had not yet been established for Christmas , or christ's birthday. Eventually it was decided to "celebrate it on dec 25" , a carefully phrased decision that hides the fact that they kept really terrible calenders at the time and no one knew when the heck the big JC had been born , that's just the day they're going to celebrate it on. However there were all these pagans they wanted to christianize  , and if they're at some big Christian festival on that date they can't be at their own pagen festival at the same time , can they ? So ..yeah , the decision of Dec 25 was made to help convert pagans , rather than out of any need for accuracy.

(actually, people picked up on the star that marked Christs birth  and , assuming it's true , there are at least three possible dates ranging from 4 years to 7 years BC . Which really shows how terrible they were at keeping time back then if they can't even get the year right. )

During a 16th century schism in the european church , the people of Holland started calling Saint Nicolos Sinter Klass, which of course , the americans corrupted into , you got it , Santa Claus.

in 1822 a biblical scholar called Clement Moore decided to write a poem , just for fun, for his children. He didn't really mean for it to get around , but it eventually was published anonymously . 

’T WAS the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that ST. NICHOLAS soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

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While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

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Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow

Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,

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But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;

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“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

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When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,

With the sleigh full of Toys, and St. Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

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As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,

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And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

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The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

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And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

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And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”

What a familiar looking story ?

Thomas Nast , a 19th century cartoonist , did a few cartoons of the fat guy , and added to the legend things like a workshop where toys were made and a book that seriously violated the privacy of the children of the world by detailing their names and whether they were naughty or nice.

in the 20th century the Coca Cola company is commonly cited as flooding America with ads of the fat man , usually drinking their product as he went about his business of inappropriately entering peoples houses and violating their privacy by keeping black lists that are quite frankly illegal in most countries.

After the Coca Cola company openned the flood gates, it just became good business to use this image painted in 1921 by Norman Rockwell to try and sell anything that wasn't nailed down.

To this day the Catholic church bemoans how the true message of christmas was lost in the noise of this Santa Claus figure , while conveniently forgetting that the very selection of dec 25 was used not to teach anyone accurate history , but to forward the cause of stamping out pagans. They generally ignore any suggestion that they are pimping out their faith for gain by pointing out that the local hardware store is pimping out a story they know to be false just to sell a few extra products. At least their version is based on truth , even if it got lost in the babble of 20 centuries of history.

So remember. Drink Coca Cola. It's Santa's favorite. Though I'm not sure what a 4th century Christian Saint from southern Turkey would have to say about that. 

And for all those nay sayers who still don't believe. I point to that unquestioned Bastion of Truth in Journalism, the new york times. 

"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Report from the front : the shooting of 20 children

Maple Leaf Rag , our transplanted Canadian now living in texas , gives us his views on gun control and violence and the recent shooting of 20 children down there and what he thinks is causing it all. Since he actually lives down there every day , rather than just reading a few newspaper articals like the rest of us, I thought his opinion might be worth more than mine.

I remember you once asked me to give you some Canadian views of life in America.  Here's my view on America's reaction to the horrible massacre of little school kids in Connecticut by a mentally ill 20 year old who used powerful semiautomatic weapons.

First thing you need to understand is how incredibly polarized between Left & Right America is.  The Left and Right have moved to very far extremes and there is NO middle ground.  Each side dismisses out of hand everything the other says and insists that their way is the only way.  A President from one side gets in for a few years and undoes or tries to undo what the other party did.  Repeat every 4 to 8 years ad infinitum, and the two sides never work together. 

I don't know if it is that apparent from Canada's viewpoint, but I think if ranked on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being total peace and harmony and 10 being outright Civil War, the USA would sit at around 6.5 to 7 now.

About this mass murder (and the many many similar massacres in recent years), the Left insists it is entirely due to readily available guns and wants strict controls on them.  Good idea in theory as far as I am concerned, but there are so many guns and real gun fanatics in the USA I don't know how they would ever implement it).  The Right insists it is entirely due to lax morals, poor parenting and lax mental health laws and the spread of uncensored violent entertainment, which are all also very real factors.  Anyone with common sense would recognize that all these factors work together to promote these mass killing sprees. 

The Left Wing's leftover Hippie sacred cows of relative morality, "revolutionary" Baby Boom era lax parenting styles, lenience to criminals, the "rights" of mental patients to refuse treatment, refusing to accept media censorship, all these create the spoiled, desensitized, deranged young killer, who, upon hitting the hard brick wall of adulthood where trophies and awards are no longer given out just for showing up, decides he hates his life where he is not the star of his own reality show, and wants to take his toys and go home in the most outrageously violent manner possible.  Then, the Right Wing's pigheaded obsessive insistence that every American has the God Given Right to own high capacity military style firearms with little or no obstacles to obtaining them, enables the killers.

