generous, always giving things to kids, and the Christmas gift tradition started with him. When I read that, I wondered if he ever got anything for someone that he didnât like.
Christmas is older than I realized before I started reading about it. The Roman Bishop Liberius is said to have chosen Dec. 25 as the birthday of Jesus in about 350 A.D. Dates like this are staggering to my brain. That was 350 years after Christ was born and 1,656 years before 2006. When you think about how hard it is to get a story right in the news the day it happened, you wonder how accurate such an old story can be.
I donât think our great Christmas carols represent actual history either, but theyâre beautiful.
You wonât hear âBah, Humbug! or âHappy Holidaysâ from me.
âMerry Christmas!â is my greeting for the day and it should be used by Christians, Muslims, Jews and atheists.
SORTING WELL-AGED FROM OLD
Some thingsâand peopleâage well. Some thingsâand peopleâjust get old.
Itâs not easy to say exactly what makes one old chest of drawers a valuable antique and what makes another a piece of junk.
One of my favorite chores is going to the dump in my hometown on Saturday morning. Throwing stuff away that is cluttering up your house or your garage is a cathartic experience that feels goodâbut in addition to that, itâs always interesting to see what other people throw away.
I donât like to have anyone see me do it, but I sometimes come home with more in the back of my Jeep than I took to the dump. Last week, the man in the car next to me was throwing out a piece of furniture that I couldnât identify. While he took one piece of it to the discard pile, I inspected another piece still in the back of his car. It was the top of some kind of table made of a single pine board almost forty inches square. Any board forty inches wide came from a huge tree probably 100 years old and the table itself was probably almost 100. When the man returned to get it to throw away, I asked if I could have it. I now have a beautiful old pine board that will have a new life because I will refinish it and turn it into something else. I feel good about saving it from being incinerated.
What started me thinking about this subject of old or used things was nothing as attractive as an old board. It was a banana peel I saw that someone had thrown in the street near where I park. Considering how attractive a banana looks sitting in a bowl of fruit along with some oranges, apples, pears and peaches, itâs interesting that it turns instantly into so disgusting a piece of garbage once the edible part is removed. There is absolutely nothing aesthetically attractive about a banana peel.
Some of the used or secondhand cars you see for sale in lots with prices written on their windshields arenât much better-looking than a banana peel. On the other hand, I drove past an old-car show a few
weeks ago and they had some antique beauties that were better-looking than the day they were made. What makes one old car junk and another collectible?
The clothes in my closet fall in two categories. A few of my good old tweed jackets made from material woven in Scotland or England have gained charm and character with age. They donât look seedy; they look well worn.
On the other hand, a lot of my old clothes ought to go. Iâm running out of hangers and some of the suits hanging from them were mistakes when they were new and theyâve aged badly. Iâd throw them out, but it hurts too much when I remember what I paid for them.
Some of my old books are ragged from the number of times Iâve thumbed through them looking for favorite passages. Iâve written remarks and notes in the margins and on the blank pages at the beginning and end. Theyâre a mess, but they look beautifully familiar to me and I wouldnât trade them for brand new copies with pristine dust jackets. I
Christmas is older than I realized before I started reading about it. The Roman Bishop Liberius is said to have chosen Dec. 25 as the birthday of Jesus in about 350 A.D. Dates like this are staggering to my brain. That was 350 years after Christ was born and 1,656 years before 2006. When you think about how hard it is to get a story right in the news the day it happened, you wonder how accurate such an old story can be.
I donât think our great Christmas carols represent actual history either, but theyâre beautiful.
You wonât hear âBah, Humbug! or âHappy Holidaysâ from me.
âMerry Christmas!â is my greeting for the day and it should be used by Christians, Muslims, Jews and atheists.
SORTING WELL-AGED FROM OLD
Some thingsâand peopleâage well. Some thingsâand peopleâjust get old.
Itâs not easy to say exactly what makes one old chest of drawers a valuable antique and what makes another a piece of junk.
One of my favorite chores is going to the dump in my hometown on Saturday morning. Throwing stuff away that is cluttering up your house or your garage is a cathartic experience that feels goodâbut in addition to that, itâs always interesting to see what other people throw away.
I donât like to have anyone see me do it, but I sometimes come home with more in the back of my Jeep than I took to the dump. Last week, the man in the car next to me was throwing out a piece of furniture that I couldnât identify. While he took one piece of it to the discard pile, I inspected another piece still in the back of his car. It was the top of some kind of table made of a single pine board almost forty inches square. Any board forty inches wide came from a huge tree probably 100 years old and the table itself was probably almost 100. When the man returned to get it to throw away, I asked if I could have it. I now have a beautiful old pine board that will have a new life because I will refinish it and turn it into something else. I feel good about saving it from being incinerated.
What started me thinking about this subject of old or used things was nothing as attractive as an old board. It was a banana peel I saw that someone had thrown in the street near where I park. Considering how attractive a banana looks sitting in a bowl of fruit along with some oranges, apples, pears and peaches, itâs interesting that it turns instantly into so disgusting a piece of garbage once the edible part is removed. There is absolutely nothing aesthetically attractive about a banana peel.
Some of the used or secondhand cars you see for sale in lots with prices written on their windshields arenât much better-looking than a banana peel. On the other hand, I drove past an old-car show a few
weeks ago and they had some antique beauties that were better-looking than the day they were made. What makes one old car junk and another collectible?
The clothes in my closet fall in two categories. A few of my good old tweed jackets made from material woven in Scotland or England have gained charm and character with age. They donât look seedy; they look well worn.
On the other hand, a lot of my old clothes ought to go. Iâm running out of hangers and some of the suits hanging from them were mistakes when they were new and theyâve aged badly. Iâd throw them out, but it hurts too much when I remember what I paid for them.
Some of my old books are ragged from the number of times Iâve thumbed through them looking for favorite passages. Iâve written remarks and notes in the margins and on the blank pages at the beginning and end. Theyâre a mess, but they look beautifully familiar to me and I wouldnât trade them for brand new copies with pristine dust jackets. I
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