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"This Just In..."
We wish you a Merry Christmas. And a Happy Hanukkah. And may your Kwanza be joyful. This month's epistle is filled with bits of flotsam, absurdities and holiday lore. It is a celebration of celebrating and we hope that you and your family have the happiest of holidays - no matter how you celebrate.
More importantly, we thank you all for your participation with us this year - more than 1,500 people played our contests and on average more than twice that opened (and we hope devoured) each month's newsletter. Please tell us what you like - and what you would like to see more of - and we will do it.
Because,
"This Just In..."
is just for you.
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Lots of bad gifts out there this Holiday Season. What was the worst one you ever received Tell us here.
This gave us an idea. A bad idea. Here are some horrible Holiday Gift ideas that you should avoid at all costs:
"
Stuffed Geisha dolls glued into a 15-gallon aquarium"
"A $10 gift card to Olive Garden. It was from my grandma, I was 15 and couldn't drive. The nearest Olive Garden was ~25 miles away."
"My Aunty gave me what I thought was a hat. I only found out it was a tea pot cover after I wore it all day."
"A bouquet of thistles, because the guy I was dating told me I was 'pretty, but prickly.'"
"A jar of Nutella from my aunt, which isn't a bad gift in and of itself- but it was accompanied with 'so you can stop eating all of ours when you come to our house and bring your own next time
"Chocolates that had expired three years prior."
"A $50 Build-A-Bear gift card from my dad when I was 18 years old."
"A letter from my grandma explaining how to write a thank you note."
"My uncle gave me an encyclopedia of Swedish flowers. The book was in Swedish and had no pictures. I can't speak Swedish... and I was 8."
Here are some really bad idea for stuffing those stockings:
A... toilet shaped coffee mug.
Cockroach Stuffed Pillows... for ol lang syne, my friends.
Personalized Branding Irons...WT....?
Nothing Says Stop Like a Lung Ash Tray.
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A beer belly fanny pack for travel naturally. |
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T'was the day after Christmas...
Why do they call it Boxing Day?
A 19th-century George Cruikshank print has fun with Boxing Day.
Credit: The Print Collector/Getty Images
The day after Christmas is a hard day to work in retail, what with all the returns and exchanges. At least Black Friday is just about sales. We don't have a proper name for the Day After Christmas here in the States.
In England, it's Boxing Day; in Ireland and elsewhere, it's St. Stephen's Day. A Briton once explained that it was called Boxing Day because it's the day disappointed children punch one another out. No. Not really.
The real origins of Boxing Day go back to feudal times, when workers on a lord's estate would ask, on this day, for a Christmas box, in exchange for good service throughout the year. Later, the tradition expanded to include the collection of alms for the poor.
In Ireland, St. Stephen's Day brings the appearance of the Wren Boys- costumed revelers engaged in a ritualized hunting of a wren. There's a lot of marching around and collecting of money, some of which goes to charity and some of which goes to pay for a round at the pub. The veneration of the wren predates Christianity: the Irish word for wren, "dreoilin" - comes from two words, "draoi ean," the druid bird.
- J. Boyland.
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No. Snow!
It will not snow this winter.
However, just in case it does, we'd kindly ask that you clear a path from your cleared
driveway to your fill pipe so our drivers can deliver your Daniels fuel oil and propane without fear of
being swallowed in a drift. It happens.
Lost two of our best last year. Found them with the mid-
April thaw. Sad.
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New Holiday Traditions?
Here are some truly weird and semi-dangerous holiday traditions you might want to share with your family. If you're not too fond of your family.
Snap-dragon
(also known as
Flap-dragon
) was a
popular from about the 16th century. It was played during the winter, particularly on
Christmas Eve
.
Brandy
was heated and placed in a wide shallow bowl;
raisins
were placed in the brandy, which was then set alight. Typically, lights were extinguished or dimmed to increase the eerie effect of the blue flames playing across the liquor.
The aim of the game was to pluck the raisins out of the burning brandy and eat them, at the risk of being burnt.
According to an eighteenth-century article in
Richard Steele
's
Tatler
magazine,
"the wantonness of the thing was to see each other look like a
demon
, as we burnt ourselves, and snatched out the fruit
."
Snap-dragon was played in England, Canada, and the United States.
The first printed references to flapdragons are in Shakespeare's Love's Labour Lost (1594), "
Thou art easier swallowed than a flapdragon
."
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Bullet...Pudding with Jane Austen?
Parlour games were played throughout Christmas and during the 12
th
Night celebrations in Jane Austen's era. One favorite was Bullet Pudding, described by Fanny Knight, Jane Austen's niece.
Fanny describes it like this:
"You must have a large pewter dish filled with flour which you must pile up into a sort of pudding with a peak at the top, you must then lay a Bullet at top & everybody cuts a slice of it & and the person that is cutting it when the Bullet falls must poke about with their nose and chin until they find it & then take it out with their mouth which makes them strange figures all covered with flour but the worst is that you must not laugh for fear of getting flour up your nose & mouth & choking you. You must not use your hands to take the Bullet out."
(Call us crazy but
beyond the absurdity of that "game" was the 103 word opening sentence. Didn't Fanny have an editor?)
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Daniels Energy Partners
With Trinity Solar To Bring
Big Savings To Our Customers
If you've wondered about the benefits of adding solar to your home Daniels Energy has a partner with the answers. Trinity Solar.
43,000 homes installed solar with
Trinity in the Northeast.
