The Christmas Times^TM, the Official E-Mail Newsletter of Family Christmas Online^TM and Affiliated Sites

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In this Issue

As Betty Talmage said, "Life is what happens when you're making other plans." After several years of writing "musings" about Christmas and other holidays, including relatively trivial ones like Groundhog Day, I decided this past February that this was the year I was going to write an article or two about Easter. I've been putting it off because it's harder for me to write substantive content about serious topics than fun ones, and I take the Resurrection very seriously. But as soon as I started researching the history (and the far more popular pseudo-history) of that holy day, I realized that a single article would not begin to do the topic justice. So a series I started in February, 2013 was finally posted many months later. I could just sit on all the articles and produce them with a flourish next February, pretending that I had planned a 2015 release all along. Or I could put them up now and give Google time to index the pages so anyone else doing similar research won't have to look quite so hard to find the basic facts as I did.

Working on some of these articles reminded me how much pressure there is from certain people to feel guilty about enjoying holidays, for all kinds of reasons. On one extreme are the modern-day Puritans who are afraid that any mode of celebration that might ever have been used by pre-Christians to worship their deities should be categorically rejected (which pretty much rules out everything). On the other extreme are the modern day self-declared Pagans who claim they're the only people in the world who should be allowed to have spring or harvest festivals, or festivals anywhere near any equinox or solstice, as though they invented the seasons. The one thing both groups have in common is that they rely on 99% fabricated evidence for 99% of their claims. Sadly, as you'll see if you peruse our articles on Easter and Thanksgiving, many of those fabrications have worked their way into reference books and school curricula, but they're fabrications none-the-less, and pretty weak ones at that.

The overriding theme of this web site is to enjoy your holidays and use them as reasons and ways to reach out to those around you. And if someone tells you that you shouldn't have Christmas trees because the Druids used to bring holly into their homes, or that putting pumpkins on your front porch in October means you're dabbling in witchcraft, smile politely and divert the conversation to football or something.

Speaking of pumpkins, next month will be the one-year anniversary of our article "Thoughts About Halloween." It's generated a bunch of hits but no angry mobs have stormed our house carrying pitchforks and torches yet, so maybe most of our readers appreciate a reasoned approach.

You may remember that we have set up discussion forums on some of our other Christmas-related topics:

• Cardboard Christmas (putz houses)

• Old Christmas Tree Lights

This month, we are publishing the news about a new forum for our Family Christmas Online readers. Obviously, we're hoping that the putz house and Christmas tree light fans will continue to use the forums we've already started. But the Family Christmas Online forums should be able to handle many, many other topics.

Finally, please accept our wishes for a blessed and joyous 2014 holiday season. And especially enjoy any time you can spend with your family in the coming weeks.

Topics discussed in this update include:

• Easter Section Rollout
• "Thoughts about Halloween" - A year later
• Family Christmas Online Discussion Forum Rollout - Connecting Christmas enthusiasts
• Holiday Train Update - A note about this year's supply of holiday trains.
• Spook Hill Chronicles A family-friendly online novel about a new family in a town where it is always Halloween.
• Christmas Train Day, 2014 - If you live near Springfield, Ohio, this may interest you.

Easter Section Rollout

I'm glad I took the time to do thorough research before I put up my pages on this holy day - the only one that the early church celebrated. In the process, I learned that I was not the only person to have deep feelings about the holiday; many folks who believe almost the opposite of what I do about many aspects of the Easter season also have very strong feelings. For that reason, I tried even harder to ferret out the "real story" behind some of the popular myths surrounding Easter.

In the process, I found names, dates, and source materials that few people have bothered to sort out, and even fewer have documented. Not everyone will be happy with me exposing the sources of several "ancient pagan myths" that first appeared about 1829 (a few were actually invented in 1999). Or pointing out, say, that all of the ways Christians traditionally celebrate Easter were actually invented by Christians (and not stolen or borrowed from pagan rituals at all). The short version is that I hope most readers will find our new articles thought-provoking, enlightening, and encouraging.

To see the new section, click on the following link:

http://familychristmasonline.com/other_holidays/easter/intro_easter.htm

"Thoughts About Halloween" - A Year Later

To see this article, click on the following link:

http://familychristmasonline.com/other_holidays/halloween/halloween.htm

Family Christmas Online Discussion Forum Rollout

Also, from this point on, when we receive a question, photo, answer, tip, or other new content, we'll post it in the discussion forums at the same time we respond to the reader directly. That way, other folks will be able to see the same content as soon as it becomes available, instead of waiting for me to get around to updating the relevant pages. And as members sign up, they can add content, answer questions, post interesting finds, and otherwise build the hobby.

You won't have to register to see the questions and answers, but you'll need to register to post directly to the forums. Also, once you are registered, you'll be able to tell at a glance where there are any new postings since the last time you signed in. (The lights on the little Christmas tree icons change color.)

We are also taking extraordinary measures to make certain only well-meaning "real people" sign up, so you don't have to worry about the unpleasantness you occasionally see on other forums.

To see the FamilyChristmas.com discussion forums, click on the following link:

http://FamilyChristmasOnline.com/forums/

To sign up for the OldChristmasTreeLights.com forum, click on the following link:

http://FamilyChristmasonline.com/forum_signup.htm

Holiday Train Update

To see our notes on product availability for Halloween-themed trains and towns, click on the following link:

http://bigindoortrains.com/trains_n_towns/14_09_newsletter_indoor.htm#halloween

To see our notes on product availability for Christmas-themed trains and towns, click on the following link (you may need to scroll down):

http://bigindoortrains.com/trains_n_towns/14_09_newsletter_indoor.htm#train_market

Spook Hill Chronicles - A Family-Friendly Halloween Novel Just For Our Readers

In 2012, we published a family-friendly novel about what it would be like to be the new family in a small town where it was Halloween all year 'round. Some folks didn't stumble onto the story until about the time I planned to take it down. So we left it up for 2013. For some readers it's become an annual thing, so we're leaving it up again this year.

To jump to the intro page for the Spook Hill Chronicles, click on the following link:

http://halloweentrains.com/spook_hill_chronicles/spook_hill_chronicles_intro.htm

Christmas Train Day, 2014

Click on the following link to see the page of information we have so far:

http://familygardentrains.com/outside_resources/openhouses/christmas_open_houses_2014.htm

Keep in Touch

Each month, we get more interest in this newsletter, in our Christmas sites, and in the Christmas traditions, ideas, and memories we discuss. We welcome your questions and comments as indicators of what we should be working on next (also, we always try to answer reader questions quickly). In addition, if you have any photos, tips, or articles you'd like to share with your fellow Christmas enthusiasts, please let us know.

Best Wishes!

As always, our hope is that we can continue helping you and your family (as Dickens said of Scrooge):

Honor Christmas in your heart, and
"try to keep it all the year."

In the meantime, please keep in touch, and let us know what you'd like to see added or changed.

May God grant you joy and wonder every season of this year,

Paul and Shelia Race

http://FamilyChristmasOnline.com

http://CardboardChristmas.com

http://OldChristmasTreeLights.com

Click the following link to view our February, 2014 newsletter:

http://familychristmasonline.com/fco_newsletter/14_02_c_times.htm

To return to the Family Christmas Online^TM Home Page, click here.