Today’s Quiz: What is wassell, or a wassell bowl?

Yesterday’s question answered below: In Britain, why do they call the day after Christmas, Boxing Day?
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History for 12/26/2007
Birthdays: Emperor Frederick II "Stuporous Mundi" Hohenstaufen, Charles Babbage, Al Gore Sr., Admiral Dewey, Mao Tse Tung, Richard Widmark is 92, Steve Allen, Henry Miller, Carlton Fisk, Chris Chambliss, Alan King, Phil Spector is 66, Fred Schepisi.

First Day of the Kwanza Festival. Kwanza is from the Swahili words “Matunda ya kwanzaa” meaning “first fruits” of the harvest. See below-1966.

In the Middle Ages this was the Feast Day of the Pagan god Jul, when good Guildsmen would gather in their Guild Halls to eat themselves sick and drink themselves silly. Then in a total stupor they would swear oaths on their patron saints to stick by and protect each other in the new year. Churchmen bristled at the licentious nature of the festival and tried to ban it, but there was no stopping a good rowdy party. Nobody really knew who the pagan god Jul was, just that it was fun to see the priests get so pissed off.

527AD-HAGIA SOPHIA- The Byzantine Emperor Justinian dedicated the newly completed basilica the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople in a grand ceremony. Sometimes called St. Sophia, the real name was not for this saint but Hagia Sophia is Greek for The Holy Wisdom or Creative Logos, in other words, God himself. It was then the biggest Church in the world, surmounted by a great dome. Emperor Justinian walked alone to the altar and raised his arms up to heaven:” Glory be to God who has thought me worthy to accomplish so great a work. Solomon, I have vanquished thee!” He was referring to Solomon’s great temple in Jerusalem. Centuries later when Byzantine Empire was conquered by the Turks and Constantinople’s name was changed to Istambul, the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque and four complimentary minarets were added to it’s design.

795 AD- Leo III became Pope.

1492- Columbus founded the first European settlement in the New World on the beach on San Salvador. He called it La Natividad because it was founded on Christmas.

1776- THE BATTLE OF TRENTON- George Washington was desperate for a victory against a huge British Army that had chased him from New York. He crossed the Delaware and at dawn surprise attacked a Hessian regiment while they were still waking up from their Christmas hangovers. As the dazed Hessians ran out of their barracks and tried to form a battle line, Washington positioned his troops so they would be have to face into a snow storm. The Americans captured 1,000 Hessians to just 4 casualties, and killed their commander Colonel Johann Rall. Just before the fatal musket ball entered his chest, Colonel Rall said to his aide: “Fu*k , a bunch of country clowns cannot beat us!” This was translated in Victorian times as “Fudge!” but we know better, don’t we boys and girls? Because part of his army got lost in the dark Washington couldn’t hold Trenton and had to retreat. But the news of the rebel attack made other British units fell back to the Jersey Coast and abandoned the Delaware line. This was the first true offensive action of the American Army in the Revolutionary War. British commander Lord Howe, when hearing the news, exclaimed:” It seems inconceivable that three venerable old regiments made up of men who make war their profession, should lay down their arms to a rabble of ragged, undisciplined militia!”

1799- In the still unfinished Washington D.C. this day saw the huge memorial in honor of the recently deceased George Washington. All of the US government was there except President John Adams. Adams was still angry at him.


1865- James Nason of Massachusetts invented the coffee percolator.

1908- Jack Johnson knocked out Canadian Tommy Burns in the 15th round to become the first African American heavyweight boxing champ. Few of the 20,000 white people in the Australian arena cheered. Johnson’s flaunting of racist attitudes and segregation laws drove mainstream America nuts. Johnson drove race cars, flashed gold teeth and made love to many white women. Muhammad Ali said:” He did this all in the time of Jim Crow and Lynching. I was outspoken but Jack Johnson was Crazy!” Jack Johnson held the heavyweight title until 1915.

1919- THE CURSE OF THE BAMBINO- Boston Red Sox baseball owner Harry Frazier announced the trade of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $126,000. The Yankees become champions and Boston believed Ruth cursed their team so they would never win another World Series, BoSox fans became obsessed with the curse story. They scoured a lake where Ruth supposedly pushed a family piano. A young man named Chris believed he helped break the curse. He lived in Ruth’s Boston home and during a 2004 game he was hit in the face with a pop fly ball, losing two teeth. He called it a Blood Sacrifice. The Boston Red Sox went on to win their first World Series in 86 years .

1924- Baby Frances Gumm first appeared on a stage at 2 1/2 years old. Grown up she would change her name to Judy Garland.

