Martinex1: Good day all! Hope your Winter is worry free! Bring us a topic so the ol' gang can get together and reminisce and discuss all things Bronze Age!
Redartz: Hi Marti, hi everyone! It's been a pretty mild winter here so far, 55 degrees as I type this. My wife and I are starting off the new year by catching up on some heroic tv. Caught the three part "Elseworlds" crossover with Supergirl, Arrow and Flash. And have been going through "Legends of Tomorrow", lots of fun there. And last night we indulged in the final season debut of "Gotham". It's an embarrassment of televised riches. So... that's what we've been up to. As Marti said, toss out a topic and let's see what's on your minds!
21 comments:
Yesterday was Christmas Day in the Eastern Orthodox Church so I'll use that as an excuse to ask one final Christmas question:
On what date should Christmas decorations be taken down? Do you have a specific day or does it change from year to year? When did your Bronze Age Christmas decorations come down?
I've always understood that Epiphany (January 6th) was the traditional day for taking down the decorations but in Medieval times decorations could stay up till Candlemas (February 2nd) which was the final, FINAL day of the Christmas season so, HB, you aren't wrong in keeping up the decorations in your shop - you are following a Medieval tradition!
I don't put up decorations any more but I do burn little tea-light candles until New Year's Eve.
With 12th Night being January 5th and Epiphany on January 6th, we also take our decorations down on the 6th. I enjoy the festive look during Christmas, but now that everything is down, I gotta admit that I like the clean, fresh look of a streamlined house again.
Of course, I also enjoy having new action figures, 50th anniversary Hot Wheels and some great new Marvel Omnibuses adorning my shelves to kick off 2019!
Disneymarvel, you raise an interesting point - is Twelfth Night on January 5th or 6th? It's debatable whether the 12 Days of Christmas means December 25th-January 5th or whether Christmas Day is a stand-alone day and the 12 Days begin on Boxing Day/St. Stephen's Day/December 26th and conclude on January 6th.
And as it's the New Year - I've been reading about a fascinating subject called the "Holocene Calendar" or "Human Era Calendar" which proposes adding 10,0000 years to the current year so 2019 would become 12019. This means we would count the years from the dawn of human civilisation, the beginning of farming etc, rather than from the supposed date of Jesus Christ's birth. It sounds like a great idea to me and you can even buy a physical calendar for this year of 12019. I'll never think of the year in the same way again!
Yeah, I always figured the first week of January was the time to take down the Xmas stuff; then there are those people who leave the Xmas lights on their houses all year ...
Redartz: 55 degrees? I can't remember where you live, but that's pretty good; it's 4 (Fahrenheit) here right now, plus the wind chill. I loved the Elseworlds x-over and Legends of Tomorrow has been great lately ... they pretty much said "To hell with logic, let's just have fun", and it's totally working for me.
Nice subject CJ!
We take 'em down when the mood hits us, usually 1 - 4 weeks after Xmas, LOL. No rhyme or reason.
Like Disney said, I do appreciate the "clean" look after having decorations every where.
But this year we only put up around 30% of the stuff and it really was more enjoyable sans clutter, even if it is Xmas clutter.
Well, I am a few hundred miles north of Red, in Chicago, and we are enjoying 45 and sunny and have been in the 40s since Saturday. This is a good thing b/c CH-47s furnace failed on Saturday and a new one is being installed today! Fortunately it hasn't been like -10 F!
Ciao Bello!
At our house now, the only decoration we have is a string of lights we put on the rail on a small spiral stairway to our upper floor. (We're not really into all the decorations any more - too much bother, and since we don't have kids or anything, there's just no point.) Back when I was growing up, though, my mom used to take down the tree and any other decorations some time on New Year's Day.
Otherwise, Colin is right about Feb. 2/Candlemas as the traditional end of the Xmas season in many European countries. However, the *start* of the season was Christmas Day; traditionally people only put up a tree and other decorations on Christmas Eve (and that's still the way many people do it where I am now in Croatia) - and not on the first day of Advent or the Thanksgiving weekend or the day after Halloween.
Like Edo's Mom, we always took down decorations on New Year's Day. It took a few extra days this year as it's been so wet our back yard was flooded and I couldn't get to the storage shed. Oh, and Mike W- I live in the Louisville area along the Ohio River. A bit cooler today, in the 40s.
Charlie- good luck with the furnace. We had to replace our system over the summer. Big pain in the wallet...
Colin J- "Holocene Calender" sounds fun. And more practical than, say, a Cenozoic calender (making this somewhere about year 60,002,019)...
Hoooo-- heya fellows. . . topic that is TOTALLY relevant and dear to my heart, and. . . I must apologize for not being able to join in at the moment! (Building an ENORMOUS set for the theater I work for, while rehearsing/in final tech/dress for an ENORMOUSLY complicated difficult play I'm in at another theater. 16+ hour days at the moment. Plus a sprained knee and sprained ankle. Plus. . . I'm old-ish. . . oof!) Gonna try to chime in by the weekend, eh? LOVE being able to keep the convo going---
HB
Thanks for the comments :)
Edo, putting up the decorations on Christmas Eve and taking them down at Candlemas is much better than Christmas starting in mid-November and fizzling out in early January as happens here. January is such a bleak time, I'd love to see the Christmas trees and lights continue till early February - and Candlemas is only two weeks before my birthday on February 17th.
