h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>> Carol singing is, unfortunately unknown in Germany. <<

Egads!

There goes the old 'Christmas Truce' myth then.

As recently as this past November 11th, a variety of sentimental media sources were still telling the tale of Christmas Eve 1914, when British troops could hear Germans in their trenches a hundred yards off, singing the German lyrics to the familiar 'Silent Night'.

The Brits were inspired to sing along and the resulting combined choir eventually took note of each other and came out of their foxholes to exchange cigarettes and chocolates in the moonlight. The truce lasted until mid afternoon the following (Christmas) day.

Rather than dispell this inspiringly optimistic myth I'm going to choose to believe that you meant that there is no 'wassailing' in Germany, which is a completely different kettle of fishcakes. They obviously do have carols in Germany even if, like the Rooskies and Poles, they spell it with a K.

~jwf~

What's that got to do with the price of eggs? I've just submitted something to the 'Alternative Writer's Workshop' if you'd care to have a look.

Boo! Would you like to go and have a look at Alternative Writer's Workshop and see what you think?

>> What's that got to do with the price of eggs? <<

An interesting point! Especially concerning the price of eggs in China. Eggs are after all one of the many products we obtain from birds.

And god knows there won't be many birds left in China (or anywhere else for that matter) if panicking bureaucrats don't stop culling their flocks in a pointless effort to eradicate bird flu.

Nothing any scientist or bureaucrat can do will stop birds from fluing south in the winter. Dogs bark, cats meow and birds flu. That's how god made them and mere mortal men cannot change these facts.


~jwf~

In flew enza, out flew iza. I'm continuing to eat Chickens...

The Chinese were very proud of the fact that they eliminated wild birds from China in the past. Mao sent out an edict that anyone who saw a bird land on the ground was to run at it and scare it away. There are so many people that the poor birds literally couldn't land and died of exhaustion. Wild bird numbers fell dramatically. The following year, crops were devastated by plagues of insects.

Gnomon! You've surprised me! I didn't know you had a sense of humour

You don't know me well, then.

I've tried that method on flies in the kitchen. It doesn't really get you anywhere. Is that really true about the birds in China? Sounds like an urban myth - but under Mao the most amazing things probably happened.

The Chinese people certainly boasted about Mao's campaign to rid China of birds to my brother when he was there in the late 1970s.

You're probably my brother.

Has the ecology recovered from that now?



Yes, jwf - by carol singing, I meant going round and knocking on people's doors and singing to them.

In our village and several other parishes throughout Germany now, the need for a similar tradition has been met with Advent windows. People get together at a pre-arranged address every evening in advent and have a little singsong and tell a story, or read a meditative text. The inhabitants of the house know about it, of course, and decorate a window specially for the event which is then on view for all to see for the rest of advent.

>> ..decorate a window specially for the event..<<

Ah, then my spirits lifted been habben.
Danke!

~jwf~

bitte