1926- Young artist Al Hirschfeld does his first caricature. A drawing of actor Sasha Guitry. A friend takes it to a newspaper and sells it, soon he's under contract to the New York Times. He will keep doing caricatures of Broadway greats into the millennium and has become a legend himself. In the American Theater a Hirschfeld caricature of you meant you had arrived and were a real star. At age 94 he remarried and drew the cast of Ally McBeal for TV Guide. In 2001 he died at age 100, drawing to the end.

1938- Young playwright Thomas Williams moved from Saint Louis to New Orleans and changed his name to Tennessee Williams.

1939- Walt Disney Animation moves from Hyperion to the new Burbank Studio lot. The buildings are designed like hospital wards, so in case he hits economic trouble, Disney could sell them to the planned St. Joseph's Hospital across the street. Animator Ward Kimball said it was the first time he worked in a studio where all the furniture matched. The old Hyperion Studio was bulldozed in 1966, the year of Walt Disney’s death.

1944- Tennessee Williams play the Glass Menagerie premiered in Chicago.

1946- The Gala Opening day of the Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas. Mobster Bugsy Siegel's $ 4 million dollar gamble in the desert. Despite booking top talent like Jimmy Durante and Xavier Cugat the promised Hollywood society types failed to materialize. The hotel part of the casino wasn't ready for guests yet so the high rollers couldn't see making the long trip. A violent rainstorm kept still more people away. Also the casinos formal dresscode discouraged the local yokels who liked to gamble in ten gallon hats and bluejeans. The Flamingo casino made a profit eventually but not before the angry Mafia riddled Siegel with bullets and cut the throat of his manager, Moe Greenberg.

1963- The death of Gorgeous George Wagner, the first wrestler to adopt a flamboyant character.

1966- The first Kwanzaa Festival was organized by African studies professor Dr Marulanga Karenga at Cal State Long Beach to celebrate African-American culture.

1973- Murakami-Wolf's t.v. special "The Point" with Dustin Hoffman narrating and Harry Nilsson's music. Hoffman's track was later rerecorded by Ringo Starr for some reason. “Me and my Ar-row…”

1973- The horror film The Exorcist starring Linda Blair premiered. Merry Christmas! Have some pea soup!

1979- The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The Moslem fundamentalist tribesmen called Mujahadin, who hadn’t submitted to any foreign conqueror since Alexander the Great, began a ten year long guerrilla war that became the Russian Vietnam. The Russians quit Afghanistan in 1989 and the veterans of that war, called the “Afghansi” suffer the same post traumatic depression and societal ostracism American Vietnam vets suffered.
Soon after the Soviets began their invasion all President Jimmy Carter could think of doing was to boycott the Olympics, western European countries worried that the US would not respond with nuclear force if the Russians launched a conventional military invasion of them. -i.e. they wouldn’t risk Kansas City for Bonn. So they asked for Pershing-2 nuclear cruise missiles, and the Russians responded with moving Soviet nuclear submarines closer to US coastal cities. Congressman Charlie Wilson helped organize the CIA weapons pipeline and the 80’s became one last chapter of the Cold War delighting spy novelists like Tom Clancy and John Le Carre’. After the Russians left the Mujahadin changed their terrorist focus to the US.

2003- As part of a promotion for a NJ Islanders-NY Rangers Hockey Game the Nassau Coliseum invited all the fans dressed as Santa Claus to parade on the ice. As the hundreds of Santas marched on to the rink several opened their coats to reveal they were actually Rangers supporters. The Islander Santas objected, some shoving ensued and pretty soon the Nassau Coliseum was packed with fistfighting Santas.

2004-TSUNAMI- One of the stronger earthquakes 9.1, recorded in the last 100 years hit the Indian Ocean. The earthquake sent giant tidal waves covering the coastlines of Sumatra, Thailand, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, killing over 215,000. Whole beach communities were wiped out without warning. Among the killed were villagers, itinerant fisherman to rich tourists from cold Europe enjoying the warm beaches. Sports Illustrated supermodel Petra Nemcova suffered two broken ribs and her boyfriend drowned and Jackie Chan narrowly escaped. More Norwegians were killed in this natural tragedy than ever before.
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Question: In Britain, why do they call the day after Christmas, Boxing Day.

Answer: It is from the Victorian custom of boxing up the leftovers of your Christmas feast and giving it to the poor.

Alastair Sim as Scrooge in the 1951 Christmas Carol. Still the best live action movie Scrooge who ever was. I wonder why they don't run it as much?

Quiz: In Britain, why is the day after Christmas known as Boxing Day?

History for 12/25/2006
Birthdays: Emanuel Ben Joseph or Yesuah. Called in Greek Jesus the Christ, 6-4 BC? or Four Before Himself-traditional date.