Red, here in the UK we are having the complete opposite of wet weather - so far January has been unusually dry with just one rainy day, and that was only very light rain.
I get rather confused by Farenheit temperatures. In Britain and Europe we officially use the Celsius/Centigrade scale - that's the one I know.
Our Fahrenheit system seems hilariously arbitrary, Colin, yes--- heh.
Even though water freezes at 32 degrees, there's still a whole aura surrounding "below zero" being even more ESPECIALLY cold. . . I'm sure I learned in science class at some point why the zero starts where it does on that scale, but I'll be darned if I can recall it. . .
De-Christmasing in our household can often be a protracted process.
Since our family tradition has morphed into getting our (ginormous live) Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, my wife has kept us rigidly on-schedule with getting it down and out of the house on New Years Day. The needle-shower this year was hilarious in the extreme-- the season was an unusually long one, and the very rainy summer/fall didn't provide for hearty Christmas trees. The poor thing stopped drinking water before Christmas Day itself had arrived. . .
Over the course of the following week, the living room decorations mostly come down.
Family room is still festooned (horrifically busy few weeks, as I mentioned above--).
And while the outdoor lights have been unplugged, it's usually into spring before I take them down, as it involves getting on the roof, using a ladder, etc.
One thing I've noticed this past week is that a LOT of the more extravagantly decorated yards and houses in our area have continued to display their full Christmas glory. Personally? I do love it. I simply don't get tired of the lights and the color-- and even the kitsch. I think it's 'cause a lot of folks are holding out in hopes of some snow to really show it all off. . .
HB
I love Xmas lights, too, HB. Or rather, I just love the lights for their own sake; I think they're pretty and wouldn't mind the light displays remaining all year around (although yes, I'm aware that that would be a massive waste of energy). I don't really associate them with Christmas or any other holiday.
HB, our newspapers (well, the tabloid ones) use the Celsius scale in the Winter but in the Summer they switch to the Farenheit scale because headlines about "Scorching 90 degrees" weather sounds more sensationalist!
But the UK meteorological office and all the weather-forecasters on TV and radio use only the Celsius scale.
Oh, bless those tabloids, Colin-- and geeze, that's a tactic I would fully expect from our American supermarket tabloids. I'd assumed that sort of non-journalistic inanity was unique to our own free-wheeling society over here. I suppose sensationalism has its own kind of universal appeal, though. . . And in this case it relies wholly upon the assumption that readers won't even have the base-level scientific knowledge of a 4th-grader.
I mean, there are folks who truly believe "Batboy" is/was a real thing. . .
Several houses on my late-night drive home still going strong with their outdoor Christmas displays, btw! However, a more recent, melancholy, post-holiday phenomenon is the sight of forlorn, flattened, deflated Christmas inflatables sprawled out on front lawns like fallen soldiers. . . just this side of creepy. . .
HB
Edo, I too love the lights. And not just holiday lights, the neon wonderland of the Las Vegas Strip left me breathless...
Colin- interesting that your tabloids make use at times of the Fahrenheit scale. Over here we seldom see the Celsius figures, except in science and engineering applications.
HB- ahhh, the Enquirer. Where would it be without Batboy, and the eternally reappearing zuvembies of Elvis, Marilyn and JFK. How did Woodward and Bernstein miss all those huge stories?
And almost as melancholy as deflated inflatables is the scraggly, dedicated skeleton of a Christmas tree lying by the curb...
I should explain that British tabloids aren't like those infamous American supermarket tabloids. Ours don't have headlines like "Elvis Spotted In Local Supermarket" but they are still downmarket compared to broadsheet newspapers.
To be totally fair and accurate. . . Batboy him/itself was a creation of the now-defunct (since 2007) Weekly World News, which really was more the source of the "Aliens Clone Elvis' Brain"-type headlines. The ENQUIRER has stuck more faithfully to pronouncing Michael Douglas, Dolly Parton, Oprah, Cher and notable others as being in their final, miserable hours of life. . . for about 20 years now. "Their final words", etc, etc.
And yeah, Red-- the ritual of laying mummified Christmas trees curbside is just starting 'round here-- although I do think there's been a noticeable decline in the use of live trees over the past decade or so. What's surprising is that it is NOT HARD AT ALL to find ARTIFICIAL trees being disposed of in the same manner--! My Shop Associate came proudly to work on Thursday with a 7'-er that her neighbors had put out with the trash.
I was forced to reject it. . . as we don't have room to store a flippin' NINTH full-size Christmas tree. . . for corn's sake. . .
HB
Red, re: lights. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I've only ever been to Disneyland once, when I was about 11, and the thing I remember best and most fondly is the Main Street Electrical Parade. It was absolutely spell-binding.
Red/edo-- for those of us with a more rural up-bringing, that was also one of the most magical aspects of the County Fair. . . the fact that EVERYTHING was emblazoned with both neon and incandescent wildly colorful lights. The fairgrounds would be open all day-- some things as early as 8:00 a.m. (judging, etc), but when dusk would finally hit at around 8:00pm-- that's when that wildly lurid Carnival atmosphere woke up--- and there'd be about 3 hours of feeling "extra" alive, y'know?
HB
Post a Comment