Hi, friends!
Happy Sunday! I hope the weekend went well and you are rested up for Monday.
Several of my friends with kids are posting Elf on the Shelf stuff on facebook every day. Others are talking about annual holiday events they celebrate.
Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Nicholas, which we always observed in catholic school and in my house growing up. I don’t the actual history of the saint, and I don’t care enough to look it up. St. Nick’s day meant kids put out a shoe before bed on December 5th and then St. Nicholas (aka a parent) put candy or small toys in the shoe for them to find on the morning of the 6th.
In grade school, they gave us candy canes which were supposed to symbolize the crook that Saint Nicholas carried. Being a kid, we always liked any excuse for candy in school. In high school, one of the nuns dressed up in a Santa suit and fake beard and a short teacher dressed as a Christmas elf and they would come into the cafeteria during lunch and throw handfuls of candy canes on the tables for us.
In grad school in Alabama, I was surprised that none of my friends grew up doing anything for St. Nick’s day. They were like yeah but that’s a Catholic thing not in the bible and my reply of oh I forgot about Santa being in the New Testament did not go over well. Hahahahaha.
We did St Nick’s day growing up but we used the Christmas stockings. My mother always put a great assortment of little toys, candy, nuts (which I never ate) and always stuffed the toe with an orange.
We don’t do Elf on a Shelf but love our Zuck on a Truck…
Wow, that is chilling…
In addition to regular presents my kids get a present from a dimwitted, Krampus like creature (but not as cruel as Krampus) who is totally, completely not made up. Not at all.
They typically get something like a beet or dried up carrot crudely wrapped up in brown paper, because he isn’t very competent. He sends them a rambling email every year filled with grammatical and spelling errors. My kids aren’t so amused.
Oh that’s awesome. I love it.
I hope you’re the parent that when they want to throw away the carrot, you’re like “waaaait that would be fine in soup don’t throw away a perfectly useful carrot!”
I love it! Save the rambling letters and put them in a book. They’ll love it when they’re grown.
The eyerolling every year is my favorite part of Christmas. Not that I have any idea who this creature is, mind you.
I grew up Catholic but went to public school. We celebrated St Nick at catechism, Sunday School to you Protestants.
Never heard of it. But then again my “formal religious education” began at around age 10 and ended quite decisively at age 12.
im in the netherlands and went shopping yesterday…
*winces*
further down south the blackface is gone nowadays…up here in the north….not so much
its not racist its tradition!
Ah, yes. I figured you’d mention this and probably took too long to type up my post. I still don’t know why this hasn’t stopped. All my Dutch expat friends hang their heads in shame when it comes up in conversation.
oh…i know why it hasnt stopped….the north is extremely white
like…90%+ so
once you cross the rivers you enter multi cultural land…where they’ve figured out people of different colours and cultures are people too (unless they are turkish or morrocan…we hates them…goddamn welfare queens running all our restaurants!)
but yeah…there is nothing to elaborate…
the reason zwarte piet is still going up here is as mentioned above….its not racist….its tradition!
usually followed by goddamn immigrants need to stop fucking up our traditions
😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬
As a secular Jew whose household more or less stopped doing many things (including anything but the most rudimentary of Chanukah observations) right around bat mitzvah time for me, I‘ve grown increasingly aware of the fact that most Anglo-American secularisms of Christian holidays are predominantly Protestant and I honestly don’t have all that much familiarity with the wider array of Catholic holidays. Not even living amongst so many Italians and Italian Americans. I’d sort of thrown the Feast of St. Nick in with Christmas in general.
I’m sure Farscy will elaborate a bit more, but the whole Sinter Klaas and Zwarte Piet custom in the Netherlands is just so outdated and needs to change.
eh…i left my reply to your other comment…..got a little confused where i was commenting there
not a huge amount of stuff i can tell you about its origins tho….i grew up with it and never thought to question it…dec 5th is our presents day..as we dont do presents under the tree for christmas
i assume zwarte piet is a leftover from colonialism…over the years whitewashed into not a slave but a helper
and its not blackface….hes just that colour from scooting down all the chimneys
but yeah..eventually…even the north will give in….could be another 20 years tho….
