Family- Newsletter- December 31, 2022

29 Dec Family- Newsletter- December 31, 2022

FAMILY SANTA COMES DOWN THE CHIMNEY ON NEW YEAR’S EVE?

You can see in the pictures above that in the 1800’s Santa was not commonly portrayed as a plump jolly guy. The guy in the article on top has a pipe, but no beard. Possibly the four Santa Claus’ above us were retired Civil War generals?
You can see the old articles about New Year’s Eve as being when cookies were laid out and Santa went down the chimney on New Year’s Eve. Apparently, in other nations, but also America that used to be quite common. Find more information at the link at the bottom.
I am not clear what the Santa on top is delivering in his bucket and back basket, You can see later that he switched to a front basket, but as he gained weight the belly basket would not have worked.
It was only in the 1920s that the modern vision of Santa as a plump and jolly man was created and this was mainly down to Coca-Cola’s holiday advertising.
You can see below that in 1920, Santa Claus was used in a political cartoon during the Russian Revolution.

https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/12/santa-claus-comes-on-new-years-eve.html

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FAMILY- CHRISTMAS WAS BANNED IN BOSTON FOR 22 YEARS

Before the Victorian era, Christmas was primarily a religious holiday observed by Christians of the Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran denominations. Its importance was often considered secondary to that of Epiphany and Easter.
On the other hand, the Puritans objected to the Christian Christmas feast during the English Interregnum, when a Puritan Parliament ruled England. Puritans sought to remove elements they viewed as unbiblical, from their practice of Christianity, including those feasts established by the Anglican Church. In 1647, the Puritan-led English Parliament banned the celebration of Christmas, replacing it with a day of fasting and considering it “a popish festival with no biblical justification” and a time of wasteful and immoral behavior. In addition, Puritans disliked traditions that inverted social hierarchies, such as wassailing, in which the rich were expected to give to the poor on demand, which, with the addition of alcohol, sometimes turned into violent intrusions.
Protests followed as pro-Christmas rioting broke out in several cities, and for weeks, the rioters controlled Canterbury, who decorated doorways with holly and shouted royalist slogans. The book The Vindication of Christmas (London, 1652) argues against the Puritans. It notes Old English Christmas traditions, dinner, roast apples on the fire, card playing, dances with “plow-boys” and “maidservants”, old Father Christmas, and carol singing. The Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 ended the ban.

Poor Robin’s Almanack contained the lines: “Now thanks to God for Charles return, / Whose absence made old Christmas mourn. / For then we scarcely did it know, / Whether it Christmas were or no.”
Many clergymen still disapproved of Christmas celebrations. In Scotland, the presbyterian Church of Scotland also discouraged the observance of Christmas. James VI commanded its celebration in 1618, but church attendance was scant.
In Colonial America, the Pilgrims of New England disapproved of Christmas. The Plymouth Pilgrims put their loathing for the day into practice in 1620 when they spent their first Christmas Day in the New World building their first structure in the New World—thus demonstrating their complete contempt for the day. Non-Puritans in New England lamented the loss of the holidays enjoyed by the laboring classes in England. Christmas observance was outlawed in Boston in 1659, with a fine of five shillings. The ban by the Puritans was revoked in 1681 by an English-appointed governor, Edmund Andros; however, it was not until the mid-19th century that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region. Before the Declaration of Independence in 1776, it was not widely celebrated in the American Colonies.

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FAMILY- GOOGLE WANTS TO HELP PHARMACISTS READ DOCTOR’S ILLEGIBLE WRITING. HOWEVER, THIS WILL ALSO HELP GENEALOGISTS

Google is developing an AI model that can decipher difficult-to-read handwriting, with a focus on notes and prescriptions written by doctors. During its annual conference in India on Monday, the search giant announced that it was working with pharmacists on an AI-powered machine learning model that can decode messily written medical notes (via TechCrunch).

Google showcased the feature during the event, demonstrating its capability to specifically detect medicines in a handwritten prescription. There’s no detail yet on when the new text deciphering feature is expected to launch or specifically what kind of product it might appear in.

