The Christmas/New Year Topic

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

Okie dokie!

It’s finally time for Christmas again. That means that you need a Christmas avatar to begin with. I also strongly suggest BIS to add some Christmas smiles so that they are easily accessible. But that’s not all.

Please also share thoughts and tips on Christmas presents. I know that the best presents are the personal ones (or the really expensive ones ;-) A personal and nice present I usually like to give some one is a nice framed picture, where I’ve edited this particular person with some fancy celebrity etc..

Merry Christmas ya’ll!!

[The Real Armstrong 0]

I gotta go get me one of 'em X-mas avatars.

X-mas hasn't begun untill you've eaten Vörtbröd and Lussekatter. Yummy.

About X-mas presents... Hmmm... I allways had good ideas on presents. I'm losing inspiration.

[Pathy 0]

Bah Humbug, i hate xmas.

Well i used to like it, but now it really pisses me off that christmas "started" like 2 months ago (thats when all the xmas stock goes out and all the adverts start )....i really really hate the commercialism surrounding it.....

Remove all that and i'd be totally happy with it. Nowerdays it just feels all worn out by the time it actually reaches Christmas day! I usually end up so bombarded with it that i dont feel "Christmassy" at all.

If i had my way, it'd be nothing to do with Xmas before the start of advent.

Now January 16th, theres a day i'm looking forward to......

[brgnorway 0]

Bah Humbug, i hate xmas.  

Well i used to like it, but now it really pisses me off that christmas "started" like 2 months ago (thats when all the xmas stock goes out and all the adverts start )....i really really hate the commercialism surrounding it.....

Remove all that and i'd be totally happy with it. Nowerdays it just feels all worn out by the time it actually reaches Christmas day! I usually end up so bombarded with it that i dont feel "Christmassy" at all.

If i had my way, it'd be nothing to do with Xmas before the start of advent.

Now January 16th, theres a day i'm looking forward to......

Exactly my thoughts aswell. Just to add to the misery I can mention that I work in the hotell business.........and the last month before christmas is my (and most others in my business) personal hate period. Period.

Do any other countries have the tradition where firms and companies take their employees out to restaurants?

It's living hell! People quarrel and smack their bosses in the face, lose their jobs because they can't fucking behave and ends up in bed with someone who is obviously not their wife!

And when they're not busy doing this the run around and puke all thinkable places.

And I have to endure all this shit! So when January nears I start to relax a few days!

Edit: It's great for kids of course! However, for us grown ups it's only about balanced reciprocity or swapping gifts! Mindless!

[FW200 0]

Christmas means vacation and presents so I love it

I ordered some Russian army stuff as my present:

M7 BDU (Kamysh)

M21 LBV (Kamysh)

And an old school Army ruck

Normally I really don't know what to get but since I needed some equipment for airsoft I ordered this this year, I just hope it arrives in time

Will update my avatar to be a bit more Christmas-ish soon

[void_false 1]

We dont celebrate Xmas in Israel.

[da12thMonkey 1943]

Merry Christmas folks

Christmas-ised my avatar:

[dm 9]

@bgnorway and pathy, yup, feel your pain there (work as a waiter in a hotel) xmas trees and decorations go up just before November, so its a bit soul destroying.

Anyho, got a suitable christmassy avatar me thinks

[Cpt. FrostBite 0]

Marry X-mas??? Hell, we first have Saint Nicholas in the Netherlands today on 5 december.

For those who don't know; Santa Claus is just a variant of St Nicholas (called 'Sinterklaas' in my language).

But X-mas isen't about santa at all  

You guys are right about the commercial aspect of X-mas. That just makes me sick. But you can't blame em; it's how they make money and those guys also have children to feed.

The little thing I want is a white x-mas this year. Must have been 10 years age when I had my last white x-mas  

The one thing I love about x-mas is they allways repeat those 'Die-hard' movies on TV (the first and second one). Allways nice to hear Sinatra sing 'let it snow' while Bruce Willes is shooting the bad guys

[The Frenchman 0]

Marry X-mas??? Hell, we first have Saint Nicholas in the Netherlands today on 5 december.

For those who don't know; Santa Claus is just a variant of St Nicholas (called 'Sinterklaas' in my language).

But X-mas isen't about santa at all  

You guys are right about the commercial aspect of X-mas. That just makes me sick. But you can't blame em; it's how they make money and those guys also have children to feed.

