Blizzard To Hit Massachusetts Tuesday

courtesy: NECN

Don't hate me, I'm just the weatherman!

Snow has been sparse this winter, but we're about to trim quite a bit off of the deficit this week. A blizzard is sizing us up and liking how we look.

Today, we're getting a storm from the Gulf of Mexico that came up the coast at us and got cold. The blizzard will be more of an Alberta Clipper that drops down onto us from western Canada.

It will be a rather large storm, and it will be a cold storm. Our storm today will move NE, and that will usher in cold air for when this storm arrives. Moisture should stream in from the ocean and fall as all snow.

It looks to be from Worcester towards the coast, with maybe the coast getting the worst of it. Accuweather is giving Buzzards Bay 15" of snow. We are also forecast to have very high winds, gusting well over 50 mph.

The snow should start as flurries Monday afternoon, steadily get worse, and then snow all day Tuesday. We should have 3-6" of snow by the end of Monday night, then pick up another 10" on Tuesday.

Coastal flooding will be a concern, as the winds will be high. The seas are already churned up from today's entertainment, so be ready. There will be a waning new moon tide of 10.9" on Duxbury Beach.

We're a few days away, and the forecast can change. However, we're also fairly close, and the present forecast is a monster. A wobble in the track could mean rain, or even no precipitation at all... but it could also mean More Snow.

As you know, a blizzard is combo platter of snow, high winds, and low visibility. We'll have all that, playboy.

We'll be back with an update.

Snow, Coastal Flooding, Weather Girls

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Love And War: The Super Bowl On Valentine's Day

2016 and 2021  AD. Two dates that may live in infamy.

There is a lot of talk regarding the extension of the NFL regular season, as the owners aren't getting enough money and the players aren't getting enough concussions. The basic idea is adding two weeks to the regular season.

Hey, that's good for me! Two more weeks of football! I can repress any thoughts about added danger to the players, or wanton greed by the owners. Yup, I'll sell all of that out for more football. If not for one thing, I'd sign off on the contract without looking at it.

That one thing is a doozy, though.

The NFL is a male-dominated game. I'm not sure if there is a female owner, but I know that there are  no females involved in any sort of important decision-making process in the NFL beyond "Which cheer should we do next?" The most important woman in the NFL last season was the one who Ray Rice snuffed in that elevator. How do I know this? Let me explain.

Assuming that they grow the regular season to 18 games, and assuming that there are no exhibition games axed in the process, the Super Bowl would be two weeks later than it usually is. If they did it this year, it would fall on February 15th.

February 15th is no problem at all. February 14th? That, folks, is what we call a capital "P" Problem.

February 14th is St. Valentine's Day.

St. Valentinus was a martyr, put to death for performing marriages for soldiers in Africa during a period where Rome was persecuting Christians. There were actually several Valentinuses running around, and several were canonized. I'm sort of merging a few stories with mine. He signed his last letter (written to the blind daughter of his jailer, who he healed and who eventually underwent baptism) with a Latin version of "Your Valentine."

You can go see Valentine's skull at some Roman church, where it is preserved and venerated as a relic. It has a crown of flowers, and may be the world's prettiest skull. During the courtly love (not Courtney Love) era in the High Middle Ages, Geoffrey Chaucer first associated the day with romance, and by the 1800s, it was pretty much a flowers/card/candy Lovers Day.

None of that is important. What is important is that the expansion of the NFL regular season by two weeks would inevitably put the Super Bowl on Valentine's Day, maybe every 5 years or so. 2015 AD is the next one, and then men are safe until 2021 AD.

Unless we get an American Pope who changes the date of a saint's feast day, we can't dodge this collision. This is the irresistible force crashing into the unmovable object.

Girls love football. Not as much as guys, but my Facebook is proof enough that a large % of girls were all worked up about the game last night (writing this after the conference championships). Several of my friends would ditch their whole family to run off with Brady or Gronk or even Chandler Jones.

