Author Topic: Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year  (Read 25863 times)

Beverly Kohn(Thompson)

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Re: Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
« Reply #15 on: December 24, 2008, 12:00:55 PM »
             Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!
    I hope everyone has a safe holiday and gets all kinds of goodies! Thank you for the Aussie info Ernest, very interesting.  Heres greetings from my family to yours, wish I could say it in Gaelic, but am a rookie at it. Maybe we'll get good news this year from Lord Lyon, heres hoping!
                            yours in family abd spirit!
                                      Bev

Barbara

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Re: Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
« Reply #16 on: December 29, 2008, 02:35:53 PM »
Ern, I like your celebration of Christmas!  Makes more sense for the men to slave over the Bar-B-Q instead of the women slaving over a hot stove in the kitchen.... ;D  Thanks for sharing that with us.  Hope you and Cheryl had a lovely Christmas.

Barbara
"Kindness is the language the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain

Barbara

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Re: Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
« Reply #17 on: December 29, 2008, 02:50:33 PM »
Mary, about "First Footing"....."First footing" (or the "first foot" in the house after midnight) is still common across Scotland. To ensure good luck for the house the first foot should be a dark male, and he should bring with him symbolic pieces of coal, shortbread, salt, black bun and a wee dram of whisky. The dark male bit is believed to be a throwback to the Viking days, when a big blonde stranger arriving on your door step with a big axe meant big trouble, and probably not a very happy New Year!

My email friend in Scotland told me they don't celebrate Christmas as much as we do, but they really celebrate the New Year, like for a week.  Then it takes that long again to sober up.   ;D

I think the reason for Scots not celebrating Christmas is because it was virtually banned in Scotland for around 400 years, from the end of the 17th century to the 1950s. The reason for this dates back to the years of Protestant Reformation, when the straight-laced Kirk proclaimed Christmas as a Popish or Catholic feast, and as such needed banning.

Happy Hogmanay to all!

Barbara
"Kindness is the language the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain

Donna

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Re: Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
« Reply #18 on: December 30, 2008, 01:11:34 AM »
Well, a dark male with shortbread, good whisky, etc. or a big blonde with an axe...they both sound good to me!
Happy New Year Everyone!

Donna
ANY DAY ABOVE GROUND IS A GOOD DAY !

Mary

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Re: Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
« Reply #19 on: December 30, 2008, 10:14:41 AM »
Hi all -

Back from the Indiana 'house of pestilence.'  ;) We went to Ted and Pam Herring's for Christmas ..... Ted already had a cold (which we knew) but while we were there, Pam went down with it too. We figured we were doomed and she certainly was in no shape to worry about company, so we packed up and came home on Friday. I did get their cold (flu?) by Saturday, but not as severe as they had. Tom got it a day or so later - again, lighter.  So, our plans for Christmas vacation didn't work out quite as planned, but.....hey! We're retired! We can head that far north just about any time, so when the weather gets better (we drove both directions in rain) and everyone's healthy, we'll hi-ho our way back up for another long weekend.

We did have a great Christmas day - lots of laughs, dinner with more members of the family, fun gifts, playing with Ted's new Wii (that baseball game could land you in therapy for shoulder dislocation from pitching!) and a bit of bridge.

Hope you all fared well over the holidays - the worst thing was that I forgot to bring home the sausage balls and Ted ate them all! And GLOATED over it!  :'(

I think New Year's Eve will probably be us warming our bums in front of the fireplace and toasting the start of another (better?) year. We wish you all the same good start!

John ThomsonHollingsworth

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Re: Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
« Reply #20 on: January 01, 2009, 06:51:51 AM »
First Foot
I had it covered left stuff outside, then after midnight brought in the shortbread and Dewers,
No coal here in Florida (should have used some grill charcoal.
Hair is still partly dark.

I had went to Cameron's British Foods in Cape Coral on the 31st.
I bought some Scottish pies both meat and pork, also some shortbread and a box of scone mix.

John

Mary

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Re: Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
« Reply #21 on: January 01, 2009, 10:11:48 AM »
Sounds like you've covered most of the requirements......come up for the AGM and we'll send you back with some TN coal!
We toasted with Robitussin!  ;D

Happy New Year!

Mary and Tom

Donna

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Re: Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
« Reply #22 on: January 04, 2009, 03:27:56 PM »
Hey Mary & Tom,
I sure hope you're feeling better!

Did you notice that the Forum has a new member for 2009 already?

It's been rather slow on the Forum and this would be a wonderful time for some of our "Shy" members to introduce themselves!  Just a couple lines to let us know who you are and what part of the country you're from!   PLEASE   :-*

Donna
ANY DAY ABOVE GROUND IS A GOOD DAY !

Mary

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Re: Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
« Reply #23 on: January 05, 2009, 11:42:31 AM »
Hi Donna -

Still not 'well' but somewhat better. This flu really hangs on!

I wish you well getting people to post.......I haven't had any luck!  Stu tried stirring the pot too...... Can't seem to get them to understand this isn't just a READING forum - to have any good stuff TO read, people have to post what they have/find so others can comment, add to it, question, etc.  It simply can't rely on a handful of people to keep doing the research and posting!  I look at the stats on how many people are online reading it and it's incredible..........but they don't post. I guess they think they don't have anything interesting??? How about your genealogy dead ends? Where did your Thompsons emigrate from (Scotland, Ireland, etc. and what port?) and where did they land in US?  All kinds of things could help someone else's research. But this requires participation - not sit back and let others do it.

I'm working on other things at the moment (website and 501c3 foremost) and just don't have time to do much posting now. You know, if there's no mandate for a forum, we can always drop it.


Stirling Thompson

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Re: Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year
« Reply #24 on: January 06, 2009, 01:23:57 PM »
Mary, glad to hear you're feeling a little better and hope you complete your recovery real soon!

Welcome to the madhouse to BillT!

Donna, now that the holidays are over hopefully things will pick up a bit around here. I went North to see the grandkids in Maine and had a total of 17 days away from work so I had a bit of catching up to do and that has kept me off the forum except for brief check-ins to see if there was anything major going on.

Truthfully, I don't understand why most folks seem content to sit back and let someone else do all the work. That's how you end up with a few people dominating the group and then you start getting complaints about people being left out of what's going on. I don't know but I'm sure everyone has something to say about something that's important to them and might be to the Clan if someone is willing to bring up the subject. Anyways, I'll try to back on the stick and start posting again.

Happy New Year to all and may 2009 be the Year of the Clan Thompson!
Semper Fidelis! Semper Familia!
Stu