Yup! It's that time again! The Harbor Street Christmas 2010 Celebration begins! We've got stories and jokes and recipes and all sorts of good stuff, including a couple of contests where you can win loot! What more could you want? (Besides lots of cash. Yeah, I'd like that, too.)Let's get going. And remember, I always welcome your input and/or submissions!
Nifty Things to do with old Christmas cards
1. A friend of mine shared this cool idea with me. She wanted to send out Christmas cards, but couldn't make the time to address them each year. So she purchased a box of labels and hand wrote each address on a label, adding embellishments and black and white stickers. Then she took them to a copy store and had the labels copied in various colors. Nifty! She also took colored pens and filled in some of the stickers. Of course, she could have used a computer program like PrintShop or PrintMaster to do this, but she liked the handwritten look.
2. You can buy blank cards at your local office supply store, print your message inside, and then paste the front of old cards as the front of the new cards. Another friend actually takes the front of the old cards and uses it as a postcard by drawing a dividing line down the middle, writing her greeting on the left, and placing the address and stamp on the right.
3. You can decorate with old cards by arranging them on your mantel or by punching holes in them and stringing them as a garland or by creating a Christmas card tree on an undecorated wall by arranging the cards in a tree shape. You can also cut old cards into gift tags for presents or cut them into interesting shapes to paste on gifts wrapped in white craft paper.
If you have a Nifty Christmas Idea, please share it with us!
And now a holiday excerpt from my book Floozy and Other Stories.
Factoids about Christmas
(Some of which could be true)
Kissing under the mistletoe dates back to a 17th century English kissing game. Back then, a berry was removed from the mistletoe every time a kiss was made, which meant no more kisses when all the berries were gone, and then everyone would laugh and laugh. Yeah, I know, but you have to remember that they didn’t have TV so they had to fill their time as best they could.
Mistletoe, by the way, was used by the druids in their secret ceremonies. The druids, a happy-go-lucky group, used to place mistletoe wreaths around the necks of their victims before the victims were sacrificed by having their entrails nailed to an oak tree. You don’t see that on a lot of Christmas cards, do you?
Christmas trees started in Germany in the 16th century. On Christmas Eve, Martin Luther was walking home under a starry sky, which was so beautiful he wanted to recreate its beauty for his children. He decorated a large evergreen with lit candles. He followed his creation of the First Christmas Tree with the development of the First House Fire Caused by a Christmas Tree.
Since 1947, the people of Oslo, Norway, have given a Christmas tree every year to the city of Westminster, England. The gift expresses Norway’s gratitude for Britain’s help during World War II, despite the fact that the tree is never on Britain’s Christmas list. Britain would prefer a gift card.
The first president to decorate the white house Christmas tree in the United States was Franklin Pierce. This is the only notable thing Pierce did while in office and as such should be remembered, but not by me. I’ve already forgotten it. Franklin who?
Traditionally, Christmas trees are taken down after Epiphany or whenever the husband has been nagged beyond human endurance.
“The Nutcracker” is the most famous Christmas ballet and was used by the Chinese to break the wills of political prisoners. It is outlawed by the Geneva Convention as is the playing of “Jingle Bells” more than 1,754,322 times during the holiday season.
If you received all of the gifts in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” you would receive 364 presents, none of which you could return. By the way, why are there so many birds in that song? Doesn’t it seem fowl?
Holly berries are poisonous, which does explain why holly berry cookies aren’t popular even though there was a heavy marketing push for them during the 1950s. It joined the ranks of other failed food products: stone ground hemlock bread, foxglove fajitas, poop pie, and of course, green tea.
In 1843, A Christmas Carol was written by Charles Dickens in only six weeks. Many of us feel he should have taken more time with it and added some spaceships and several hot alien females.
The first state to recognize the Christmas holiday officially was Alabama. Afterwards, Alabama had to lie down and wasn’t able to recognize other things for years, which is one of the reasons they lagged so far behind in civil rights.
Christmas became a national holiday in America on June 26, 1870. When the news was announced, many retailers swooned.
Coca Cola was the first beverage company to use Santa for a winter promotion. This would be the beginning of a lucrative career as Santa signed endorsement contracts for all sorts of products, including gardening tools (Hoe, Hoe, Hoe!), dynamite (Hole, Hole, Hole!), laser removal of facial disfigurements (Mole, Mole, Mole!) and even Viagra (Pole, Pole, Pole!).
The government actually banned a Christmas tree decoration. Tinsel was once made of lead. (It’s now made of plastic.) The tinsel maker’s jingle – “Decorate your tree with silver rain; You’ll be happy as you damage your brain” – was remade into a hip-hop hit in the ‘90s.
Rudolph was created by Montgomery Ward in the late 1930s for a holiday promotion. The rest is sheer greed and marketing history.
The Christmas card was created in England in 1843. Louis Prang, a Massachusetts printer, printed the first Christmas card in the United States in 1875. There’s more to the story, but I got bored. Feel free to look it up.
Merry Christmas!
Excerpted from Floozy and Other Stories. Copyright 2010 by Stephen B. Bagley. All rights reserved. No copying without express permission from the publisher and author.
Here's a quick and delicious recipe from my sister.
Microwave Fudge
1 lb. box of powdered sugar
1/2 cup of cocoa
1 stick of butter
1/4 cup of milk
1/2 cup of chopped pecans or crushed peppermint and 1/2 teaspoon peppermint flavoring
1 teaspoon of vanilla
Prepare an eight inch square pan by lining with foil and then buttering the foil. In a microwaveable container, mix the sugar and cocoa. Place butter on top of the powdered sugar/cocoa mix. Pour in milk. Microwave on high for two minutes or until the butter is melted. Stir and mix well. This mixing process will take a few minutes. When it begins to thicken, add chopped pecans and vanilla. (This recipe can be adapted using crushed peppermint instead of nuts and adding 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint flavoring.) Pour mixture into pan and let harden. Delicious!
And that's it for today. Be back tomorrow for more! See you then!
Buy Floozy and Other Stories in paperback at Lulu.com
Buy Floozy and Other Stories in hardcover at Lulu.com
No comments:
Post a Comment