Well cheer up! There is always someone far worse off than you.
UPDATE:The rumoured challenger for Labor preselection in Gellibrand is also sending out
.... but only Penny Wong really captures the Christmas spirit
Actually, that's not Ms Wong at all. For more fine family snaps, go here -- and don't miss the main course.
(h/t Catallaxy, with special thanks to Papa Chango)
I just got a Christmas card from my local member Steve Herbert. It does not mention Christmas at all. Good to see political correctness is alive and well in the ALP.
ReplyDeleteBut "festive season" doesn't necessarily mean Xmas. So this must be Roxon's all-purpose, all-year card. Printed off for every multicultural festive season. And nothing else to indicate Xmas, either. But at least they are all smiling. So be happy and celebrate the festive season of your choice.
DeletePedro of Adelaide
What is 'Xmas', Pedro? Christmas with the Christ taken out, that's what! Can you think of any other word which gets abbreviated in such a way? Think about that.
DeleteQuite true, Andrew. Take Christ out of Christmas. Then take Xmas out of the festive season. I notice now we don't have Easter, we get the "holiday break".
DeletePedro of Adelaide
Xmas is Christmas with Christ replaced by a cross or chi. It's hundreds of years old has nothing to do with removing Christ from Xmas. There are plenty of things Xtians can take offence at without making up new ones.
DeleteGarbage. Regardless of its historical use, it is used pointedly in this day and age.
Delete"Don't mention the Messiah. I mentioned Him once, but I think I got away with it" ..... from the desk of Festive-ine Milne, Leader of the Greens.
ReplyDeleteProf, when I was a little girl I remember wonderful Christmas cards coming over from rellies in England, full of Victorian folk riding through the snowy landscape in horse-drawn coaches and everything covered with stuck on silver glitter which fell off everywhere. They smelled so good too, a special sort of paper and print. Or there were jolly cards with Santa beaming, or tasteful ones for tasteful folk with Christmas stars for the religious, or Holly and Ivy for the more secular. We didn't get too many, and sent even fewer, but everyone of the cards that I secretly poured over in the newsagents said 'Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year' inside - 'Season's Greetings' was unusual, in my memory at least. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and the Little Drummer Boy were sung into being in the shops, plus my mum would sing in her lilting Welsh accent an old song she got from her mother, called "the little boy who Santa Claus forgot" who went back home to play 'with last year's broken toys' - which would bring me to tears of comiseration each time, because my stocking was pretty sparse too, although mum did try despite her ongoing depressions and hearing voices. In our early teens my sister and I would knock over a small casuarina tree from near the creek, put it in a bucket of bricks and decorate it with cheap baubles which we kept in a box under the house. Angel on top, of course.
ReplyDeleteI don't much like the trend now for cards to be email, or pics of the family on holiday, or anything like the above horrors. That is just advertising.
Roxon's is even bleaker than mum's song. At least that recognised what was missing.
For the Christmas experience of a lifetime, give me Nine Lessons and Carols in Kings College Chapel, Cambridge, with da Hairy Irish Ape, in the deep midwinter afternoon as the skies slowly darken the medieval stained glass. In dulci jubilo, Prof.
Lizzie...
DeleteWhile my male line is from Cornwall, there were some old folk on my Mum's side who were from Cymru, excellent singers every one.
The thing I noticed about them and their compatriots was, let a random group of them start singing and within the first line or so, they'd automatically divided up the song into the various S.A.T.B voices, seemingly without thinking.
Thing is, I can't recall them singing any Welsh Christmas songs.
You'd hear hymns like "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah" and 'Tydi a Roddaist', penned just before the Second World War, was popular, but no Christmas carols that were indisputably Welsh spring to mind.
What could be more old-time Welsh than that final couplet of 'Tydi a Roddaist':
"Oh! save us from the dawning of an age
Bereft of crown of thorns,and pain, and cross."
That said, while we then-young folk learned to sing 'Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau' and the odd song in Welsh, we weren't taught the spoken language that the old folk would sometimes natter in.
With the exception of one short, pithy phrase..."Cau dy geg!" (Shut up!)
That'd mean they were all from the North rather than the South, I guess?
Dave,
DeleteMy maternal Grandfather also came from northern Wales, from Bethesda in Gwynedd. I remember once introducing him to a school friend of mine, when I said he was from Wales (lest my friend not understand his broken English). Grandfather corrected me, "I'm not from Wales, I'm from Northern Wales".
I'm told that it's a Levite vs. Simeonite thing.
My grandmother could speak some Welsh, but my mother none of it. All of her songs were ex-radio (i.e.popular songs of the period) from my grandmother's era, which were sung to her. The tradition of singing was still adhered to though within the culture - and I think that is interesting and something that I suspect has existed over the longue duree (and I have some theories as to why).
