A Skeptical History of Christmas

Happy Festivus!

Saturday Snap – I’m Batman!

Pace got a hold of the iPad again…

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Friday Fun Link – #yqr Self-Guided Twinkle Tour

The Centre of the Arts is running a “12 Tickets of Christmas” series on FB for free concert tickets each day.  The other day they asked people to submit the location of the best Christmas lights they’d seen in Regina to enter that day’s draw.

Later that day, I also came across this on Twitter – a Google Maps mash-up of some of the best light displays in Regina.

I mentioned this mash-up on the original FB thread which got me a shout out from the Centre of the Arts in return.

Wikipedia’s Doing Their Annual Year-End Fundraising Drive – Do They Need To?

According to this article, not really.

Pube Juice

This is kind of dumb but for some reason, Shea and I were absolutely killing ourselves reading these out loud tonight!

Five Differences Between Christmas Concerts For Pace and The Elementary School-Aged Me

Pace had his first Christmas concert (actually “concerts” – see #5 below) today. That got me thinking about the ways they’ve changed since I was a kid.

[Edit: Someone pointed out many of the differences are as much about rural vs. urban approaches as generational which is probably true.]

  1. First off, when I was a kid, we actually *had* Christmas concerts. Pace had a “Holiday Celebration” or some such word mush.
  2. Pace’s had a whole lot more educational content than I remember my own long-ago Christmas concerts having. With a theme of “Christmas Around The World”, we got narrations about Christmas traditions for Jewish people, Africans, Germans, Chinese and maybe 1-2 other cultures/countries. Mine might have had an abridged version of “The Night Before Christmas” or the story of “The Babe in the Manger” (definitely *not* educational!).
  3. Not a single Christmas carol, not even a secular one, or even one that mentioned Santa. (I mean, wouldn’t “Let It Snow” work?). They did, however, have a song about how German people put pickles in their Christmas Trees which almost made up for it.
  4. All classes from K-8 were on the stage at the same time for the whole half hour production. Back in my day, the classes got marched up from the front rows of the school gym (uphill both ways through six feet of snow of course!), one at a time, to do their song.
  5. They do two performances in the city – one in the afternoon and one in the early evening. My memory is that we only did an afternoon concert when I was a kid but I may be mis-remembering that.

    Extra ideas after discussing with a co-worker who spent many years in a small town school library:

  6. Length.  Pace’s was half an hour from start to finish.  Small town Christmas concerts would go on for at least an hour and often a couple hours.
  7. They played “O Canada” as part of the program (and sometimes even “God Save the Queen”) in small town Christmas concerts.
  8. In Regina, they had a single lapel mic the kids on stage had to pass back and forth when doing their narration.  In a small town, my memory was that kids would have to go up to a podium with a handheld mic on it at the side of the stage.

@ryanMeili Monday – Who’s Winning The #skndpldr $$$ Race With Individual Support Only?

At the start of the #skndpldr race, there was a bit of attention when one candidate (I think it was Erin Weir?) proposed that if elected leader, he would work to ban corporate and union donations from the political process (although also declining to follow this guideline for the Sask NDP leadership race pointing out that this would only be fair if all candidates agreed to a similar restriction.)

With the release of the November fundraising totals today, I thought it might be fun to do a thought experiment to see where things would stand if the candidates had agreed to forego corporate, union and other organizational support in favour of *only* accepting donations from individuals.

(Of course, we have no way of knowing how that may have shifted their strategies or fundraising approaches but it’s still enlightening in that it shows a clear division between the two candidates who are very focused on getting funding mostly from individuals and two – including Weir – who are getting a much larger percentage of their support from organizations.)

Here’s how the candidates rank for total fundraising so far (with what I calculate their total would be if you remove all obvious corporate, organizational and union donations in brackets.)

Of course, I can’t account for any organization which gave less than $250 and I’m also whipping this off pretty quickly – just before heading out to a union meeting ironically – so there may be errors:

Ryan Meili – $58, 151.44 ($50, 745.19) which means Ryan gets about 87% of his funding from individuals.

Trent Wotherspoon – $56,202.88 ($36,614.88) which means Trent gets 65% of his funding from individuals.

Cam Broten – $40,007.89 ($36507.89) which means Cam gets 91% of his funding from individuals.

Erin Weir – $33, 623.64 ($22,728.89) which means Erin gets 68% of his funding from individuals.

If I’ve got my math right (and as an English major, I make a mostly okay mathematician), any surprises?

  • Ryan’s still in the overall lead if you take out donations from institutional supporters while, all of a sudden, Trent and Cam are neck and neck in second place in terms of money raised.
  • I would’ve thought Erin would’ve easily had the most support from institutional supporters given his strong union ties but Trent actually relies on institutional donors slightly more.
  • I was a bit surprised to see Cam narrowly beating out Ryan in the percentage of donations from individuals – but I suspect Ryan would take that trade-off if it means he’s raised $14 000 more than Cam! ;-).

Anything else catch your eye?

I Am (Not) Adam Lanza’s Mother

This blog post by the mother of a mentally-ill son, posted in the wake of the Connecticut shootings, was making the viral rounds.  Although I found it an interesting piece of writing with potentially some good points being made about the stigma of mental illness and the struggles of families trying to deal with it, there was something about the article that also really bugged me.  This response from another blogger captured many of the misgivings I had about the original piece.

Saturday Snap – Holiday Concert

Pace saw a YouTube video of the song he’s doing for his school Christmas holiday concert and decided he needed to jazz up his look too!

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Friday Fun Link – The Outdoor Coed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society

You know you’re old and married when you’re more interested in what books they’re reading than the other “boo” word that’s being featured in these photos!  😉