The little thing I want is a white x-mas this year. Must have been 10 years age when I had my last white x-mas  

The one thing I love about x-mas is they allways repeat those 'Die-hard' movies on TV (the first and second one). Allways nice to hear Sinatra sing 'let it snow' while Bruce Willes is shooting the bad guys  

My favorite christmas movie.

I have turned my French Ninja avatar into a Christmas French Ninja!

[lee_h._oswald 0]

I want snow!

Damned global warming is coming closer to germany every year!

---

MfG Lee

[stevevcb 3]

I love Christmas because there's the annual booze run to look forwards too. I've not been fully sober for three days. Happy days...

[Colossus 2]

I want snow!

Damned global warming is coming closer to germany every year!

---

MfG Lee

It's raining in Norway

It should be snowing by now!!

I lost my christmas spirit, now it's just a big commercial party.

[iNeo 0]

It's raining in Norway

It should be snowing by now!!

Yeah here in Stockholm too, the snow's gone again About +10C, summer in December

[ran 0]

It's raining in Norway

It should be snowing by now!!

Yeah here in Stockholm too, the snow's gone again About +10C, summer in December

1 to 3°C in the morning here, doesn't go above 10°C then.

[Milkman 1]

Now I know why everyone hates Americans; its because our cars are causing global warming and now you can't have your precious snow! MUAHAAHAHAHAH!

Joking of course. Happy holidays everyone.

PS: Where is the Christmas Avatar that we had last year?

[ralphwiggum 6]

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">:xmas:

[Donnervogel 0]

Now I know why everyone hates Americans; its because our cars are causing global warming and now you can't have your precious snow! MUAHAAHAHAHAH!

Joking of course. Happy holidays everyone.

PS: Where is the Christmas Avatar that we had last year?

in the long term it will bring europe more snow than we can cope with ;)

And I am truly fed up with christmas. wans't it just last year when we had this shit? They could come up with new ideas...

[iNeo 0]

It's raining in Norway

It should be snowing by now!!

Yeah here in Stockholm too, the snow's gone again About +10C, summer in December

1 to 3°C in the morning here, doesn't go above 10°C then.

Well yeah in the morning it's around 0-5.. In November it was down to -10C..

[Nemesis6 0]

We dont celebrate Xmas in Israel.    

*ignores void_false's @mail.ru account*

:P

[Akira 0]

Well reading some of the comments makes me sad. This is the one time of year where I am jovial and happy and freely give to others (its tough the rest of the year ).

I don't like the commercialism or the buy buy buy feeling Xmas has gotten in the last decades or so, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying the time and close togetherness of friends and family. I ignore the advertisements, I ignore the crap that I am trying to be sold, and enjoy the feeling of the time, and how I feel about it, not how some external force makes me feel or says I should feel like.

[shinRaiden 0]

My church is doing a version of Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" this year. I missed out on the last cycle, but not this time.

My brother's part. He goes all out, platform shoes to make himself about 7~7ft 2in tall (213-215cm), lots of padding, and tons of lights. He takes a small and a medium christmas wreaths and layers them on his head (St. Lucia style), then wires in a couple meters of various sized christmas and misc lights. He wants to weave in his mexican pepper lights, but I told him that was a bit excessive. He's got the voice to match though.

I like my part better. I have no lines and I get to scare the bejeebers out of everyone. Ironically it's the pastor who'll be playing Scrooge. Otherwise I'll be on spotlight duty the play nights. I've got to top my brother somehow, I figure about 12in to get me up into the same 7~7'2" range should be about right. Leftover halloween supplies will help, and I'm trying to figure out how to rig up a fog source underneath it all.

The plan is that all the lights will be out with a narrow spot on my brother (Christmas Present) walking "off into the light" while I sneak out like a big black icky shadow across the floor. Scrooge (the pastor) will be stareing wistfully after him ("Please, don't leave me..."), then the spotlight pulls back and -boom- I'm there. Yup, we're going to have some fun with it.

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Two years our church did a "Night in Bethlehem" party. My brothers and I got in trouble the previous time they had one because we had made our own stash of 'gold nuggets' and were doing brisk business on the side scamming and scheming. We tried to cop the excuse of adding 'atmosphere' by simulating 'authentic' money changing, but the pastor threatened to break out the Good Book on us, especially the part where the Good Lord thumped the miscreants.

