Dreaming of a White Christmas!!

The Candy Cane

About this time of year I always wonder how some of the customs of the season came to be! Last year I did a blog on christmas tree lights, Rudolph, and the NYC Christmas Tree, today I was thinking about candy canes ... so decided to do some research! That is why I love my computer! There is an answer to "almost" all questions!

Around the seventeenth century, European-Christians began to adopt the use of Christmas trees as part of their Christmas celebrations. They made special decorations for their trees from foods like cookies and sugar-stick candy. The first historical reference to the familiar cane shape goes back to 1670, when the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, bent the sugar-sticks into canes to represent a shepherd's staff. The all-white candy canes were given out to children during the long-winded nativity services.

The first historical reference to the candy cane being in America goes back to 1847, when a German immigrant called August Imgard decorated the Christmas tree in his Wooster, Ohio home with candy canes.

BUT WHY The Stripes???
About fifty years later the first red-and-white striped candy canes appeared. No one knows who exactly invented the stripes, but Christmas cards prior to the year 1900 showed only all-white candy canes. Christmas cards after 1900 showed illustrations of striped candy canes. Around the same time, candy-makers added peppermint and wintergreen flavors to their candy canes and those flavors then became the traditional favorites.

Sweet Secrets of the Candy Cane
There are many other legends and beliefs surrounding the humble candy cane. Many of them depict the candy cane as a secret symbol for Christianity used during the times when Christian were living under more oppressive circumstances. It was said that the cane was shaped like a "J" for Jesus. The red-and-white stripes represented Christ's blood and purity. The three red stripes symbolized the Holy Trinity. The hardness of the candy represented the Church's foundation on solid rock and the peppermint flavor represented the use of hyssop, an herb referred to in the Old Testament. There is no historical evidence to support these claims, quite the contrary, but they are lovely thoughts.

A Catholic priest called Gregory Keller invented a machine to automate candy cane production during the 1950's.

Sooooo the next time you suck on one of those bad boys you can relate your knowledge of these canes to the rest of the candy cane suckers/lickers!!

I heard Santa said this ....
The night Santa first met his future wife, he uttered the now famous words:
"Yes, that is a candy cane in my pocket, and I am glad to meet you."
Hey .... don't shoot the messenger!!!

Worldwide Candle Lighting is Today

Today is the Worldwide Canlighting for all children that have died to soon. Please remember to light your candles at 7PM in your time zone, as one time zone burns down, another is lit, creating a 24 wave of light around the world.

Today, Dec. 13 in an act of symbolic remembrance for all children.

In Memory of Jodi

Candles flame in darkness,
flicker, steadily glow,
bringing light from shadows
and help to soothe me so.

My daughter, like the candles,
gave my life true light.
I use the candle's beacon
to connect us in the night.

As I light the candles,
my wish and my request
is that she'll see my signal
and know my love's expressed.

As her light joins my lights,
our worlds touch and flame.
As I snuff out the candles,
I softly say her name.

Worldwide Candle Lighting

Candle Lighting has carried the torch of remembering all children, in a special way, who have died. The Compassionate Friends Worldwide Candle Lighting unites family and friends around the globe in lighting candles for one hour to honor and remember children who have died at any age from any cause. As candles are lit at 7 p.m. local time, creating a virtual wave of light, hundreds of thousands of persons commemorate and honor children in a way that transcends all ethnic, cultural, religious, and political boundaries.

Believed to be the largest mass candle lighting on the globe, the Worldwide Candle Lighting, a gift to the bereavement community from The Compassionate Friends, creates a virtual 24-hour wave of light as it moves from time zone to time zone. Hundreds of formal candle lighting events are held and thousands of informal candle lightings are conducted in homes as families gather in quiet remembrance of children who have died, but will never be forgotten.

The Worldwide Candle Lighting started in the United States in 1997 as a small Internet observance but has since swelled in numbers as word has spread throughout the world of the remembrance.

The Worldwide Candle Lighting has carried the torch of remembering all children, in a special way, who have died.

This appeared in Dear Abby Dec 5,2009:

Dear Abby: In cities large and small across the globe, a sad reality occurs year after year. Children die. The causes vary -- an auto accident, suicide, drive-by shooting, fire, illness, war or something completely different. Families, friends and entire towns mourn the deaths of children who have died before they could reach their full potential.

For the past 13 years, The Compassionate Friends, a national self-help support organization for families grieving the death of a child, has sponsored a Worldwide Candle Lighting during the difficult holidays to honor the memory of all children -- no matter their age -- who died too young.

Dear Abby readers, whether or not they have been personally touched by such a tragedy, are invited to remember all children who have died by joining in the Worldwide Candle Lighting on Dec. 13. Although officially held for one hour at 7 p.m. local time, this has become an event where hundreds of services in memory of children are held throughout the day around the world.

Anyone who is unable to attend is encouraged to light candles in their home, whether alone or with friends and family. -- Patricia Loder, Executive Director, The Compassionate Friends

The Compassionate Friends Web site: www.compassionatefriends.org

Thanks to all who light a candle on this speical night .... maeve

Foto Friday - Snow!

It may not officially be winter yet but it sure feels and looks like it!!

(click on photos to enlarge)

(my husband finds it a challenge to find the unplowed roads!)

Reindeer

Remember This At Christmas Time

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female reindeer grow antlers in the summer each year, male reindeer drop their antlers at the beginning of winter, usually late November to mid-December. Female reindeer retain their antlers till after they give birth in the spring.

Therefore, according to EVERY historical rendition depicting Santa's reindeer, EVERY single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen, had to be a girl.

We should've known... ONLY women would be able to drag a fat-ass man in a red velvet suit all around the world in one night and not get lost.

Liam Clancy ~ RIP

Irish folk singer Liam Clancy, who is credited with popularising his country's traditional music in the United States in the 1960s, died Friday aged 74, Ireland's RTE state radio said.

Liam Clancy, the youngest of 11 children in a County Tipperary household filled with folklore and song, emigrated to the U.S. in 1956 to join two elder brothers, Tom and Patrick, in New York City who were singing on the side as they pursued budding careers as Broadway actors.

But after recording a 1956 album of Irish rebel songs, they grew a New York following as musicians and formed a partnership with Northern Ireland immigrant Tommy Makem. Soon they were earning more as weekend singers in Manhattan bars and clubs than as full-time stage actors.

Scouts for U.S. television's flagship Ed Sullivan Show spotted them performing in Greenwich Village's White Horse Tavern, and their 16-minute appearance in March 1961 on the program — extended because of the last-minute cancellation of another act — turned them into an Irish-American folk phenomenon.

Their agent cultivated a schmaltzy appeal to Irish emigrants worldwide, encouraging the Clancy Brothers and Makem to perform in cream-white Aran wool sweaters hand-knit from home as well as tweed fishermen's caps.
But their up-tempo resurrection of traditionally slow, sad Irish songs made a deeper impression on much of America's emerging folk artist movement, including Bob Dylan, who paid tribute to Liam Clancy as "the best ballad singer I'd ever heard in my life."

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem performed Carnegie Hall, toured Ireland, Britain, Australia and repeatedly throughout the U.S., and recorded more than a dozen albums before breaking up amid arguments over bills, babes and booze in 1974.


May you rest in Please Liam Clancy!! You will be missed!!