Reflections: ‘Tis the season for deep drifts of junk mail

Once again, we’re finding ourselves in the middle of the season when we’re not only supposed to be jolly but also to try to keep our chins up and our smiles bright as we deal with listening to Burl Ives sing “It’s a Holly Jolly Christmas” over and over again. Media programmers, it seems, are immune to the U.S. Constitution’s ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

But although Ives was a big star (he shuffled off to that holly, jolly place in the sky back in 1995) he, too, was undoubtedly afflicted with that bane of all U.S. citizens: junk mail.

Here it is December and, along with Christmas best wishes from such folks as the tobacco industry, the junk mail has been arriving here at the Matile Manse in great quantities over the past few weeks. Therefore, I thought you might like to find out a few things you might not even have thought about if you hadn’t read your award-winning weekly newspaper this week.

So, with no further ado, here are a number of things you probably wouldn’t even have bothered with had I not had the bad manners to bring them up:

Both flies and frogs have been known to catch athlete’s foot. No wonder flies like to stomp around the Dr. Scholl’s display at the drug store.

Outdoor carol singing probably started in the Middle Ages when groups of people went from house to house singing by torchlight. Do you suppose they sang torch songs?

Traditional weather lore says that if snow falls on Christmas Day, Easter will be warm, green and sunny

Some kangaroos live in treetops. Boy, and we think pigeons make big messes. Can you imagine a whole flock of kangaroos roosting on buildings in downtown Chicago?

The first father and son team to serve at the same time in the U.S. Senate were Henry Dodge of Wisconsin and his son Augustus Caesar Dodge of Iowa. They served from 1848 until 1855.

The original St. Nicholas was a fourth-century Turkish bishop. According to legend, he dropped a bag of gold coins down a chimney into a stocking a poor girl had hung up by the fireplace to dry. I wouldn’t mind getting a Krugerrand or two this Christmas, would you?

Give or take one or two, there are about 550 hairs in the average eyebrow.

“Yuletide” comes from the Norse tradition of cutting and burning a tree to bring the winter solstice inside. This was to last through 12 days, which is where our 12 days of Christmas comes from.

The only American author to win the Pulitzer Prize four times was poet Robert Frost.

Stagecoaches began to run over colonial roads – and colonial potholes – during the time of George Washington.

Sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi originally envisioned his life’s masterpiece to be a statue of an Egyptian peasant woman standing at the north entrance to the Suez Canal. But it was finally realized as the Statue of Liberty after being a moved a few miles west to her current location.

Lack of communication? Parents, on average, only talk with their youngsters about 20 minutes a week.

The customary Christmas Eve dish in Italy is roasted eel, which is why I plan to stay home for Christmas this year.

Scientists say the blue color of the sea is due to the reflection of the sky. But why is the sky blue?

While a lot of Senators have run for President and have been elected, only one former President has been elected to the U.S. Senate: Andrew Johnson.

Boy, here’s a vital bit of info. Vermouth is concocted from wormwood, the same herb as absinthe.

Maine is the only state in the Union whose name has one syllable.

Ben Franklin was one of the first to manufacture playing cards in America. What would we have done without Ben?

George Gershwin was only 26 when he completed his piano score for “Rhapsody in Blue.”

The largest painting now in existence is probably “The Battle of Gettysburg,” completed in 1884. The first version of the work took two and a half years of work, by artist Paul Philipoteaux and 16 assistants before being completed for exhibit in Chicago in 1883. The painting was 410 feet long, 70 feet high, and weighed 11,792 pounds. The next year, he did a second version that opened in Boston. Done as cycloramas, they were designed to be viewed in the round. The Boston version was acquired and moved to Gettysburg, restored and opened in 1913 in time for the 50th anniversary of the battle. The monumental work has recently been nicely restored at Gettysburg National Military Park and is now the centerpiece of a dramatic sound and light show. Which is too bad because it would be just the thing for that problem wall in the living room, don’t you think?

Some bodily statistics: Fingernails grow about 1.5 inches a year; the body produces about 500,000 new cells each day to replace those that have died; and the adult heart beats about 40 million times a year.

What’s going on here? In 1945, Americans ate an average of 402 eggs a year. By 1985 that was down to 255 eggs a year, but by 2007, we were consuming 257 eggs a year.

The first bowling tournament for women was in 1917 in St. Louis.

In Indonesia, primitive people once believed that bathing a cat caused rain. Today, of course, we modern humans know that bathing our autos causes rain. They were so close to getting it right, too.

That little metal or plastic doohickey on the end of your shoelace is called an aglet.

The letters “IOU” didn’t originally mean “I owe you.” They meant “I owe unto” followed by the creditor’s name.

Finally, the only correctly spelled 10-letter word you can write using only the top line of the standard QUERTY keyboard is “typewriter.”

Here’s hoping you and yours have a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

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