Not even a creature was stirring...

except for a spider (or two), at least that is the story in the Ukraine.  Celebrated on January 7th, spider webs and ornate spiders can be found on Christmas trees through out Ukraine and parts of Germany.  The story goes that a widow and her children spent the year growing their own Christmas tree from a pinecone due to lack of money to purchase one.  

'Twas the night before Christmas and the children were in a panic and crying because of the lack of decorations to decorate their tree.  

Luckily, nearby spiders heard their cries and when the family slept, the spiders decorated the tree with freshly spun webs.

Upon waking Christmas day, the children were delighted to see their tree adorned with the most beautiful shimmery webs that easily made their tree as beautiful as any other tree in the Ukraine.

~

New for the Thanksgiving menu this year....

 I found this roasted cabbage at Eat Something Vegan blog and instantly added it to the list.

Ingredients

• 2 small cabbage heads
• 3 tbsp. olive oil
• ½ tsp. salt or to taste
• 2 tsp. paprika
• 1 tbsp. garlic powder

Instructions

• Cut the stems off the cabbage heads and then cut each one in half, then in half again. You should have four flat discs of cabbage that are about ¾ to 1 inch thick from each head. Place the cabbage steaks on a baking sheet that is lined with parchment paper, allowing some space between each one to even cooking.
• Brush the cabbage with the olive oil, coating them thoroughly. Then generously sprinkle the salt, garlic powder, and paprika on the cabbage steaks. Flip the cabbage over and repeat, brushing them with oil and sprinkling the seasonings. Then add a pinch of red pepper flakes to each one, if desired.
• Bake the cabbage steaks at 400°F for about 25 minutes, until the leaves are browned and the center is tender. Serve hot out of the oven.

Almost time for Tofurky....

 

Looking forward to family Thanksgiving....

 

Image and recipe link here.

A Christmas Witch, The Whipping Father, a child-eating scarecrow, and a Troll named Meat Hook....

It is fascinating how many different traditions and customs Christmas symbolizes around the world.  I found a few that I have to share.


I did not really think people still went Christmas caroling but if you find yourself in Glamorgan, Wales, be weary of those songsters at your door.  You might just find those roaming performers have brought along a Mari Lwyd (a horse skull on a stick with a person hiding under a cover) with them to try to argue their way through song to get inside your house and take your food and gifts. 

If you are in Eastern Europe, you may find the two-faced Frau Perchta (Christmas Witch).

Apparently, she has a nice face for the nice children and a scary face for the bad children. She also comes into the homes of the good children and leaves a piece of silver in their shoe.

Norway also has a Christmas Witch.  The Norwegian Witch comes out on Christmas Eve to steal brooms just to go for a ride.

Guess you probably want to hide your broom if you are in Norway on Christmas Eve.

If you find yourself in Finland on Christmas Eve, head on over to a cemetery.  Finns go to the cemeteries to light candles at the graves of their loved ones who have passed away.


In the Alsace region of France, tales of a cold-blooded, rich, old man named Hans Trapp will give you a freight.

This devil-worshiping dude was excommunicated and lived in a forest.
Story has it he became a cannibal and would venture out of the forest on Christmas dressed as a scarecrow for the purpose of kidnapping all the bad children so he could eat them.

That's pretty frightening!  I am guessing there are some pretty well-behaved kids in Alsace, France.

People in South Africa have a full proof way to make kids stop eating Santa's cookies. Parents simply remind their kids about the story of Danny.  He was caught by his grandmother eating Santa's cookies so she killed him.  Makes perfect sense to me.  So now the ghost of Danny haunts all the kids who eat Santa's cookies.

In Iceland, Santa brings along 13 badass trolls when he visits.  Their gang name is The Yule Lads, and they have names like Pot-Scraper, Bowl-Licker, and Meat Hook.
They steal food, slam doors, destroy property, and kidnap the bad kids to bring to their mother, Gryla, who is said to be a large, hoofed troll/ogre female with terrifying horns and covered in warts.

