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Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Boxing Day

Greetings, dear readers. I hope the Christmas break was joyous and peaceful. As we start the countdown to the new year, here is a bit of trivia for Boxing Day . . .

Boxing Day is the day after Christmas Day but is not celebrated as a holiday in all countries. Having originated in the United Kingdom, it is celebrated in a number of countries that previously formed part of the British Empire.

The name Boxing Day has nothing to do with pugilism or of ridding the house of Christmas packaging from the day before. Instead the name harks back to the age old British practice of giving cash or durable goods to those of the lower classes. Gifts among equals were exchanged on or before Christmas Day but generosity to those less fortunate happened the day after. But why Boxing Day. There are several theories:

- That members of the merchant class gave boxes of food and fruit to tradespeople and servants the day after Christmas in an ancient form of Yuletide tip.

- That the day after Christmas the lord of the manor gave his serfs anr annual allotment of practical goods, such as spun cloth, leather goods, durable food supplies and tools. As to who received what depended on the status of the worker and family size. These were not gifts but allocated entitlements and were distributed in boxes.

- That servants in Britain carried boxes to their masters when they arrived for work the day after Christmas Day, it being a tradition that at on this day all employers would put coins in the boxes as a special end-of-year gift, akin to an early form of Christmas bonus

- That church boxes with donations for the were opened on Christmas Day and the contents distributed by the clergy the following day.

The theme common to all these theories is of persons of lesser standing being gifted or allocated benefits via boxes. There was no gift in return to the superiors, that would presume to be a presumptuous act of equality.

The Christmas bonus gift box for tradies is mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary entry for 19 December 1663: “. . . thence by coach to my shoemaker’s and paid all there, and gave something to the boys’ box against Christmas.”

Saint Stephen's Day, or the Feast of Saint Stephen, is a Christian saint's day to commemorate Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and is celebrated on 26 December in the Latin Church and 27 December in Eastern Christianity. The name may be familiar from the carol: “Good King Wenceslas looked out on the Feast of Stephen…” Saint Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia (907–935) was a saintly king who went out in a storm to give a poor man not just the bare minimum of fuel, but also a feast. As he and his servant brave the elements, the King is so pious that even his footsteps give off enough heat to warm his cold and tiring page. Hence the Boxing Day tradition of giving probably built on the actions and commemorations of Saint Stephen and King Wenceslas.

In the UK, Boxing Day is a bank holiday (in England, Wales and Northern Ireland since 1871). When 26 December falls on a Saturday, the Boxing Day public holiday is moved to the substitute day, which is the following Monday. If 26 December falls on a Sunday, the substitute public holiday is the following Tuesday.

In Australia, Boxing Day is a federal public holiday. The Australian state of South Australia instead observes a public holiday known as Proclamation Day on the first weekday after Christmas Day or the Christmas Day holiday.

In Canada, Boxing Day is a federal statutory holiday. Government offices, banks and post offices/delivery are closed. In some Canadian provinces, Boxing Day is a statutory holiday that is always celebrated on 26 December. In Canadian provinces where Boxing Day was a statutory holiday, and it falls on a Saturday or Sunday, compensation days are given in the following week.

While not generally observed in the United States, on 5 December 1996, Massachusetts Gov. William F. Weld declared 26 December as Boxing Day in Massachusetts, in response to the efforts of a local coalition of British citizens to "transport the English tradition to the United States", but not as an employee holiday.

In the UK, Canada, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago and New Zealand, Boxing Day is primarily known as a shopping holiday, much like Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) in the United States. Boxing Day sales with dramatic price reductions are common in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

On Boxing Day 2004 a massive earthquake in the Indian Ocean created a tsunami that killed 275 people.

The Boxing Day Test match is a cricket Test match held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia involving the Australian cricket team and an opposing national team which is touring Australia during the southern summer. It begins annually on Boxing Day and is played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race is an annual event hosted by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia, starting in Sydney, New South Wales on Boxing Day and finishing in Hobart, Tasmania. The race distance is approximately 630 nautical miles (1,170 km). The race is widely considered to be one of the most difficult yacht races in the world.

Boxing Day is the day that Bytes returned after Christmas this year.

Saturday, December 22, 2018

No Bytes

I will be away from my computer for a few days and there won't be any Bytes posts in that period. Bytes will return on Boxing Day.

I take this opportunity to wish all readers and their families, friends and loved ones a safe and happy Christmas .