So both sides contribute majorly to the problem and utterly refuse to accept that their side has any guilt whatsoever.  I made a couple of posts on Yahoo News about how ridiculous this situation was and people from both camps immediately leaped down my throat.  Lefties called me a fascist, Righties called me a commie.  I call me sensible.

America's extreme political polarity has basically crippled its power to make any positive changes in its very sick society.  America will shout and rant and rave about doing something about this horrifying problem of mass killings, but nothing effective will ever come of it.

The Credit Card Scam

Article = none , personal experience


Here's how the scam works.

You work hard, you get a job , you're financially responsible , you get a credit card.

You're girlfriend wants to go to the casino and demands money off you , or she'll withhold sex. She knows you have a credit card , she knows you have it.

Your brother , every now and then , very subtly , asks you "So how much you have on that credit card ?" He's already twice borrowed money and never paid it back.

Your employer at your two bit company that only has three people decides that you can wait for your paycheck , because you have a credit card and can get by, the other employe doesn't , and can't wait.

and on , and on , and on it goes.

Next thing you know , you're 10 grand in debt , and you literally have nothing to show for it. No new car, no fully paid off computer , nothing. Everyone and the dog owes you thousands of dollars that you know you'll never collect on , but the bank fully expects to collect from you. And now it's time for the whole bankruptcy / garnashee of salaries thing.

And now all your friends and relatives are ticked at you because you leant them money when you were in trouble before , why arn't you lending them anything now ?

And your bank sends you to a credit counciling session that basically tells you "Pay us every single dime you owe us, including the 150$ / month interest that you can't actually afford. Beg, borrow, steal if you have to , just not from our bank. And if you owe anyone else money , pay us first because we paid to hold this credit counciling session and you owe us. "

Don't get a credit card. Especially not "Just in case" .

Don't tell anyone how much you have in the bank. Put money in a savings account and if anyone asks, you live paycheck to paycheck , and always gripe how you never have any money just before the next pay check.

It's none of their business, and them knowing it just opens the door to endless requests for money , and fights.

And if you can't tell anyone that you have no money , then don't bother saving a dime , because you'll never get to spend any of it on yourself. 

And todays privacy violation is ... Stalker Apps

'Stalking apps' could be banned in US

 

 It would also outlaw apps from collecting or sharing location data without the consent of the owner.

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"But right now, companies - some legitimate, some sleazy - are collecting your or your child's location and selling it to ad companies or who knows who else." 

 

The joy of it all. Your phone that you paid probably hundreds of dollars for (doesn't work on cheapie phones that can't run apps !) is probably spying on you. And your kid. Sometimes just for commercial gain (spamming you with ads) , and sometimes because your ex boyfriend / girlfriend is stalking you. 

Fun fun fun. 

 Don't you love modern technology ? It's no longer big brother you must panic over. It's now your ex's and your over bearing mother or father as well. 

 

  

Report from The Front : Texas Health Care

I asked Maple Leaf Rag how health care was in xx xxx ,  Texas, where he lived. And boy , did he have a few words to share.

I thought of some more aspects of the US medical system that you might find interesting, and that I have not heard discussed elsewhere.  These are my personal observations.

Whenever I got sick in Canada and decided I needed to see a doctor, I went in, the doc found out what was wrong, treated me, I got better and that was that.  OHIP paid my bill and I was happy.  On the other hand, when my cat, Wizard got diabetes when she was 15 years old, I took her in to the Vet, and as there is no OHIP plan for pets, and everything was coming out of my own pocket, the vet tried really hard to scare me and encouraged me to have them do some $2000 dollar procedure on Wizard or she would basically be dead within a week.  When I told them that I was completely unable to pay that kind of money and had tears in my eyes thinking that I would have to have her euthanized, the veterinary assistant took pity on me and mentioned as an afterthought that I could just start buying insulin and needles at the drugstore for 20 or 30 bucks a month and inject her 2 times a day.  I tried it and it worked.  She lived 5 more years.

