Merry Christmas to all of those who read this blog!
Thank you for reading and sharing your views.
If you are surrounded by family and friends, enjoy them and treasure them.
If you are not, go to a church or community center and help others. Some are serving Christmas dinner and would welcome your help. Find out where community groups are sharing with others. Help them. They need you.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you as well, Diane. A huge THANK-YOU for sharing so many things with us all year long. You are a blessing, indeed!
Merry Christmas 🎄💖
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div dir=”ltr”>And a Merry Christmas to you and Mary, Diane! Hope it’s a gre
Happy holidays to all! Diane, thank you for all that you do for public education. You are the gift that keeps on giving!
I concur, retired teacher.
Merry Christmas to Diane for all her good work and to those who follow Diane on this blog.
May LIGHT shine on us all.
Wishing PEACE and GOODWILL on Earth for EVERYONE.
Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday to all.
Greetings in this holiday season to all.
Merry Christmas Diane, everyone!
I wish everyone peace. I wish that everyone will become a mouthpiece for peace for me most create peace on earth!
God bless you all!
Let’s throw love around like confetti!
Love,
Miles Patrick Yohnke
https://yohnke.com
306.652.3898
Merry Christmas Diane and happy holidays to all in this wonderful community!
Merry Christmas essay from MontyPhD@gmail.com
Happy holidays to all!
Christmas Letter, 2024 | Bob Shepherd
Only a few are allotted to us. Perhaps you are young enough not to feel this yet, but you will. So, I figure I’d better write a Christmas letter while there is still time.
Yes, this is the time of the winter solstice, celebrated by pagans worldwide long, long, long before there was a Christ or a Christmas. And of course we have no idea on what day our brother Yeshua was born, but this day will do as well as any: a day to celebrate the rebirth of the Sun (when it starts traversing the sky ever higher until Midsummer), becomes a day to celebrate the Son. This is altogether fitting.
Leading up to this day, when I was a kid, Grandpa (or simply Pa, as we called him), would take me with him out to the woods to gather mistletoe and holly and cut a Christmas tree and drag it back (my brother was as yet too young for these excursions). Grandma (or Granny) would put candles in the windows, and these seemed to me the purest, most beautiful things in the world, as did her tiny porcelain figurines of angels and Santa and his reindeer.
May we often pause to express our gratitude for the small and breathtaking beauties of our world, such as the light of a candle shining through a lattice of frost on a windowpane and stars twinkling through ice crystals high in the air.
There would always be lots of family at Christmas back then because Granny and Pa’s kids mostly built on parts of the farm, so it was easy enough to get them and their young ones around a table. And on that table would be vegetables from Granny’s canning throughout the year, meat from their smokehouse, and peanut cake and lemonade. In that part of the country at that time, peanuts and lemons were easy enough to come by. So, she made do with what she had. This combination, btw, the sweetness of the cake and the acerbity of the lemonade, is astonishingly delicious. Country people (all those Pas and Grannies) know a thing or two.
And sometimes, for Christmas, way back then, I would get an orange. These were rare (did we have lemon trees and no oranges; I do not know), and the smell and taste were exotic and exquisite. I wish I had a way of conveying how amazing such a thing is when one rarely has one. Imagine never having seen a tree and suddenly, boom, there one of these amazing things is!!!! This should remind us to see A LOT OF THINGS anew, in their true glory, each day, including ourselves and those around us. Let us remember this in this season of The Birth (and the rebirth).
I would be remiss if I didn’t remind you all that the First Noel was the certain good shepherds. LOL. But seriously, glad tidings to you. And on the shortest, darkest night of the year, feast and be merry and shine in the light of the love of friends and family.
Peace to Israel and Palestine.
Bob
The peanut cake is interesting. Where was this? I never heard of this, and I love local food tradition.
Southern Kentucky. Russell Springs.
We got an orange in the toe of our stockings, too! There was very little fresh fruit in the middle of winter (in NJ, then). I loved eating the cherries in canned fruit cocktail, canned being the major source of fruit other than apples that got increasingly more mealy as the winter wore on. McIntosh apples are only at their best fresh off the tree. When we moved to Illinois, we were introduced to Jonathans. They, too, lost their crispness with age, but at least they were sweeter. I still crave apple pie with McIntoshes, however.
Good morning Diane and everyone,
Merry Christmas and Happy holidays. May peace and abundance be yours.
Good morning Diane and everyone,
Merry Christmas and happy holidays. May peace and abundance be yours.
My wish is we take this time to set aside the worries of the world, be kind to our neighbors, relish time with family, and hug forever our loved ones. Life moves quickly and nothing is guaranteed. Warmth, peace, and harmony this day and always! I have learned so much from Diane’s blog family.
Felicem natalem Christi and pacem in terris!
Power is back on and the almost, not-so-cold full moon is out!
Have a great night!
Merry Christmas, John!
You, too, Bob.
That’s a beautiful piece of writing (above) with the candles in the window.
Those small glimmers of real, physical comfort matter so much -maybe now more than ever since so much of our lives are spent peering through computer screens, and touching ceramic-hardened cellphone glass.
My wife’s uncle was awake early like me, when I had to leave for school, way before dawn. (He was a logger, still going out into the woods even though he was long past social security age.) On frigid mornings, the sweet curl of smoke from his wood stove would sometimes find its way down the hillside to me as I trudged to my car. That and the light in his window always made me feel better. I could endure, surely.
We are so lucky when we have these people still with us.
Take care.
wow. Beautiful, John.
Wonderful!
So, four years ago, Trump promised a new, comprehensive healthcare plan that would be far better than Obamacare “in a week or so.” A week or so after that, he promised the same plan in “about a week.” A week later, he promised the same thing again. You get the pattern, . . .
Well, on Christmas, Trum promised [guess what?]
Because you can always trust Trump [to lie to you].