Quiz: Okay, just who the heck is Old and Good King Wenceslas?

Yesterday’s Answer below: Who first decided that Santa Claus is from the North Pole?
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History for 12/24/2008
Birthdays:, Roman Emperor Servius Galba, English King John Lackland, Revolutionary Patriot Dr Benjamin Rush, Kit Carson, Howard Hughes, Ava Gardner, Michael Curtiz real name Mikali Kertesz, I.F.Stone, Robert Joffrey of the Joffrey Ballet, Mean Joe Green, John Matusak, Susan Lucci, Nicholas Meyer, Ricky Martin is 38

This was the birth festival of Mithras, the Persian sun god.


Mithraism was Christianity's chief competitor for converts during the late Roman Empire. It professed a dualistic theology, that God and the Devil battled equally for the souls of men: light and dark, hot and cold, day and night, etc. It was very popular among the troops of Rome’s Legions. There were Mithraic temples from Scotland to Iran, and even into the Middle Ages it resurfaced as a Christian heresy, Manichaeism and later Catharism. There are 200,000 Zoroastrians around today and 18,000 in North America.

In the Middle Ages this was the Feast of Saints Adam and Eve. The western theatrical tradition survived in the form of Mystery Plays, acting out stories from the Bible. So this day they would do a play about the temptation and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. A tree was brought into the church and decorated to represent the Tree of Life, glass balls representing the fruit. This is one of the origins of the Christmas Tree. The Feast of Adam and Eve was dispensed with during the Reformation.

1247- Sir Robin of Loxley, called Robin Hood, died. Legend has it that he fired an arrow out his window with instructions to bury him where it fell.

1652- In England the Puritan Parliament of Oliver Cromwell forbade any celebration of Christmas. Their brethren the Puritans of Massachusetts would arrest anyone found making merry and fine them three shillings. But after the restoration of King Charles II the partying came back.

1783 - the American Revolution concluded, General George Washington arrived home at Mt. Vernon :" The scene is at last closed. I feel myself eased of the load of public care."

1814- U.S. and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812. John Quincy Adams headed the American negotiation team. The British had demanded a independent Indian buffer state in the Great Lakes between the US and Canada, and the US demanded the Pacific Northwest, but all they got was the status quo before the war started. The news wouldn't get across the Atlantic for two months, and in the meantime Americans and Englishmen would murder each other one last time at the Battle of New Orleans (Jan 8th).

1818-the song Silent Night was composed by an Austrian priest named Joseph Mohr for a Midnight Mass in Obersdorf. The church organ was broken, so it was first performed accompanied by a guitar.

1865- THE KU KLUX KLAN BORN. Before the Civil War white plantation owners rode together at night to patrol their fields chasing runaway slaves. After the South’s defeat, in Pulaski Tennessee in the law offices of Thomas M. Jones some disaffected Confederate veterans formed a secret society of night riders. They named it based on the Greek letter fraternities just gaining popularity in universities- Kappa-Alpha or Kuklos Adelphon.- Kuklos meaning Circle. Another version is that it came from a lost Indian tribe called the Kawklats. It corrupted into the Ku Klux Klan. They donned white sheets and hoods to portray themselves as the avenging ghosts of dead rebel soldiers. They played up the mystical images to terrify the superstitious-Grand Wizards, Cyclops. Ghouls. The first Grand Wizard was General Nathan Bedford Forrest, but he resigned after he felt their violence had become counterproductive.
There is a hotly disputed version that the Klan first offered their leadership to Robert E. Lee but he declined in a letter suggesting they should be an "Invisible Empire". After Congress outlawed them in 1871 the Invisible Empire went underground to thwart reconstruction and Black Civil Rights.

1888- Vincent Van Gogh cuts off a piece of his left ear after an argument with Paul Gaugin over the affection of a prostitute named Rachel. He sent his ear to the prostitute. She fainted.