I don't know who did the survey, but the Washington Post reports that women make up 45% of the 150 million football fans in America. Even the Post doesn't know how many are in Asia, Europe, Africa, Oceania.... but it's a lot. An ESPN survey said 34%, but that is still 50 million plus.

Not only are the women 45% of the audience, they are the empowered 45%. Women, even these days, tend to be in charge of the household budget. Whoever is in charge of that budget is also the person you aim the advertising at. Advertising fuels the NFL.

In a house where the man watches football and the woman does something else, advertisers are in a quandary. Not only are they counting on the man being swayed by their commercials, but they are counting on him being swayed to the point where he tells the Ol' Ball and Chain about it.

Even then, they are counting on him to be able to convince her that she needs to buy a particular type of beer or pickup truck. They are also counting on him being able to do so without the bells, whistles, rock music and large breasts that commercials use to make you want to try out a particular brand of cereal.

Fortunately for places like Battle Creek and the Chevrolet plant, football is awesome. It can be tough to get a pigskin virgin into it, but once they get hooked, you own them for life. Some women love it right off the bat, while others are more like Diane Chambers from Cheers.... "Not only have I progressed to the point where I can now watch a hockey fight without covering my eyes, I even took a side once."

The NFL has ended up with a large female demographic. For instance, the NY Times has a fact of interest from a 2011 article. The top 4 shows among women, 18-49? Dancing With The Stars... Glee... Grey's Anatomy... and Sunday Night Football... and SNF beat Glee.

The NFL does do their best to drive women away. I can't imagine a female coach in my lifetime, and only the death of a billionaire will put a widow woman in charge of a team. I have secretly rooted for Oprah or Madonna to buy a team, but that's probably not going to happen. While girls do play football at lower levels, you probably won't see one in the NFL unless someone makes a Great Leap Forward.

Here's the pom-poms. Shake what Momma gave ya. We have no other role for you.

Women are not only eye candy cheerleaders in the NFL, however... they are also plaintiffs. When you get some monster who is trained to be aggressive, arguments about fidelity or the budget turn bloody, and the blood is almost always shed by the female.

Now, that 45% is a real number, but it is also a real vulnerable number. I have no idea how to gauge this, but that 45% may be the less invested 45%. I'm sure that the NFL lost some women fans during the Rice debacle, and there were 76 other cases recently where a baller got physical with his better half. At least one woman has been murdered by an NFL player in the last few years, and I may be missing a few.

Throw in an occasional serial date-rapist, a double-murderer, and a guy who hangs dogs, and that can turn off a lot of TVs.

The NFL is still winning the battle, to the tune of 45%.  As we said, though, it is a fragile 45%. What the NFL can't afford to do to woman is, say, ruin their favorite holiday. That is gonna end up with a lot of motherf***ers unhappily watching Glee.

They actually have a good thing going now, with the present schedule. It empowers the woman, especially the non-fan (or, as we'll see near the end of this article, the fan who can still manipulate her husband somewhat over it). I draw power from it, and I actually like football.

We always host a Super Bowl party, I always cook enough food to feed a platoon, I mix drinks, I open beers, I ferry  plates of Yummy in and out of the room, and I even do most of the cleaning after. I'm a f***ing soldier, as Kellen Winslow II once said.

I also always make a point of reminding my husband of this as Valentine's Day approaches, seeing as it is just 2 weeks after. I prefer vacations, but I'll settle for gifts. If he does a good job, he earns complete freedom for March Madness, which I don't care about.

It's win/win. The NFL, in their male-dominated thought process, fails to realize this. This failure, as failure often does, will compound itself when the owners get greedy and add 2 weeks to the season.

I'm in a bit of a moral quagmire with this issue.

I'm a woman, and I owe some debt to my gender.

I'm also a football fan, and don't want to screw over my fellow football fans.

I'm going to hand they keys to the castle to the women.

The only thing I can tell the guys reading this is some variation of "I have presented you with a potential problem, and I have even provided the dates when the problem will become catastrophic."