Other Christmas Babies- Sir Issac Newton, Clara Barton, Humphrey Bogart- born in 1899 Bogie called himself the Last Baby of the XIX Century, Cab Calloway, Helena Rubinstein,, Rod Serling, Charles Pathe, Jimmie Buffet, Quentin Crisp, Mike Mazurki, Conrad Hilton- Paris’ granddad, Anwar El Sadat. Alice Cooper, Larry Csonka, Burne Hogarth, Ishmail Merchant, Maurice Utrillo, Kid Ory , Ken Stabler, Barbara Mandrell, Dame Rebecca West, Clark Clifford, Dick Miller, Sissie Spacek, Annie Lennox, C.C. Pounder, animator Howard Beckerman

272 A.D. To the Ancient Romans this date was the feast day of DIES NAVITUS SOL INVICTUS, the "Invincible Sun", a hybrid religion that attempted an early form of monotheism, worship of the sun. The Roman Emperor Constantine, whose conversion raised Christianity from a cult to a world religion, was first a devotee of Sol Invictus.

495 A.D.- Clovis, first King of the Franks (French),is baptized. St. Remi said while pouring the Holy water on the old barbarian's head:" Kneel Sicambrian, and adore what thou once had Burned: and burn what thou once hath Adored."

800AD- In old Saint Peters Basilica in Rome, Charlemagne knelt in prayer with Pope Leo III, celebrating the Christmas feast. The King of the Franks had just come over the Alps to defeat the threat to the Vatican from the Lombards. During the service, Pope Leo whipped out a big jeweled crown and plopped it on Charlemagne’s head, as the audience cried out three times in unison the ancient formula:"HAIL CHARLES THE AUGUSTUS, CROWNED BY GOD THE GREAT EMPEROR OF THE ROMANS!" Charles had said he did not want the Imperial crown, but nobody believed such an important step was taken without his consent. Charlemagne ruled a European Empire almost as large as the Old Roman Empire of the West, from Spain to Hungary and Denmark to Sicily.

885AD- Pope Gregory I formalized what Christians had already been doing for 500 years, namely celebrating the birth festival of Jesus or "Christ’s Mass", on December 25th.

1066- After the great victory of Hastings William the Conquerer had himself crowned King of England in London. Outside when his nervous Norman knights heard the loud shouts of celebration they mistook them for an uprising and attacked the crowd. They slaughtered many and burned down most of the neighborhood around Westminster Abbey.

1428- During the Hundred Years War, at the siege of the city of Orleans, a six hour truce was declared for Christmas. English warlords Sir William Gladesdale and Sir John Talbot expressed a wish to hear French music, so a band of enemy trumpeters serenaded them from the city walls.

1497-Natal South Africa discovered by Vasco da Gama. It was called Natal because it was discovered on Christmas.

1541- After the Christmas services, Michelangelo’s fresco The Last Judgement was unveiled, done for the Altar wall of the Sistine Chapel beneath his famous ceiling.

1734- Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio first performed at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Bach pioneered writing sacred music in German instead of Latin or Italian despite the opinions of King Frederick the Great in Berlin:" German singers? I’d rather hear my horse whinny!"

1745-The Treaty of Dresden between Prussia and Austria.

1758- HALLEY’S COMET- Sixteen Years after his death the comet Sir Edmund Halley had predicted showed up right on schedule. This event was seen as significant because for centuries the random unexplained appearance of a comet in the sky seemed to be a direct sign from God. Halley proved once and for all that comets were not supernatural omens of Fate. That they had an erratic orbit but were otherwise natural phenomena.

1776- WASHINGTON CROSSES THE DELAWARE-
The closest the American Revolution came to being lost. George Washington's bedraggled minutemen had had their butts kicked by a massive British Army from Brooklyn across New Jersey to Philadelphia. The British Navy controlled the coastline. Washington had lost every battle, lost Americas’ largest city and was about to lose the capitol. From 23,000 men in July he now commanded a paltry 4,000 cold dispirited scarecrows. Washington wrote his family advising them to flee to the Blue Ridge Mountains if the British came their way. His generals openly complained to Congress that Washington was an incompetent and should be replaced. And now the soldier’s 6-month enlistments were up! Who would re-up with a defeated shambles of an army? The American Revolution was close to complete disintegration. George Washington knew he had to do something soon. He drew a line in the snow with his sword and begged his sulky men for one more battle, appealing to their patriotism and the great cause of independence. Only a few men crossed the line to volunteer. Frustrated, Washington gave a second speech, the contents of which are hidden from history but eyewitnesses said was more to the point: a lot of swearing and descriptions of how they would be hanged, their farms taken away and given to loyalists and their wives and daughters raped by foreign mercenaries, etc.. This time a larger crowd crossed the line.
Washington spent this night ferrying these men across the Delaware at McKonkey’s Ferry to attack a Hessian regiment in their Christmas beds. The boatmen were all from one town, Marblehead Mass, under their Quaker leader John Glover.

