Dateline 12.22.2020. I can close my eyes and remember Christmas snippets from my childhood. The baking of the rye bread, the dipping of whey to make Ostakaka which is a Swedish milk/cream/sugar baked dessert. When you were having a house full of people on Christmas, you started cooking a few days before the magical event. The good memories should be on the bookshelf. Easily picked up to be relived. This day has only three events: Abilities Day, which is about celebrating people with disabilities, National Cookie Exchange Day and National Date Nut Bread Day. That’s it. It’s off to the way back machine: In 1882 on this date the 1st string of Christmas tree lights created by Thomas Edison were turned on. That man was full of ideas. In 1949 on this date, the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment) was about to be executed by firing squad when his sentence was commuted at the last minute by Tsar. Whew, that was a close one. On this date in 1944 Germans demand the surrender of American troops (101st Airborne) at Bastogne, Belgium to which General Anthony Clement McAuliffe replied “Nuts”. In 1967 “The Graduate” American starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft, was released. I’m going to use quotes by Dostoevsky to wrap up this post. His crime was to read books that had been banned. While he didn’t die by firing squad, he did spend 4 years of hard labor in Siberia. He is now thought to be one of the best authors to have ever lived. Fyodor said, “I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.” “You can be sincere and still be stupid.” “A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.” I’ll end with this one: “Wealth is the number of things one can do without.” That is an excellent observation. Abide.