HOW did you grow up Catholic and have a FUN holiday at the beginning of December?!?😉😂💖
The only “celebration” *I* can remember in Early December ever “celebrating,” is The Feast of the Immaculate Conception…
And in true catholic tradition, there IS no actual “feast” it’s just a “Holy Day of Obligation”… aka, one of those “mandatory” additional church-days… (Unless it falls on Sunday, of Course, because ya don’t have to go to church twice in one day!) just multiple times a week, some weeks.😉
And for the folks looking at the math & getting puzzled, contrary to popular belief, “The Immaculate Conception” was not when Mary got knocked up!
The Immaculate Conception was when Mary’s MOM (iirc, her name was Ann/Anne) got pregnant with Mary. Catholic tradition holds that because Mary was the only being to be born with an entirely clean soul, and without Original Sin, *hers* was “The Immaculate Conception.”
Most Non-Catholics, and even plenty of Catholics, mess it up all the time by thinking the Feast Day was about Jesus’ own conception!😉
Ha!
Feast of the Immaculate Conception is December 8th (sad I remembered that) and all we had to do that day was go to mass where they used the old 1800s hymns about Mary.
Not really a big deal for kiddo brighter.
And just BECAUSE, I’m taking advantage of the “OT,” part of the NOT, to celebrate the fact that Rod Carew was able to pull along his old friend, and AMAZING Twins player Tony O, to join himself and so many other greats, in the Baseball HOF😁🤗💖
The Great Tony O, Jim Kaat, and four more “old timers” who have sadly passed before the vote & announcement today (O’Neil, Miñoso, Hodges, & Fowler), were selected as inductees for the class of ’22💖💖💖
https://apnews.com/article/mlb-sports-minnesota-twins-alex-rodriguez-barry-bonds-6c91f6a9f3a5ec58c256296b56b21b5b
And a bit of explanation, for all of y’all who didn’t grow up around MN, as to why it’s SO awesome, that Tony O fiiiiinally got his Due!!!
In MN, for the decades before the ’87 and ’91 teams–before names like Herbie, Kirby, Berenguer, Danny Gladden, Lombo, Chili, & Morris, there were three names every kid in the state knew and adored…
The Killer, Carew, and Tony O.
Before the series’ that we Gen-X’ers grew up during, Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, and Tony Oliva were the Minnesota Twins.
They were the guys our parents grew up watching, and they were the guys who played in the first World Series the Twins played in (and sadly, lost).
Killer, Carew, and Tony O were the greats—the first three Twins’ players to have their numbers retired.
Although there is a minor mistake in that article–Tony isn’t “the only man in club history to be in uniform during both of the Twins’ World Series appearances.”
He’s the only man in club history to be in uniform during all *three* of the Twins’ World Series appearances!😃😁🤗💖
If you look at the date on the article, it was written mid-season, during 1991.
The 1991 season’s the one where Kirby had what was single-handedly one of the best MLB games EVER.
That was the game where Jack Buck uttered the infamous & oft-since copied line, “We’ll see you… Tomorrow night!”
Tony O has two World Series Twins rings, but he’s the only one who also played in the third Series.
And it’s just INCREDIBLY fitting, that he is fiiiiinally going to be in The Hall with Killebrew & Carew, and that Rod was the one who got Tony in there.
Like Harmon & Rod, Tony’s a class act, and is exactly the sort of quality player who deserves that sort of recognition, beyond the place where he played.
And it’s so right, that he, Harmon, & Rod will finally be *together* in the place that carries baseball history.💖💫💝
I was raised Catholic and my family never did anything in excess of putting up a tree and opening up presents. I was allowed to open up one early on xmas eve. My parents didn’t even push the Santa Claus narrative. We also didn’t go to church 😄
We only went to church for weddings/baptisms/funerals and during the years I had sacraments (2nd and 7th grade). We weren’t even Christmas/Easter catholics because my mom figured it pissed off all the regulars when people shoved into church for those 2 days.
I had mass weekly in grade school, that was assumed to be good enough.
Yeah, i did CCD growing up so I only went to mass maybe once a year? When it was part of class. More often before 1st communion or confirmation.