Speaking of black and white pictures:
Bob Hope always put on great Christmas shows - jokes and girls were what the troops needed and he always provided. Raquel Welch was my main fantasy back then. But unfortunately I missed her live shows and only saw it much later on video. I did see Ms Margaret and Heatherton, I think it was 1969(?) but was so far back in the crowd that both they and Mr Hope looked like ant people. It was good regardless. Although with that crowd one rocket or mortar round could maybe have inflicted mass casualties.
Here is Christmas in Vietnam today:
Frank Capra and Bob Hope! Both were great Americans. Both were immigrants.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas back at ya, mike, as well to all the denizens of MilPub.
ReplyDeleteMay 2016 be a good year for all of us and our loved ones.
My memories are nearly all of pulling CQ on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day so the married NCOs could get some family time. So nothing says Yule to me like warm Coke and football on the dayroom TV. Merry Christmas, ya bastiches and the First Shirt was in looking for a couple of privates what don't have nothin' else to do to move some stuff out of the HHC conex...
ReplyDeleteAnon - Ann Margaret was an immigrant too.
ReplyDeleteAl - Thanks! Are you celebrating again on the 6th?
FDChief - I hope that later you got some 'quid pro quo' from the married NCOs whose duty you stood in for.
It kinda depended. I hate to say this, but the volunteer participation was pretty dependent on the NCO slated for the duty. Guys we liked would always get a number of offers for relief. Guys who were not so popular? Not so much. The deal was usually a straightforward favor to the nice guys, the sergeants who had a dickish reputation often had to bargain for an exchange of duty to get anyone to cover for them...
Deletemike-
ReplyDeleteActually, no Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas on Jan 6th as such. Some still use the old Julian Calendar, which is 13 days out of synch with the generally accepted civil, or "Gregorian Calendar", and consequently the Liturgical 25th of Dec falls on the day the rest of the world considers to be Jan 6th.
In 1923, The Church of Greece,along with several other Orthodox Churches, adopted the "Revised Julian Calendar" for all purposes except the computation of Easter. Thus, we no longer identify Jan 6th as liturgically being Dec 25th. Keep in mind, that the "Revised Julian" is not the "Gregorian", and has some minor computational differences. However, it does, for all practical purposes, march in step with the Gregorian, at least for a few hundred or so. Consequently, the Orthodox Churches that adopted the Revised Julian align their Liturgical Calendar (with the exception of Easter) with the civil calendar of the rest of the world without having to be accused of using a calendar promulgated by Papal Decree in 1582. I would note that as an anti-Papal act, a fair portion of the European Protestant world also refused to adopt the Gregorian Calendar for quite some time. The British Empire didn't adopt the Gregorian, for example, until 1752. Yup, Christmas in The Colonies was originally on "Jan 6th".
Lots of confusion reigns in popular Christian lore over the calendar. In 1970, when Moscow released it's Archdiocese in North America to be a self headed Church (The Orthodox Church in America), changing to the Revised Julian was a matter of priority. Getting the "ethnics" to accept such a drastic move resulted in a rather slick education program. At the heart of it was pointing out that rather than adopting that "heretical Papist calendar", the Orthodox were adopting a more accurate calendar that in a few hundred years would not have a one day error that would arise in the Gregorian. Of course, it was never mentioned that there was no doubt that the Gregorian adherents would simply make the necessary adjustment when ethe time approached. Slowly but surely, the "New Calendar" was accepted. There are, however, a few ethnic Orthodox jurisdictions in the US and elsewhere that remain on the old Julian Calendar and thus call Jan 6th Dec 25th.
The computation of Easter is a totally different matter. The Ecumenical Counsels that "standardized" the formula used the equinox as a start point, and also included that Easter must never fall on or before the Jewish Passover. The West stopped making the Passover adjustment, probably due to Middle Age antisemitism precluding any Christian matter as serious as Easter being influenced by those damn Jews. On the Orthodox side, the use of the old and astronomically inaccurate Julian date of the equinox simply precludes Easter falling on or before Passover. Thus, conformance with the Early Church Canons and holding on to a morsel of anti-Papism. As one of my Church History profs described it, the divergence in the dates of Easter is due to an error by both East and West. Rome's error is canonical and Orthodoxy's is astronomical.
And thus ends today's history lesson
"Christmas in The Colonies was originally on "Jan 6th"
DeleteWelllll...sorta.
In terms of solar date, yes; by the mid-18th Century the Julian calendar had lost about two weeks in terms of sidereal time. The actual dates didn't change, but if you looked at the solar year versus the calendar year they were two weeks out of synch. So the colonists celebrating Christmas on "December 25th" were, in terms of the solstice/equinox cycle, two weeks too late.
But my favorite part of the story is that so far as we can tell from the Scriptural clues (and it's also worth noting that the "nativity story" per Luke is perhaps the latest and most questionable addition to the Gospels; Mark, the earliest written gospel, doesn't even mention it, and neither do any of the epistles (which AFAIK are also dated through internal evidence was at least contemporaneous with Luke) or even any of the apocryphal writings that didn't make the cut...) it seems likely that the actual date of the nativity was sometime in late winter or spring. No shepherds would have been "watching over their flocks by night" during the long nights near the winter solstice; the sheep would have been down in the sheepfold warm and well-defended.
