What's up with those reindeer games?

You can watch this later when you're wrapping all those gifts



In another life I used to run the Isle of Misfit Toys (don't ask.)


Here's your Today in History -
December 24, 1865 -
Southern whitefolk unite together to form a service organization wherein they consort with other southern whitefolk.



Members participate in festive cruciform fire ceremonies and lively negro butcherings.



By the 1920's membership in the Ku Klux Klan reaches an astonishing 2 million.


December 24, 1954 -
Rock musician Johnny Ace plays a little .45 calibre solitaire (Russian Roulette) at City Auditorium in Houston after a concert.



Blammo.

He thought it would impress his girlfriend - perhaps it did.



December 24, 1985 -
Fidel Castro announces that he has given up cigars.

Santa still leaves him a lump of coal in his stocking every Christmas.


Alright, I won't leave you on Christmas Eve with all of these fun facts, so I'll leave you with these thoughts from Henry Van Dyke (and no it's not Dick and Jerry's dad) -

There is a better thing than the observance of Christmas day, and that is, keeping Christmas.

Are you willing...

To forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you;
To ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you owe the world;
To put your rights in the background, and your duties in the middle distance, and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground;
To see that men and women are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy;
To own up to the fact that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life;
To close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness.

Are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing...

To stoop down and consider the needs and desires of little children;
To remember the weakness and loneliness of people growing old;
To stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask yourself whether you love them enough;
To bear in mind the things that other people have to bear in their hearts;
To try to understand what those who live in the same home with you really want, without waiting for them to tell you;
To trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you;
To make a grave for your ugly thoughts, and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open -

Are you willing to do these things, even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing...

To believe that love is the strongest thing in the world -
Stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death -
Then you can keep Christmas.
And if you can keep it for a day, why not always?

But you can never keep it alone.


Now get back to shlepping through the stores trying to find that last gift before I explain to you how the War of 1812 was resolved by the Treaty of Ghenet in 1814 and yet the Battle of New Orleans happened after the treaty was signed.










And so it goes