We’ve already seen similar technology implemented via Google Lens, an AI-powered multipurpose object recognition tool that can be used to detect objects (such as products, plants, or animal species) and translate languages. The Google Lens app can already be used to digitally transcribe handwritten notes, though, in our tests, the feature depended on how legible said handwriting is.

The Verge by Jess Weatherbed

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FAMILY- THE 51ST STATE OF SAN BERNARDINO?

There have been other threats of counties looking to secede from their current state and joining up with neighboring states whose political leanings better match the county’s sentiments, or in this case, going their own way. Maps of Greater Idaho, New South Dakota, and New Minnesota are below.

RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. (AP) — The November elections saw Californians continue to embrace progressive leadership. Still, voters in one of the state’s most populous counties are so frustrated with this political direction that they voted to consider seceding and forming their own state.

An advisory ballot proposal approved in San Bernardino County — home to 2.2 million people — directs local officials to study the possibility of secession. The razor-thin margin of victory in California is the latest sign of political unrest and economic distress.

This attempt to create a new state — the first since Hawaii in 1959 — is a longshot proposition for the county just east of Los Angeles that has suffered from sharp increases in the cost of living. It would hinge on approval by the California Legislature and Congress, both of which are highly unlikely.

Still, it’s significant that the vote came from a racially and ethnically diverse county that is politically mixed, the fifth-most populous in the state, and the largest in the nation by area. San Bernardino’s 20,000 square miles (51,800 square kilometers) comprise more land than nine states.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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FAMILY- DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE IS A PART OF RUSSIA SURROUNDED BY NATO?

Russia has made the argument that they could not accept countries such as Finland and Ukraine joining NATO since they border Russia.
However, since 2004, the enclave of Russia called Kaliningrad, once known as the Hong Kong of the Baltic, has been surrounded by NATO. Across the Baltic, Sweden, and Finland joining NATO, it will be even more so surrounded.

Here are some links about this history of Kaliningrad and the deployment of the Russia’s 11th Army from there to Ukraine and its destruction.

Kaliningrad: Baltic Hong Kong No Longer

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2022/10/27/12000-russian-troops-once-posed-a-threat-from-inside-nato-then-they-went-to-ukraine-to-die/?

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FAMILY- LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE VILLAINOUS PIRATE HENRY EVERY

The poster on the right comes from the trial of his crew.

Thanks to detectorists, we know the world’s most wanted pirate hid out in 1600s America before vanishing into the wind.

One tarnished silver coin at a time, the ground is yielding new evidence that in the late 1600s, one of the world’s most ruthless pirates wandered the American colonies with impunity.

Newly surfaced documents also strengthen the case that English buccaneer Henry Every — the target of the first worldwide manhunt — hid out in New England before sailing for Ireland and vanishing into the wind.

“At this point, the amount of evidence is overwhelming and indisputable,” historian and metal detectorist Jim Bailey, who’s devoted years to solving the mystery, told The Associated Press. “Every was undoubtedly on the run in the colonies.”

In 2014, after unearthing an unusual coin engraved with an Arabic inscription at a pick-your-own-fruit orchard in Middletown, Rhode Island, Bailey began retracing Every’s steps.

Research confirmed that the exotic coin was minted in 1693 in Yemen. Bailey then discovered that it was consistent with millions of dollars’ worth of coins and other valuables seized by Every and his men in their brazen Sept. 7, 1695, sacking of the Ganj-i-Sawai, an armed royal vessel owned by Indian emperor Aurangzeb.

Historical accounts say Every’s band tortured and killed passengers aboard the Indian ship and raped many of the women before escaping to the Bahamas, a haven for pirates. But word quickly spread of their crimes, and English King William III — under enormous pressure from a scandalized India and the influential East India Company trading giant — put a large bounty on their heads.

More to read at this link:
https://fortune.com/2022/12/08/metal-detectorists-henry-every-rhode-island-1600s-pirate-most-wanted/

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FAMILY YOUR ANCESTORS ARE WAITING TO BE DISCOVERED!

Reach out to Dancestors and let us research, discover, and preserve your family history. No one is getting any younger, and stories disappear from memory every year and eventually from our potential ability to find them. Paper gets thrown in the trash; books survive! So do not hesitate and call me @ 214-914-3598.