Merry Christmas to all our friends and family in Canada

We are in Australia celebrating Christmas with my daughter, and her family and her friends, and we celebrated our Christmas one day earlier than our friends back in Canada. 

So our hope is that you have a wonderful day surrounded by friends, family and loved one. Our wish is that today is a day that some of your dreams, hopes and aspirations come true. Merry Christmas for all of us in Australia and we look forward to coming home in mid-January.

We love to celebrate

Any excuse for a celebration, humans love to have a reason to have a celebration. Yesterday I listed a few of the religious holidays in December, so I thought the day before Christmas I would give a longer list than yesterday. Whatever your faith, enjoy your day of celbration

Buddhism

·       8 December Bodhi Day is a day of Enlightenment, celebrating the day that the historical Buddha (Shakyamuni or Siddhartha Gautama) experienced enlightenment (also known as Bodhi).

Christianity

·       Advent: four Sundays preceding Christmas Day

·       4 December Saint Barbara's Day the Feast of St. Barbara is celebrated by Artillery regiments across the Commonwealth and some western Catholic countries.

·       5 December Krampusnacht The Feast of St. Nicholas is celebrated in parts of Europe on 6 December. In Alpine countries, Saint Nicholas has a devilish companion named Krampus who punishes the bad children the night before.

·       6 December Saint Nicholas' Day

·       8 December Feast of the Immaculate Conception Day The day of Virgin Mary's Immaculate Conception is celebrated as a public holiday in many Catholic countries.

·       13 December Saint Lucia's Day Church Feast Day. Saint Lucia comes as a young woman with lights and sweets.

·       16–24 December Las Posadas procession to various family lodgings for celebration & prayer and to re-enact Mary & Joseph's journey to Bethlehem

·       December 21 Longest Night: A modern Christian service to help those coping with loss, usually held on the eve of the Winter solstice.

·       24 December Christmas Eve In many countries e.g. the German speaking countries, but also in Poland, Hungary and the Nordic countries, gift giving is on 24 December.

·       25 December and 7 January Christmas Day celebrated by Christians and non-Christians alike.

·       25 December Anastasia of Sirmium feast day

·       25 December–6 January Twelve Days of Christmas

·       26 December Saint Stephen's Day In Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic a holiday celebrated as Second Day of Christmas.

·       27 December Saint John the Evangelist's Day

·       28 December Holy Innocents' Day

·       31 December Saint Sylvester's Day

Hinduism

·       December 21 through 25 Pancha Ganapati: a modern five-day Hindu festival celebrated from in honor of Ganesha.

Historical

·       Saturnalia: 17–23 December – An ancient Roman winter solstice festival in honor of the deity Saturn, held on the 17 December of the Julian calendar and expanded with festivities through to 23 December.

·       25 December Malkh is a festival dedicated to the Deela-Malkh in Vainakh mythology. 25 December was the birthday and the festival of the Sun

·       25 December Mōdraniht: or Mothers' Night, the Saxon winter solstice festival. was an event held at what is now Christmas Eve by the Anglo-Saxon Pagan

·       25 December Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (Day of the birth of the Unconquered Sun):– late Roman Empire

Humanism

·       23 December HumanLight Humanist holiday originated by the New Jersey Humanist Network in celebration of "a Humanist's vision of a good future."[9]

Judaism

·       Hanukkah: usually falls anywhere between late November and early January

Secular

·       Mid-November and early January Yule: Pagan winter festival that was celebrated by the historical Germanic people.

·       21 December Yalda The turning point, Winter Solstice. As the longest night of the year and the beginning of the lengthening of days, Shabe Yaldā or Shabe Chelle is an Iranian festival celebrating the victory of light and goodness over darkness and evil. Shabe yalda means 'birthday eve.' According to Persian mythology, Mithra was born at dawn on 22 December to a virgin mother. He symbolizes light, truth, goodness, strength, and friendship. Herodotus reports that this was the most important holiday of the year for contemporary Persians. In modern times Persians celebrate Yalda by staying up late or all night, a practice known as Shab Chera meaning 'night gazing'. Fruits and nuts are eaten, especially pomegranates and watermelons, whose red color invokes the crimson hues of dawn and symbolize Mithra.

