March, 2015 Issue: The Christmas Times<sup><small>TM</small></sup>


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	Bible Story of Christmas	More Stories of Christmas
	Christmas Music	Craft Resources
	About Nativities	Christmas Musings
	Christmas Poems	Christmas Memories
	About Christmas Trees	About Christmas Decorations
	Recipes	Activity Ideas
	Advent Resources	Other Resources
	Christmas Movies	Christmas Books

Written by Paul and Shelia Race for Family Christmas Online^TM

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

This newsletter is for people who like celebrating holidays, especially Christmas. It is produced in conjunction with the following web sites.

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Old Christmas Tree Lights^TM

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In this Issue

Welcome to the March, 2015 issue of The Christmas Times^TM.

In case you wondered, we're still digging out of reader e-mails and signups that came last Christmas season. But we have to keep going. If you got last month's newsletter, you'll remember that I have a lighted grapevine tree outdoors that I had determined to keep lit until it stopped snowing every few days. Now I've determined to keep it lit until the last of the snow is gone. It's still lit. :-)

This is the month where I finally get to properly feature a family of Easter-themed articles that I've been working on for months. I started the project last May when I was traveling for work and was stuck in hotel rooms a lot. I figured it would take a few hours to capture the "basics," why we celebrate Easter, where the most obvious traditions come from and so on. To my surprise, I discovered that everything I'd "learned" about the origins of traditions like Easter Eggs and the Easter Bunny was wrong. It turns out that - despite many internet "news stories" to the contrary, not only was Easter invented by Christians, but even the secular icons of Easter like the Easter Bunny and Easter Eggs were invented by Christians (German Lutherans and Greek-speaking Eastern Christians respectively). Which makes Easter, technically, the most "Christian" of all holidays.

Of course, St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner. Even though we talked about that last newsletter, we can't ignore it entirely.

In the meantime, for vintage Christmas light enthusiasts, we have done a little work to make the OldChristmasTreeLights.com pages more useful.

Topics discussed in this update include:

Introduction to Easter Articles - Links to a few of our most popular Easter articles so far.
1950s, 1960s, and 1970s Pages Restored to the Old Christmas Tree Lights Site - "Missing" pages have been restored to the most popular version of our restored site.
Jan Brett's Kids' Activity Pages for Easter - Fun pages from a popular Children's author and artist.
Kitchen Musician's St. Patrick's Day Offerings - Great traditional Irish music arranged for traditional instruments
Jan Brett's Kids' Activity Pages for Saint Patrick's Day - Fun pages from a popular Children's author and artist.
Saint Patrick, a Reminder

Introduction to Easter Articles

We've actually written more than we show here - the articles listed below this one are just our most popular so far. The Introduction page lists more. If you want to learn more about facts and fictions surrounding Easter and its celebrations, dig in.

To jump to our Easter Introduction/Table of Contents article, click on the following link:

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

Easter: Frequently Asked Questions

Want to know why Holy Week wanders around the calendar? What the Stations of the Cross are? Why we call Easter "Easter" when almost every other culture calls it "Pasch"? Click on the following link to learn the answer to these questions and more.

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

The Timeline of the Resurrection

If you read the gospel accounts one at a time, they can be confusing. Each author reports only certain events - just like you'd expect if you had four independent accounts. To show the combined timeline, as most people see it click on the following link:

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

The Myth of the Myth of the Easter Bunny

Where did the Easter Bunny really come from and how did it get attached to so many urban legends? Click on the following link to see the answers:

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

Why Easter is Sacred to Me

Of all the times, seasons, holy days, and holidays, the Easter season is the one that is most likely to make me stop and think. The link below will fill in the gaps.

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

1950s, 1960s, and 1970s Pages Restored to the Old Christmas Tree Lights Site

Bill and George Nelson's online "museum" of vintage Christmas lighting was the internet's foremost reference work on the topic from about 2000 until 2010, when the site went down. As many of you know, with the help of many friends, we have rebuilt the site as the OldChristmasTreeLights.com site. We also restored earlier versions, for folks who liked the 2001 or 2003 version better. In the proces, we discovered that the earlier versions had some page that were not included in the later versions. So this month, we've added those back into the 2008 version so folks would be able to find them without going back to the earlier sites.

As far as I can tell, Bill hadn't got very far with some of those pages before he became too ill to continue, and George wasn't interested enough in later lighting topics to finish them. But we have restored what we could.

To see the restored pages for the 1950s, please click the following link:

http://oldchristmastreelights.com/1950s_Lighting_Sets.htm

To see the restored pages for the 1960s, please click the following link:

http://oldchristmastreelights.com/1960s_lighting_sets.htm

To see the restored pages for the 1970s, please click the following link:

http://oldchristmastreelights.com/1970s_lighting_sets.htm

Jan Brett's Easter Coloring Pages

I don't have an Easter craft or activities section in this site yet, but if you have little kids, check out the Jan Brett's activity sheets, including Easter and spring coloring sheets, and bookmarks:

Happy Easter Eggs
Happy Spring!
Jan Brett's other coloring sheets are here:
Jan Brett's Activities Page
Jan Brett's Spring Bookmarks
Jan Brett's other bookmarks are here:
Jan Brett's Bookmark Page

Kitchen Musician's Holiday Offerings

Our friends at Kitchen Musician are responsible for keeping many great old songs in circulation, as their custom songbooks and free music pages attest. For St. Patrick's Day, they've added a special feature on their home page - direct links to several traditional Irisn tunes with other links to dozens more.

Click on the following link to see the Kitchen Musician page

http://kitchenmusician.net/

If this puts you in the mood for more Irish music, Kitchen Musician also offers a book of "Mostly Irish Airs" for Hammered Dulcimer in standard notion with guitar chords. I have a similar book from them and can attest to the quality of their work. To learn more about this book, please click on the following link.

http://kitchenmusician.net/books/km5.html

Jan Brett's St. Patrick's Day Coloring Pages

Here are some more of Jan Bretts's activity pages, including printable bookmarks, coloring sheets, and placements, with St. Patrick's Day themes:

St. Patrick's Day Rainbow
A Leprechaun takes a Hedgie Ride
St. Patrick's Coloring Place-Mat
Hedgehog Leprechaun
Jan Brett's other coloring sheets are here:
Jan Brett's Activities Page
Jan Brett's St. Patrick's Day Bookmarks
Jan Brett's other bookmarks are here:
Jan Brett's Bookmark Page

Saint Patrick: His People, His Work and His Day

In case you missed this last month, our article on St. Patrick's and his feast day is still at the following link:

http://familychristmasonline.com/other_holidays/st_patricks_day/st_patricks_day.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, 2015 newsletter:

http://familychristmasonline.com/fco_newsletter/14_12_c_times.htm

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