[Reposted]

WHEN the Ghost of Christmas Past appears to the hard-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge on the night of Christmas Eve and takes him on a journey back in time, they revisit a party at the warehouse of Scrooge’s former employer, Mr. Fezziwig.

The scene has been played countless times in countless remakes and adaptations of Charles Dickens’ novella, A Christmas Carol. In these interpretations, Mr. Fezziwig, the merchant and money lender, remains fundamentally the same.

Let’s not forget that Christmas Carol is not primarily a tale about Christmas. It’s a story about the idolatry of money and how it transforms society.

Dickens understood that Capitalism was creating an inhuman society. Scrooge embodies an economy that is based first and foremost on the relentless pursuit of money for money’s sake — not for the sustenance of virtuous and happy families. He is a “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint… secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.”

Unsurprisingly, he is a bachelor, too hard-driving for his old sweetheart.

Fezziwig is his counterpart. He stands for economic sanity, a world of independent businesses and family-like commerce — independent of global conglomeration and centralized banking. Sadly, he is later forced to sell out. His former apprentice Scrooge and his equally grasping partner, Jacob Marley, eventually buy everything.

Mr. Fezziwig is light-hearted enough to dance with his employees. He is the paternal employer who treats his workers not as exchangeable commodities but extended family. His warehouse on Christmas Eve is transformed into a festive ballroom, with the good cheer and generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig presiding over all. Mrs. Fezziwig is “one vast substantial smile.” When Fezziwig dances with her “a positive light appear[s] to issue” from his calves.

Mr. Fezziwig is everything Scrooge is not. Here is the scene from Stave Two of The Christmas Carol:

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 THE BEAUTIFUL Basque carol "Gabriel's Message" is based on a hymn first sung some 900 years ago: The medieval Basque hymn ‘Gabriel’s Message’ tells the story of the Annunciation in the context of Christmas. The worship of heaven and earth conjoin as the chorus repeats the connection between the Blessed Virgin Mary’s unique status as the Mother of God and the desire to honour and praise both her and God. The Trinitarian presence of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is implied beneath the radiant surface of the hymn, in the core of the Annunciation and the impulse to worship. Time—both Chronos and Kairos—weave into playful conjoining throughout the hymn, which tells the story of the Annunciation in a linear way while promising the generations to come and looking to the forerunners of Christ’s arrival, particularly Isaiah. The hymn pierces the darkness with Gabriel’s flaming eyes and snowdrift wings, offering the Feast of the Annunciation as a Christmas promise, redolent with Advent imagery. The carol is based on a c. 13th-century Latin hymn, Angelus ad Virginem, which probably has a Franciscan origin. Its popularity meant it travelled throughout Europe, and was known in Britain soon after it was written. Indeed, it’s quoted in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, as part of the Miller’s Tale when he mentions Nicholas the scholar singing it ... More Like many Christmas carols, this has gone through many transformations, has been rediscovered and cherished by…

 FROM English Folk-Carols by Cecil J. Sharp (The Wessex Press, 1911): There is, perhaps, no branch of folk-music in the creation of which the unconscious art of the peasant is seen to greater advantage than the carol. For his peculiar and most characteristic qualities, mental and emotional, are precisely those which in this case are most needed — his passion for simple, direct statement, his dislike of ornament and of the tricks of circumlocution, his abhorrence of sentimentality, and above all his courage in using, without hesitation, the obvious and commonplace phrase, of words or music, when by its means the required expression can most easily be realized. What cultivated musician would dare to set to such words as "The Virgin Unspotted" the graceful, flowing, three-time melody given in this collection, even if he had the luck or skill to think of it? What, again, could be more concise in its diction or clearer in its meaning, than the last stanza in "King Herod and the Cock," or more vivid than the following lines in "The New Year's Carol:" Then Christ He called Thomas And bid him: Come and see And put thy fingers in the wounds That are in my body; And be not faithless, but believe! And happy shalt thou be which will, I venture to think, bear comparison with the parallel stanza of the Easter carol "Ye Sons and Daughters," translated by Neale. It is just his…

THE “Huron Carol,” sung here by Heather Dale in Wendat (Huron), French and English, was written in 1643 by St. Jean de Brébeuf, one of the eight North American Martyrs. This is said to be the first carol ever written in America. St. Jean, who was later captured by the Iroquois and tortured to death, adapted a 16th-century French folk song to his Jesous Ahatonnia (Jesus is Born). According to the early missionaries, the Hurons had a great devotion to Christmas once it was introduced and built Christmas chapels out of fir and cedar.