The famous painting, Emmanuel Leutze's "Washington Crossing the Delaware" was painted in Dusseldorf Germany in 1894. The painter omitted details like Washington sat down all the way across, and there were two black men in the boat, Oliver Cromwell the ships pilot, and Washington's bodyguard.

1836- According to the novel Moby Dick, today is the day the Pequod set sail from Nantucket, Mass.

1855- Ice hockey first played in North America at Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

1869- In Towash Texas John Wesley Hardin went into town for a friendly game of cards. He quarreled over the game with a man named Bradley. The two went out into the street to shoot it out in classic gunfighter style. Bradley’s shot missed but Hardin drilled him dead. John Wesley Hardin wasn’t as famous as Jesses James or Billy the Kid but he was one of the deadliest gunfighters of the west. His business card read J.Wesley Hardin, shootist.

1914- During World War One German and British soldiers facing each other across the Western Front held a spontaneous Christmas truce. After midnight the German guns ceased and the sounds of Christmas Carols drifted over the barbed wire. The British and French responded with serenades from their regimental bands. At dawn without any official sanction or orders the soldiers of both sides came out of their trenches and in the middle of No-Man's Land exchanged laughter, Schnapps, Scotch, tobacco and even played a good natured English football or soccer game together. Next morning the shooting resumed and the officers who allowed the fraternization were reprimanded.

1917-"Why Marry?" by Jesse Lynch Williams opened. The first play ever to win a Pulitzer Prize.

1929- The Fox Atlanta Theater opened on Peachtree St. A wild Moorish fantasy in part financed by the Shriners so they could use it for their meetings.

1931-The first BBC World Service Network broadcast. An address by King George V called "Around the Empire".

1937-NBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the legendary Arturo Toscanini premieres with its first radio broadcast. The studio used for the NBC broadcasts in 1975 was renovated to be the main set for Saturday Night Live.

1946-Comedian W.C. Fields died of alcoholism at 67. While in his hospital bed someone saw him reading a Bible. They said:" W.C. what are you doing with that? "Fields replied:" Looking for loopholes!"

1955- Chuck Jone's 'One Froggy Evening' premiered. Director Steven Speilberg calls it the "Citizen Kane of Cartoons." If you wonder why you never heard the old time ditty 'The Michigan Rag' anywhere else but here was because Carl Stalling wrote it specifically for the cartoon.

1974- A cyclone hits Darwin, Australia.

1977- Charlie Chaplin died quietly in his sleep at Vevey, Switzerland. He was 86.

1980- Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns finished reading Simon Schaara’s novel about the Battle of Gettysburg called The Killer Angels. He tells his father he is inspired to make a documentary about the Civil War. The Civil War took six years to make and ran in 1990, but it was one of the most popular documentary films in the US and redefined the medium of documentary filmmaking.

1989- Romanian Communist dictator Nicholai Cercescu and his wife were executed on live television. Cercescu ran the last mad-Stalinist tyranny in Eastern Europe. Finally the army joined the people and overthrew Cercescu. Madame Cercescu, unrepentant, bellowed defiance at the cameras as they were stood up against the wall. They were so hated that the presiding officer barely had time to get out of the way of the firing squad and say "Ready..Aim.." before the troops started shooting. Instead of being given one round each with the Unknown Blank Cartridge, the men had asked for extra clips. The death penalty was abolished in Romania immediately afterwards.

1989- Hot tempered NY Yankees manager Billy Martin died in a car accident.

1991- General Party Secretary and Premier Mikhail Gorbachov resigned and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, aka the Soviet Union, ceased to exist. In it's place is the Confederation of Independent States led by the Federation of Russia under Boris Yeltsin.

1998- Fidel Castro allowed the resumption of Christmas celebrations in Cuba, outlawed since 1960.

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Merry Christmas, Freylich Chaunnakah, Happy Winter Solstice, Happy Birth of Horus, Happy Washing of the Buddha, Happy Birth of Mithras, Io, Io, Saturnalia, Joyeux Noel, Bozego Narodzenia, Frohe Weinacht, Helige Yule, Feliz Navidad, Prettig Kerstfeest, Nadolig llawen, Selamat Hari Krismas, Happy Birth of Sol Invictus the Sungod, Happy death and rebirth of Baldur son of Odin, Happy beginning of the rise of Porsephone back from Hades to her mother Demeter.
Tom & Pat in 1982.click to enlarge

To one and all, a Merry Christmas, from Tom & Pat Sito.
click to enlarge.