·       Koliada: Slavic winter festival celebrated on late December with parades and singers who visit houses and receive gifts.

·       3 December International Day of Disabled Persons

·       10 December Human Rights Day

·       13 December Salgirah celebration of Shia Ismaili Muslims of their Imam (Aga Khan IV)

·       15 December Zamenhof Day  Birthday of Ludwig Zamenhof, inventor of Esperanto; holiday reunion for Esperantists

·       21 December Soyal: Zuni and Hopi a celebration of the solstice by the Zuni and Hopi

·       21 December Solstice.

·       22 December Dongzhi Festival – a celebration of Winter

·       25 December Newtonmas As an alternative to celebrating the religious holiday Christmas, some atheists and skeptics have chosen to celebrate December 25 as Newtonmas, due to it being Isaac Newton's birthday on the old style date.

·       26 December Boxing Day.

·       26 December–1 January Kwanzaa– Pan-African festival celebrated in the US

·       31 December–before dawn of 1 January Hogmanay Scottish New Year's Eve celebration

·       31 December New Year's Eve last day of the Gregorian year

·       31 December Watch Night A day where people celebrate the ending of the year and watch for the dawn of the new year

Unitarian Universalism

·       Chalica: first week of December – A holiday created in 2005, celebrated by some Unitarian Universalists.

Treat the children well

Few months present the number of multicultural events and celebrations that happen during December, here are some of the celebrations that occur around the world.

• Saint Nicholas Day (Christian)
• Fiesta of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexican)
• St. Lucia Day (Swedish)
• Hanukkah (Jewish)
• Christmas Day (Christian)
• Three Kings Day/Epiphany (Christian)
• Boxing Day (Australian, Canadian, English, Irish)
• Kwanzaa (African American)
• Omisoka (Japanese)
• Yule (Pagan)
• Saturnalia (Pagan) 

In the Christian world, the celebrations are mostly about children and focucsed on gift-giving. However, today we seem not to cherish children, who are the future of our species but to detain them when the seek shelter and protection.  This is a time for us to reflect and to think about how we treat each other, and importantly how we treat our children.

The following is from a wonderful blog called Brain Picking 

“You must cherish one another. You must work — we all must work — to make this world worthy of its children,” Pablo Casals, the greatest cellist of the first half of the twentieth-century, counselled humanity in the final years of a long life filled with music as a conduit of beauty and cross-cultural understanding.

Casals’s words fall heavy on the heart in an era when the world’s children are not cherished but detained at national borders treated not as radiant beacons of our shared future but as criminals. To any conscionable human, witnessing such inhumanity is at once utterly infuriating and utterly helpless-making — a devastating syncopation of feelings.

The Lebanese-American poet, painter, and philosopher Kahlil Gibran (January 6, 1883–April 10, 1931) addressed these elemental questions with sensitivity in the Prophet

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Thoughts on an idle Sat

Middle age is walking around all-day

muttering things like...

But I Might Be Funny

“What was I going to say?"

“What did I come in here for?"

"Did I already take my pill? “

“How did I get this bruise?"

"Why am I sore?"

“Where did I leave my phone?"

“Who moved my water glass?"

"Did the dryer shrink these pants?"

"That‘s it. Diet starts tomorrow."

“$2.99 a pound for apples? The nerve."

“I could've sworn that was my password."

"Who in the world is calling me at 9:00 pm?"

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo so you can quote them, disagree with them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. about the only thing that you can't do, is ignore them because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy. Because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do. Written by Rob Siltanen, an advertising guy, working with Steve Jobs for Apple’s “Think Different” campaign, not Jack Kerouac