@Arrow I would stop in the student union, order a piece of pizza and queue Any Colour You Like, on the jukebox.

As always, love your poetry.

So. the 'Peruvian Beach Shack Report'(TM - No rights reserved) - 'On the Mend' edition has been delayed do to continued steady convalescing(I'm lazy and I sleep a lot).

Got one for Aspie - "Your not disabled...You can still telemarket Condo timeshares from your hospital bed!"

I have two songs to share with all this morning. Both are by Pink Floyd (with full writing credit on the second to Clair Torry):

The first is a live version that in it's multimedia presentation shows the band's feelings on war.

The second is one of the greatest songs ever written with no words(except a little speaking piece at the beginning).

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z39KZAryzk]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVBCE3gaNxc]

@Arrow
real estate. Thanks for the tunes and good luck on the pony.

As always, love your poetry.

So. the 'Peruvian Beach Shack Report'(TM - No rights reserved) - 'On the Mend' edition has been delayed do to continued steady convalescing(I'm lazy and I sleep a lot).

Got one for Aspie - "Your not disabled...You can still telemarket Condo timeshares from your hospital bed!"

I have two songs to share with all this morning. Both are by Pink Floyd (with full writing credit on the second to Clair Torry):

The first is a live version that in it's multimedia presentation shows the band's feelings on war.

The second is one of the greatest songs ever written with no words(except a little speaking piece at the beginning).

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z39KZAryzk]

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVBCE3gaNxc]

@Lookout

Here's a friend Erynn Marshall playing the tune.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66oANY0ugRo]

Hey smiley - don't often come by on Sat AM, but it is too cold to go to Trade Day this morning. It was 15 and now pushing 20 degrees...so a heat wave compared to your situation. QMS sparked my curiosity and I had the research "old christmas". Funny how music travels in time. All the best!

...and some comments from a music list serve about the day...

last verse of Please To See The King, that odd carol sung by Martin Carthy & Steeleye Span , supposedly about the Wren, king of birds - tho there are several different & competing exegeses:

Old Xmas is past, Twelfth Tide comes the last
So we bid you adieu, Great joy to the New [ie presumably Happy New Year]

Twelfth Night [aka Epiphany, the 12th Day of Xmas of the song where the Lords come a-leaping or the drummers drumming, depending on yr version], has also been identified with Roman Bacchanalia, when everything was reversed, slaves were masters for a day &c ? hence, some think, the title of Shax's comedy, 'Twelfth Night, or What You Will', in which everyone is disguised, nothing is as it appears, nobody [becoz of existence of identical twins] is who they appear to be ? as Feste the Fool exclaims sarcastically at one point, but we, the audience, know, more accurately than he thinks, "Nothing that is so, is so!"

In Co Kerry, Ireland, where I grew up, January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany, is also called "Little Christmas", or "The Women's Christmas". My late mother used to solemnly place the little statuettes of the Three Wise Kings in the "crib" (nativity set) on the eve of January 6th, as this was the night that the Magi were traditionally supposed to have arrived at the stable in Bethlehem, and unlike in a lot of other local households, these statuettes were not permitted to appear in OUR nativity display PRIOR to that date !!

"The Women's Christmas" was in effect a kind of "Mother's Day" and it was the day when the mother in the house was celebrated and thanked by the rest of her family for all her hard work in providing us with the best of everything over the Christmas period, and all the cooking and other household chores on that day were done by her family, so that she became a lady of leisure and had a day of rest and pampering. Little inexpensive gifts were also exchanged on that date as well.....hence the reference to "Little Christmas"

Here in Cornwall, where I now live, "Twelfth Night" is celebrated in Launceston every year with a fine informal music and singing session in Launceston,

And a final interpretation...

Long, long time ago, the Romans had a calendar which was more or less moon-based, in which they introduced a leap-month every now and then to keep the calendar year more or less the same as the solar year. For various reasons, this calendar was no longer running synchronous with the actual seasons. In fact, it was several months ahead; the start of the calendar year, which was the beginning of March, fell long before the solar start of the year, the spring time equinox.

Julius Caesar introduced, in 46/45 BC, a calendar that had months slightly longer than a moon, so a single leap-day, at the end of a year, the end of February, would be enough to correct the year. At the introduction he also needed to correct the accumulated mistake, by introducing in the last year old style two extra months. However, to avoid having a year of fourteen months, he declared the year would from now on start in January, instead of March.