Quiz Question Answered below: Why do we pull cut down trees into our homes and decorate them with glass balls to celebrate Christmas?
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history for 12/24/2007
Birthdays:, Roman Emperor Servius Galba, English King John Lackland, Dr Benjamin Rush, Kit Carson, Howard Hughes, Ava Gardner, Michael Curtiz real name Michali Kertesz, I.F.Stone, Robert Joffrey of the Joffrey Ballet, Mean Joe Green, John Matusak, Susan Lucci, Nicholas Meyer, Ricky Martin is 37

This was the birth festival of Mithras, the Persian sun god. Mithraism was Christianity's chief competitor for converts during the late Roman Empire. It professed a dualistic theology, that God and the Devil battled equally for the souls of men: light and dark, hot and cold, day and night, etc. It was very popular among the troops of Rome’s Legions. There were Mithraic temples from Scotland to Iran, and even into the Middle Ages it resurfaced as a Christian heresy, Manicheanism and later Catharism. There are 200,000 Zoroastrians around today and 18,000 in North America. Legend says Mithras was born in the wilderness and was adored by shepherds. Hmmm.
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1247- Sir Robin of Loxley, called Robin Hood, died. Legend has it that he fired an arrow out his window with instructions to bury him where it fell.

1652- In England the Puritan Parliament of Oliver Cromwell forbade any celebration of Christmas. Their brethren the Puritans of Massachusetts would arrest anyone found making merry and fine them three shillings. But after the restoration of King Charles II the partying came back.

1783 - the American Revolution concluded, General George Washington arrived home at Mt. Vernon :" The scene is at last closed. I feel myself eased of the load of public care."

1814- U.S. and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812. John Quincy Adams headed the American negotiation team. The British had demanded a independent Indian buffer state in the Great Lakes between the US and Canada, and the US demanded the Pacific Northwest, but all they got was the status quo before the war started. The news wouldn't get across the Atlantic for two months and in the meantime Americans and Englishmen would murder each other one last time at the Battle of New Orleans (Jan 8th).

1848-the song Silent Night composed by an Austrian minister named Rudolph Scribner.

1862- Near Mufreesboro Tennessee Confederate guerrilla Col. John Hunt Morgan took advantage of the Christmas truce to get married. The ceremony was conducted by Confederate General Leonidas Polk, who was an ordained Methodist Bishop. Both men would not survive the Civil War.

1888- Vincent Van Gogh cuts off a piece of his left ear after an argument with Paul Gaugin over the affection of a prostitute named Rachel. He sent his ear to the prostitute. She fainted.

1889- Daniel Stover & W. Hance of Freeport Ill. invented the bicycle backpedal brake.

1922- The BBC presented it’s first radio play:" The truth about Father Christmas."

1941- General MacArthur had to abandon the Philippine capitol Manila to the advancing Japanese army. He withdrew to the island fortress of Corregidor, while his exhausted Philippine-American troops set up a last line of defense on the Bataan Penninsula.

1941- German Admiral Doenitz dispatched advanced 5 long range U-Boats to attack ships off the American Coast. Operation Drumroll.

1951- Gina Carlo Menotti’s opera "Amal and the Night Visitors" premiered.

1964- First day shooting on the “Cage” a pilot for a new TV show called Star Trek. Jeffrey Hunter was the first captain, later replaced by William Shatner when Hunter’s wife advised him to skip the series. She was worried he’d be typecast.

1968- Apollo 8 went into orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders become the first men to reach the moon and win the Space Race. They orbited but did not land, that was for Apollo 11 next year. Borman sent a message to Earth Christmas night by reading from Genesis as they sent back the first images of Earth, a little blue gem in a black cosmos: "And God said: Let there be Light, etc." To a world traumatized by the riots and assassinations of 1968, Apollo 8’s message ended the year on a positive note. That humans could still dream to be better than they were.

1968- Twentieth Century Fox announced that legendary Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa had been fired from the production of TORA-TORA-TORA. Producer Darryl Zanuck’s original concept was the story of Pearl Harbor told by Kurosawa from the Japanese side and David Lean from the American side. But Lean passed and Richard Fleischer stepped in. Kurosawa spent a year in research, which meant fighting his crew and Japanese conservatives over Japanese culpability in the surprise attack. By now was physically and emotionally exhausted. He once assaulted the clapper boy because he clapped the scene title board sticks too loud. Kursosawa was fired this day and the Japanese sections were directed by Toshio Fukusaku and Masuda, who’s previous credit was the Green Slime.