What you do with that information is up to you. Godspeed.

I already know how I'm going to handle this, and the answer is to Exploit My Husband's Fears. Keep in mind, I have maintained a football blog for years. I'm an easy sell. Throw in the fact that my husband, as much as I love him, is a bit of an oaf, and I'd most likely be happier watching the Super Bowl than watching him try to order in French at a nice restaurant.

(adopts deep voice)

"Yeah, I'll have one of those bif-techs, maybe some of those pommy doo terry..."

Of course, HE doesn't know that I'd prefer to watch the game, and I'd give him no clue that I feel this way. This is all part of the plan. I have the advantage, because I'm already thinking about something that won't occur to him until it's too late.

Girls, you can borrow my plan as long as you give me credit for it. What you do is wait for the NFL to expand the season, wait for the Super Bowl to fall on February 14th, and then- most imporatntly- wait for him to put two and two together regarding all of this. You want to be with him when he figures it out, because every second afterwards is time that he has to do his own scheming.

It will, in the end, come down to three critical sentences, with some body language and grunting.

"Hey, the Super Bowl is on Valentine's Day."

I will not speak when he says this, but will instead stomp one foot, furrow my eyebrows, put my hands on my hips, and stare at him. Be very afraid to know that I am already practicing noises I will make when he speaks the sentence I ascribed to him above, all some variation of "Hmmmf." I will not speak until he figures out why I am doing this, and I will make him speak the critical words himself.

"This is going to be a problem, isn't it?"

Now, if he and I were fish and fisherman, this is the part of the process where I have cast my bait out to sea, the gods have moved the fish near it, and he has just bitten the piece of mackerel that I was offering... the mackerel with a big hook in it. He is at his lowest point here in the argument, and is at his most vulnerable... which is why it is then that I strike with my Finishing Move.

"I'd be willing to forego Valentine's Day and watch the Super Bowl...."

(pause, let his hopes rise)

"... in Paris!"

I will then exit the room, signifying the end of negotiations.


- Stacey

The Super Bowl Should Be Followed By A Holiday

Foxboro, MA

On almost any other weekend, a 6:30 PM Sunday kickoff time for the Patriots playoff game would be a serious socioeconomic disaster.

People love the Patriots, the game might run through 10 PM, they serve beer at football games and even at football parties, most people have to be back to work on Monday, and you can kind of do the math.

Your workers will be hung over, the students will be sleepily distracted, and Monday will be useless for much of New England. It should be a Recovery day by any metric I can think of.

It's a shame that there isn't a holiday on Monday.... oh wait, there is!

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a celebration of civil and nonviolent disobedience, is January 19th, the day after the NFL conference championships.

That's right, kids... we have us a day off on Monday. You are now secret agent #008, and you have a license to binge. This is good, because you can't even start celebratory drinking until about 9 PM in a best-case scenario of a Pats blowout.

It's not just the drinking. People also binge-eat during football. During last Sunday's entertainment, myself, two brothers, and 2 or 3 other dudes consumed 3 large pizzas, an order of teriyaki wings, an order of buffalo chicken fingers, a giant bag of tortilla chips with a pile of salsa, a package of Chips Ahoy, a tray of seven layer dip, 12 Marylou's coffees, a randomly-cooked and needless pound of bacon, a bag of Skittles, a box of mini Charleston Chews, several grams of vaporized hash oil, a dozen donuts, a quarter ounce of Sour Diesel, a case of beer, 4 cans of whipped cream-flavored nitrous oxide, two packs of Marlboros, and probably some other stuff that I'm forgetting.

That's some conspicuous consumption, and it takes more than 8 hours of sleep to recover from it. Our totals would be even worse if we had some heavy drinkers among our numbers, or some really fat guys. I was the biggest person there, and I'm a lanky 235. We are also not at all unique among Patriots fans, and I may even say that we were a bit more restrained than the average New England football party last Sunday.

Just in case you thought we were kidding about the Marylou's...