Anyway, this past time we were partially better behaved. I dug out all the bedouin gear I picked up in the ME when I was there in 2000 and my brothers and I went decked out in style - the only things we were missing were the camels. Got a rise out of the member of the congregation who is a USMC Major, and had just gotten back from a deployment to Kuweit. We assured him that we 'infidels' had no weapons, and then I spent the night translating just what the heck was going on to the Japanese nephew of another member of the congregation.

In the middle of all this another friend (distant jewish ancestory) came over to have a "few" words with the "a-rabs". She and I played it up, had a big huge fight over nothing, made all sorts of baseless accusations about the other's ancestory, and ended up being escorted to opposite corners of the room by the ushers (dressed as Roman soldiers) cause we were scaring the little kids with our mutual insulting the "infidels" and the "goyim". To top it all off, I was wearing an IDF t-shirt under all the robes and stuff.

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Every five years or so my family will put on a family "re-telling" of the Christmas Story. We don't do it every year, because my mom wants to preserve a little bit of the sanctity of the season, and there might be statutes of limitations and other concerns. Besides there is the minor detail of wanting friends to come back - ever.

The entire 'production' is totally adlibed, no rehearseing allowed. The only planning is deciding 30seconds before each scene who's going to be what. Sometimes when there's not enough people we get some *creative* interpretaions. One time we had two "wise guys" with jumbo afros, old-skool sunglasses, and Mr. T style gold chains. The 3rd Wise Guy got arrested for dealing frankinsence in the bad part of the ghetto. The shepherds have belt buckles tha size of Texas and have heavy drawls, Mary is usually severely emotionally unstable, and the Angel once was a Japanese exchange student that had no idea what angels are supposed to do (aside from whatever she learned on Anime back in Tokyo). We taped it once and sent it to grandma. She died a few months later, we're still worried that might have hastened things a little.

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So Christmas is fun because my family and I go all out to make it fun. Yeah, I think the mechandising folks are shooting themselves in the foot by trying to stretch out christmas, but it's still a good enough excuse to get the lights up before the neighbors.

It also reminds you of the more important things as well. My little sister has been pestering me with "what do you want for christmas". Well, I'd like a major system upgrade, new mobo and AMD-FX and GPU, dual 21" LCD's, etc, VBS addons, obscure expensive books, and such, but I also know she can't afford (on her own) even the CPU water-cooling block. So in order to get rid of her 'nagging', I'm forced to sit down and think of something practical, meaningful, and usable, with little or no monetary value. It can actually be quite a challenge, if you're out of practice.

My old dear scoutmaster shippes his only son off to Baghdad just before christmas as a medic. The dad is a goofy guy, but you can see the impact that it is having on them at this holiday season. There are others as well, including young family's that have lost a parent or child at this season and have reason to grieve, and not celebrate.

So my Christmas Challenge is look around you, and find a friend, a family member, a neighbor, or a stranger, and make their life meaningfully better this season. Save Santa some time and effort by doing his work for him, and early.

[cozza 24]

I like my christmas. We get the Barbeque going and sit out in the bush and eat susegues and steaks. When its done, my dad takes me to the pub and i come home blind.

*Edit*

Say hello to the Chrismas T

[denoir 0]

While I do tend to get annoyed when they start with christmas decoration in early August (ok, not quite, but still usually waay to early), Christimas can be very nice - family, friends and good food.

I've had a streak of bad Christmases though, the past years. While a student, my university was sadistic enough to put an exam period during the first weeks of January. So I couldn't really relax and enjoy myself. In the end I never did any studying, but I had a constantly bad conscience and was stressed because of it, so it more or less ruined the holiday. Two years ago, I was dumped by my girlfriend a few days before Christmas as she was moving to study 2+ years in Australia. So that Christmas kind of sucked. Last year, the holidays were just very weird. I basically slept through the entire Christmas holidays. Don't know why, but I was constantly tired and averaged something like 12-16 hours of sleep a day

Hopefully it will be better this year, although I'm pretty overloaded with work. Mentally, I'm still convinced it's something like late Septemeber. I havn't come to terms that it's Christmas soon.

[skynet 0]

Christmas...that time of the year again...more and more people in debt, struggling to survive, all to impress others and their family with money and presnets that (half the time) end up in the rubbish sooner than expected.

It should be a time just to enjoy the company of friends and family, cause (well at least i am) very busy with everything (uni, work...work....work....)

im just happy i can have a few days off to sleep in, do nothing, not have a worry and be with family and friends; without christmas carols or bloody decorations which don't mean anything.

Enjoy your holidays!!!