Woo-hoo! Festivities! It’s 2023!

Happy Chanukah everyone! Enjoy your candlelight! And your fried foods, whichever you choose (I made mini-latkes from mashed golden sweet potatoes for last night). 

It’s also Gravy Time in Australia, thanks to the wonderful Paul Kelly’s timeless anthem. This version  is the Covid lockdowns one, there’s also the classic original (decades old) and many more. 

Happy Chanukah to you.  Neither my wife nor I are in any way practicing Christians but we have been lighting an Advent Candle each night at dinner and the light has been magical here in the dim dark North.  Perhaps we should add a menorah to the mix as well.

21st: Gravy Day. A new, but very important Australian Christmas tradition (thank you, Paul Kelly). 

Paul’s inspiration for How To Make Gravy came from thinking about the spoken intro to the modern standard, Dreaming of a White Christmas. Such a shift of perspectives, really, yet much of the emotion is the same.  Every performance is now so different: this cover features First Nations inmates singing in language. I’ll admit I cried when I heard it. 
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-21/how-to-make-gravy-goldfields-edition/101795028

It’s CHRISTMAS DAY - woohoo!! Hope your celebrations survive storms, blackouts, feuding families etc and that you all make heart-warming new memories to give you added strength in the year ahead 

From our families to yours, @marksierra and @joanne & @shemademedothis (David)

O Holy Night as you’ve never heard it before

Thanks Joanne. Apparently Santa has just left Nantucket and is heading for Connecticut. Should be to New Jersey soon. I better get to bed before he arrives. 

Yeah, I know there’s a big time difference and I’m in your future   Still, it is Boxing Day here and in many Commonwealth nations, and slowly it will roll around to the West Indies and Canada too. Woo-hoo! 
More than just a bank holiday, Boxing Day is a massive contradiction: a huge day for sports; the biggest day for huge discount sales BUT shortened business hours (‘holiday’ hours), and the reason that here, we have 2 extra days off (Tuesday & Wednesday ) for people who have to work over Christmas/Boxing Day. Yep, true.

 (But our trash and recycling bins were just emptied by the City Council. Those folk are amazing!)

Happy Boxing Day, Joanne! Wahoo! Sales!

eta, no one here really knows what we’re talking about. Boxing Day doesn’t really exist, and those who know about it don’t really know what it is. It’s a bank holiday here this year but only because Xmas was a Sunday.

ridski said:

Happy Boxing Day, Joanne! Wahoo! Sales!

eta, no one here really knows what we’re talking about. Boxing Day doesn’t really exist, and those who know about it don’t really know what it is. It’s a bank holiday here this year but only because Xmas was a Sunday.

I thought it was traditionally a holiday for the servants after they had to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for the household.  (Is that true?)

Perhaps @ridski could correct me, I was taught that people who had servants and people who ‘lived in’ allowed them this day off. However it’s called Boxing Day because each was given a box with a gift for their work throughout the year - the gift may have included money, cast-off clothing, food etc that could be shared with the workers’ families. 
The custom spread to factories and mill workers.
I believe there may also have been a ‘below stairs’/village party or dance.

When our unions formed in the 1800s and won workers’ rights, they secured the rights to a week’s holiday for non-retail workers which meant that most agricultural workers, mine workers, carriers, etc. Could travel home to be with family. 

There’s a ton of stories about why it’s called Boxing Day, so take your pick, but the reality is that no one really knows the true origin of the day’s name.

Take it from future me, friends, the fireworks are deafening this time - protect your your ears! And if you have asthma or other respiratory issues, be sure to have your inhalers on hand. (I don’t know why the pyro-techs have been told to go crazy for this year, but I swear I thought my house had moved to Ukraine)*

Wishing you all a sweet, healthy, happy 2023 - full of wonderful surprises and delight. 

Are you planning any changes/affirmations this year? I’m working on being kinder and less snarky in real life. I’d rather my ‘resting face’ doesn’t look like a scowl or frown.

*Im going to discuss those fireworks with the City Council. I’m several streets away from detonation point, and halfway up the street yet I seriously felt my yard was under attack. I won’t be surprised if there are shell fragments outside. I was itchy AFTER a shower, from all the gunpowder in the wind. Why are we still blowing things up??? It’s barbaric and a waste of $$$.

Fireworks are going off in Germany right now - no one could buy them the past two years.  Just had a skype call - sounds like they're making up for it this year.  It really is crazy and scary - I experienced it once in person.

Happy New Year from Hong Kong!

Here's a good re-cap of 2022