quote:Four Logan teenagers, two boys and two girls, turned themselves in at the police station late Tuesday, confessing that they wrote and delivered threatening letters to 14 homeowners displaying Christmas lights. The teenagers on Saturday allegedly taped threatening notes to the front doors, warning that the homes would be burned down if outdoor-decoration lights were not turned off until Dec. 14.
*facepalm* On a personal note:
quote: "This is what happens when you've got the safest community in America," Thompson said, referring to the designation announced Nov. 21 by Morgan Quitno Press. "Something like this gets people scared."
Yay! I love Logan (my college town).
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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I only hate the lights I have to put up! Stupid tangled, won't roll or wrap well for storage, broken bulbs in the hand, strings out for no reason icicle lights! I think I hate them more knowing I have to put them up tomorrow.....
Posts: 880 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Actually, the lights are one of the few aspects of Christmas that I like. Hate the songs. Hate the enforced cheerfulness. Hate the commercialization. But I really like the lights.
Posts: 2454 | Registered: Jan 2003
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katharina...It's my college town too (and where I met my wife). There's a lot of things I like about Logan--especially the lights on mainstreet at Christmas-time.
Posts: 1412 | Registered: Oct 2005
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I like that commercial for some camera or something where it opens with the ghetto cruisers driving past - and looking wistfully at - a home with Christmas lights.
Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
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Wow, a ton of people went to USU! I actually live here in Logan, and have my entire life. That's pretty awesome...(er, not the thing about the lights, of course.)
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My dad leaves his up all year round. (But they're only plugged in from the end of November through January 6.)
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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I hate the fact that shopping for normal things in a regular store becomes so much more of a hassle. They need to make so much room for the seasonal stuff and bright shiny objects that something has to give up space. Usually, it's something I waited too long to purchase, so it's my own fault, but it really is a pain. I need stuff, just not Christmas stuff.
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I don't really like the holidays lights either because it's a lot of energy spoiled and it's not as if we had that much stock we don't have to worry about the folowing years.
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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I would like to be able to use Christmas lights for things other than Christmas. But they are really hard to find in stores in June.
Posts: 527 | Registered: Aug 2004
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So buy some now and save them for June? Or better yet, buy some immediately after Christmas so you get a better price.
When I was in high school, my best friend made a really neat project out of white Christmas lights and clear plastic cups. She poked holes in the bottoms of the cups so that there would be a single light in each cup, then stapled the cups together to form a sphere. It was really pretty hanging in a darkened room.
quote:But they are really hard to find in stores in June.
You shop the wrong stores, bud! Plus, you know, buy them once when they're on sale in Jan. and you can use them year-round.
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Yeah I know. It's just that I don't think of it until I need them. It's an impulse purchase at that point.
Posts: 527 | Registered: Aug 2004
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For me, the worst part is not the lights, it's the office "Christmas, oh, excuse me, I mean, Holiday Party". That's where I was earlier this evening. The worst part -- everyone pretending to have a good time so that the boss will think we have a good attitude and team spirit.
The best part -- seeing who embarrasses themselves with too many trips to the open bar or with inappropriate ho'-like outfits. (There was a doozy tonight! Let's just say that if her clothing accidentally caught fire, and she suffered burns because of it, she would be just fine -- only a small area would be affected.)
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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I'm sorry, but everyone is so far wrong about the worst aspect concerning the holidays. Any person who has ever worked in retail during the season will say it is the constant playing of Christmas music throughout the day. I am not looking forward at all to going to work when I get home at break. That means I'll have to start pondering again exactly what are
"the tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago."
Posts: 291 | Registered: Jun 2002
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They blast Christmas music in my Metro station in the morning.
I'm not opposed to Christmas music in principle. I'm sure there's good Christmas music out there. I'm just very, very sure that what they're playing isn't it.
And even if it was, I'm not sure the crack of dawn is the time to hear it.
Posts: 650 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Heffaji: I'm sorry, but everyone is so far wrong about the worst aspect concerning the holidays...it is the constant playing of Christmas music
Gotta agree that it can be grating. A few years ago, I was working on a private-duty nursing case. The patient would insist on listening to all his Christmas CD's beginning right after Thanksgiving. He had a doozy of a collection. Have you ever heard "Dominic the Donkey"? "The Dolley Parton Willy Nelson Country Hoedown Christmas"?
My ears would be bleeding by the end of each shift.
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Well, starting in around August or September, Big Lots sometimes has them (and cheap.) Then, around here, craft stores and some hardware stores have them year-round. Occasionally I'll also see them at Pier One or Cost Plus.
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quote:While the idea or the image of a Santa Claus dates back to the 1800s, a rendering of the man with rosy cheeks and a big red coat didn't receive widespread exposure until Coca-Cola began using it in the 1920s, according to Gillespie's research.
Parents soon started telling their children that Santa Claus is real and that he brings Christmas presents via a home's chimney. Telling children an outright lie and possibly violating issues of trust and honesty irk Gillespie.
"I'm not sure why anyone would want to take that risk," he said
The whole "Santa Claus" thing is what I would call forced cheerfulness. I can't stand anything "Santa" and because "Santa" is now dominating Christmas so much, I'm no longer very fond of the holiday.
I also can't stand charity Christmas giving. I'll admit that in my youth my family qualified and the people giving us presents treated us like pond scum. So I'm really burned on the "service" that dominates the holiday too.
But I heard Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Greensleves tonight on the radio and I loved it.
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:The whole "Santa Claus" thing is what I would call forced cheerfulness.
I don't see it. Haiving Santa images plastered everywhere doesn't force any mood upon you, including cheerfulness.
