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« The Music Thread: Happy Happy Joy Joy Edition | Main | Daily Tech News 25 December 2022 »
December 24, 2022

Saturday Overnight Open Thread (12/24/22) Christmas Eve Edition


christmas eve.jpg

***

The Gospel According to St. Luke


Luke 2 - King James Version

2 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.

2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)

3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)

5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.

6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.

7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.

8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.

16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.

17 And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.

18 And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.

19 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.


***


The Saturday Night Joke(s)


What do snowmen call their offspring?
Chill-dren.

What’s the most popular Christmas wine?
‘I don’t like Brussels sprouts!’

What do you call a snowman with a six-pack?
An abdominal snowman.

What did one snowman say to the other?
Do you smell carrots?

What is the best Christmas present?
A broken drum, you just can’t beat it.

How did the ornament get addicted to Christmas?
He was hooked on trees his whole life.

What are the best Christmas sweaters made from?
Fleece Navidad.

Why do Christmas trees like the past so much?
Because the present’s beneath them.

What kind of motorbike does Santa ride?
A Holly Davidson!

What’s green, covered in tinsel and goes ‘ribbet ribbet’?
A Mistle-toad.


***


Are you attending a Christmas Dinner? Are you expected to bring something yet travel to the festivity? Let Red Green help you out with some nifty ideas..................


***


The ONT Musical Interlude & Joyful Emporium



&&&


***


I'm always on the lookout for The ONT. Everybody has a "Cousin Eddy" and apparently a Genius Award Winner.

SHEPHERDSVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A “Cousin Eddie” display in Kentucky apparently looked a little too real and police were called to check it out.

After receiving the call, a dispatcher described the scene to responding officers as “a male standing outside. He is naked. He has a robe covering part of his body. He is exposing himself, and he has a hose between his legs.”


It certainly is a touching story about the rescue of a certain deer. Tonight's Feel Good Story of The Day.

The residents of Dallas, Oregon, need to get a handle on their Christmas light displays. For the second time this holiday season, officials with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife found themselves called in to rescue a buck that found himself tangled in a string of festive lights.

The other rescue happened just before Thanksgiving, also within the city limits. The big difference between the two incidents is this latest one involved a buck that only has three legs! Photos posted to the ODFW Twitter page show most of the buck's right front leg is entirely gone. Only a small stub remains.


***


Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by The Gospel In Action (H/T Bitter Clinger)

“If You’re Missing the Baby Jesus, Call 7162” A true story by Jean Jeffrey Gietzen

When I was a child, my father worked for an oil company in North
Dakota. The company moved him around to different parts of the State,
and at some point between one move and another, we lost our family
creche. Shortly before Christmas, my mother decided to replace the set and was happy to find another at our local five and dime for only $3.99.

When my brother Tom and I helped her unpack the set, we discovered
two figures of the Baby Jesus.
“Someone must have packed this wrong,” my mother said, counting
out the figures. “We have one Joseph, one Mary, three wise men, three
shepherds, two lambs, a donkey, a cow, an angel, and two babies. Oh
dear! I suppose some set down at the store is missing a Baby Jesus.”
“Hey, that’s great Mom,” my brother and I shouted, “Now we have
twins!”
“You two run back down to the store and tell the manager that we have
an extra Jesus. Tell him to put a sign on the remaining boxes saying that if a set is missing a Baby Jesus, call 7162,” my mother instructed. “

I’llgive you each a penny for some candy. And don’t forget your mufflers.It’s freezing cold out there.”
The manager of the store copied down my mother’s message, and the
next time we were in the store we saw the cardboard sign that read, “If you’re missing Baby Jesus, call 7162.”
All week long we waited for the call to come. Surely, we thought,
someone was missing that important figurine. Each time the phone
rang, my mother would say, “I’ll bet that’s about Jesus,” but it never
was. My father tried to explain that the figurine could be missing from aset in Walla Walla, Washington, and the packing errors occurred all the time. He suggested we just put the extra Jesus back in the box and forget about it.

“Back in the box!” I wailed. “What a terrible thing to do to the Baby
Jesus, and at Christmas time, too!”
“Surely someone will call,” my mother said. “We’ll just keep them
together in the manger until someone calls.”
When no call came by 5:00 on Christmas Eve, my mother insisted that
my father “Just run down to the store” to see if there were any sets
left. “You can see them right through the window, over on the
counter,” she said. “If they are all gone, I’ll know someone is bound to call tonight.”

“Run down to the store?” my father thundered. “It’s 15⁰ below zero out there!”

“Oh, Daddy, we’ll go with you,” I said. “Tommy and I will bundle up
good. And we can look at all the decorations on the way.”
My father gave a long sigh, and headed for the front closet. “I can’t
believe I’m doing this,” he muttered. “Each time the phone rings
everyone yells at me to see if it’s about Jesus, and now I’m going off on the coldest night of the year to peek in a window to see if He’s there or not there.”

My father muttered all the way down the block while my brother and I
raced each other to the store. I was the first to press my nose up to the window where tiny lights flickered on and off around the window
frame. “They’re all gone, Daddy,” I shouted. “Every set must be sold.”
“Hooray, hooray!” my brother joined in, catching up with me. “The
mystery will be solved tonight!”

My father, who had remained several steps behind us, turned on his
heel and headed back home. Inside the house once more, we saw that
the extra figurine had vanished from the set, and my mother appeared
to have vanished too. “Someone must have called and she went out to
deliver the figurine,” my father reasoned, pulling off his boots. “You kids get busy stringing those popcorn strands for the tree and I’ll wrap your mother’s present.”