1985- Fidel Castro gives up smoking cigars, on doctors orders.

1990- Tom Cruise married Nicole Kidman.

1992- Outgoing President George H. W. Bush Sr. announced Presidential Pardons for all the former Reagan Whitehouse staff implicated in the Iran Contra Scandal. Caspar Weinberger, Bud McFarlane and probably himself.

1997- The first Hannaukah menorah lit in Vatican City.

1997- 62 year old Film director Woody Allen married 27 year old Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his former lover Mia Farrow. When asked to explain himself the director said: " The Heart wants what it Wants.."
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Question: Why do we cut down trees, set them up in our houses and decorate them with glass balls to celebrate Christmas?

Answer:
In Ancient times Germans and Vikings brought evergreen boughs into their homes at the winter solstice to bring back the plants from winter. Legend was in the 8th Century Saint Boniface stopped pagan Germans from sacrificing to Odin at a sacred oak by declaring the oak sacred to the Christ child. In the Middle Ages today was the Feast of Saints Adam & Eve. The western theatrical tradition survived in the form of Medieval Mystery Plays, acting out stories from the Bible. So this day they would do a play about the temptation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. A tree was brought into the church and decorated to represent the Tree of Life, glass balls representing the fruit. This is one of the origins of the Christmas Tree, The Feast of Adam and Eve was dispensed with during the Counter-Reformation. This custom was brought to America first by Hessian German soldiers, but it really caught on when Queen Victoria's husband German Prince Albert set up a Christmas Tree in the British royal palace in the 1840. Charles Dickens called it " A new German toy."
In 1877 The New York Times called Xmas trees " A useless rootless corpse, unworthy of the day.." But soon everyone had to have one, and anything fashionable in England was soon cool in America too. Thomas Edison first replaced the candles with a string of electric lightbulbs in 1882, President Grover Cleveland lit the first White House Christmas tree in 1895.

Victoria & Albert at Christmas.

Question: Who came up with celebrating the birth of Jesus by cutting a tree down and setting it up in your house with lights and glass balls?

Yesterday’s Quiz: Why is Santa Claus also called St Nicholas and Kris Kingle?
See below at 1823 for the answer.
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History for 12/23/2007
Birthdays; Joseph Smith -Founder of Mormonism, Paul Hornung, Ruth Roman, Otto Soglow -cartoonist creator of 'the Little King', Frank Morgan (the Wizard of Oz actor was also the first president of the Screen Actor's Guild) Jose Greco, Elizabeth Hartmann, Harry Guardino, Claudio Scimone, Vincent Sardi of Sardi’s restaurant in NY, Harry Shearer, Bob Barker, Japanese Emperor Akihito is 74

1740-King Frederick the Great of Prussia attended a masked ball. He finished his coffee, said good night, mounted his horse and invaded Silesia. He described it as “my own little masquerade".

1753- A twenty year old buckskin clad surveyor from Virginia almost drowned when a raft his party was pulling across the Allegheny River capsized. Miraculously, despite his inability to swim and the icy water, he made it to safety. His name was George Washington.

1786- HMS Bounty sets sail from Portsmouth. Their mission to the South Seas was to bring back breadfruit plants and see if the breadfruit could be a cheap dietary staple like potatoes from America, except these would be used to extend the lives of the slaves in Jamaica and Barbados tending the sugar cane fields. But Mr. Christian and the crew would mutiny against tyrannical Captain Bligh and set him adrift in a rowboat.

1823- SANTA CLAUS BORN. This day the poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" was published anonymously in The Troy Sentinel, a New York newspaper. . Several years after the authorship was claimed by a Bronx Bible teacher, the Reverend Clement Clarke Moore, and he was celebrated in his time as the father of Santa Claus until his death in 1863.The poem completed the synthesis of English and Dutch folk traditions that were merging in New York into our modern concept of Santa. The Dutch Klaus-in-the-Cinders" or Kris Kringle was an elf who climbed down chimneys to give children toys. He merged with the British Father Christmas or Saint Nicholas who was a big fat jolly bishop with a white beard in a red suit. In an 1859 reprint of the famous poem famed cartoonist Thomas Nast (who created the Republican elephant and Democratic donkey) drew the first likeness of Santa Claus. Because of residual rivalry from the Civil War claiming Santa was a Yankee or came from old Dixie, in 1867 Nast ended the argument by declaring Claus’s true address to be the North Pole. The likeness we all recognize was created by illustrator Haddon Sundblom for a Coca-Cola ad campaign in 1934. In 2000 a literary-forensic specialist challenged Clement Moores authorship. He claimed an Revolutionary War veteran from Poughkeepsie named Major Henry Livingston actually wrote the poem. He uses as evidence the poetry style of Livingston being much closer to the anonymous poem than Rev Moores. But we may never know.

