Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays and All

[Amskeptic]

After the Starbucks Cup Imbroglio, perhaps Americans are a little confused about this holiday and what we're supposed to say to each other in the public sphere. I say, "Merry Christmas!" and if you should respond, "Happy Winter Solstice!" I might reply, "and a Happy Winter Solstice to you!" and if someone might add, "Happy Hanukkah!" why, I would return a "Happy Hanukkah to you!"

It seems just that easy if you don't think about it, so I try hard not to think about the bizarre self-serving emotionally disingenuous interactions becoming commonplace in our public political common, and if one tribe suggests that political correctness is killing us all, I might suggest that insensitivity is too, and if another tribe declares that a terrible injustice has been promoted in the refusal to acknowledge the Day of the Return of the Wandering Goddess, I might declare that I never heard of such, but "Happy Day of the Return of the Wandering Goddess to you!"

I have traveled far and wide in this country and I love it all the more for this exposure to all of these people everywhere. It appears that common sense and courtesy and the essential interest in others is well hidden these days, but it exists yet in my one-on-one interactions with so many. I have to conclude that Americans are by and large a nice bunch, generous in their local communities, heart-felt in their service and damn sick and tired of the yammering twitterishness of "the media", a media that suffers from having to be "on" 24/7. How could you not get sick of it? How could they not get sick of it? These talking heads and programming directors answer to their bosses, and their bosses don't have to babble all day about everything, their bosses just demand "ratings" and we all suffer.

As an itinerant, I have come to love being able to disconnect from the public sphere, stay away from televisions and radios and Starbucks Christmas music and hordes of guilt-driven shoppers spending more than they feel like spending and just enjoying the friggen miracle of life from the margin. Occasionally I will see a wonderstruck child, and I say "go for it, give that kid some wonder, he/she'll need it."

Whether you are a Christian, Pagan, Kwanzan, Egyptian waiting for your Goddess, Jew, Aetheist, what the heck, jump in and connect with a "Happy" or a "Merry" and don't forget to tell that wonderstruck six year-old, "Santa doesn't know crap about whether you've been naughty or nice, he waits for the NSA download of your data off that microchip implant."
Merry Christmas! Eggnog!
Colin

[Bleyseng]

Happy Federal Holidays, Merry Christmas, Fröche Weinachten from Heildelberg, Germany.

I am having a amazing Christmas as it's very different as everyone in town at night attends the multiple Christmas Markets. Time is spent socially interacting, shopping, eating and most of all drinking Glüwine with rum. No one stands around staring at their phones.....Kids ride the little train or ice skate and run around playing under their parents legs. We cooked a family dinner as every cafe or restaurant is closed in fact everything is closed..

Onto the Netherlands in the morning....

[Jivermo]

Merry Christmas, one and all.

[weisswurst]

Merry Christmas Forum Friends!
Hoping for a "wonder struck" six year old here this morning...
Stay warm Colin.
-Jeff

[phaedrus76]

Beautifully said, Colin!

Happy <insert holiday here> to every last one of ya!

[Sylvester]

I hope all had a Merry Christmas!

[Amskeptic]

I hope all had a Merry Christmas!

I did. Then I opened the bill from Mercy Hospital for my bee sting in the throat ER visit.
$2,450.00 "you are not eligible for a charity discount because you did not send in an application for a charity discount in the required seven days."
ColinHoHoHoooooooo
( I am asking for an itemized bill )

[Jivermo]

They don't call it Mercy for nothin'. When you open the bill, it's, "Lawdy, have mercy!"

[Amskeptic]

They don't call it Mercy for nothin'. When you open the bill, it's, "Lawdy, have mercy!"

It is beyond "offensive" to me to have walked in under my own power, sat on a table with a bp/pulse and oxygen sensor wire, then checked myself out 2 hours later to find that it was $1,000.00 per hour.
ColinGonnaOpenSomeMercyOnThem

[dingo]

"the American health care system remains a hostage racket. When you are sick, you will do anything to get better, and the system knows it. You will sign onto any agreement to keep yourself alive, even if the health care system ends up taking your house and your children’s educations. It is a well-established fact that the chief cause of personal bankruptcy in the USA is unpayable medical bills on the part of people who have health insurance. It is considered bad manners to inquire of a surgeon what his fee might be for a life-saving operation. Anyway, you don’t want to know because it will be a figure with no anchor in the reality of hours spent or services rendered. Ditto the folks who run the hospital, where there is no reality-based relationship between things dispensed and prices charged. It’s simple racketeering"

[Xelmon]

Ahhh... To you guys too, w/e you may celebrate. :D

[Amskeptic]

Ahhh... To you guys too, w/e you may celebrate. :D

You are currently stationed in LA? I enjoyed my whirlwind through LA this past summer.
Where were you?
And a Merry GMCvan to you and Happy New Leaf Spring Shackles
Colin

[Xelmon]

You are currently stationed in LA? I enjoyed my whirlwind through LA this past summer.
Where were you?
And a Merry GMCvan to you and Happy New Leaf Spring Shackles
Colin

Yep, still in Smell-A, the one and only.
Uhm, as for where I was... Bored out of my skull at work. Didn't even call, or write, or send back-fire signals. I'll be honest, I completely spaced that you were rolling through town.

Ah, as for the leaf springs, yep, I'll have to update about that... I think I'm in the final stretch.
Now to finish lathing my bronze bushings for the kingpins.