I am no fan of Santa Clause myself. The idea that he might be real never crossed my mind until I started going to school and met other kids who believed in him. While we have told our kids the stories of Santa and the Tooth Fairy, we have never told them they are real.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Maybe it is just how I feel. I would probably skip the holiday and I don't seem very cheerful and so everyone else celebrating makes it feel like forced cheerfulness?
I'm Christian, but I'm just so not into the way America celebrates the birth of Chirst. I don't put up a tree or decorate anymore.
However, I do still like giving gifts. I've already bought my Hatrack gift exchange person's present.
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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To add more. I was reading the newspaper the other day and got thinking how noisy daily life is. So many people throwing out their opinions, acusations, then the violence and whatnot that people have been complaining about for years. And because of Thanksgiving having just happened, and I had a nice one, I could see one of the things that made it nice, was the quiet. No news. Got to stay home. Didn't even check my email (AHH!!!).
If I got to decide how Christmas should be celebrated, I would have all stores close at 6 pm for 3 days before and 3 after Christmas. And nobody goes to work on Christmas day. Minimal TV and the newspapers have to have as little content as they can get away with. And everyone has to talk to every member of their intermediate family. And anyone who can't travel to their family must call their family on the phone. And you have to have a dinner.
I think this already happens actually. But the weeks before Christmas just start getting so noisy! And to me, decorations are noisy. And Santa Claus is just the noisiest thing of all because as that Gillespie guy said in that quote I gave above, the Santa the nation embrases is an "outright lie".
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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human, the bad thing is, there are services that CAN'T shut down for Christmas - ie, hospitals and utilities. But I agree it would be nice if people actually celebrated Christmas, but that's just the Christian part of me.
I really do love the gift giving, it's the gift buying that annoys me (I hate malls). Christmas music is ok in small doses, but those d*^n dancing santas that repeat over and over again kill me. My nephew kept playing one over and over again, until I asked to see it, pulled the batteries, and told him it broke :-)
Posts: 880 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Maybe it is just how I feel. I would probably skip the holiday and I don't seem very cheerful and so everyone else celebrating makes it feel like forced cheerfulness?
I can see how that could be called encouraged cheerfulness, but force or enforced? That seems too much of a hyperbole.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Crow's Wife- How do you crochet snowflakes? I'm just learning to crochet and am fairly solidly at the scarf stage. Is it something I could do?
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Ohhh, crocheted snoflakes, snoballs, and angels are so fun to make. Then you stiffen them with fabric stiffener or sugar. Here's a good picture of a nice one: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CrochetSnowflakes/Posts: 1014 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:I don't really like the holidays lights either because it's a lot of energy spoiled and it's not as if we had that much stock we don't have to worry about the folowing years.
This is a myth. Regular house christmas lights use "a small fraction of 1 percent of the nation's energy consumption, and precious little of it from oil scarce power generation."
That's from A Century Of Light by James Cox. Online references back this up. Although some of the larger (town) decorations and really huge motorized Santas do use more energy than just regular Christmas lighting, it's a small drop in a large bucket.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Maybe it is just how I feel. I would probably skip the holiday and I don't seem very cheerful and so everyone else celebrating makes it feel like forced cheerfulness?
I can see how that could be called encouraged cheerfulness, but force or enforced? That seems too much of a hyperbole.
Well, I'm not being very cheerful, so it certainly isn't forced in that manner.
Actually, now that I think about it, I've just had a series of very miserable Chirstmases in which some were devoid of any celebration at all. Last year's, for example, was probably the worst. This one isn't looking so bad, so I suppose I could lighten up a little bit.
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Theaca, that looks pretty difficult. I ,too, am at the scarf stage in crocheting but that looks kind of intimidating. Are there instructions for it?
Posts: 697 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Well, you would want to do snowflakes using cotton thread, because yarn doesn't stiffen all that well. That said, the larger sizes of thread aren't much smaller than sports weight yarn, so it isn't really that much of a jump. The main difference between yarn and thread is tension: with yarn you want to crochet fairly loosely so that the natural spring of the yarn will make the fabric stretchy. Thread doesn't have any give, so you need to crochet fairly tightly or else it will just look loose and messy.
All snowflakes are crocheted in rounds instead of rows, so you might want to do a few granny squares first just to get used to working in rounds.
I've used the Leisure Arts book "99 Snowflakes" and most of the patterns are fairly easy. The main difficulty, imo, is that many of the patterns have a lot of picots, and they can be annoying if you're just learning. You can also find free patterns online, although they aren't always written in an easy to understand way.
The instructions will give a thread/hook size recommendation, but you can always work them in larger or smaller sizes. The smaller your thread, the daintier the snowflakes, but ones done in thick thread are nice, too. Choose a hook that's large enough that the thread doesn't slide off, but small enough that the stitches don't look large and loopy. I have a chart somewhere that suggests the proper sized hook for a given thread size; I can look it up for you if you want.
That was probably way more information than you wanted. *embarrassed grin* I've done a fair bit of research/practice with thread crochet, and I'm always happy to see crocheters try it out.
If you're still interested, I could probably find a free pattern online that would be easy to work.
Actually I was also speaking about town Christmas illuminations, which IMHO can become quite expensive to maintain... But I may be wrong.
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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Hmm, it sounds a little too advanced for me. I've never successfully done a granny square, although I've tried several times. I'm waiting until I get home and can get a friend to walk me through how to follow the pattern, I get all turned around and confused.
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote:Originally posted by blacwolve: Hmm, it sounds a little too advanced for me. I've never successfully done a granny square, although I've tried several times. I'm waiting until I get home and can get a friend to walk me through how to follow the pattern, I get all turned around and confused.
You'll definitely want someone around to help you read the patterns, then. Probably at some point it will just "click" for you and you'll understand; at least that's how it was for me. If we lived in the same area I would offer to help you. I've already taught my husband and sister-in-law to crochet, and one of them was left-handed!