Thomas Nast's Santa from 1859.
Sundblom's Santa

Sundblom made Santas for Coke ads, but he made more money painting Santas like this. Ho-Ho-Ho!

1834- In London Joseph Hansom patented Hansom cabs. This is the one horse, two wheeled cab with the driver in back. Cab is shortened from Cabriolet.

1857- Ex-army officer, failed businessman and town drunk Ulysses Grant pawned his watch so he could buy Christmas presents for his wife and kids. From this rock bottom he would eventually rise to win the Civil War, become President of the United States and the most famous American of his time.

1893- Humperdinck's opera "Hansel und Gretel" debuts in Weimar Germany.

1894- Claude DeBussey’s “Afternoon of a Faun” premiered in Paris.

1912- France’s leading literary magazine Nouvelle Revue Francaise rejected a new novel by an author named Marcel Proust “A La Recherche du Temps Perdu” “Remembrance of Things Past”. One critic wrote: “Maybe I’m dead from the neck up, but I can’t see why the author needed 20 pages to describe how he got out of bed in the morning!” Remembrance of Things Past became one of the great works of the Twentieth Century.

1912- The Max Sennett short comedy “Hoffmeyer’s Release” premiered, the first comedy featuring the Keystone Cops.

1913- Young Italian Rudolph Valentino arrived in America to seek his fortune. He was so poor that after a year he sent his parents a photo of himself in a borrowed tuxedo to allay their fears. He worked as a nightclub dancer and gigolo until becoming a Hollywood film star in 1921.

1930- Young actress Betty Davis signed her first contract with Universal Studio.

1935- Walt Disney sent a detailed memo to art teacher Don Graham outlining his plans for retraining his animators to do realistic feature films.

circa-1935- This was the traditional day for Republic Pictures to fire all their employees and hire them back after New Years so they wouldn't have to pay them holiday pay. Republic billed itself on it’s business cards as The Friendly Studio.

1944-The Germans had timed their surprise offensive “The Battle of the Bulge” to coincide with a heavy storm system over northern Europe. The snow and poor visibility kept Allied airforces helpless and grounded. As Third Army was moving northward to rescue soldiers trapped in the surrounded Belgian town of Bastogne General Patton called the Third Army’s chaplain to him. “Captain!” Old Blood & Guts growled:” I want a prayer for good weather! Have it in my hands in an hour!” Dutifully the prayer was written and recited throughout the army. This day on cue the sky cleared and the sun shined for the first time in a week. The slow moving German Tiger Tanks proved easy pickings for Allied fighter planes. Gen. Patton’s reaction: “That chaplain! Make him a Major!”

1947- Two Bell laboratory scientists invent the Transistor. Nobody was quite sure what to do with the little thing until Texas Instruments invented the portable radio in 1954.

1972- The Immaculate Reception. Football’s Pittsburgh Steelers were trailing the Oakland Raiders 7-6 with one second to go when they scored a touchdown and won.

1973- Soap Opera “the Young and The Restless” premiered.

I was googling my book Drawing the Line and I saw it's being offered for sale at WalMart. A union book on sale at WalMart..hmmm, Go Figure. Ya can't make this stuff up. We saw Kevin Lima's ENCHANTED tonight. Great job! Congrats to all the team, including many of my old friends. Too bad there wasn't enough animation to make Oscar consideration.

Evan Spiridelis sent me the link to the latest Jib-Jab year end review. They call it their Non-Crappy Holiday E-Card.
http://www.jibjab.com/sendables/274/in_2007
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Quiz: Why is Santa Claus also called St Nicholas and Kris Kingle?

Yesterday’s Question answered below: Another holiday question: Why reindeer? Why not eight tiny horses?
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History for 12/22/2007
Birthdays: Josef Stalin- real name Jozef Djugashvili, James Oglethorpe the founder of the State of Georgia, Jean Racine, Giacomo Puccini, Connie Mack, J. Arthur Rank, Ladybird Johnson, Deems Taylor, Jean Michel Basquiat, Barbara Billingsley, Peggy Ashcroft, Emil Sitka, Gene Rayburn, Hector Elizondo, Diane Sawyer, Steve Carlton, Steve Garvey, Diane Sawyer, Robin Gibb & Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, Ralph Fiennes is 44

Happy Winter Solstice! The shortest day of the year. Ancient Egyptians made offering to the god Horus to return from the Land of the Dead. Zoroastrians light fires on their roofs to Ahura Mazda and Vikings brew an extra strong beer and bring evergreen garlands indoors to decorate their homes.

