Dung on twigs, etc.

Advice from Mom
By Rita Lessard

Merry Christmas to one and all. This is one of my favourite times of the year. Most people are happy and cheerful at this time as they enjoy the company and goodness of their family and friends. At this time, I would like to share some Christmas trivia with you.

I’m sure most people are familiar with the traditional 12 days of Christmas. The Aussies interpret the song differently; here is the final verse:
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
Twelve goanna goin,
Eleven snakes a-sliding,
Ten dingoes dashing,
Nine wombats waddling,
Eight koalas clinging,
Seven emus running,
Six ‘roos a-jumping,
Five opals black,
Four great galahs,
Three parakeets,
Two cockatoos,
And a kookaburra up a gum tree.

I’m not familiar with some of these words; sorry, I’m from Montreal, so I don’t profess to know everything.
Let’s kiss under the what???
Did you know that the word mistletoe is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning dung on a twig? Apparently it was thought that life could spring spontaneously from dung. Mistletoe groups on tree branches, and since bird droppings are commonly found on tree limbs, the words mistel (meaning dung) and tan (meaning twig) thus blend to give you dung on a tree. True story.
Hey, it’s not as if you’re eating the stuff, just kissing under it, for heaven’s sake.
Apparently the tradition of midnight mass on Christmas originated in the belief that the Christ child was born at the stroke of midnight.
These trying times
Christmas can be frustrating sometimes. My greatest frustration was hiding the gifts so my kids would be surprised on Christmas Day. This, I’m sure, didn’t happen as long as Mike was around. It was amazing how he knew exactly what everyone was getting. Believe mem, I would wrap everything and code it some way or other, and that didn’t matter. I almost think he unwrapped and rewrapped everything. Since I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer at this busy time of year, he got away with it for years until one day the cat was let out of the bag and I found out. From then, I took all the gifts to a neighbour’s house and didn’t bring them home until Christmas Eve.
If you have this problem and you don’t want to store your stuff at a neighbour’s, you might want to try this: use different wrapping paper for each member of the family. Gifts can be left in plain sight under the tree and no one will know which is theirs until it comes time to open them. No gift tags necessary!

Some people think that Christmas is like a day in the office: you do all the work and the fat guy in the suit gets all the credit.

Happy birthday to my brother Richard (27th) and my son Casey (16th), and happy anniversary to Bill and Christine (15th).

Overheard (as told by my friend Frank): Things are still bad in the banking industry. The other day, a lady went to the bank and asked the teller to check her balance, so he reached over and gave her a push.