And The Yule Lad gang also have a monstrous cat that goes by the name Jolakotturinn.


Fingers crossed that you will receive clothing of some type for Christmas because if you do not, Jolakotturinn with devour you.




I think I will be staying away from Iceland around the Christmas holidays.





And finally if those stories were not odd/scary enough; Le Pere Fouettard a.k.a. The Whipping Father should do the trick.

This dude hangs out with Santa everywhere he goes.


He basically whips all the children who have not been good.


If you are going for that obligatory mall photo with Santa, you can almost count on someone dressed as Le Pere Fouettard right beside him threatening children to be good.


On that note, Joyeux Noël! Et à tous une bonne nuit!

Its that time of year again...

Still a little conflicted over this holiday....

as you can read in my other blog post or by looking up the dark side of Thanksgiving but I am grateful for my friends and family.  Without that, what do you actually have?

Thanksgiving plans are stacking up.....

We are so grateful for friends and family.

Holidays....

A bewitching fact or two just in time for Halloween...

Did you know the word witch cannot be traced back to a definitive origin?  So turns out that it is assumed to be most closely related to the Old English word wicce (today wiccan) meaning "wise woman."  Another thought is the word comes from the Old English word wigle which is divination and wih which means idol and together they form Proto-Germanic word wikkjaz which means necromancer.  Language is so interesting.  No matter where the word came from or what the exact definition is, back in the day, these wiccan-wonders were very respected people.  If you want to try to meet a witch, tradition says if you wear your clothes inside out and stroll down the road backwards at midnight on Halloween, you may have the chance to do just that.

I'm leaving tonight, I'm leaving tonight, I'll be gone in the morning.....

The only thing A18 wanted for her birthday was to see The Neighbourhood in concert but at the time, they were not touring here or anywhere close by but then we found out that Jesse Rutherford (singer for The Neighbourhood) was coming to Atlanta, score!


That concert was a freak show and more than a little scary but 100% awesome and would totally go again. (You can read about that here.)  

Fast-forwarded to today and guess who is coming to town in time for the holidays, and I am not talking about Santa.  The Neighbourhood!

Guess A18 knows what her Christmas present is...

Bonne Annee..........

Another year has come and gone.  Bring it on 2019!!!!

You can read more New Years facts and trivia blog posts here and here. 

In Argentina at exactly 12:00, everyone takes one step forward with their right foot so they can get the year started off "on the right foot."

They also eat beans, a lot of beans with the belief of a prosperous new year.

In Chile at midnight, they eat one spoonful of lentils so the year will be filled with money.

They also grab brooms and sweep out their homes to rid the house of bad energy.

They are especially fond
of  burning Spongebob in
Ecuador.

Ecuadorians make a doll thing of sorts that usually resembles politicians, pop stars, and/or other famous people and burn them in the streets at midnight.  This burns away the old year for a fresh new year to begin.

When the clock strikes midnight, they eat 12 grapes before 12:01 which is said to be harder than it sounds to do.

In England, they believe the first person to come through your door will bring you good luck in the new year but it should be a young handsome man carrying salt, coal, money, and bread but beware of any person with red hair.  They refer to this as "first-footer."

They eat a lot of bread and drink an excessive amount of beer.

The French eat escargot, oysters, and foie gras, which is liver from a duck or a goose (besides eating anything from an animal being gross and unnecessary, the French take it one step further.  They literally force-feed the ducks and geese with a feeding tube shoved down their throat to fatten up their livers.  What a bunch of saccades!).
Side note, never tell a French person Happy New Year until it is actually the new year.  They are sensitive about that.

In the Netherlands, they eat big oily balls of dough (gross) called oliebollen.  I guess basically it is like a donut hole which sounds better than big oily balls of dough!


They burn their Christmas trees and have bonfires to celebrate.

In the Philippines, they open all the windows, doors, and cabinets and turn off all the lights and just after midnight, they race around shutting them all back.  This is to ward off evil spirits in the new year.  Not sure how that works but okay, whatever. 

They also eat foods that are round again for a prosperous new year. 