This brings to mind a greater question. The scenario I painted above is for a conference semi-final game, which is sort of like the NFL's quarterfinals. Important, but also paling in comparison to the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl also has a 6 PM start, and features the same over-consumption that my friends and I took part in last weekend. The difference in this case is that the celebration will be a national one, not just a regional one. Throw in the fact that many non-fans will go to Super Bowl parties and watch the entire game, and that more than cancels out the fact that only two cities out of fifty states will have a dog in this fight.

There is no national day of rest after the Super Bowl, and there should be.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a great man, and it is right that we celebrate his birthday. Not a lot of people get their own holiday. It is held on the third Monday of January, which is sort of close to MLK's January 15th birthday.

George Washington was also a great man, and we have a sort of holiday dedicated to ol' Dollar Face and his five dollar friend, Abe Lincoln. Presidents Day is tentatively set between the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln, on the third Monday of February.

The floating holiday thing opens up a loophole for the forward-thinking man. If we're honoring MLK, George and Abe and not their birthdays, why shouldn't we have some wiggle room as to when we celebrate their lives?

George or MLK are going to have to make a sacrifice between them, for the greater good of the America that they strove to protect and perfect. I'm thinking George, but MLK supporters will have some good arguments for their side.

Before we get to that, we have a few problems to solve. OK, some are more along the lines of "mitigating factors."

- The way it works now... Christmas/New Year's is the big holiday season.... you get a few weeks back at work before MLK Day... you do another month and get February Vacation.... then you do a long push before Easter.

- MLK Day does not occur during Black History Month. This could be viewed as a positive, with MLK Day sort of giving the already-short Black History Month a running head start. But it also is a conspicuous void.

- There is some debate as to whether the February holiday is really President's Day or Washington's Birthday. A lot of the red states don't like to celebrate the birthday of the Great Emancipator.

- Schools take a week's vacation during the middle of February, between Washington and Abe's birthdays. President's Day usually falls into that period, giving the parents a day home with the kids.

- There will be many people who will get Furious if you try to alter the celebration of either man's day.

- Feminists would note that "giving women the right to vote" may eclipse any of Dr. King's accomplishments, and wonder why Susan B. Anthony only gets an obscure collector's coin when people are throwing holidays around.

- There is some sentiment to make September 11th a holiday, which would add to the holiday pool.

- Speaking of that pool, why don't the Native Americans have a day?

- How about cops/firefighters/EMTs? I kind of grade emergency responders around the same as soldiers on the deserves-some-honor-for-bravery scale. While we're on the topic, what about Nurses? Teachers?

- An even better argument can be made for establishing a holiday on Election Day. That one gets proposed with the frequency.

- Dr. King and George Washington led very important lives, perhaps two of the greatest American lives. Their birthday celebrations should be somber, especially that of the man who worked for peace only to die of violence. It may be poorly received when I suggest moving these solemn and hallowed dates to accommodate the binge-drinking associated with a game where a bunch of giant children chase a rubber ball around.

- Depending on when you celebrate Easter, March/April, June and August don't have holidays. March has St. Patrick's Day, which is more of a feast day.

- Ironically, the only birthday celebration we could really move without straying too far from the established birthday would be the unknown one which we would never be allowed to move, that of Jesus.

- Rhode Island still celebrates VJ Day.

- The Super Bowl is usually held early in February.

- There is fierce debate regarding the possibility of extending the NFL regular season by 2 weeks, which would, in theory and assuming they keep the same amount of preseason games, push the Super Bowl into the period where we now celebrate February Vacation.

- When you start moving the Super Bowl back, you set up a potential confrontation of planet-shattering force, and one I have written about before.... the Super Bowl being played on St. Valentine's Day.

- If you push the NFL back into March, you run the risk of serious competition from March Madness.

- People who have sentences in their story about smoking vaporized hash oil shouldn't also speak sentences with "I think that Martin Luther King or George Washington would have wanted this," but I do think that Martin Luther King and George Washington would have wanted their celebrations to make people happy. I bet MLK watched a bit of NFL, IMHO.