But the solstice was a big holiday for the religious "competitors" of the early Christian churches. You had Saturnalia in mid-December and the damn Mithraists with their bull-slaying god may have had some sort of similar celebration around the solstice time. So, like a 7-Eleven setting up on the corner across from a mom-and-pop stop-n-rob the early Christian fathers walked that baby back to the solstice to put their competitors out of business...
Another little piece of Christmas lore I love is that the one we celebrate - the "Reason for the Season" and the tinsel-bedecked holiday - is really a creation of Victorian and Modern commercialism. The early Christian churches really had very little affection for the date; Easter was the big deal. And some of the Puritan churches actively pestered people who celebrated the holiday, disliking the association with both Passover and the solstice. So the real "Reason for the Season" is that Gilded Age businessmen found out thay they could make a buck off the sonofabitch.
But, whatever - hope everyone had a nice holiday and are anticipating a good New Year...
Western Christianity indeed embellished Christmas. The date of Christmas, for the early Church (first 4 or 5 centuries) was no big deal. The Feast of The Nativity was, as you note, not nearly on the level of Pascha (Easter), but just another of The Church's major commemorative days, such as Pentecost or Theophany. In the Orthodox world, it still does not approach Pascha in terms of either religious or secular significance.
DeleteOf course, I doubt a Greek Orthodox parish in the US would consider, no less get away with, what is done at midnight on the Feast of Pascha. This is just our little village, and it's quite impressive, especially the final minutes when the priest declares, "Christ is Risen!", the church beels begin ringing and everyone sings the Paschal hymn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kGRb_ncn5c
1923??? When I was a boy in the late 40s, early fifties there was a large Greek immigrant community in my fair city in New England that still celebrated in early January. I believe many if not most of them were refugees from Turkey. Must have been one of the few ethnic jurisdictions you mention. But googling now I see that they currently celebrate on the 25th, so they got the word. One of the more famous from that community was WWI medal of honor winner George Dilboy. http://www.dormitionchurch.org/our_parish/g-dilboy-legacy
ReplyDeleteThe local VFW Post was named in his honor also. I spent a lot of time there as a five and six year old when Grandma (who had a husband and brothers in WW1 and three sons-in-law in WW2) used to go to help cook with the Ladies Auxiliary. Many of her friends there were Greek ladies who stuffed me with baklava and other honeyed deserts. Those were truly the good old days.
Same went for the Armenian community there, an old high school classmate 'Hayk' celebrated a double Christmas, the second one in January.
Whatever the date, or the reason be it religious or commercial or solstice related, I for one am glad to see it now celebrated all around the world even in trditionally non-Christian areas. link tehttp://www.greenprophet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/abu-dhabi-christmas-tree-560x543.pngxt
BTW, if this press release is true, American Special Forces participated in a Peshmerga raid against Daesh on Christmas night:
http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/26122015
mike- The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North America is not a part of the Church of Greece. Rather, it is an Archdiocese of the Patriarchiate of Constantinople, and was allowed to remain on the "Old Calendar" as part of their status in the New World and penchant for "maintaining their Greek roots". We Orthodox in the West have a long tradition of hanging on to stuff from what we "remember from the Old Country" that really is either inaccurate or has very little to do with Orthodox Christianity. Quite often, traditions are continued only in order to differentiate one ethnic jurisdiction from other ethnic jurisdictions. Was interesting to see how Greek Orthodox customs in the US had actually been somewhat Americanized versus what actually is practiced in Greece. The folks in our little village parish, who are aware of the local customs in other European Orthodox countries, were very interested in learning about "American Orthodox" customs, BTW.
Deletemike,
ReplyDeleteAt C co in Bien Hoi they had a pic/poster of Ann M. taken fron the audience , and she didn't have any underwear on, so it was a full mu-- shot.
i don't think that mufti describes the situation.
I saw this blown up pic several places in country.
i was a patient in the 24th evac in Long Binh when the BH show came thru but i didn't see the show.They did walk the wards and talk to the soldiers.
I caught a satelite show in Bear Cat after the big televised shows made the rounds.
We alwys said-where theres Hope theres war.
Happy New Year to one and all.
best wishes etc...
jim hruska
mike,
ReplyDeleteAt C co in Bien Hoi they had a pic/poster of Ann M. taken fron the audience , and she didn't have any underwear on, so it was a full mu-- shot.
i don't think that mufti describes the situation.
I saw this blown up pic several places in country.
i was a patient in the 24th evac in Long Binh when the BH show came thru but i didn't see the show.They did walk the wards and talk to the soldiers.
I caught a satelite show in Bear Cat after the big televised shows made the rounds.
We alwys said-where theres Hope theres war.
Happy New Year to one and all.
best wishes etc...
jim hruska