A pre-Christmas visit from the Witnesses

As you may know, the Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t believe in Christmas.  A JW co-worker and I once had a very pleasant discussion about how Christ was almost certainly not born in December.  I believe he claimed the evidence indicates Christ was born in October, while I said it may have been in April.

So, this morning I got a visit from our local Jehovah’s Witnesses (I live right next door to a Kingdom Hall).  It was 15 degrees out, so they were not doing the usual tracting.  One guy came to the door and rang the doorbell and handed me a pamphlet.  I did not catch all of his pitch, but he said something to the effect of “did you know that the world is ending, and we have a message for you?”

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Partridge in a Pear Tree: a symbol for Christ?

I received an e-mail this week making the old claim that the “Twelve Days of Christmas” song has hidden religious meanings. The story goes that Catholics invented the song as a catechism in anti-Catholic England so they could secretly remember religious symbols. In this version, “a partridge in a pear tree” is a symbol for Christ (hanged on a tree). Each of the other days in the song is a reminder of another number (four gospels, three as the trinity, etc). Ever the skeptic, I decided to Google this story and discovered the claims about the song being related to Catholic persecution were false.

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A season for giving

One of my biggest dislikes about December is the busyness of Christmas shopping, parties and the stress associated with year-end activities at work. Today, thankfully, I had the opportunity to take a break from the stress of Christmas and take a brief moment to remember the reason for the season.

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Let it snow, let it snow

If you scroll down this page a bit, you’ll see a whimsical post about Las Vegas and the rest of Nevada.  Timely given a rare snow in Las Vegas just a few days ago.

I moved to Colorado this summer after living in a tropical climate for 22 years.  Yes, you read that right.  Twenty-two years.  And I am never going back to the tropics.  I have sweated my last day in humid 92-degree weather.  Give me snow, and snow and more snow.  I guess I would never have made it as a Nephite or a Lamanite.

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