day 360 - Boxing day

 Today is the 3rd day of the 52nd week, the 26th day of the 12th month, the 360th day of 2023, and:

• Boxing Day - which is, I will point out, celebrated by MOST of the English speaking world....  Here we have to wait until 2026 before we get off the day after again
• National Candy Cane Day
• National Thank You Note Day
• National Whiner's Day - this is in recognition of those who have to go to work today
• ST Stephen's Day
• the first day of Kwanzaa
• The second day of the Twelve Days of Christmas [AKA Twelvetide] - apparently it has nothing to do with 2 turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.
• the Cold [or Long Night"] full moon at 7:33 PM EST
• and Voyager 1 is 22h 34m 14s of light travel time from Earth, or 24,359,000,000 km / 15,136,000,000 miles / 162.83 AU

Quote of the day:

     “Only twenty-seven people in Britain can explain why the day after Christmas Day is called Boxing Day, but that doesn't stop millions from marking it by staying home from work. An intriguing side effect of thus having two consecutive public holidays is that no matter what days of the week they fall on, the British can easily justify taking the whole week off.

     Suppose Christmas Day falls on a Tuesday, with Boxing Day on the Wednesday. Well, then, what is the point, the contemporary Bob Cratchit cries, of bother to open up the office or factory on Monday, when we all plan to knock off work by lunchtime because it's Christmas Eve? And it's hardly worth cranking up the heat for a working week that's now been whittled down to just two days. By the time we finish complaining about our ingrate in-laws and the cheesy Christmas television programs and the blatant materialism of our kids, it's time to go home for the weekend. Isn't it simpler for Mr. Scrooge to close the counting house until the New Year? (He can still pay us, of course.)

     This creative logic is a little more challenging when Christmas Day is a Thursday, but several Plumley residents had pulled it off...”

~   Alan Beechey, Murdering Ministers: An Oliver Swithin Mystery

One of the saddest posts I saw in a group online was when a person used the Marked Safe From Meme Generator  to point out to the rest of us that we were all actually celebrating a pagan holiday and that Jesus was actually born sometime in September.  I'd post a copy, but the post was deleted, whether by an admin or himself,  I do not know as he has been reprimanded in the past for telling us that our calendars are wrong and the earth is flat [yes he really believes this and is not just trolling].  

The post did not sadden me because I feel that someone is waging war against Christmas, or that someone doesn't celebrate Christmas - after all, Christians only represent about 31% of the world's population and are fractured into five different groups [Catholics, Orthodoxes, Protestants, Angelicans, and Pentecostals], and not all of them celebrate holidays as such.  The post did not sadden me because it pointed out that Santa and other traditions are scarcely religious, having little to do with the birth we are celebrating.  No, what saddened me was the carping at someone else's celebrations, the same as I would be saddened if someone complained about Rohatsu or Eid ai-Fitr or Diwali or Hanukkah or or Yule or Kwanza.   You see, I do not demand the rest of the world agree with me and accept that truth may be found in many places And I neither object to saying "happy holidays" nor resent when someone says it to me

Don't darken other's days when they are celebrating their holidays, okay?

Of course I say that at the same time I am complaining about Boxing Day, but that is sheer unadulterated envy on my part.  

So to finish up?  Here's a picture of Triscuit, ignoring me completely as her back is to me, and also carefully ignoring the cat toys that I put there yesterday for her Christmas present.

Now to find some cheese to go with that whine....