- There is a proposed Susan B. Anthony holiday, aimed at the third Monday of February. Would the feminists side with the beer-drinking football slobs if it meant steering that holiday closer to, say, a certain championship game?

- If you are, say, writing an essay on the matter and over-thinking it.... once you move one holiday, there is both the temptation and perhaps the need to start moving several of them.

OK, let's skip the nonsense and start re-arranging the calendar.

Christmas stays where it is, even though it is the most randomly-chosen date ascribed to a holiday other than Veteran's Day and Memorial Day. It would also be tough to move New Year's Eve, short of altering our orbit around the sun.

I feel badly for the feminists, and feel strongly about Election Day. Why not have Bofe? Let's give Suffrage Day the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This would be an 11/2-11/8 range, and it should increase voter turnout.

Election Day would be wayyyy too close to Veteran's Day, which- to be honest- is way too close to Thanksgiving. I propose giving the Veterans an early August holiday. Instead of a cold November day at the cemetery, I have now given America a second 4th of July... just in August. You're welcome.

I can do 9/11 Day, but it means moving Labor Day back into April. April might be a better day to get off than a September one, as it gets the outdoor workers inside for a winter day. I'm a journalist, so I can't say whether construction workers would rather have a hot day off of work or a cold one. A great part of me thinks that Labor Day should be aligned with either the first day of March Madness or baseball's Opening Day.

Flag Day, which is more of a day of Observance than a holiday, sort of has June locked down.

Now, things get awkward. MLK Day is rather close to Christmas. However, moving it towards the Super Bowl would make for a long holiday drought. There would be outrage. I say that Martin stays where he is.

President's Day? Make it the third Monday of February. It falls within the school vacation week, and it saves us from having to move MLK Day. We seem to be moving a lot of holidays around in this scenario, and some stability would be nice.

The Super Bowl should be aimed at the Sunday before President's Day, even if that means moving the Super Bowl back, expanding the regular season, or expanding the playoffs. If they are going to push all of those beer and food commercials on us while keeping us up to 11 PM (and then setting many of us loose upon the roads), they should hire a few sharpies to make sure that everything synchs up.

Putting the Super Bowl on this date also avoids the potential catastrophe of the Super Bowl falling on Valentine's Day. The week off before the Super Bowl should be set to Valentine's Day.

Doing so also creates revenue for the NFL, as adding to their schedule fills stadiums, sells ad space and so forth. It fills dull winter weekends for meaningless-life sports fans. It lessens the time between the Super Bowl, which is the end of the football season, and the onset of free agency and the NFL Draft, which is the beginning of the next season.

It's a win all around, and someone more prominent than I should be working on it already.

In the end, you'd have this nice Halloween/Election/Thanksgiving/Christmas/NYE/MLK/Valentine's/Super Bowl run into school vacation that would keep the people happy and prevent them from eventually eating the rich.

We Come From The Land Of The Ice And Snow

Bourne Rotary

New England is one of those cold places. We get a bit spoiled in Cranberry County, as our lows aren't as low as they get further inland. We're actually the balmy part of New England, which- as good as it sounds- means that we are currently 9 degrees when inland locations are 6 degrees. I doubt that this is of any great comfort to you.

New Englanders are logical, and we'd be quick to point out to someone who is suffering in our climate that many parts of America have it worse than we do with Old Man Winter. Everything from the Great Lakes west to the Rockies along our latitude is colder than we are, as our climate is influenced by the Gulf Stream. As cold as our air is right now, there is a touch of Florida to it that is saving us from the true Ice Bowl stuff.

Still, New Englanders sometimes forget that a lot of the country is comprised of states that are much warmer than we are. Any state which once had slaves picking cotton is warmer than us. Any state Mexicans sneak into is warmer than us. Any state where people surf, any state with a Disney park in it, any state with palm trees, any state with more than one NASCAR track... you guessed it, warmer than us.