DeleteI sometimes listen to Welsh men's choirs on CD in the car; good for driving along.
And I do love the BBC's classic production of Under Milk Wood. I can sing Polly Garter's Song with quite a lot of feeling. I sometimes sing around the house, to myself.
The girl over there with the sweet voice, called out my old primary school teacher in singing class one day. Then I twigged. He meant me!
Talking about Welsh singing, you could do yourselves a favour and have a listen to Cerys Matthews' album "TIR". It's wonderful. Here's a sample:
Deletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXF4AezB0B8
Just listened to this song: wonderfull, even though I dont understand the words.
DeleteShe'd be an old razzle dazzle of a Christmas party. At least Gomez and Morticia had a bit of style.
ReplyDeleteProf, I am sure your readers would appreciate it if you would refer to our esteemed AG by her real name Nicola Ropshitz. Says it all really.....
ReplyDeleteA good photo of Comrade Ropshits of the Commisariat of Peoples Decromatic soshalist "LAW" and some of her Aparatchiks,taken outside the Peter Slipper Entrance to Lubyanka House in Scamberra .Her Beloved Maximum Loider was busy rehearsing more LiES for hes Stand Up Comedy Routine ,she will need it after she gets the Flick next year! ( if Ausralia still exists).
DeleteIndeed, just like Trotsky one needs to reinvent oneself in the new age. Ms Roxon can abandon her family's Jewish heritage of escaping Hitler's Europe and attack her ancestors people with impunity. As a conservative I would be proud to have had ancestors of the calibre of The Ropshitz's. Such are the weeds that grow in untended soil.
DeleteRussR
just suspecting Australia really isn't ready for an actual "Christmas" story Prof.
ReplyDeleteBeruitification/ Balkanization hasn't gone that far and we're still not quite in the Economic black hole of Calcutta. Suicide bombers and homemade mortars are still, oh so 'somewhere else'; land for peace deals could never be Australian body politic could they?
People still talk "lucky" country / Nicola, Penny and Julia still rule the day. [but bigger still Darwinism makes everyone feel soooooooooh scientific - how else could Tim Flannery or Robyn Williams get away with such 'scientific rigor' as theirs]
Geert Wilders thus remains under permanent body guard and another Pauline Hanson is guaranteed to be just as crucified as the last.
Merry Christmas then; with slightly discordant iconoclastic memories smattered across the page by the deracinated watchers.
ooops typo
ReplyDeletebeirutification - noun - act or process of beirutifying
process by which former European cultural capitals [Paris of the Middle East] become enclave driven culturally riven death zones for tourists and ideologues on missions of cultural awareness sensitivity and competence training.
"All I (don't) want for Christmas is my missing front file".
ReplyDeleteAnd Big Shampoo has again not kicked in with any freebies for the "festive season". I guess the industrial strength product just wasn't going to make it.
Toots and the Tootettes.
You would be smiling too, about all the money you're making off the public teat, thinking nobody notices how incompetant you are.
ReplyDeleteI gather that wearing a dead uncle's coat is now de rigueur among the feministas. In this regard, the young and naive Roxon must have been a trend setter.
ReplyDeleteThey're creepy and they're kooky,
ReplyDeleteMysterious and spooky,
They're all together ooky,
It might be a Halloween card. Plenty of time for tricks and treats before the next election.
ReplyDeleteI think I'll use Ms Roxon's group photo to send to a friend in the US just to show him they are not the only ones to enshrine incompetence within Government. Given her antecedents she could have at least wished everyone a Happy Hanukkah and a following Merry Christmas. As she has ignored Hanukkah I'll wish everyone one instead. Can't wait for the Christmas Carols - not very Jewish but I love them. Kol Tuv
ReplyDeleteWHAAT? Comerad Roxon is Jewish? Could turn me nearly into an anti-semite!
DeleteHappy Hanukkah to all Jewish people, except the execrable Adolf Loewenstein and his ilk.
You are all missing the point. Read the fine print;
ReplyDelete"absent: Jeremy"
It is clear for all to see that "Jeremy" has been edited out of existence. It all starts with the family photos, next his name will no longer be on the phone list and before you know it, blam! 'I'm sorry, no one of that name works here!'
Questions need to be asked fellow Bunyipteers, probably starting with always useful 'what role did Tony Abbott play in all this?'
Fight for your Right to Jeremy!!!
Well she's ticking most the boxes with the photo
ReplyDeleteEmily list ratio of male to female: yes
Obligatory minority group representation: yes
Mixture of ages: yes
Tilt of heads to the left: NO - Jacob's letting her down.
Hey Prof, where's my hat tip? I posted a link to the Roxon 'festive season' card a couple of days ago on Catallaxy Files.
ReplyDeleteThey were none to happy about it either... apparently I should have put a warning next to the link :D