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from Photographers Blog:
A Klingon Christmas Carol
By Jim Young
"ram nI' tay"
Which in the Klingon language means “Festival of the long night”, because fictional alien cultures obviously don’t observe Christmas.
SLIDESHOW: A Klingon Christmas Carol
Having seen Christmas decorations up since before Thanksgiving Day and hearing the cringing sound of carols in shopping malls everywhere, I was looking for a different way to ring in the holiday cheer and what better way than to cover a take on the Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol” as performed by Klingons.
Klingons, for those not fortunate enough to be raised on Star Trek as a child, are aliens from the television series and though the show has been off the air for over 40 years, it continued on through movies and devoted fans everywhere.
A Chicago based theatre company used the language created by philologist Dr. Marc Okrand, who was hired by Paramount Pictures to develop the language and it is the first full-length play ever to be produced entirely in the Klingon language.
from Photographers Blog:
Christmas in Afghanistan
Baghlan, Afghanistan
By Fabrizio Bensch
There are thousands of miles that separate the German soldiers in Afghanistan from home. For up to one year, they may be stationed in Afghanistan, but for most of them no more than four to five months.
The lead up to Christmas in Germany has a very long tradition and the arriving season is dominated by beautifully decorated shop windows in department stores and the smell of gingerbread and cinnamon. Christmas trees are festively illuminated in the streets with Christmas decoration and Christmas markets and Santa Claus are in every city.
from Photographers Blog:
The people behind your mail
Chicago, Illinois
By John Gress
Every afternoon I walk through the front door and step over my mail. When I pick it up, I never think about where its been or how its made it to my home - God only knows, I guess, well sort of...
After spending most of Thursday with United States Postal Service employees, I know a lot more about how it made its way to my door than ever before.
from Photographers Blog:
Where your Christmas tree comes from
West Jefferson, North Carolina
By Chris Keane
Having lived in North Carolina my entire life we have always bought a real Christmas tree every December. Growing Christmas trees in North Carolina is serious business with over 1,600 active growers working 25,000 acres.
The last few years I have wanted to make the trip up to the mountains to photograph a Christmas tree farm. This year I did some research and found out that the White House Christmas tree was coming from North Carolina. Since the White House Christmas tree program began in 1966 North Carolina has led the states, with trees being chosen 12 times from here. This year Peak Farms won the honor of having a tree selected for the White House.
from Photographers Blog:
Christmas comes early to China
By Carlos Barria
He Heping, who runs a factory that makes plastic Christmas trees in Yiwu, talks with one of his employees as they finish up a massive order destined for the Netherlands.
He started this business more than ten years ago after an uncle encouraged him to produce plastic Christmas trees. His company had been making knives, but the uncle had visited Serbia at the end of the Balkan War, and came home convinced that a product related to seasonal good cheer represented a better business prospect.
from Left field:
NFL Week 16 Christmas Lineman picks
By Steve Keating
Well, after two weeks of 4-2 the Lineman is still searching for that perfect Christmas gift and hopes he has found it with this six-pack of holiday picks.
Keeping in the spirit of the holiday season, the Lineman offers you all the best and may all your picks be winners HO HO HO.
from Left field:
Post-Christmas cheer in Oslo for out-of-contract players
By Philip O'Connor, Scandinavia sports correspondent
For many football fans, the post-Christmas blues will be banished by the prospect of their club buying big when the transfer window opens in January.
But the out-of-contract players taking part in the FIFPro Winter Tournament in Oslo are hoping to get their futures sorted out before the window opens again.
from John Lloyd:
Finding a new role for churches
The opinions expressed are his own.
There is a poem, written in 1955, by the English poet Philip Larkin, called Church Going. It tells of the poet’s solitary penchant for cycling about villages, visiting country churches, empty, sometimes ruined, each with a “tense, musty, unignorable silence.” In deft touches, he writes of taking off his bicycle clips in lieu of doffing a non-existent cap; of experiencing an inexplicable pleasure in standing in these “frowsty barns”; yet finishing his visit feeling “much at a loss.”
He ends with a reflection: that the church is “a serious house on serious earth,” and that
from Edward Hadas:
The spirit of Christmas presents
By Edward Hadas
The opinions expressed are his own.
Ah, the curse of materialism. The true spirit of Christmas has been obliterated by a landslide of gifts. The crass commercialism which surrounds the experience of holiday shopping, not to mention the returns and post-Christmas sales, has turned this joyous holiday into little more than an exaltation of the worst aspects of our modern consumerist economy.
Or so it is often said. But is the complaint fair? It’s certainly true that the exchange of gifts on a large scale is a relatively new feature of Christmas festivities. In the 1840s, Charles Dickens has the Spirit of Christmas Present take the miser Ebenezer Scrooge to witness joyous celebrations of the feast. Food, drink and good cheer are in abundant supply, but there are no presents.
from Oddly Enough Blog:
Yule laugh, yule cry…
Blog Guy, what do you think is the biggest holiday for your blog?
Christmas, for sure. We celebrate it for most of the year. Not only that, we're able to appreciate BOTH holidays.
You mean the religious Christmas and commercial Christmas?
No, I mean the magical goosebump childhood excitement Christmas, and the darkly absurd, "Look, somebody shot at Santa's helicopter!" Christmas.
