Friday night I went over to my sisters' place from which we were hosting an online carol sing for friends and family.
Well, the government has brought in updated restrictions for the holidays, and they are as unwelcome- and useless- as I expected them to be. More on that at a later date. Suffice to say, they've made it virtually impossible for even a fraction of my family to get together legally. It is, however, still Christmas and we're still celebrating, if in a limited fashion. Friday night I went over to my sisters' place from which we were hosting an online carol sing for friends and family. Then last night it was off to another sister's place for a fondue and film night. The fondues were cheese and chocolate, and the film was White Christmas. I'm taking all of this week off work; it's been so crazy that up until now, this year I've only taken one week of the three weeks of vacation that I have. Looking forward to getting some stuff done and seeing as much of the family as I can.
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“You fear the world too much,' she answered gently. 'All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off, one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?” The above quote is from Charles Dickens' 1843 story A Christmas Carol. It is uttered by Belle, the woman Ebeneezer Scrooge was engaged to marry when he was a young man. During the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Past, Scrooge is taken back to the Christmas many years before when Belle broke her engagement to him after realizing that the love which he once had for her has been supplanted by his love of money: "It matters little," she said softly. "To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and, if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve." "What Idol has displaced you?" he rejoined. "A golden one." "This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said. "There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!" "You fear the world too much," she answered gently. "All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?" "What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you." She shook her head. "Am I?" "Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor, and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made you were another man." "I was a boy," he said impatiently. "Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are," she returned. "I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of this I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you." Related Posts:This is Winston Churchill's 1941 Christmas address, given in Washington on Christmas Eve because he had travelled there following the attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7th. I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States. I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.
This is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other. Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field. Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart. Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace. Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world. And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all. Okay, I finished the second series of Grantchester and it was... meh. It has a darker tone- especially one plot line which is carried over from the first series- which is fine, and some of the other story lines are pretty good, but still... meh. Frankly, it's the character of the vicar Sidney Chambers which is dragging it down for me. As I said in my review of series one, I'm not Church of England and have no great knowledge of what they would have tolerated in a priest in the 1950's. But I have a hard time swallowing that any parish would put up with the way Chambers behaves. In this series, besides his habitual neglect of his pastoral duties, he is publicly intoxicated on several occasions, engaging in a fist fight in one instance and, while drunk at the local pub, grabs a barmaid's butt and sloppily tries to kiss her. This happens in his own small community... am I supposed to believe that there would be no ramifications for this? He's briefly dated a couple of women- not counting a drunken one night stand he had in London- but keeps getting mixed up with his original girlfriend who is now married. In the final episode of the series, she leaves her husband although she's at least six or seven months pregnant and comes running to Chambers in Grantchester. In the final scene the two are passionately kissing on a public road. On top of everything else, are we to accept that he can openly carry on with a married woman- visibly pregnant with her husband's child- and still remain the town vicar? In rural England. In the 1950's. Sorry, that strains my credulity too far, and I'm someone who watches a lot of science fiction. It would be nice if some modern show at least made an attempt at realistically portraying clergy... I don't expect sainthood, but this is ridiculous. I realize that I haven't actually mentioned the crime solving being done by Chambers and Keating; it's still occurring and generally remains interesting but the personal drama is taking up more and more time in the episodes. It's fine to have some character building scenes, but I tuned in to see a crime drama, not a soap opera. I don't think I'll go on to series three, at least not right away. Maybe at some later date, when I forget how annoyed I am with it.
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