Otto

Thought for the Day

Five By Five: Christmas Songs

5 facts about 5 songs . . .

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WHITE CHRISTMAS:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7S-IidmcSN8

This song of holiday nostalgia was written by Irving Berlin for the 1942 movie Holiday Inn, where Bing Crosby sings it from the perspective of a New Yorker stranded in sunny California during Christmas. That’s the link above to the film clip. By 1954, this song was a holiday favourite, and that year Paramount Pictures released a movie called White Christmas to tie in with it. Crosby starred in the film along with Danny Kaye, and performed this song again.

The song enjoyed a sales resurgence every Christmas after it was first released in 1942. It went to #1 that year in America, and again reached the top spot in 1945 and 1947. The song appeared on various Billboard charts every year until 1963 when it finally dropped off the Hot 100.

It is the biggest-selling Christmas song of all time and was the biggest-selling song of all time, going back and forth with Bill Haley's "Rock Around The Clock," until Elton John released his tribute to Princess Diana - "Candle In The Wind."

According to Mark Steyn's “A Song for the Season”, "White Christmas" owes much of its enduring popularity to World War II, specifically the attack on Pearl Harbor that led to US involvement, because the song adopted a significance beyond the reaches of Hollywood: "Had America entered the war in Europe in 1939, 'White Christmas' might have been just a hit-record from a so-so movie. Instead, 1942 was the American serviceman's first Christmas away, in the Pacific, under glorious sunny skies that only made home seem even more distant."

Christmas was a painful time for Irving Berlin and his second wife, Ellin Mackay, who found their infant son dead in his bassinet early Christmas morning in 1928.

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LITTLE DRUMMER BOY:

"The Little Drummer Boy" was originally known as "Carol of the Drum" and was written by the American classical music composer and teacher Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941. She based it upon a traditional Czech carol. The Czech original of the carol has never been identified.

"Carol of the Drum" appealed to the Austrian Trapp Family Singers, who first brought the song to wider prominence when they recorded it for Decca Records in 1951 on their first album for Decca.

This was released around Christmas every year from 1958-1962. It made the US Top 40 all five years and became a holiday classic.

According to Alexandra Petri, columnist for the Washington Post, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” is uncomfortable on the subject of consent, “Merry Christmas/War Is Over” is saccharine and cloying, and “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” is laying the groundwork for a surveillance state, but the worst Christmas song of all is “Little Drummer Boy.” She describes it as a story in which the boy is invited to a baby shower for someone he doesn’t know and where gifts are clearly expected, arriving without gifts and deciding instead to do an annoying drum solo. Not only that, he interrupts his narrative continually with “Pa rum pum pum pum”.

The story depicted in the song is somewhat similar to a 12th-century French legend where a juggler juggles before the statue of the Virgin Mary, and the statue, according to which version of the legend one reads, either smiles at him or throws him a rose.

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HAPPY XMAS (WAR IS OVER):

"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" was released in 1971 as a single by John & Yoko, and the Plastic Ono Band. The lyrics, by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, are set to the traditional English ballad "Skewball".

John and Yoko spent a lot of time in the late '60s and early '70s working to promote peace. In 1969, they put up billboards in major cities around the world that said, "War is over! (If you want it)." Two years later this slogan became the basis for this song when Lennon decided to make a Christmas record with an anti-war message. John also claimed another inspiration for writing the song: he said he was "sick of 'White Christmas.'"

The children's voices are the Harlem Community Choir, who were brought in to sing on this track. They are credited on the single.

Though now a Christmas standard, Lennon originally penned this as a protest song about the Vietnam War, and the idea "that we're just as responsible as the man who pushes the button. As long as people imagine that somebody's doing it to them and that they have no control, then they have no control."

John Lennon was shot and killed less than three weeks before Christmas in 1980. The song was re-released in the UK on December 20 of that year, reaching #2.

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ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU

Performed by American singer and songwriter Mariah Carey, she co-wrote and co-produced the song with Walter Afanasief.

"All I Want For Christmas Is You" was not released as a single, serving instead to drive sales of Mariah Carey's Merry Christmas album.

Probably not high up these days of Jamie Packer’s List of Favourite Christmas Songs.

This song is sung by Olivia Olson (Sam’s object of affection) at the Christmas concert in Love Actually. She does all her own singing in "All I Want for Christmas is You". She had such an amazing voice that Director Richard Curtis had it edited so that it sounded more like a child singing.

