| Written by Paul and Shelia Race for Family Christmas OnlineTM |
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The Christmas TimesTM, the Official E-Mail Newsletter of Family Christmas OnlineTM and Affiliated SitesThis newsletter is for people who like celebrating holidays, especially Christmas. It is produced in conjunction with the following web sites.
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In this IssueWelcome to the September, 2013 issue of The Christmas TimesTM.Yes, it's a while before Christmas, but I wanted to let our readers know that we're alive and well. We have some great Christmas resources that we hope to publish in the next several weeks, but we also wanted to publish reminders of resources that we already have. In the last eighteen months, we've moved web servers twice. The first time we moved because we had become so limited on space that whenever we added a new hi-resolution photo, we'd have to reduce the resolution on two other photos. The second time was a few weeks ago - our web server provider retired old hardware and installed new systems, which caused an outage for a bit. One reason I point that out is that many of you got onboard when we were on our old server, so if you saved a "favorite," the link has "btcomm.com" in the name. Now our sites' domain names align with the site name. For example:
Sooner or later the "btcomm.com" addresses will stop working altogether. But if you want to make certain you're on the most up-to-date version of our pages, please replace the old "favorites" line with the new one before that happens. We also had to change how the mailing list for this newsletter works. I used to keep the "christmas lights" people segregated from the "christmas music" people and the "cardboard Christmas houses" people, but it got way too crazy, especially when some folks signed up for every flavor of this newsletter and wound up getting several different versions of our newsletter every time we sent it out. By combining, we do run the risk that occasionally we'll have a newsletter that doesn't have one item that hits your area of interest. If you decide that the new format doesn't interest you at all, please just hit reply and tell me you want to unsubscribe, and I'll be very polite. By the way, I'm linking to some family-friendly Halloween projects and resources in this newsletter. I hope you're not offended. I, too, am put off by the gruesome and macabre aspects that dominate many Halloween celebrations (and airwaves). But I also have fond childhood memories of dressing up as a pirate or bum and collecting candy in my small town. In fact, I still enjoy candy corn. As an adult Christian there's one other thing I appreciate about Halloween - the fact that it comes before Thanksgiving and Christmas. By the time November 1 rolls around, nobody is interested in scary masks or creepy costumes or the like. This gives us four weeks to look forward to celebrating an American religious community's Thanksgiving feast and seven weeks to look forward to celebrating the birth of Jesus. The "dark forces" may seem to own October, but we own November and December. This has had a peculiar application in workplaces where they tried to outlaw Christmas decorations. As often as not, the people who thought I was violating their constitutional right to pretend Christmas didn't exist by hanging a wreath on my cube or something were the same folks who went all out for Halloween. So when they came down on me for hanging tinsel or setting up a little tree or some such, all I had to do was remind them that Halloween started out as a religious holiday, and four weeks ago they had put strobe lights in the halls, hung rubber bats from the acoustic ceiling supports, played "haunted house" sound tracks all week long on a boom box, and - on Halloween itself - come to work in a gorilla suit. That said, if you're looking for truly family-friendly Halloween resources, you'll find some good links further down. We'll have more Christmas-related projects in a few weeks. Finally, please accept our wishes for a blessed and joyous 2013 holiday season. And please enjoy any time you can spend with your family in the coming months. Topics discussed in this update include:
When I was very small, Baby Jesus didn't arrive at the manger until after Midnight Mass. As an adult reconstructing childhood memories, I discovered something odd - the Woolworths plaster figures Mom and Dad arranged in our nativity are easy to find except for Baby Jesus.
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In Search of Baby Jesus
The CardboardChristmas.com Forums are Jumping
New Halloween Projects for Indoor Trains and Towns
Also, due to popular demand, we've reposted Paul's 
To visit the HalloweenTrains.com pages, click on the following link:
Christmas Train Day, 2013