Now, this system is not perfect, and initially its implementation wasn't perfect either, but things were not all that bad, so in 325 the Council of Nicaea saw no particular problem in defining the date of Easter as: The first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, even though at the time the calendar was already slightly behind. However, a small error that kept accumulating, meant that around 1582 pope Gregorius XIII was beginning to feel Easter was celebrated on the wrong day. By his time, the calendar was 10 days behind, compared to 325! He introduced the Gregorian Calendar, which only differed in the timing of the leap-day: There would no longer be leap-days in century years, except if that year could be divided by 400. This would keep Easter in its place for millennia, once he correct the calendar back to that of 325. So, he ordered that one time only, every one should skip 10 days.

Will we get to the point? Is the pope Catholic? Yes, he is, but not all countries are. So while some countries followed the instruction immediately, other, Protestant, countries were more hesitant. For example, it wasn't until 1701 that we in Friesland changed the calendar. By then the error had grown to 11 days. When we did change it, we had a slight contractual problem: All contracts started on the First of May, and lasted a year. Nobody was going to pay a year's wages for only 354 days' work, so the full year had to be served till the old First of May, and then the new contracts could be entered into, which would again last a year, and so on. Thus came into existence the day of "Old May", 11 days after the new First of May.

In the British Empire lived even more Protestants that didn't want anything to do with all of this, so it wasn't until 1752 that reluctantly, Great Britain reformed its calendar by skipping 11 days. But many Protestants agreed with the Pope, in that they believed the Christian feasts should be observed on the correct day! The difference was, to them the right days were those indicated by the calendar as it was in 1751. Thus, similar to the Frisian case, days like Old Halloween and Old Christmas came into existence.

Now, curiously, by counting 11 days you'll find Old Christmas should be the day before Epiphany, and in the carol mentioned above this is indeed the case. Today, however, it's celebrated on Epiphany, or similarly. I've never seen an explanation for that. The only thing I can think of is that by 1800 still the old, Julian, calendar was followed by those observing the Old Christmas, and thus the 11 day difference became a 12 day difference. This may seem a bit unlikely on the surface, but it would have occurred within the same generation, and in fact to this day Eastern Orthodox churches use the Julian calendar. As this generation might have lived in the knowledge that they would have to take notice in 1800, this doesn't seem an impossible scenario to me.

In the nineteenth century, Christmas, which had been in decline, grew in popularity again, on the 25th of December, but the other date is still known as Old Christmas, and for those who observe it, it is still associated with older Christmas traditions, some of which are in fact even older Mid-winter traditions. By coincidence, the days of Christmas and Epiphany are twelve days apart, which is why Old Christmas is often considered to be the same day as Epiphany. At least one alternative custom exists, where Old Christmas is now celebrated on the Saturday closest to its real date. In this way, the attempts to keep Old Christmas on the same date have now given Old Christmas a date that varies yearly. History plays strange tricks sometimes.

@Lookout maybe we could apply all those rules to voting day? Confuse the hell out of the talking heads! March to madness at the polls...

Here's a friend Erynn Marshall playing the tune.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66oANY0ugRo]

Hey smiley - don't often come by on Sat AM, but it is too cold to go to Trade Day this morning. It was 15 and now pushing 20 degrees...so a heat wave compared to your situation. QMS sparked my curiosity and I had the research "old christmas". Funny how music travels in time. All the best!

...and some comments from a music list serve about the day...

last verse of Please To See The King, that odd carol sung by Martin Carthy & Steeleye Span , supposedly about the Wren, king of birds - tho there are several different & competing exegeses:

Old Xmas is past, Twelfth Tide comes the last
So we bid you adieu, Great joy to the New [ie presumably Happy New Year]

Twelfth Night [aka Epiphany, the 12th Day of Xmas of the song where the Lords come a-leaping or the drummers drumming, depending on yr version], has also been identified with Roman Bacchanalia, when everything was reversed, slaves were masters for a day &c ? hence, some think, the title of Shax's comedy, 'Twelfth Night, or What You Will', in which everyone is disguised, nothing is as it appears, nobody [becoz of existence of identical twins] is who they appear to be ? as Feste the Fool exclaims sarcastically at one point, but we, the audience, know, more accurately than he thinks, "Nothing that is so, is so!"

