31 Dec 2020
Later This Evening
New Year's Eve
The Scottish Parliament (with the late Sean Connery present) sings Auld Lang Syne.
Archive for December, 2020
31 Dec 2020
New Year’s Eve or Hogmanay
Hogmanay, New Year's Eve, Robert Burns
Robert Burns
NEW YEAR’S EVE, OR HOGMANAY
As a general statement, it may be asserted that neither the last evening of the old year nor the first day of the new one is much, observed in England as an occasion of festivity. In some parts of the country, indeed, and more especially in the northern counties, various social merry-makings take place; but for the most part, the great annual holiday-time is already past. Christmas Eve, Christmas-day, and St. Stephen’s or Boxing Day have absorbed almost entirely the tendencies and opportunities of the community at large in the direction of joviality and relaxation. Business and the ordinary routine of daily life have again been resumed; or, to apply to English habits the words of an old Scottish rhyme still current, but evidently belonging to the old times, anterior to the Reformation, when Christmas was the great popular festival:
-
Yule’s come and Yule ‘s gane,
And we hae feasted weel;
Sae Jock maun to his flail again,
And Jenny to her wheel.’
Whilst thus the inhabitants of South Britain are settling down again quietly to work after the festivities of the Christmas season, their fellow-subjects in the northern division of the island are only commencing their annual saturnalia, which, till recently, bore, in the license and boisterous merriment which used to prevail, a most unmistakable resemblance to its ancient pagan namesake. The epithet of the Daft [mad] Days, applied to the season of the New Year in Scotland, indicates very expressively the uproarious joviality which characterized the period in question. This exuberance of joyousness—which, it must be admitted, sometimes led to great excesses—has now much declined, but New-year’s Eve and New-year’s Day constitute still the great national holiday in Scotland. Under the 1st of January, we have already detailed the various revelries by which the New Year used to be ushered in, in Scotland. It now becomes our province to notice those ceremonies and customs which are appropriate to the last day of the year, or, as it is styled in Scotland, Hogmanay. Read the rest of this entry »
30 Dec 2020
Corbet’s Couloir
Jackson Hole, Photography, Skiing, Wyoming
A ski run in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where legendary skier Doug Coombs once skied. Photo by Bob Woodall.
30 Dec 2020
Ça, bergers, assemblons-nous
Christmas Carols, France, Quebec, Raoul Jobin
Québecois tenor Raoul Jobin with choir.
29 Dec 2020
Flash Mob in Edmondton, Alberta
Christmas Carols, Edmonton Ukrainian Mens Choir, Flash Mobs, Ukraine
It’s the Edmonton Ukrainian Mens Choir performing a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Carol (Kolady).
28 Dec 2020
“Quam Parva Sapientia Regitur Mundus” (The Latest Moldbug Screed)
COVID-19, Curtis Yarvin
Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug) clocked in this morning with his latest emailed rant. This one’s on the Coronavirus and is apparently to be the last that we subscriber readers are encouraged to share, for at least a while.
(Occasional emphasis on the really good lines added by me. JDZ)
2020, the year of everything fake
“The only question left to ask was what would happen after everything familiar collapsed.”
Dec 28
I keep thinking there is some German word, like Schadenfreude or Gemütlichkeit but different, for the inability to take the world you live in seriously. If so, I can’t find it. We live in the future where everything is wrong, but at least you can’t google ideas.
In some worlds, the inability to take the world seriously is a mental disorder. In other worlds, it is normal and universal. And in some, it is a sign of superb mental health.
All of us old sufferers from this old itch, certain as we were, were never quite certain that we didn’t live in that first world. As 2020 ends, there is a certain Schadenfreude in seeing tout le monde heading toward the second—a tragedy, but a hopeful tragedy.
There are probably still people who take the world seriously—or at least, take America seriously. (Since the world still takes America seriously, it’s the same thing.) Even if the tables are starting to turn, we still have a deep moral duty to berate these people. And tables rarely turn—though they often feel like they’re starting to.
2020, for America, was a disaster. For instance, 1/4 of all small businesses are dead. Now, a serious country would try to understand that disaster, the way it understands each and every airplane crash. Who loaded the live oxygen generators into the hull? Why was the passenger permitted to board with her “emotional-support viper?” Read the rest of this entry »
