Merry Christmas dear Group

[nerbyon]

I wish you all of you...Members group, Astrophotographers, Owlice, Asterisk and APOD Editors Team, a Great Christmas in the company of those who loves, and in the company of this particular Lord



Thank you for all,
Happy New 2011 Year

Best Regards

Miguel Claro
http://miguelclaro.com/

[owlice]

Miguel, thank you, and a merry Christmas to you and yours!

[bystander]

Thanks, Miguel, and Merry Christmas to you and yours!

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[neufer]

Click to view full size image

[bystander]

When nights are darkest and days most dark; when the sun seems farthest from the planet and cheers it with lowest heat; when the fields lie shorn between harvest-time and seed-time and man turns wistful eyes back and forth between the mystery of his origin and the mystery of his end,--then comes the great pageant of the winter solstice, then comes Christmas.

So what is Christmas? And what for centuries has it been to differing but always identical mortals?

from The Bride of the Mistletoe, by James Lane Allen
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/we ... p?num=9179

[size=110][b][i]JAMES LANE ALLEN ON “THE FUTURE CHRISTMAS”:[/i][/b][/size] Author of [b][i]“The Bride of the Mistletoe”[/i][/b] Traces Festival to Remote Pagan Past and Pictures Its Development Through the Ages. [url=http://www.sundaymagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/19101225-3-james.pdf][b][i]The New York Times Sunday Magazine (1910 Dec 25)[/i][/b][/url]

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James Lane Allen On “The Future Christmas” (2010 Dec 24)

Although the headline suggests the article is all about the future, in fact novelist James Lane Allen gives a detailed history of Christmas. He focuses on the symbols we associate with the holiday — the tree, Santa, etc — and explains their Pagan origins. He then speculates that in the future, Christmas will again be celebrated as a ritual worshiping nature. He doesn’t say exactly when this will happen, so there’s still time for his prediction to come true.

James Lane Allen wrote a story that uses on the Pagan roots of Christmas as a theme. It’s called The Bride of the Mistletoe and can be read free here at Project Gutenberg