I’m taking several days off blogging now. I’ll be spending a good part of Christmas with friends eating too much and drinking even more (and although they have internet access, I have come to the conclusion that alcohol + blogging = unwise in the extreme). But in any case I think I should take a blog holiday, after six months near-continuous posting. So I probably won’t be back much before the New Year (maybe the occasional brief silliness or photos if I get severe withdrawal symptoms).
There are certain things that I planned to blog by now that haven’t happened: the second part of the ‘how to get funding’ post, and roundups of links for South America and the Middle East. They’ll just have to wait till January. I may have a go at those Lollards when I get back too. And high time there were more DNB posts! (I’m up for New Year biography requests…)
But, anyway, let me leave you with a few links for the holiday season, and wish you all the best whatever your faith and preferred festivities.
Nadolig Llawen!
Winter festivals and traditions
Winter festivals
Origins of mid-winter festivals
Winter festivals/festivals of light
Names of the Christmas festivals
Eleven Christmas customs (sepoy, this has a section on Christmas trees!… But no, I don’t know why you dragged a 7 foot tree into your living room. Where I celebrate Christmas this would be regarded as an absurd distraction from eating and drinking)
Wikipedia Christmas
Winter solstice and Christmas
History of Hogmanay
A Scottish Hogmanay
A Victorian Christmas
Early Modern Christmases and Controversies
Cotton Mather’s dilemma: Christmas in Puritan New England
Feast, fairs and festivals: mirrors of Renaissance society
Christmas unwrapped
Christmas witchcraft in 17th-century Finnmark
Notes on seventeenth-century English Christmases
Christmas in and out (by John Taylor, the ‘water poet’)
The ascetic and the skeptical
Chanukah Wikipedia
Chanukah
History of Chanukah
History of Hanukkah
The official Kwanzaa website
Everything about Kwanzaa
Kwanzaa Information Centre
Saturnalia
Saturnalia Special
Saturnalia Convivia
Celebrating Solstice
Ancient origins: Yule
History of the yule log
Midvinterblot
Wassailing
Iroquois Midwinter Dream Festival
And… Let the Christmas/holiday blogging commence (maybe I will come back and add to this section!)
Hark the Herald Tribune Sings
Seize to exist, or a short hiatus
(Of course, the Chanukah/Hanukkah already started earlier in the month…)
And for the Victories
Eighth Candle (follow links in sidebar to the rest of the Candles)
Of course, what I’m really waiting for is Belle’s Christmas feasting post(s).
14 comments on “Happy Holidays”
[...] ith… everything the ‘i’ geekdom — Rob @ 7.58 pm
Two of my favourite blogs have gone on blog-holiday! They will be missed, but I espec [...]
As the embattled Right in the US would have it, Merry Christmas.
A merr, merr, Chrishmash to you all!
Ah, I see Steve’s been raiding the drinks cabinet already.
Merry Christmas, Sharon.
Happy holidays!
Merry Christmas favourite sister!
Thanks for the link. But my misspelling of “hiatus” was completely deliberate.
Have a good one Sharon! And everyone else, of course.
Have a great holiday. We’ll miss you and look forward to your return to the Blogosphere. Eat good food and wear great shoes
P.S. For a small (actually, very large) bribe, I can reveal family secrets whilst she’s gone, if you like….
She’s an impostor. Either that or my little sis just found my blog and that’s too horrible a prospect to contemplate, so I’m in denial.
HOpe everyone’s having a good time. Amazingly, I’ve only had one hangover so far. But it was an extremely impressive hangover.
Stay in denial then
And apparently our dad believes my sister is far too innocent to get p*ssed – needless to say, I put him right on that score!! Although I managed to refrain from the fact that my oh-so-perfect big sis had been known in the past to smoke the odd (and odder) cigarette!
Happy Xmas, big sis
Jason, I’ve only just realised what I typed. (I was a weeny bit muzzy when I first read your comment…) I had no intention of ruining the joke! (It’s just that anal-retentive-spellchecker in my head…)
Two hangovers and counting. But restrained last night. Only pissed and a half instead of two pissed. Just as well on surveying all the washing up.