American doctors operate on a profit basis much like Canadian veterinarians.  The more you see them, the more you pay them, the richer they get and as there is no OHIP to deny unnecessary procedures, they encourage all kinds of ridiculous tests, scans, & endless return visits.  They scare you with all kinds of hypotheses and frightening possibilities and drop frightening little comments and concerned looks and basically try to hook you like a fish and milk you like a cash cow.  You see their waiting rooms full of the same frightened patients week after week, going in for probably unnecessary tests and coming out with huge bags of pill bottles.  I got sucked into this a few years ago when I got a case of bronchitis that would not go away for months.  At my doctor it was "come back next week, take more pills, get more chest x rays, it's PROBABLY not cancer, etc. etc."  Finally, I took some different antibiotics my mother in law had gotten over the counter in Mexico and the bronchitis went away in a week.  Drugstores here have huge LED signs outside advertising vaccines against all kinds of diseases, from meningitis, to flu, to shingles.  Scary medical billboards flank the highways.  The USA is host to a culture of fear.  Fear of sickness, fear of crime, fear of terrorists, fear of social ostracism, fear of damnation, you name it, and it is all calculated to make you spend your money, whether on doctors, guns, deodorant, church tithes or whatever.

One of my xxxx sons has to see a shrink ever month or so.  His former doctor was a shameless pill pusher.  His waiting room was full of  people who were essentially junkies, asking the receptionist every 5 minutes when he would see them so they could get their allotment of the happy pills he threw around like Willie Wonka at the chocolate factory.  He gave my son these pills that seemed to work at first.  But after a few weeks, however, the kid started losing weight and displaying psychotic symptoms like cutting off all his hair and attacking his brother in his sleep.  He started to look like a skeletal Auschwitz inmate.   I checked into the pills online and it turns out the doctor had prescribed him what was basically speed, which apparently works on hyperactive kids, but NOT on xxxxxxx.  We got him to another doctor who seems a LITTLE more ethical.

Also, as it is all profit based, their offices and waiting rooms have this cheap, unprofessional appearance in many cases, because they skimp on anything peripheral to the operation of scamming patients.  I've been in waiting rooms that felt more like someone's den.  Better than Mexico though...  I once had a root canal and a crown done by a lady dentist down in Juarez who had her 2 year old daughter on her lap screaming PEE-PEE!  PEE-PEE!  PEE-PEE! in my ear for the whole time and her office looked about as sanitary as a bachelor's kitchen.  But then again, that only cost me $70 dollars.

A lot of American institutions seem to be run by the seat of the pants.  I blame the capitalistic profit-based mindset for this.  Very inefficient, very wasteful, very foolish due to poor decisions and trying to stretch the buck.  The xxxxx xxxxx that employs me, for example.  Several years ago they bought half a million bucks worth of some kind of hand-held data organizer and matching software for use by the xxxxxxx simply because they were on sale.  When they distributed them, they found that these things were totally unsuitable for their needs.  Whoops!  No returns on sale items.  Into the  warehouse they went, where they sit like the Lost Ark of the Covenant on a dusty wooden skid, gathering dust and getting more and more obsolete every day.  Not to mention all the corruption, misappropriation of funds etc. in local government.  In xx xxx,  it is commonplace for the FBI and Texas Rangers to step in and raid municipal government offices and local police departments in order  to arrest politicians and cops for corruption.  Recently, a County Commissioner was arrested for smuggling  thousands of pounds of pot from Mexico to northern cities.  I don't know if all this corruption is a result of being tied so closely to the thoroughly corrupt culture of our Mexican neighbors or if it is endemic to the entire US, but it is pretty much a Mickey Mouse outfit around here as far as local Government goes. 

 Ok. so ... my dreams of imigrating to the states are shattered. How about yours ?

Doctors that push pills rather than cure diseases ? Months with Bronchitis until you looked it up and handled it yourself ?

I have a real sickness (Chrones Disease) which means if I was an American I would either be hooked on narcotics by now  , or simply dead from endless misdiagnosis designed to enrich the doctor rather than cure disease.

If you do a better job looking stuff up on the internet than seeing the doctor ... something is wrong with that system.

For Maple Leaf Rag ...

For Maple Leaf Rag. A reminder of all that you left when you decided to fly south to warmer climes ...

Guard Rails

See the above picture ? Just a road, with guard rails right ?

I walked by and there were construction workers puting up guide wires and doing measurements, and no guard rails.

An hour and a half later , I walk back , and they just finishing up. And there were guard rails. Sunk into the ground, ready and waiting to be crashed into , the works.

An hour and a half ? Dang that was fast. I figured such a thing took days, not 90 minutes.

Weird.