We had almost completed one strand when the phone rang. My father
yelled for me to answer it. “Tell ‘em we found a home for Jesus,” my
father called out. But the caller was not an inquirer. It was my mother with instructions for us to come to 205 Chestnut Street immediately and bring three blankets, a box of cookies and some milk.

“Now what has she gotten us into?” my father groaned as we bundled
up again.“ 205 Chestnut. Why that’s about eight blocks away. Wrap
that milk up good in the blankets or it will turn to ice by the time we get there. Why in the name of Heaven can’t we all just get on with
Christmas? It’s probably 20⁰ below out there now. And the wind is
picking up. Of all the crazy things to do on a night like this.”

Tommy and I sang Christmas songs at the top of our lungs all the way to Chestnut Street. My father, carrying his bundle of blankets and milk, looked for all the world like St. Nicholas himself with his arms full of goodies. Every now and then my brother would call back to him, “Let’s pretend we’re looking for a place to stay, Dad, just like Joseph and Mary.”

“Let’s pretend we are in Bethlehem where it is probably 65⁰ in the
shade right now,” my father would answer.
The house a 205 Chestnut turned out to be the darkest one on the
block. One tiny light burned in the living room and the moment we set
foot on the porch steps, my mother opened the door and shouted,
“They’re here, they’re here. Oh, thank God you got here, Ray! You kids take those blankets int the living room and wrap up the little ones on the couch. I’ll take the milk and cookies.”

“Would you mind telling me what is going on, dear?” my father asked.
“We have just walked through below zero weather with the wind in our
faces all the way…”
“Never mind all that now,” my mother interrupted. “There is no heat in this house and this young mother is so upset she doesn’t know what to do. Her husband walked out on her, and those poor little children will have a very bleak Christmas, so don’t you complain! Oh, and I told her you could fix that oil furnace in a jiffy.”

My mother strode off to the kitchen to warm the milk while my brother
and I wrapped up the five little children who were huddled together on the couch. The children’s mother explained to my father that her
husband had run off, taking bedding, clothing, and almost every piece
of furniture. But she had been doing all right until the furnace broke down.
“I been doing washin’ and ironin’ for people, and cleanin’ the Five and Dime,” she said. “I saw your number every day there, on those boxes on the counter. When the furnace went out, that number kept goin’ through my mind. 7162. 7162.”

“Said on the box, that if a person was missin’ Jesus, they should call you. That’s how I know you were good Christian people, willin’ to help folks. I figured that maybe you would help me too. So I stopped at the grocery store tonight and I called your missus. I’m not missin’ Jesus, mister, because I sure love the Lord. But I am missin’ heat. Me and the kids ain’t got no beddin’, no warm clothes. I got a few toys for them, but I’ve got no money to fix that furnace.”

“OK, OK,” my father said kindly. “You’ve come to the right place. Now
let’s see, you’ve got a little oil burner over there in the dining room. Shouldn’t be too hard to fix. Probably just a clogged flue. I’ll look it over, see what it needs.”

My mother came into the living room carrying a plate of cookies and a
tray of cups with warm milk. As she set the cups down on the coffee
table, I noticed the figure of Baby Jesus lying in the center of the table.

It was the only sign of the Christmas Season in the house. The children stared wid-eyed with wonder at the plate of cookies my mother set before them. One of the littlest ones woke up and crawled out from under the blanket. Seeing all the strangers in his house, he began to cry.

My mother swooped him up in her arms and began to sing to him.
“This, this, is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing,” she crooned while the child wailed. “Haste, haste to bring him laud, the Babe, the son of Mary,” she sang, oblivious to the child’s cries.

She sang and danced the baby around the room until he settled down again.
“You hear that, Chester?” the young mother said to another child. “That woman is singin’ ‘bout the Lord Jesus. He ain’t ever gonna walk out on us. Why, He sent these people to us just to fix our furnace. And blankets we got now too. Oh, we’ll be warm tonight. Jesus saves, that’s what He does.”

My father, finishing his work on the oil burner, wiped his hands on his muffler and said, “I’ve got it going, but you need more oil. I’ll make a few calls tonight when I get home and we’ll get you some oil. Yes sir, you came to the right place,” he grinned.

When my father calculated that the furnace was going strong once
more, our family bundled up and made our way home. My father didn’t
say a thing about the cold weather, and we had barely set foot inside
the front door when he was on the phone.
“Ed, hey, how are ya, Ed?” I heard him say. “Yes, Merry Christmas to
you, too. Say, Ed, we have kind of an unusual situation here and I know you’ve got that pick-up truck. I wonder if we could round up some ofthe boys and find a Christmas tree, you know, and a couple of things for…”
The rest of his conversation was lost in a blur of words as my brother and I ran to our rooms and began pulling clothes out of our closets and toys off our shelves. My mother checked through our belongings for sizes and games she said, “might do,” and added some of her own sweaters and slacks to our stack. We were up way past our bedtime that night wrapping our gifts.

The men my father had called found oil for the furnace, bedding, two chairs, three lamps, and made two trips to 205 Chestnut Street before the night was done. Our gifts were piled into the truck on the second trip, and even though it must has been 30⁰ below by then, my father let us ride along in the back of the truck.

No one ever did call about the missing figure in the creche set, but as I grow older, I realize that it wasn’t a packing mistake at all. Jesus saves. That’s what He does.


Notice: Posted with permission by the Ace Media Empire and AceCorp, LLC. The Fabulous Mrs. Mis. Hum. & I wish you and your family a truly Merry Christmas. May you find the Joy and Peace that comes with the Savior's birth.

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posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 09:56 PM

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