Thanksgiving, Christmas Trees, and Holidays IV

Thanksgiving came. I ate. I enjoyed time with the family. Grandpa came down from Stockton. I always like taking pictures when he's down. Here are four generations of Anderson decendants: Grandpa, Uncle Donnie, Me, and the boys.


I went shopping at 6:30 the next morning. I don't know why I do that to myself. I try to get into the Christmas spirit, and end up having to come home early so I don't go postal on somebody. I saw some interesing things while I was out. One I will shares is something that I found humorous and that pretty much sums up the mentality of most of the people I encountered.

While checking out with my loot at the local electronics store, I overheard two "ladies" yelling at the girls who had the very important job of standing at the end of the line holding helium balloons. The conversation went something like "We better still get the good price when we get to the register. It's not our fault that we couldn't find what we came here for. You people be all hiding stuff so we can't see it (under the HUGE yellow sign reading 'Adverstised Special')." To this, the employee responded "Oh you don't need to worry about the price. We pretty much give people the sale price until we close tonight." I guess this wasn't good enough, because the "ladies" demanded the girls name, and made some empty threat about coming after her if they didn't get the good price. I caught the balloon girl's eye while this was going, and she just rolled them at me. I smiled and chuckled back. I think we both agreed, these people were crazy.

We picked our our Christmas tree this weekend. The fam and I went to our local tree farm, where we have been going for about 10 years, and picked out two trees. One for us, and one for Flipside. Here we are in front of our find.

Lastly, a brief history of Christmas trees - again, plagerized from numerous reliable web sites.

The fir tree has a long association with Christianity, it began in Germany almost 1,000 years ago when St Boniface, who converted the German people to Christianity, was said to have come across a group of pagans worshipping an oak tree. In anger, St Boniface is said to have cut down the oak tree and to his amazement a young fir tree sprung up from the roots of the oak tree. St Boniface took this as a sign of the Christian faith. But it was not until the 16th century that fir trees were brought indoors at Christmas time.

The first decorated tree was at Riga in Latvia, in 1510. In the early 16th century, Martin Luther is said to have decorated a small Christmas Tree with candles, to show his children how the stars twinkled through the dark night.

In 1846, the popular Royals, Queen Victoria and her German Prince, Albert, were illustrated in the Illustrated London News. They were standing with their children around a Christmas Tree. Unlike the previous Royal family, Victoria was very popular with her subjects, and what was done at Court immediately became fashionable - not only in Britain, but with fashion-conscious East Coast American Society. The English Christmas Tree had arrived!

Holidays III

So much to day...so little time to make an entry while I'm at work.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I love this holiday, mostly becasue I get to eat good food. I like eating. It's one of my weaknesses. But it's fun.

So, in previous posts, I have questioned a couple of the traditions surrounding Christmas. First, I pointed out that we don't really know how many wise men there were becasue the Bible just doesn't say. Next, I made an off-handed comment about Shepherds tending sheep in Winter. The point was that there are some scholars who believe that Jesus was born in the spring, not in the winter. If that totally ruins Christmas for you, I sincerely apologize...but keep reading.

If I had nothing else to do, I would spend a lot of time writing about Christmas and the traditions that surround it. But since I don't, I'll try and summarize a few.

Christmas, as we know it today, really didn't exists until sometime after the founding our our nation. However, celebrations and traditions have always occured around this time of year because of something that has more to do with physics than anything else - the Winter Solstice, or shortest day of the year. Some historians think that ancient cultures put much emphasis on this day because they worshiped the sun. During the winter months, the absense of the sun was feared, so to appease their false gods they held celebrations. Many of our traditions, the Yule log, gift giving, feasts, holly, wreaths, have their roots in pagen celebrations.

In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday; the birth of Jesus was not celebrated. In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival. First called the Feast of the Nativity, the custom spread to Egypt by 432 and to England by the end of the sixth century. By the end of the eighth century, the celebration of Christmas had spread all the way to Scandinavia. Today, in the Greek and Russian orthodox churches, Christmas is celebrated 13 days after the 25th, which is also referred to as the Epiphany or Three Kings Day. This is the day it is believed that the three wise men finally found Jesus in the manger.

In the early 17th century, a wave of religious reform changed the way Christmas was celebrated in Europe. When Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan forces took over England in 1645, they vowed to rid England of decadence and, as part of their effort, cancelled Christmas. By popular demand, Charles II was restored to the throne and, with him, came the return of the popular holiday.

After the American Revolution, English customs fell out of favor, including Christmas. In fact, Congress was in session on December 25, 1789, the first Christmas under America's new constitution. Christmas wasn't declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870.

Christmas has even been re-invented a few times since then. It wasn't until Washington Irving's The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, gent., and Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol became popular that that modern Christmas was established.

So, the popular saying that "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" isn't 100% accurate. It is what we as Christians celebrated on Dec 25th, even though he probably want born on that day. Intermingled with the Christian celebrations are various other traditions from many differnt cultures and beliefs.

Pretty cool, huh?

BTW - I need to give credit where credit is due. Most of this blog was plagerized from The History Channel website. If you want more detail about the History of Christmas, check out this link: http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=mini_home&mini_id=1290

Birthday at Mt. Baldy Visitor's Center

This year, we celebrated Josh's birthday at the Mt. Baldy Visitor's center. As a family, we have been spending a lot more time in the Mt. Baldy area, and Josh really wanted to share his passion for our local mountains with his friends. For kids, this is a great way to spend the day. For birthday parties, especially, you can't beat this because it's educational, fun, and creates an awareness and appreciation for the mountains. It doesn't cost more than a party in a stuffy room at the pizza jounts, either.After most of the kids arrived, we ate Mac & Cheese. Then Ranger Briana came in and the activities began. First, we made animal tracks:

Then we went outside and listend to a story about what the gold miners used to do to claim jumpers (cut their ears off) - then we panned for gold. Josh found a huge nugget!