A much different version of the carol can be found here. (more…)

  

FBI crime statistics for 2012, the year of the alleged Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, show zero homicides for Newtown, Connecticut, where the school was located. Look for yourself. The FBI, in this case, is honest. They could not show homicides in Newtown for that date because the alleged massacre was a government propaganda drill that involved dozens of actors and other government staff for the purpose of terrorizing the public into accepting gun control legislation and tighter government security measures. Propaganda of this kind was legalized under the Obama Administration. In the following video, First Selectman Patricia Llodra of Newtown states under oath that an electric sign that read, "Everyone Must Check In" was erected by the Department of Homeland Security near the school. Some say the sign appeared as early as Dec. 13th, the day before the alleged shooting.    

TODAY is the 12th anniversary of the alleged shooting of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Find independent reporting on the event here, here and here.  

MANY articles and books on the points made in this video can be found here.  

    

ALAN writes:

With perhaps a few exceptions like the Amish and a small percentage of others, modern Americans have proven conclusively that they are not guilty of common sense.

Celebrities are NOT “sick people”.  They may be stupid and they may do evil things.  That does not make them “sick”.  It makes them stupid or evil.  Propositions like “celebrities are sick people” or “murderers are sick people” are moral judgments couched in the vocabulary of fake-medicine.

It is standard procedure nowadays to attempt to discredit people by calling them nasty-sounding names like “crazy”, “insane”, “mentally ill”, “mentally sick”, “psychopathic”, “psychotic”, and “sociopathic”.  I contend that such name-calling is both a measure and a consequence of moral cowardice.  It is as if breaking rules or laws were not itself sufficiently wrong or evil.  I submit that all of that pseudo-medical vocabulary is nonsense, evasion, and theater. (more…)

VOTING is a sham. Both sides work for Big Brother.

Is jury nullification the solution?

Legalman offers a primer on jury nullification. “People are scared to death of the government and even of speaking out. And ultimately it all goes back to jury nullification and the rights of the people. And that’s why you will never hear about it.”

It’s worth a listen.

I don’t endorse all of Legalman’s views and I wish he would clean up his language, but he has some interesting things to say. (more…)

"ALL the world's helpfulness was but a ray out of his helplessness. No man's work, be it for himself or for his fellows, has any true strength in it, no man's strength is any thing better than effort and gesticulation, except the weakness of Chris have touched it, nerved it, and made it manful with heavenly manfulness. What are half the literatures and philosophies in the world but gesticulation, men in attitudes which effect nothing, voices raised to screaming partly to save appearances and counterfeit strength by noise? The strong man is he who has gone deepest down into the weakness of Christ. The enduring work is that which Christ's humiliation has touched secretly, and made it almost omnipotent." --- Fr. Frederick Faber, Bethlehem (Tan Books, p. 75)  

NEIL writes:

Saw a story yesterday that Charlize Theron’s two sons (whom she considers girls) have become a handful.

Maybe it’s been scrubbed from the Internet, but when her two boys realize at the time they are at peak testosterone that they are the products of a sick psychological experiment, I won’t feel sorry for her. (more…)

MORE on the Brian Thompson psyop:

“The narrative allows them to harness and direct the anger the collective feels towards the criminal health system. Dangling a cash prize as a reward increases the participation. Simultaneously, they will push for AI recognition and tracking. They will also be pushing for gun control, digital ID’s and methods to recognize an individual that may be a threat to the “community”. The psyop also serves to glorify the police that strive to “protect” them, while they practice anticipated scenarios so they can effectively hunt someone down when instructed to do so.”

Don’t forget: They want you to approve of and participate in manhunts. (more…)