~★~♥~♥~★~ El Morno! ♥~★~★~♥ ~
December 19th

★~ Today’s Quote:  No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another. Charles Dickens

★~ Look for an Evergreen Day:

Ah, Oh Christmas tree. A time-honored tradition that dates all the way back to 16th century Northern Germany, where towns would decorate a spruce in the market square. Pastor Balthasar Russow wrote of the young men and women who ‘first sang and danced there and then set the tree aflame.’ Probably this meant set candles on the tree aflame, though setting the tree on fire is a possibility after a day spent lugging it in the house, digging the boxes of ornaments out of the attic and untangling the strings of lights. Let’s face it  for most of us putting up the ‘Oh Christmas Tree’  is rarely a Hallmark moment. Have you ever wondered who came up with the great idea of putting glass heirloom ornaments on a Christmas tree? Me too.

★~ Hard Candy Day: 

Who doesn’t love a piece of hard candy now and again? Hard candy can be traced back to Ancient Egypt, Arabia, and China. Archaeologists in all of these regions have found traces of “candied” fruits and nuts that had been dipped in honey.  There is also evidence that people stuck sticks into their candy treats to keep their hands from getting sticky as they ate them, just like our modern lollipops!

Did you know that the world’s largest lollipop weighs 6,514 pounds? Ashrita Furman and members of the Sri Chinmoy Centre made it in August of 2009 to break the Guinness World Record.

To celebrate National Hard Candy Day, enjoy a piece (or two) of your favorite hard candies!

★~ Oatmeal Muffin Day:

A fresh oatmeal muffin paired with a foamy cappuccino might be the quintessential afternoon pick me up you need to make it through your day.  If you bake a dozen, call them oatmeal without a spoon,  and feed them to your family for a weeks worth of easy breakfast.

★~ Today in History:

♥~ 1776 – Thomas Paine published his first American Crisis essay, Common Sense, in which he wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”

♥~ 1843 – Charles Dickens’ Yuletide tale, “A Christmas Carol,” was first published in Britain. IA year earlier, he had read a disturbing news story about child labor in England, and so he had visited Cornwall to see for himself the horrible conditions of child workers in the mines there. Then he visited free schools for poor children. By the time he was through, he was so angry that he decided to write and publish a book exposing the terrible situation of children in poverty, and publish it at his own expense. That was A Christmas Carol in Prose, now called just A Christmas Carol.

A Christmas Carol follows the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge, a mean old miser. At the beginning of the book, his view toward Christmas is: “Every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.” And after hearing that some poor people would rather die than go to prisons or workhouses, all he can say is: “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” But by the end, he has taken on the role of a second father for the poor, crippled son of a man who works for him. And he exclaims: “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody!”

♥~ 1863 – London’s Frederick Walton patented linoleum.

♥~ 1973 – Johnny Carson pulled a good one before a nationwide late-night audience on NBC. Carson started a fake toilet-paper scare. In his Tonight Show monologue, he told his huge audience that a Wisconsin congressman had warned that toilet paper was disappearing from supermarket shelves. Toilet paper soon became a scarce commodity in many areas of the United States after the gag.

♥~ 1997 – A big day for new movies in the U.S.: Titanic, starring Leonardo Dicaprio Kate Winslet Billy Zane and Kathy Bates, the biggest grossing movie of all time (has topped the $600-million mark)

★~Born Today:

♥~ 1933 – Cicely Tyson – Emmy Award-winning actress: The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman [1973-74], Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All [1993-94]; Roots,Fried Green Tomatoes, Heat Wave, Sounder

♥~ 1941 – Maurice White singer – musician: drummer; founder of group: Earth, Wind & Fire: Shining Star, Sing a Song, Got to Get You into My Life, After the Love Has Gone,Best of My Love

♥~ 1944 –  Alvin Lee – musician: group: Ten Years After: A Space in Time

♥~ 1944 –   Tim Reid – Actor- “WKRP in Cincinnati”

♥~ 1960 – Mike Lookinland – Actor, “The Brady Bunch”

♥~ 1967 – Criss Angel (Christopher Nicholas Sarantakos) magician, musician, mentalist, hypnotist, escapologist, stunt performer, actor, A&E TV host: Criss Angel Mindfreak

♥~ 1969 – Kristy Swanson -actress: Dude, Where’s My Car?, Pretty in Pink, Knots Landing, Nightingales, Hot Shots!, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marshal Law, Bad to the Bone,Early Edition

♥~ 1971 – Amy Locane – actress: Airheads, Spencer, Melrose Place, End of Summer, The Heist

♥~ 1972 – Alyssa Milano – actress: Fear, Deadly Sins, Conflict of Interest, Commando, Old Enough, Who’s the Boss?

★~ Did You Know: 

♥~ Christmas trees have been sold commercially in the United States since about 1850.

♥~ The best selling trees are Scotch pine, Douglas fir, Noble fir, Fraser fir, Virginia pine, balsam fir and white pine.

♥~ Since 1966, the National Christmas Tree Association has given a Christmas tree to the President and first family.

♥~ The first Christmas tree retail lot in the United States was started in 1851 in New York by Mark Carr.

♥~ In 1856 Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States, was the first President to place a Christmas tree in the White House.

♥- President Coolidge started the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the White House lawn in 1923.

♥~ In 2009, 21% of United States households had a real tree, 48% had an artificial tree and 32%  did not have a tree.

♥~ Thomas Edison’s assistant, Edward Johnson, is credited with the idea of electric lights for Christmas trees in 1882.

♥~ Real Christmas trees are involved in less than one-tenth of one percent of residential fires and only when ignited by some external ignition sources. In 1998 more than 32 million Real Christmas Trees were used in the U.S. Of these, only 0.00093% were ignited in home fires.

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Just a few more days until Christmas! Are you excited? Do you want an effen Christmas Advent Calendar to count down the days? I still have a few left and several El Morno Friends have been able to open them.  Come on it will be fun! I Promise.

If you have a morno moment leave a morno comment! It could say…Send me an effen Advent Calendar!

♥