MommaLibrarian's Commonplaces

Flexibility and Balance

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Seems like a good stretch for New Years resolutions

Not a tame affair

Lord of Misrule •

Ian Norbury

\LORD-uv-miss-ROOL\ •

noun : a master of Christmas revels in England especially in the 15th and 16th centuries Examples: Jesters, pipers, jugglers, and drummers followed the lord of misrule into the court for the singing of the carols. "Christmas before Victoria was a wild affair, in which the fun was presided over by the Lord of Misrule, and it was full of lewd and naughty pranks—usually strictly for the grown-ups." — From an article in the Northern Echo, September 20, 2012 Did you know? Late in the medieval days of England, the royal court, the houses of noblemen, and many colleges at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford appointed a manager for their Christmas festivities and dubbed him the "lord of misrule" or the "abbot of misrule." The lord of misrule was responsible for arranging all Christmas entertainment, including plays, processions, and feasts. The lord himself usually presided over these affairs with a mock court and received comic homage from the revelers. Scholars believe that the name "lord of misrule" (sometimes capitalized, as in our second example sentence above) was taken from the name of the official who presided over an older New Year's celebration called the "Feast of Fools."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 25, 2012

"Few Americans know that Santa descends from the mock king who held court at Saturnalia, the Roman festival celebrating the winter solstice. Or that he shares cultural DNA with the Lord of Misrule who presided over the yuletide Feast of Fools in the Middle Ages—lewd, blasphemous revels that gave vent to underclass hostility toward feudal lords and the all-powerful church.

By the late 19th century, Christmas in Manhattan was an excuse for the rabble to go wilding from door to door in upper-class neighborhoods, demanding booze and cash from terrified householders in exchange for an off-key (and sometimes off-color) yuletide song. In desperation, Washington Irving, Clement Clarke Moore, and other members of New York’s cultural elite invented Santa Claus—and Christmas as we know it—as a means of domesticating the drunken revels of the dangerous classes. Their bourgeois myth was designed to channel lumpen unrest into a more acceptable outlet: a domestic ritual consecrated to home, hearth, and conspicuous consumption."

Mark Dery (markdery at verizon dot net

 

How did you celebrate?   And we still have the New Year to celebrate!  More of the same. . .

Around the holidays

If someone waits for you it doesn't mean that they have nothing else to do, it just means that nothing else is more important than you...

anon

Waiting, waiting, waiting. All my life, I've been waiting for my life to begin, as if somehow my life was ahead of me, and that someday I would arrive at it.

Camryn Manheim

But if we learn to think of it as anticipation, as learning, as growing, if we think of the time we spend waiting for the big things of life as an opportunity instead of a passing of time, what wonderful horizons open out!

Anna Neagle

Habit

“We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar”

William James

How long?

Lleva mucho tiempo llegar a ser joven.

                                               Pablo Picasso

It takes a long time to become young.

                                             Pablo Picasso

Why'd ya stop?

"It's stupid to be afraid of drawing or to believe that you "can't draw." That's ridiculous. You might not remember it, but when you were a kid you drew and you loved it. You didn't care if the drawings were good. You drew without fear! You were fearless! Why are you afraid of it now?"

   unattributed - could have been you

". . . cartoonists, get to work from home. They get to hang out at home with their cats all day and draw pictures and eat candy and if they don't feel like wearing pants they can just take their pants right off and work without any pants on. . ."

Phil McAndrew

Joseph Christopher Chizanskos

Make a squiggle.  Put eyes on a doodle. Draw a smile on a coffee cup.  You have not lost the creative spirit.  You can do it.

CHILL

Don't let the reindeer get you down!

courtesty MrGuilt

You don't have to give everything.

You don't have to receive everything.