After that, Briana took us on a hike where we found ladybugs, learned about bay trees, saw the oldest big cone conifer west of the Missippi, crossed an old ricketty bridge, and then played red-light-green-light on the way back.

When we got back, we got to see a Desert Tortise, and handle snakes!

After cake and ice cream, we played outside until parents came to get the kids. Overall, I think all the kids had a really good time. And I have to admit, for a kids party, I had a good time, too. You can check out more aboyt the visitor's center here: mtbaldyeducation.org

Holidays II

Last weekend we went to San Diego with some friends. We spent Friday at the zoo, and Saturday lazing around the KOA in Chula Vista. I took the kids on a short 3 mile bike ride, during which I made a spectacular sliding dismount from my bike as it slid down a slick ramp covered in sea muck. After getting completely smelly, covered in green slime, and getting my sweats soaked with yuck water, I got back up just in time to see my oldest son following my trail. Luckily, I was able to yell with sufficent volume and urgency that he stopped before hitting the slippery part.

At the zoo, my buddy Chris and I were amuzed by the Chimpanzies and their ability to entertain by all mannor of comical and sometimes explicit antics.


Overall, it was a wondereful weekend. Any time I get to hang out with my kids is good, and after they went to bed the grown-ups sat around the campfire and melted root-beer bottles. We're so mature. :-)

Next week is Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving is always the busiest shopping day of the year, and all of the retailers gear up for it. Our family celebrates Thanksgiving day usually by going to my aunts. We always get assigned the vegetable tray - don't know why. We spend another day at my in-laws usually watching football. I don't really watch much football, but it's on when we get there, so I watch it. This year, my wife's aunt and uncle are coming. Actually, I think they are here this week as we're supposed to have dinner with them tomorrow. My wife's aunt is a vegan, so it will be interesting to see what we have for dinner.



Okay - Time for Christmas Entry # 2:

First off, the Bible doesn't say how many "wise men" there were. The three wise men tradition probably stems from the three gifts that were presented to Jesus when they arrived; gold, francensense, and myrr. A study of the account of the Magi reveals another intersting tidbit of information - they probably weren't at the manger in Bethlahem. Herod sent them to find the child that posed a threat to his kingdom, so Jesus had already been born when they started their journey. I doubt Mary and Joseph hung around in a barn for the length of time it would have taken the Magi to get from the orient to Bethlahem. So if you're interested in being completely accurate about the Nativity, get the wise men out. Something to think about...

I need to go tend my sheep now, becasue that's what shepherds do in the winter in the middle east. Crazy you say? Well, if Jesus was born on Christmas day, which is in the winter, and the shepherds were tending their sheep when the Angels announced that a Saviour had been born, doesn't it stem to reason that the shepherds were tending their sheep in winter? Hmmm? Maybe this deserves a little more investigating.

e-stalking

I got an email from a friend today. It was a well fabricated story about a cop who masqueraded online as a teenager and stocked a 14 year old girl. He was able to get enough information about her to find out where she lived, when she was alone, etc. Eventually, he followed her home, and then discussed with her and her parents the dangers of chatting online, even if you think you aren't giving away any personal information. I'll forward it to you if you want, but that's not really the issue of this entry.

On the top of the email was a list of all of the people to whom the email was sent. I looked at the list, and realized there was enough information in that list to do the same thing the police officer did. For example, one of the email address, which is changed here to protect the unknowing, was pat.anderson@highschool.ca.gov. In that one email address is a first name, a last name, and a place of employment. A simple internet search would give me enough information to find that person and stalk them if I was so twisted. I could also have easily saved the emails of a bunch of other people who would probably prefer I didn't invite them to my next midnight hike to Cucamonga Peak. So I started thinking about a simple way to keep this from happening - one more small security step we can all use. When sending bulk emails to everybody you know, don't use the CC (Carbon Copy) for the recipient list. If you use BCC instead (Blind Carbon Copy), you will still send the email to everybody, but they won't be able to see who else you sent it to. Pretty cool, isn't it. To show you how this works, I sent an email to 50 people asking them to check out my blog. I BCC'd all of the recipients, so if you're here as a result of that email, you have already seen how it works.

Anyway, I just wanted to pass that along. BTW - Blogs are a great place to post pics of your family. They are also a good place for wierdos to find pictures of you and yours. Post with care.

Love you all.

Halloween Pics

Halloween is gone, and now are left with nothing but a lot of candy, moldy pumpkins, and pictures of our kids in costumes. The pumpkins are good for the compost pile. The candy is good for keeping the dentist in business. The pictures are good for putting on the blog so people can tell me how cute my kids were this year. So here you go...

On Halloween night, we went Trick-or-Treating with our friends. The took us to the "secret place" where the nice people give out king sized Snickers bars and dollar bills instead of the little bit sized candies and pennies. Apparently it isn't much of a secret because there were bazillions of people there. Once we got off the main drag though, it was better. The kids got enough loot to last until next Halloween, and we got to hang out so that is always good. The kidos looked good in their costumes. Besides our Spiderman and Cross dresser, we had mermaids, a cat (I think), Edward Scissorhands, and Charlie Brown (in Halloween attire.) I didn't get any pictures of Eddie, though, which is too bad 'cause he gave Johnny Dep a run for his money.

This is my son, with whom I am well pleased

There is nothing deep in this post. I just wanted the world to share in one of my proudest moments. While I was work one day, my oldest son decided that he was going to dress up as a girl for Halloween. With Mom's help, here is what he came up with.

I'm so proud. (BTW - I did have some say in the costume; I would not let him paint his nails)