Here are 4 Reasons To Consider Trinity Solar:
If You Qualify:
TRINITY Solar will install a solar system with NO out of pocket cost.
TRINITY Solar will guarantee your rate will be lower than your current provider.
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TRINITY Solar will cap your rate for term of your agreement.
There are lots of reasons to consider adding solar - and lots of questions to be answered.
Take the next step:
Call Lori at Daniels at
860.813.9122 x138
She will arrange for our Trinity representative
Richard Delorenze to contact you at
your convenience
.
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Holiday Art
The artist is: Yana Fefelova.
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Gotta Eat.
We love Hanukkah. It
is an 8-day long festive holiday that commemorates an improbable victory, some 22 centuries ago, by the Maccabees, a band of Jewish guerilla fighters seeking to reclaim their land, their
Temple
,
and their sovereignty from the oppressive rule of the Syrian Greek empire
(also sometimes called the Seleucid Empire).
The word "Hanukkah" means "dedication," and it refers to the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. Once the Maccabees had restored the Temple the traditional story says that they sought to relight a lamp known as the "eternal flame." But only one day's worth of consecrated olive oil could be found.
No one wanted to light the eternal flame only to see it sputter out after a day, but there was also a deep spiritual desire to rekindle the sacred lamp immediately. The priests decided to light it and hope for the best. Miraculously, it burned for eight days until fresh jars of olive oil were finally brought to keep the flame alive. Hence, the eight nights of candle lighting for Hanukkah.
And so began a tradition of eating oil based foods, including our favorite...
Potato Latkes.
C'mon, you know you want them...here's how:
Ingredients:
* 1/2 an onion
* 2 tbsp oil
* 3 tsp. kosher salt, divided
* 1.5lbs. Yukon Gold potatoes
* 2 eggs
* 1/4cup flour
* Oil for frying
Directions:
-
Dice the onion and sauté it in 2 tbsp. oil and 1 tsp. salt until golden.
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Grate the potatoes (by hand or in a food processor). Immediately transfer the grated potato to a bowl of cold water.
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Place the eggs, flour, fried onion and 2 tsp. salt in a separate bowl. Drain the grated potato well, add it to the rest of the ingredients and mix immediately.
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Heat 2-4 tbsp. of oil in a frying pan, over medium heat. Test the oil by dropping a tiny bit of the mixture into the pan. When the oil sizzles upon contact, it is ready.
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For uniform latkes, use a 1/4 or 1/8 cup measuring cup. Scoop the batter and gently drop it into the oil. Press down gently with the back of the measuring cup to flatten. Fry 2-3 minutes until golden, then flip the latkes and fry 1-2 minutes on the second side. Repeat until all the mixture has been fried. (You will need to add more oil to the pan every couple of batches.) More here:
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THE SANTA QUIZ
It's the holiday season and we're in the best of moods - so we're making this month's quiz the easiest one of the year. Simply identify Santa or his helper. For each one you get correct, you get an additional entry in the drawing. Get one - get one. Get four - get four. Get 'em all! So...tell us here and good luck.
Oh, last month
Carol P
correctly identified
Steven King
and
Patricia Z
recognized the
Giant Dragon at Wat Samphran Temple
.
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We're getting a tree again this year. Schelpping through the woods, cutting in down, hauling it home, arguing over the decorations and praying that it won't fall over for the three weeks it's up. Got us wondering...where did the tradition of the Christmas tree come from? And while we all know about the Rockefeller Center tree...what do others do around the world?
The Christmas tree appears to first be associated with the celebration of Christmas
, originating in Northern Europe.
The custom was developed in medieval
Livonia
(present-day
Estonia
and
Latvia
), and in early modern Germany
where Protestant Germans brought decorated trees into their homes. It acquired popularity beyond the Lutheran
areas of Germany
during the second half of the 19th century, at first among the upper classes.
The tree was traditionally decorated with "roses made of colored paper, apples, wafers, tinsel
, [and] sweetmeats". In the 18th century, it began to be illuminated by candles, which were ultimately replaced by Christmas lights
after the advent of electrification
.
Edible items such as gingerbread
, chocolate
and other sweets are also popular and are tied to or hung from the tree's branches with ribbons. In the Western Christian
tradition, Christmas trees are variously erected on days such as the
first day of Advent
or even as late as Christmas Eve
depending on the country.
More info on...Wikipedia!
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Surprise Link of the Month
Dessert, anyone?
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Here Are Some Trees From
Around the World
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And the largest in the world...Rio!
In addition to being the biggest Christmas tree in the world, at 278 feet, it is
also one of the most unusual. It floats in the city's lagoon, which sits just inland from famous Ipanema Beach. This is convenient, considering that Christmas falls in the middle of summer in Rio de Janeiro.
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5 Christmas/Holiday Movies
"
She who must be obeyed,"
has been ill and has begun watching all the Hallmark channels. That means 24/7/90 days of Christmas-Holiday movies. None of them any good. So, as we clean up the tinsel let us suggest these five films to help get you through the holidays.
(Die Hard is not a Christmas movie)
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#3 - National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
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#5 - It's a Wonderful Life
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Playing at Trinity College's Cinestudio Dec 22,23 and naturally ...24th
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Daniels Energy, 8 High Street, Portland CT 06480
Daniels Energy: CT License S1-385517 HOD#19 /
Daniels Propane. LLC: #846 CT License S1-302857
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