In December 2006 this became the first ringtone to achieve a RIAA Gold certification for sales of over 500,000. The next year, the ringtone was certified Platinum for a million, then Double Platinum for 2 million in 2009.

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SANTA BABY

One of the reasons that I have included this Christmas song is that I love the 2010 clip of our own singing budgie Kylie Minogue performing it at the Rockefeller Centre. See it at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFOu4OHV3Kg

Originally released by Eartha Kitt in 1953, the song is a tongue-in-cheek look at a Christmas list addressed to Santa Claus by a woman who wants extravagant gifts.

Along with "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," this was one of the first Christmas novelty songs. Christmas songs written at the time tended to be nostalgic looks at the holiday or kid's songs, but this one took a different approach, with Kitt singing about how she's been good all year and expects some very expensive gifts to appear, including a fur coat, a new coat and even a yacht.

In 1987 Madonna recorded it for the charity album A Very Special Christmas. Madonna's version brought the song back into the spotlight and it has been a Christmas standard ever since.

Eartha Kitt’s 1953 recording was banned in parts of the South: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk_GmhD053E

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Thought for the Day

Funny Friday

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Here we are, the last Funny Friday before Christmas, we got there . . .

(By the way, the above image was going to be the basis of my Christmas card this year with extra figures and faces uperimposed but daughter Acacia was unhappy with the quality of the GoT main image, hence the Star Wars alternative).

So this is Christmas, and what have you done?

The start of a John Lennon song, or the wife about to start an argument?

All you people telling me to take down the Christmas decorations all year.

Well, who’s laughing now?

I hate this time of year, all the adverts on the TV, leaflets through the doors, emails, more adverts, wherever you go there's some sort of in your face advertising campaign shoving Christmas down your throat. When did our once great nation become such sellouts for a fast payday. Its sad to see how society is manipulated. Thankfully over at Amazon.com things are different.

Finest of Funny Friday:

From the Archives, November 2012

Risque content follows.

You know that classic oldie about how Native Americans get their names. . .

A Native American lad asks the tribe’s chief how he names the tribe’s children. “When a papoose is born,” says the chief, “I enter the teepee and hold the child in my arms, then I walk outside and the first thing I see is what I name that child. That is why your brother is named Lone Eagle and your sister is Moonlight on Water. Why do you ask, Two Dogs Fucking?”

I came across a reference to a possible source for that joke, a book called Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett. Even if that book is not the origin of the joke, the variation in the book on the classic joke is quite witty:

"Why are you called One-Man-Bucket?"

"...In my tribe we're traditionally named after the first thing my mother sees when she looks out of the tepee after the birth. It's short for One-Man-Pouring-a-Bucket-of-Water-Over-Two-Dogs."

"That's pretty unfortunate."

"It's not too bad. It was my twin brother you had to feel sorry for. She looked out ten seconds before me to give him his name."

"Don't tell me, let me guess. Two-Dogs-Fighting?"

"Two-Dogs-Fighting? Two-Dogs-Fighting? Wow, he would have given his right arm to be called Two-Dogs-Fighting."

And a further variation:

Back in 2001, Chrysler was running an ad that praised the roomy interior of its Concorde model.

The ad showed a Chrysler Concorde being driven through a leafy suburban neighborhood.

A prim mom, who looks vaguely like Hillary Clinton, is driving with her young daughter. "Mom," the girl asks earnestly, "How did I get my name?" Mom, equally earnest, smiles warmly and says, "We named you kids after the places where you were conceived." Daughter: "So, that's why I'm named Savannah." Mom, smiling and pleased: "Right." At this point a female voice-over remarks, "Some like the redesigned Chrysler Concorde for its engaging style and engineering." Then another question occurs to the little girl. "But Mom, how did she get the name Concorde?" Mom's smile drops, and they both look at the infant strapped into a car seat in the back. Mom doesn't answer, and the earnest daughter's eyes fall on the car's name engraved in the dashboard. Mom smiles weakly.

The girl stares at her, appalled. The voice-over butts in again to say, "Others just like its really big back seat." We cut to an exterior shot of the car puttering through the burbs, as we hear the daughter say, "Aw, yuk, Mom."

Unfortunately complaints forced the ad to be taken off air.

See the ad by clicking on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuaIJGJNbzo

Gallery:

Christmas lights and decorations, with more risque content . . .