I covered the MLB All Star game for AOL once, and it involved flying into Houston in July. Houston is the cooler part of Texas, which is known for her rotten climate. The general who occupied Texas after the Civil War was once asked how he was enjoying the climate. "If I owned Hell and Texas," he said, "I would live in Hell and rent Texas."

It was 95 degrees at 6 AM in Houston when I was stumbling back to the hotel one morning. I smelled smoke, followed my nose,  and found two bellhops smoking a blunt (I smell the cheeb like a beagle) in the parking lot. While joining them, I asked them how they were able to tolerate this climate.

"You're from Boston, right?"
"Essentially."
"How do you tolerate walking around through 3 feet of snow while it's 10 degrees out for 6 months?"
"I suppose that you get used to it after a while."
"There's your answer."

I actually thought that the story would have a little more gusto and insight for my readers, but that's pretty much it right there. I just wanted to use the "Hell and Texas" quote, to be honest.

Massachusetts is much colder than Texas. We have milder summers, but we make up for it with our winters.

Winter is officially when the axis of the Earth is tilting away from the sun in our hemisphere. Weathermen sometimes call winter the 3 months with the coldest temperatures. Other people go by length of day, vernal equinox dates, animal migrations, and a ton of other omens. I personally bracket winter by the first and last snowfalls, although it is a flawed method.

Winter brings the coldness. Cold is a subjective perception thing. Someone from New England might scoff at what someone from Georgia considers to be cold, while someone from Alaska might find the Yankee to be a bit of a wuss.

Even tonight, we're not the coldest place on Earth. The coldest temperature ever recorded reliably was above Lake Rostov in Antarctica, which clocked in at -128 Fahrenheit. That's colder than Mars, if you need a scale of reference.

Cold will happily kill you if you don't protect yourself from it. Humans have an optimal operating temperature in the upper 90s. We're not designed (fur, down, blubber) for colder conditions, and we only survive in places like New England or Scandinavia because we're crafty suckers who figure out stuff like fire and eletctricity. Without that, we'd be Peopsicles.

How cold does it get around here?

Although it is not Cranberry County, Boston has extensive weather records. Boston is a bit north of Cranberry County, but it also has a more concrete-ish urban heat effect. They are generally just a bit colder than coastal Cranberry County, and warmer than inland Cranberry County.

The same basic logic applies to snowfall, with Boston getting the lesser snow of an East Falmouth rather than the heavier snowfall of an East Bridgewater.

I just happen to have the January weather records for Boston right here. They go back to 1920. Let's roll through some fun facts, shall we?

- January is the coldest month, with an average high/low temperature range of 36/22. Second coldest? February, follwed by December, March, November, April, and October.

- Rolling through the lowest January temperatures, we get a -2 in 2011, a -7 in 2004, -4 in 1994, 1988 and 1981, and an ungodly -12 in 1957. For highs, we hit 69 degrees in 2007 and a lay-out-and-tan 72 degrees in 1950.

- Boston's record for coldest high temperature in a January day is 7 degrees. It was -4 that night, so people were happy with the 7. However, the temperature never dropped below 55 degrees on a day in 1950.

- The state in January has an Average Daily High temperature range in the  of 21.9 degrees in the Berkshires to 29 in Boston to 31 on Martha's Vineyard.

- The lowest temperature ever recorded in Massachusetts was -37 F, in Chester. Nominally warm states like Arizona, California, Missouri and Mayland have all had colder days than that. California also somehow owns the national snowfall event total record at like 20 feet or something.

- Cape Cod, the South Shore, Bristol County and Boston get, generally, about 2/3 the snow that Worcester gets.

- Average annual snowfall totals (days with at least .1" of snow, and inches of snow per year) for towns in our area:

Boston 22.4 days/43.6"

Boston is our standard, and we'll lead off with it.

