…but mostly I wanted to put up more Christmas related stuff while it was still the season.

Here ‘round the old Majestic…we celebrate the holiday the way it was meant to be celebrated…it is a celebration of the birth of Jesus after all and although we do succumb to the buying presents part a little…mostly that is an afterthought for us as we mostly buy what we want or need when we want or need it. That said…Neil did get some new Thorlo running socks…not that he runs any more but he wears them with his Merrell shoes that are his daily drivers (well, at least they are when he doesn’t have flip flops on) because his old ones are all (a) thin and tearing up and (b) mostly gray instead of white after so many years. He also got a new pair or bike gloves and this really cool blue Hawaiian shirt that he is going to wear tomorrow night to the Gatsby Gala at the Elks. Connie ordered herself a flapper dress a couple weeks back…black, fringe, short skirt…and it comes along with the feather adorned headband to wear, long black gloves…’cuz wimmin wore those back in the 20s ya know…and one of those really long pearl strings that they put on and then tie sort of a knot in it just below the girls if ya know whaddImean. He’s going in Hawaiian 20s regalia…whatever that means he ain’t really sure but it involves the aforementioned blue shirt…and he’s even going to wear pants instead of his standard shorts. For Christmas…Connie got a new bottle of Jean Claude Gautier perfume…she was almost out and both of them really like the way it smells. She also got some new hair scrunchies…white ones don’t stay clean and they’re just about impossible to get white again…sorta like white sneaker socks…along with some other colors that will match several other tops she likes to wear. She also got some cucumber flavored vodka…she likes to have a nip of it occasionally and although it’s usually just plain with some olive juice in it…AKA a dirty martini…she also drinks cucumber mashed into tonic water a lot. The tonic provides quinine which helps with her rib cramps that she gets frequently…and the cucumber masks the taste of the tonic…’cuz that stuff tastes turrible ya know.

Anyways…back to the reason for the season.

We always set up our tiny manger scene on the left side of the TV…but until Christmas it’s only the shepherds and the livestock gathered around the old manger. On Christmas…Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus make their appearance as you can see in this photo.

That angel laying down there…well that’s the lute player (part of that whole heavenly host thing)…but when we put her up we discovered she had been inadvertently beheaded somehow. Not to worry…a spot of gorilla glue and she’s as good as new…but Neil forgot to stand her back up before he took the photo. Over on the right…that’s the rest of the heavenly host…led by the angels Lo and Behold in the front of the group. Ya knew that wuz their names right? It says so right in the Bible…”and Lo, an angel of the Lord” and “Behold, an angel of the Lord”. They’ll stay that way doing their heavenly host thing right up through Epiphany…which is when the wise men arrive. Here they are.

The wise men will slowly make their way across the top of the fireplace over the next week or so and eventually will arrive at their designated location on time to deliver their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Speaking of wise men…you can tell these wise men are not from North Carolina since they’re not wearing their fireman hats. Again…it says right there in the Bible…”They came from a far”.

Also speaking of wise men…did you know that there were actually 4 of them originally. The fourth one was sent away because he brought a fruitcake.

As I said…just a teeny tiny bit of stupidity today…and it’s even Christmas related. I ran across
this article that relays the story of a liberal millennial who never allowed her daughter to sit on Santa’s lap during the holidays because (a) it communicates to children that it is OK to confide in strangers and have physical contact with them, (b) because we invite a complete stranger to surreptitiously enter our homes through the chimney in the middle of the night, instead of announcing himself at the front door like any other guest…then we reward him for it with offerings of milk and cookies, and (c) she doesn’t push her daughter to be affectionate even with family. She closes by saying that her daughter…now that she’s old enough to communicate her desires…her daughter agrees with her…poor kid…she’s already indoctrinated into liberalthink.

She then goes on to castigate families who let their children follow this custom and praises the establishments that allow beloved characters to be appreciated at a safe distance.

Ok…enough of that blather. On to more interesting stuff.

You might have thought from those last two…and harkening back to the 70s when the movie Blazing Saddles came out…and remembering the campfire scene from that movie…that reindeer are guys…particularly when the leader of the pack is Rudolph with his radioactive glowing nose…although I can’t really figure out exactly what radioactive element glows red. Tritium is the only one I know of that glows and it is white. There’s also Cherenkov Radiation which is emitted by uranium atoms when the fission…they can be observed in swimming pool reactors but Cherenkov is blue. Anyways…if you thought that the reindeer were male…I hate to break it to you…but you’re absolutely 100% incorrect.

All of the reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh are female.

True…google it.

Reindeer are the domesticated version of caribou…they’re genetically identical. They are the only member of the deer family where both the bucks and does grow antlers…although not all does do so but the majority of them do. Bucks (males) shed their antlers after the rut in the late fall…or well before Christmas Eve. Females typically keep their antlers until June…they use them to defend areas where they have cleared the snow away to give birth and get food to enable them to provide milk to their offspring.

Since every…andI mean every last steenking one…image you’ve ever seen of Santa, his sleigh, and the reindeer clearly shows antlers…QED, they are all female.

There’s another story goin’ ‘round that conclusively proves that if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve that he’s dead now…there’s a lot of math, science, and physics in it…but it’s a long story so I will save it for another season.

And finally…everybody remembers that old saw from back in the day that helped you remember whether the i or the e comes first when spelling certain words…

Cyas.