In Co Kerry, Ireland, where I grew up, January 6th, the feast of the Epiphany, is also called "Little Christmas", or "The Women's Christmas". My late mother used to solemnly place the little statuettes of the Three Wise Kings in the "crib" (nativity set) on the eve of January 6th, as this was the night that the Magi were traditionally supposed to have arrived at the stable in Bethlehem, and unlike in a lot of other local households, these statuettes were not permitted to appear in OUR nativity display PRIOR to that date !!

"The Women's Christmas" was in effect a kind of "Mother's Day" and it was the day when the mother in the house was celebrated and thanked by the rest of her family for all her hard work in providing us with the best of everything over the Christmas period, and all the cooking and other household chores on that day were done by her family, so that she became a lady of leisure and had a day of rest and pampering. Little inexpensive gifts were also exchanged on that date as well.....hence the reference to "Little Christmas"

Here in Cornwall, where I now live, "Twelfth Night" is celebrated in Launceston every year with a fine informal music and singing session in Launceston,

And a final interpretation...

Long, long time ago, the Romans had a calendar which was more or less moon-based, in which they introduced a leap-month every now and then to keep the calendar year more or less the same as the solar year. For various reasons, this calendar was no longer running synchronous with the actual seasons. In fact, it was several months ahead; the start of the calendar year, which was the beginning of March, fell long before the solar start of the year, the spring time equinox.

Julius Caesar introduced, in 46/45 BC, a calendar that had months slightly longer than a moon, so a single leap-day, at the end of a year, the end of February, would be enough to correct the year. At the introduction he also needed to correct the accumulated mistake, by introducing in the last year old style two extra months. However, to avoid having a year of fourteen months, he declared the year would from now on start in January, instead of March.

Now, this system is not perfect, and initially its implementation wasn't perfect either, but things were not all that bad, so in 325 the Council of Nicaea saw no particular problem in defining the date of Easter as: The first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, even though at the time the calendar was already slightly behind. However, a small error that kept accumulating, meant that around 1582 pope Gregorius XIII was beginning to feel Easter was celebrated on the wrong day. By his time, the calendar was 10 days behind, compared to 325! He introduced the Gregorian Calendar, which only differed in the timing of the leap-day: There would no longer be leap-days in century years, except if that year could be divided by 400. This would keep Easter in its place for millennia, once he correct the calendar back to that of 325. So, he ordered that one time only, every one should skip 10 days.

Will we get to the point? Is the pope Catholic? Yes, he is, but not all countries are. So while some countries followed the instruction immediately, other, Protestant, countries were more hesitant. For example, it wasn't until 1701 that we in Friesland changed the calendar. By then the error had grown to 11 days. When we did change it, we had a slight contractual problem: All contracts started on the First of May, and lasted a year. Nobody was going to pay a year's wages for only 354 days' work, so the full year had to be served till the old First of May, and then the new contracts could be entered into, which would again last a year, and so on. Thus came into existence the day of "Old May", 11 days after the new First of May.

In the British Empire lived even more Protestants that didn't want anything to do with all of this, so it wasn't until 1752 that reluctantly, Great Britain reformed its calendar by skipping 11 days. But many Protestants agreed with the Pope, in that they believed the Christian feasts should be observed on the correct day! The difference was, to them the right days were those indicated by the calendar as it was in 1751. Thus, similar to the Frisian case, days like Old Halloween and Old Christmas came into existence.

Now, curiously, by counting 11 days you'll find Old Christmas should be the day before Epiphany, and in the carol mentioned above this is indeed the case. Today, however, it's celebrated on Epiphany, or similarly. I've never seen an explanation for that. The only thing I can think of is that by 1800 still the old, Julian, calendar was followed by those observing the Old Christmas, and thus the 11 day difference became a 12 day difference. This may seem a bit unlikely on the surface, but it would have occurred within the same generation, and in fact to this day Eastern Orthodox churches use the Julian calendar. As this generation might have lived in the knowledge that they would have to take notice in 1800, this doesn't seem an impossible scenario to me.

In the nineteenth century, Christmas, which had been in decline, grew in popularity again, on the 25th of December, but the other date is still known as Old Christmas, and for those who observe it, it is still associated with older Christmas traditions, some of which are in fact even older Mid-winter traditions. By coincidence, the days of Christmas and Epiphany are twelve days apart, which is why Old Christmas is often considered to be the same day as Epiphany. At least one alternative custom exists, where Old Christmas is now celebrated on the Saturday closest to its real date. In this way, the attempts to keep Old Christmas on the same date have now given Old Christmas a date that varies yearly. History plays strange tricks sometimes.