Russians write down a wish on a piece of paper and at midnight set the paper on fire and put it in a glass of champagne and drink it before 12:01.

They fancy eating sweets for the new year.

The Spaniards eat 12 grapes exactly when the clock strikes 12 and must have them all eaten before 12:01.
They celebrate with red undergarments and lots of lottery tickets.

We have gone with the black-eyed peas, cornbread, and greens over the last few years, and we have been lucky.  We were going to shake up the menu this year but decided to just add rice pilaf, vegan Italian sausage, and spiced up lentils.  Yum!

New Year's Eve party at our place tonight.....

It seems like it always rains on New Year's Eve in the ATL but that will not stop the party.  Somehow we always get nominated to host and somehow we love it!!!!!  We are the designated party family!  !!Happy New Year!!

~

~

"Fake" history.........

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, lets talk turkey, well, I guess we should talk lobster since that was on the menu and tryptophan-packed turkey was not.

For Americans, the fourth Thursday of November is a day celebrated with too much food, too much football, and a dessert full of lies.

First a little nugget of info.  When you read the definition of the word pilgrim, you will find that it is a person or people who journey to a sacred place for religious reasons.  While it is true many people from "the old world" did flee to North America for religious reasons and to escape the king, they were actually Puritans and Separatists but for the sake of this blog post, I will continue to use the term pilgrim as that is what they taught us in school, and I do not want to confuse anyone. These people were 100% altruistic.  In fact, they basically annihilated the Native Americans and stole their land because they wanted it.  A good definition of this would be genocide.  I am guessing you did not learn that fact in school either.

In school, they teach this holiday as being a positive exchange between the pilgrims and the Native Americans sharing a feast.  The week leading up to Thanksgiving, children make paper turkeys, fashion headbands out of feathers, make wreaths out of corn shucks, and making Pilgrim hats out of Oreo cookies (psst...The pilgrims did not wear those stupid black hats in the illustrations that we have all seen a million times, they did not wear buckled shoes either).  Sounds like fun but what they do not teach in school is the fact that the Pilgrims and Native Americans were in a constant war with each other.  Who knew?

For some reason, Americans take pride in sugar-coating the truth for unsuspecting children.  Columbus is another fine example of this dumbing down of American school kids.  We are lead to believe that Columbus discovered America, but did he? (Read this blog post if you want to know).  And, please do not even get me started on the whole Santa Claus charade, just don't!

I know, you are probably thinking what is the harm in editing the truth, well, everything!  I personally do not want to breed ignorance and with all the whitewashing of true history, that is exactly what is happening.  The true history of Thanksgiving is not the heart-warming tale in textbooks but rather a hypocritical holiday.  I am not trying to rock the Mayflower but the pilgrims and Native Americans were not working side-by-side planting corn as school books suggest.  Just letting you know.

A few more random facts.

Factoids:
~The native people around the Plymouth Colony had lived there over 10,000 years before the Europeans arrived.
~The natives that were not killed were sold into slavery and sent back to the old world.
~Did you hear the story of how the pilgrims literally set the natives on fire while they were sleeping?
~The first "real" Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1541 in Texas when Franscisco Vasquez de Coronado and his crew held the celebration in Palo Duro Canyon.
~Baby turkeys are called poults.
~Domestic turkeys cannot fly.
~Can you believe turkey fossils have been found across the US dating back 5 million years?
~Jingle Bells composed in 1857 was originally a Thanksgiving song.
~The first Thanksgiving football game was in 1876.
~America was not the first stop on the pilgrim voyage.  They moved from England to Holland and when that did not work out, they sailed to America.
~Oceanus Hopkins is the only baby born on the Mayflower.  He only lived to be 6 years old unfortunately.
~By the end of the harsh winter, almost half of the pilgrims died.  The bodies were buried at night so the natives would not figure out the number of pilgrims was quickly dwindling.
~The drink of choice for the passengers of the Mayflower was beer, and they brought plenty with them.

Friends and family is what it is all about.....

Cutie......

Grateful for my family.......