Merry Christmas

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Here's wishing a Merry Christmas to all my regulars, visitors, and faithful spam bots.
May you all have a good and peaceful day.

 

Merry Chistmas to you all

Holy Family by Lourry Legarde
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I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -

 

Merry Christmas

Nativity by Erland Sibuea

Christmas is a bridge. We need bridges as the river of time flows past. Today's Christmas should mean creating happy hours for tomorrow and reliving those of yesterday. - Gladys Taber

 

Merry Christmas

Nativity by He Qi

Let us keep Christmas beautiful without a thought of greed - Ann Garnett Schultz

   

  

I think I would rather get a lump of coal

A Christmas postcard with an illustration of Santa Claus attempting to put a frightened child into his sack of presents. An English legend popular during the Victorian era said that St. Nicholas recruited the Devil to help with his deliveries. Together, they determined which children had been naughty or nice.  - Missouri Historical Society (from Some of the Earliest Christmas Cards Were Morbid and Creepy)

  

Merry Christmas to one and all

To those at sea

Christmas celebration of a U-boat crew by Felix Schwormstadt, 1915

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In my younger years I spent a few Christmases underway or in distant ports. It is a loneliness that is hard to explain. And so, a wish of fair winds and following seas to my fellow sailors this holiday season.

Christmas at Sea - Robert Louis Stevenson

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seamen scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every 'long-shore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard's was the house where I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
"All hands to loose topgallant sails," I heard the captain call.
"By the Lord, she'll never stand it," our first mate Jackson, cried.
..."It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

Merry Christmas PUNK

Yikes! I hope you were all good boys and girls this year because, if the above picture is accurate, it appears that Santa may be packing heat instead of charcoal. I guess he's watched one too many Dirty Harry movies in the off-season.

Anyway... Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays all. Have a good one.
 

Merry Christmas

Hopefully your Santa wasn't sloshed by the end of his run and you got what you wanted. Regardless, I hope you all have a Merry Christmas.
 

Breaking News: a disaster strikes Christmas!

 

Merry Christmas to you all