Christmas

[Alabama Larry]

I love it when the policeman/firefighters take kids shopping. Less fortunate People getting meals, and visits. Angel trees to help children who are needy. Folks going to senior citizens homes to sing and spend time.

 

Salvation Army raising funds, just people thinking of others at this time, but its a shame we can't do this more often, Anybody else got some examples. I know the railroad used to run freight trains thru Eastern Kentucky and stop and give toys/food away back in the 50s, and continue to do so even today.

 

Arond the 1984 there was an article about a family getting robbed of their Christmas presents and other items. AT the South Louisville Shops we saw this and in just a few hours collected over $500.00. We called the reporter and told her what we had done and met with her and took the family some money.

 

Thats Christmas. Sharing your heart and loving others...

 

JIM/UK I hope you get a chance to change your thoughts and I hope you find some joy during this time. You can call any Senior home and ask to visit and they will let you come and sit with someone. I do it and its a blessing.

[Jim Schue]

He's not along. I do not much care for Christmas either. Five years in retail hell will do that to a guy. Nothing like seeing grown women fistfight in the aisles over the last available Gameboy or Tickle-Me-Elmo to get you in the Christmas spirit.

 

Oops. Meant "alone," not "along." :ohbrother:

[Jim Schue]

I love it when the policeman/firefighters take kids shopping. Less fortunate People getting meals, and visits. Angel trees to help children who are needy. Folks going to senior citizens homes to sing and spend time.

 

Salvation Army raising funds, just people thinking of others at this time, but its a shame we can't do this more often, Anybody else got some examples. I know the railroad used to run freight trains thru Eastern Kentucky and stop and give toys/food away back in the 50s, and continue to do so even today.

 

Arond the 1984 there was an article about a family getting robbed of their Christmas presents and other items. AT the South Louisville Shops we saw this and in just a few hours collected over $500.00. We called the reporter and told her what we had done and met with her and took the family some money.

 

Thats Christmas. Sharing your heart and loving others...

 

JIM/UK I hope you get a chance to change your thoughts and I hope you find some joy during this time. You can call any Senior home and ask to visit and they will let you come and sit with someone. I do it and its a blessing.

 

I choose to focus on the time I get to spend with my family during the time -- that's wonderful. I'm fine (and have warmed up to Christmas in recent years because of this) if I can keep it family-centered and shut out all the garish commercialization.

[Alabama Larry]

I agree with 100%.^^^My parents made sure we had a great time, lots of Family and learning to be with each other. We didn't have much and I remember one time my Mom & Dad going out on Christmas Eve to buy presents for 4 kids under the age of 12. He had just got paid. Seeing them leave so late at nite is etched in my mind. Christmas to a child is huge and they learn and pass it on. Thanks for sharing.

[rockmom]

I love it when the policeman/firefighters take kids shopping. Less fortunate People getting meals, and visits. Angel trees to help children who are needy. Folks going to senior citizens homes to sing and spend time.

 

Salvation Army raising funds, just people thinking of others at this time, but its a shame we can't do this more often, Anybody else got some examples. I know the railroad used to run freight trains thru Eastern Kentucky and stop and give toys/food away back in the 50s, and continue to do so even today.

 

Arond the 1984 there was an article about a family getting robbed of their Christmas presents and other items. AT the South Louisville Shops we saw this and in just a few hours collected over $500.00. We called the reporter and told her what we had done and met with her and took the family some money.

 

Thats Christmas. Sharing your heart and loving others...

 

JIM/UK I hope you get a chance to change your thoughts and I hope you find some joy during this time. You can call any Senior home and ask to visit and they will let you come and sit with someone. I do it and its a blessing.

 

This year, my family has chosen not to exchange gifts. We're buying for the youngest children in the family, but we're not exchanging gifts among the adults. I'm now in a quandry. I'm going to take that money and find a way to give to the less fortunate. But then that leads me to the realization that these people need help all year round, not just at the holidays. I'm hoping to find a way to "adopt" a family or child or senior I can help year round. There are SO many who need help, especially now. It's actually made me feel terrible that I can't do more.

[nWo]

We play dirty santa. Each one of the adults by a gift of around $25 dollars. Then we wrap it so no one knows what it is. Next, we draw numbers and then pick a present accordingly. After that then a person gets to either keep their present of take one from someone else. Of course you give up your first present if you take someone else's. After everyone has had a turn then we open the presents. It is a lot of fun.

[True blue (and gold)]

Honestly, Christmas has always brought about mixed emotions for me. I deeply appreciate the religious aspect of it and the feeling that it gives me and if I concentrate on that, I am okay.

 

However, the family aspect of it has been hard. My parents divorced when I was four and my mother moved 1200 miles away from my father and my half brothers and sister. I was never able to spend another Christmas with them, as I am my mother's only child and leaving her alone at Christmas seemed cruel. I always felt like part of myself was missing at Christmas, as a result.

 

Unfortunately my mom passed away back in October. I now have the opportunity to go to Colorado for Christmas this year to spend time with my dad and family and if the weather cooperates, I will, but I will also be missing my mom now for the first time. If the weather is bad, I've got some great friends to spent time with at home and I'll also go spend some time with the residents at the nursing home that my mom was in. I adopted an "angel" from that home and one other to buy Christmas gifts for, so I am looking forward to that.