1742-HALELIEUYAH! HALELIEUYAH!- George Fredrich Handel's oratorio "the Messiah" debuted in Dublin. Legend says he completed the work in only three weeks. When Messiah was played in London King George II was so moved by the "Halelieuyah Chorus" that he rose to his feet. Of course then everyone else immediately had to also and to this day the tradition is to stand during it's singing. Critics of the king said the only reason he stood up was the silly old duffer thought they were playing the national anthem. Handel was beloved of the British despite curious behavior like ordering three dinners and eating them himself. He had a bad temper that made him throw a bass drum at his musicians when they played off key and he once threatened to throw a soprano out of a window. Handel at first had a bad grasp of English. After hearing the Messiah when someone asked him how could he write so sublimely in a language he had so little of, he replied :"It ist because I haff a little Religion in me alzo !" Truth be told he had an English collaborator named Whitney who picked appropriate passages from the Bible.

1808-DA-DA-DA- DUMMMMM…..Beethoven first performed his 5th Symphony. It was a memorable four hour concert that also premiered his Fantasia for Piano, Orchestra & Chorus, several octets and he did piano improvisations.

1849-Russian writer Fyodor Dostoeyevsky had been a political radical. On this day the Czar's secret police the Ohkrana broke his spirit by a cruel ruse. They arrested him for treason. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. He was given a last meal, received Last Rites from a priest, blindfolded and stood before a firing squad. But before the guns would go off the squad stopped and his sentence was commuted. He was sent instead to Siberia for four years. This naturally had an adverse effect on his sensitive nature and he spent his later years a raving conservative.

1864- General Sherman marching through Georgia reached the Sea and telegraphed Lincoln :”I present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah”. Sherman spared Savannah the depredations his men committed in the rest of the state, many say because he had friends there before the war, but also because he needed a deep water port for a winter base that the US Navy could supply him from.

1882- Thomas Edison introduced the string of electric Christmas Tree lights replacing candles.

1940- Nathaniel West, novelist author of Day of the Locust and Miss Lonelyhearts, was killed in a car crash in L.A..

1941-Now that America was officially at war with the Axis, Prime Minister Winston Churchill slips across U-Boat infested waters to spend a month at the White House planning strategy with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Churchill liked to dictate memos from his bath. When Roosevelt was told he could enter the room he was embarrassed and excused himself to leave. Churchill stood up from the tub wearing nothing but soapsuds and the cigar in his teeth and declared: "THE PRIME MINISTER OF GREAT BRITAIN HAS NOTHING TO HIDE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES !"

1944- During the Battle of the Bulge a German officer was sent under a white flag to Gen.McAulliffe's American troops in Bastogne. His message was “You are surrounded with no hope of relief. Surrender or be annihilated!” General McAuliffe sent him a simple reply:" NUTS!' McAulliffe's force was eventually rescued by Patton. In later years McAullife grew tired of the fame of being the general who said "nuts". At a party a Manhattan socialite once said to him: "How do you do, General Nuts".

1964- In Chicago Comedian Lenny Bruce was sentenced to four months in prison on obscenity charges. When the arresting officer read aloud his jokes the jury laughed but convicted him anyway. Bruce complained about the policeman’s delivery. One fan arrested that night as well was future comic George Carlin.

1973- The 55 miles per hour speed limit was set for all US interstate highways.

2001- THE SHOE BOMBER. Would-be terrorist Richard Reid tried to blow up an American Airlines flight from Rome to Orlando by trying to ignite a substance concealed in his sneakers. He was stopped and beaten silly by his fellow travelers, including a 6’8 pro basketball player returning home from the Italian leagues.
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Yesterday’s Question: Why reindeer? Why not eight tiny horses?

ANSWER: No one is quite sure where Rev Clement Moore got the idea for eight tiny reindeer pulling St Nick’s sleigh when writing his famous 1859 poem. In pre Christian Scandinavia, where we get the Yule Log, Thor the god of thunder was pulled across the sky in a chariot pulled by magic flying goats. These sometimes get translated as reindeer. Two of the poem’s reindeer are Donner and Blitzen, thunder and lightning, Donner is the old German name for Thor.

A more likely origin is in Welsh tradition the Druid priest who collected the magic mushrooms for the Yule celebrations traditionally wore red fur with white facings and buttons. He fed the mushrooms to reindeer and brewed a beer from their urine, which gave you the high without the toxicity.

jingle bells, jingle bells

Sound weird? You got a better explanation? So Merry Christmas! And please pass the reindeer pee!