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New Year's Eve 2020 Fireworks

Welcoming 2020...

Grateful for what we've lived, hoping the best is yet to come...

Best wishes for a bright and lovely 2020!

Have yourself a very merry Christmas!

Oh my love

We've had our share of tears

Oh my friends

We've had our hopes and fears

Oh my friends

It's been a long hard year

But now it's Christmas

Yes, it's Christmas

Thank God it's Christmas

The moon and stars seem awful cold and bright

Let's hope

The snow will make this Christmas right

My friend the world

Will share this special night

Because it's Christmas

Yes it's Christmas

Thank God it's Christmas

For

One

Night...

To all our readers and visitors, the warmest wishes of a very 
MERRY CHRISTMAS, this year, every year!...

Christmas Caroling

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Christmas carols today carry cozy connotations of ancient traditions as old as King Wenceslas, but Christmas caroling as we know it dates back to the 19th Century and not much further. In fact, caroling itself didn't always involve Christmas, and the ancient tradition of traveling from house to house to wish neighbors good cheer didn't always involve singing. There's a distinction to be made between carols — songs stemming from medieval musical traditions — and today's Christmas caroling, says Daniel Abraham, musicology expert and choral director at American University in Washington, D.C. "The concept of carol in its origins has actually nothing to do with Christmas," Abraham says. Medieval carols were liturgical songs reserved for processionals in the 12th and 13th centuries. And though modern carols sometimes take their form from these original carols — starting with a refrain, followed by verses of uniform structure — they're separate entities.

The act of traveling to different homes comes from a different tradition altogether, albeit a similarly ancient one. In England, the word wassail — derived from the Old Norse ves heill meaning "be well, and in good health" — came to mean the wishing of good fortune on your neighbors. No one is quite sure when the custom began, but it did give us the song, "Here We Come-A-Wassailing" — sung as carolers wished good cheer to their neighbors in hopes of getting a gift in return. ("A Wassailing" also evolved into the popular "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" — its last verse, "Bring us some figgy pudding" stems from the wassailers' original intent.)

The two traditions of singing and visiting first merged in Victorian England, as church carols began to merge with Christian folk music. At that time, it was far from a Christmas tradition; festivals like May Day were deemed worthy of caroling, too, but the repertoire as well as early records of this are pretty unclear. In the 19th Century, as Christmas became more commercialized and popular, publishers began churning out anthologies of carols, many which were ancient hymns, also circulating them in broadsheets.

image credits: Amazon

Many of our today's most popular carols date to this period. Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern published in London by British lawyer William B. Sandys in 1833, was the first to print "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," "The First Noel" and "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing." "Joy to the World" first appeared in the Anglican Church hymnalHymns Ancient and Modern in 1861. Composed by Isaac Watts, known as the "father of Englsh hymnody", the song actually wasn't written exclusively for singing at Christmastime. Charles Wesley's "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" was originally "Hark! How All The Welkin Rings!" (Welkin means sky or heaven, and came to mean making a loud sound.)

The Oxford Book of Carols, first published in 1928, was a landmark book that combined medieval carols, folk songs and Christmas songs from around the world, publishing 201 of them in a 700-page volume. An updated version, the New Oxford Book of Carols, was published in 1992.

Ubiquitous holiday TV ads to the contrary, American caroling is far less common than it used to be, says Bob Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. It's not unusual to see carolers standing still in a shopping mall or churchyard, but as for the random groups of friends traipsing to your doorstep for singing, don't count on it. "You talk to most baby boomers they might have a caroling story or two," says Thompson. "Talk to anybody born after 1960 or so and it's become much less common." Simply put, times and culture have changed. "The singing of Christmas carols at a stranger's door assumes a similarity of culture among carolers and audience," says Chris Brunelle, an assistant professor of classics at St. Olaf college. With America a far more diverse and less homogenous society than it was in caroling's heyday, that's a larger assumption than many are comfortable with. Still, most of us probably agree about the egg nog.

In Time World

Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday is a marketing term for the Monday after Black Friday (the Friday following Thanksgiving), created by companies to persuade people to shop online. This year, Cyber Monday is today, December 2nd.

The term made its debut on November 28, 2005 in a Shop.org press release entitled "'Cyber Monday' quickly becoming one of the biggest online shopping days of the year".



image credits: Business Pundit

In 2006, Shop.org announced that it launched the CyberMonday.com portal, a one-stop shop for Cyber Monday deals. Cyber Monday has become an international marketing term used by online retailers in Canada, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand and Chile.

In late November 2005, the New York Times reported that "The name Cyber Monday grew out of the observation that millions of otherwise productive working Americans, fresh off a Thanksgiving weekend of window shopping, were returning to high-speed Internet connections at work Monday and buying what they liked."

Cyber Monday came to Canada in 2008. The National Post featured an article, in the November 25, 2010 edition, stating that the parity of the Canadian dollar with the US dollar caused many Canadian retailers to have Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales of their own. By 2011, around 80% of online retailers in Canada were participating in Cyber Monday.

image credits: All Things

According to The Guardian, UK online retailers are now referring to "Cyber Monday" as the busiest internet shopping day of the year that commonly falls on the same day as the US Cyber Monday.

Amazon.de announced that it brought Cyber Monday to Germany in 2010.

In Portugal, the term Cyber Monday was first used in 2009.

Inspired by the US phenomenon, the term Cyber Monday was first used in France in 2008.

The first Cyber Monday Sale in New Zealand was held on 29 November 2010. It lasted for five days, from Monday to Friday.

Chile's first Cyber Monday took place on 28 November 2011. The companies participating in the event are those part of the Santiago Chamber of Commerce's Electronic Commerce Committee.

On 20 November 2012, Australian online retailers held a similar event for the first time dubbed Click Frenzy; many websites immediately crashed, went offline or had major server issues including the Click Frenzy promotion website.

Source: CyberMonday.com & Wikipedia (abridged and adapted)