1889- Daniel Stover & W. Hance of Freeport Ill. invented the bicycle backpedal brake.

1922- The BBC presented it’s first radio play:" The truth about Father Christmas."

1934-GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR DUMPED HIS GIRLFRIEND-For two years the divorced general had kept a beautiful young Eurasian mistress he met in Manila. But when he accepted the posting back in Washington she insisted on coming with him. Today he sent an aide to intercept her in the lobby of the Willard Hotel in Washington and buy her off with a newly minted sheet of 100 dollar bills. His chief reason for giving her the boot was the 54 year old four star general was afraid his mother would find out.

1941- General MacArthur had to abandon the Philippine capitol Manila to the advancing Japanese army. He withdrew to the island fortress of Corregidor, while his exhausted Philippine-American troops set up a last line of defense on the Bataan Peninsula.

1941- German Admiral Doenitz dispatched advanced 5 long range U-Boats to attack ships off the American Coast. Operation Drumroll.

1944- In some of the last big V-1 attacks on London the Nazis added a sick twist- they filled the buzz bombs with letters home from British POWs. As the bombs exploded in Oldham and Gravesend killing women and children the letters blew out like confetti.

1951- Gina Carlo Menotti’s opera "Amal and the Night Visitors" premiered on NBC TV..

1964- First day shooting on the “Cage” a pilot for a new TV show called Star Trek. Jeffrey Hunter was the first captain, later replaced by William Shatner when Hunter’s wife advised him to skip the series. She was worried he’d be typecast.

1968- Apollo 8 went into orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Jim Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders become the first men to reach the moon and win the Space Race. They orbited but did not land, that was for Apollo 11 next year. Borman sent a message to Earth Christmas night by reading from Genesis as they sent back the first images of Earth, a little blue gem in a black cosmos: "And God said: Let there be Light, etc." To a world traumatized by the riots and assassinations of 1968, Apollo 8’s message ended the year on a positive note. That humans could still dream to be better than they were.

1968- Twentieth Century Fox announced that legendary Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa had been fired from the production of TORA-TORA-TORA. Producer Darryl Zanuck’s original concept was the story of Pearl Harbor told by Kurosawa from the Japanese side and David Lean from the American side. But Lean passed and Richard Fleischer stepped in. Kurosawa spent a year in research, which meant fighting his crew and Japanese conservatives over Japanese culpability in the surprise attack. By now was physically and emotionally exhausted. He once assaulted the clapper boy because he clapped the scene title board sticks too loud. Kursosawa was fired this day and the Japanese sections were directed by Toshio Fukusaku and Masuda, who’s previous credit was the Green Slime. Years later when Francis Coppola and George Lucas helped him finance his masterpiece Kagemusha, the Japanese film commission refused to enter it in the Oscars. It was entered as a Canadian film.

Ahhh,The Green Slime. Remakes of Day the Earth Stood Still and Forbidden PLanet going ahead, when will they revisit this old chestnut?

1985- Fidel Castro gives up smoking cigars, on doctors’ orders.

1990- Tom Cruise married Nicole Kidman.

1992- Outgoing President George Bush Ist announced Presidential Pardons for all the former Reagan Whitehouse staff implicated in the Iran Contra Scandal. Caspar Weinberger, Bud McFarlane and probably himself.

1997- 62 year old Film director Woody Allen married 27 year old Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of his former lover Mia Farrow. When asked to explain himself the director said: " The Heart wants what it Wants.."
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Yesterday’s Question: Who first decided that Santa Claus is from the North Pole?

Answer: Cartoonist Thomas Nast had created the image of Jolly St Nick, since first illustrating Clement Moore’s poem a Visit From St. Nicholas. After the Civil War ended, Nast grew tired of endless arguments whether the Jolly Old Elf was a Southerner or a Yankee. So in 1866 he declared that Santa Claus lived in the North Pole, and thus was a citizen of the World.


Merry Christmas!—ts