[Jim Schue]

We play dirty santa. Each one of the adults by a gift of around $25 dollars. Then we wrap it so no one knows what it is. Next, we draw numbers and then pick a present accordingly. After that then a person gets to either keep their present of take one from someone else. Of course you give up your first present if you take someone else's. After everyone has had a turn then we open the presents. It is a lot of fun.

 

We do that too. However, last year my idiot aunt thought it would be a good idea to make the amount of times you can have a certain gift taken away from you unlimited. I finally got frustrated and grabbed something new off the pile. What could go wrong? There were already a dozen bottles of good whiskey in circulation. Of course, it ended up being something fantastic -- Shake Weight. Needless to say, no one grabbed that one from me. :madman:

 

Hope my mom puts that one back in circulation this year.

[Randy Parker]

Nothing like seeing grown women fistfight in the aisles over the last available Gameboy or Tickle-Me-Elmo to get you in the Christmas spirit.

 

Wow

[Colonels_Wear_Blue]

I love that song. Those who know me are aware of -- and sometimes barely tolerate -- my fascination with all things ancient. The melody is derived from an 8th-Century Gregorian Chant and the antiphons are at least as old, some speculate as early as the 5th century. They don't come much older than that.

 

I especially love the inherently liturgical nature of that song. It perfectly exemplifies the two-fold nature of Advent. Not only are Christians in anticipation of the historical Christmas and all it represents, but the season is about looking forward to the time when Christ comes again. Spectacular.

 

You might be a good person to clarify then. So my family has a long-standing Advent tradition of lighting Advent candles at dinner, and concluding the Prayer Before Meals by singing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel". My parents have the entire family over for dinner on Sundays, and since we all have moved out and the different families are in different parishes. The different parishes have different songbooks, and the different songbooks have two variants of the refrain for the song, so long story short, we have people singing different versions of the refrain now after dinner:

 

Version 1: "Rejoice, rejoice, O Israel! To you shall come Emmanuel!"

 

Version 2: "Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!"

 

Any clues which version is the original and/or more correct?

[Getslow]

You might be a good person to clarify then. So my family has a long-standing Advent tradition of lighting Advent candles at dinner, and concluding the Prayer Before Meals by singing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel". My parents have the entire family over for dinner on Sundays, and since we all have moved out and the different families are in different parishes. The different parishes have different songbooks, and the different songbooks have two variants of the refrain for the song, so long story short, we have people singing different versions of the refrain now after dinner:

 

Version 1: "Rejoice, rejoice, O Israel! To you shall come Emmanuel!"

 

Version 2: "Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!"

 

Any clues which version is the original and/or more correct?

 

The original Latin text reads like this:

 

Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel

nascetur pro te Israel.

 

"Nascetur" literally means "shall be born," so both translations are paraphrased in order to flow better and make the syllables fit. That said, the second version you posted is the one I've seen more often and follows the lines more exactly, which was an older feature of Latin translation of Catholic hymns. That first version, by not dividing the clause "Emmanuel shall come to thee" into two different lines, is a little easier to understand while singing it, but does flip some words around.

 

In the end, they're basically the same but the second is the Neale translation that I think is the older of the two.

[Getslow]

Have a couple personal Christmas traditions involving books. I started the first yesterday, getting out my collected volume of Charles Dickens' Christmas Stories and Books. I'll read "A Christmas Carol" for sure and probably a couple others before setting it aside to get started on my other personal December tradition: reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy. This year will be the 15th in a row... and yet I've never tired of it. Tolkien is just one of the best there has ever been.

[Alabama Larry]

Look at Matthew chapter 1 and see the Family history of Jesus. It goes thru 14 generations. Notice how the term "Father" is used until it comes to Mary to describe Joeseph, the earth Father of Jesus. It says "Husband of Mary".

 

Jesus was a descendant of both Abraham/David. Also Ruth 4:18-22/Isaiah 7:14

 

700 years ia a long time, but look at Micah 5:2. There we actually see the town where Jesus would come from. There were actually two Belthlehems. One near Nazareth and the other Jerusalem and in Micah is mentions the one near Jerusalem.

 

Isaiah 7:14 The LORD himself will give you a sign The Virgin will be pregnant. She will have a son and she will name him Immanuel. Which means God with us. This was wriite before Micah.

 

700 years from right now would be 2711.

[Alabama Larry]

Mary was so very important. She was chosen by God over all the women on earth. God favored Mary. He knew her heart 1st Samuel 16:7. Mary was told by the Angel that her older cousin Elizabeth was also with child, six months into it.

 

Mary had to visit Elizabeth and did so soon after, when Mary approached Elizabeth the baby in the womb jumped.

 

So why did Joeseph tale Mary back to Bethlehem? We all know that one. Why was he named Jesus?

[Alabama Larry]

There is no scripture that tells us to celebrate the Birth Of Jesus. But also there is no verse to do the same for a loved one, but we do it. but notice the word I used "LOVED ONE" We simply love Jesus and thats why we do it.

 

God gave us a gift and one reason we do. The three wisemen also gave gifts but a little later, another reason we get/give gifts. What a great time to share this time and be around family and friends. People just seem a lot nicer.

 

But actually we should do this every day. Its like the LORD's Supper, once a week, how about every day? Celebrate the birth, Christmas every day.

 

And there is no verse for Easter, but we can do that one later.