Blackmoor Vituperative

If I had to pick one Christmas special that sums up what I consider the “true meaning of Christmas”, it would be Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

“Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer. Cheer to all Whos, far and near. Christmas Day is in our grasp, so long as we have hands to clasp. Christmas Day will always be, just as long as we have we. Welcome Christmas while we stand, heart to heart, and hand in hand.”

Christmas (or Yule or whatever other name you want to call it) is not merely some religious festival. It is bigger than that. Christmas belongs to everyone — that is the entire point of “How The Grinch Stole Christmas”. And that is the lesson that Grinches who want to limit it to their tiny religious set-piece need so desperately to learn. Christmas is no more a “Christian” holiday than Tuesday is a “Norse” day of the week. Christmas is a human holiday, for the whole human family.

I still haven’t taught myself to use Campaign Cartographer 3, but I really enjoy ProFantasy’s monthly special maps. Check out the December Annual issue for 1930s travel guide-style maps.

We celebrated the third day of our four-day weekend by watching a number of shows on Netflix. The best of these were from across the water: Grabbers (an Irish film in the tradition of Tremors and Shawn Of The Dead), and the first episode of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. These were both great fun. Grabbers, in particular, deserves to have wider recognition. As much as I enjoy the work of Simon Pegg, Grabbers was much more fun than The World’s End.

As for Miss Fisher, it reminds me a great deal of another mystery genre import, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. I wish they had made more episodes of that. It was a delightful show, and quite likely the first time I had ever seen Africa being portrayed as a place where people could actually live and be happy.