Chatham 11.7 days, 28.9"
Martha's Vineyard, 9.7 days, 23.6"
Hyannis,  6.1 days, 15.6"

Chatham and Martha are further out into the ocean, and get clipped by storms more than closer-to-the-mainland Hyannis. The totals spike upward when we go to the mainland, although the South Coast is subject to the same Gulf Stream effect that Cape Cod is regarding to moderate temperatures.

Taunton, 10.3 days, 28.0"
New Bedford, 14.7 days, 33.2"
Wareham, 14.3 days, 36.1 inches
Plymouth, 13.1 days, 36.2"
Hingham, 25 days, 47.1"

Hingham's totals illustrate how the snow is more regular as you move North. Plymouth, Taunton and Wareham (and even the Cape and Islands, once you stare at the numbers a lot) illustrate how, when they do get snow, they tend to get a lot of it. Plymouth gets rain half of the time that Hingham gets snow, but they get more than 2/3 of Hingham's snow in that same time frame.

Blue Hill, 29.1 days, 62.7 inches
Lowell, 20.3 days, 51.9"
Amherst 16.6 days, 36.9"
East Brimfield, 23.1 days, 59.0"
Worcester, 31.7 days, 64.1"
Great Barington, 22.1 days, 61.0"
Worthington, 52.6 days, 79.7"
Ripton, 366 days, 1968"

Worcester, which is in the hills a bit, is used as the Central Massachusetts benchmark on most news programs. Blue Hill is a mountain, or what passes for a mountain in EMass. Amherst is in the Connecticut River Valley, which gets lower totals than, say, Great Barrington. I'm amazed that there is a need to differentiate between the eastern and western pats of Brimfield, but it probably matters a lot to Brimfieldians. Ripton is a fictional community, so I gave it fictional snowfall totals.

- Boston is the windiest of major US cities, with an average wind speed of 12.3 mph.

We're windier than Chicago, the Windy City, which clocks 10.3 mph. Tornado-ridden Oklahoma City only gets 12.2 mph.

- January snowfall totals in Boston

2014, 21.8"

2013, 4.8"

2012, 6.8"

2011, 38.3"

2010, 13.2"

2009 23.7"

2007, 1.0"

2005, 43.30"

1996 39.80"

1992, 0.40"

1986, 0.80

1978, 35.90 (that's BEFORE the Blizzard, btw)

1957, 20.6" (They also had a 72 degree day that month)

1945, 42.3"

1920, 24.8"

- Boston's Top Snow Events

2003 Blizzard, 27.5"

Blizzard of '78, 27.1"

Feb. 1969 Blizzard, 26.3"

April Fool's Blizzard, 1997, 25.4"

February 2013 nor'easter, 24.9

Blizzard of 2005, 22.5"

- Snowstorm records

* New Hampshire got 13 feet, 8 inches on Mount Washington in one storm.

* Blizzards in 1997 and 1992 dumped over 30" of snow in Worcester.

* When I was at Worcester State College, we got 18" of snow on April 28th, 1987. I had to drive a girl to Berlin, MA and then go back to Worcester in the height of it. What makes the story cool is that, before the storm, I had picked her up at West Boylston High School, because that's how I rolled back in 1987.

* I lived in Monponsett, MA when they got 36" of snow in 2005. I actually had to shovel my way out of the house. There were no high school girls hanging around for this storm.

* The Massachusetts single-event snowfall record is 62", which fell on Great Barrington in a 2013 Blizzard.

* Massachusetts ranks 23rd in a list of Worst US Snow Events, State By State. We lack the mountains or lake-effect lakes to fight the contenders.

The state with the most snow ever from one event is, as you might have guessed, California, where 451 inches fell in the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1911.

- Some historical snow and cold information:

* The British started shooting at the Boston Massacre partly because they were angry that American kids were throwing snowballs at them.

* Russia would be French or Nazi if the Motherland didn't have such rotten winters.

* Cold or snow killed the Frankenstein monster, the Nicholson character in The Shining, several Jack London protagonists, and- via colds, which increase in cold weather- the Martians in The War Of The Worlds. Mr. Freeze of the Batman rogues gallery is dependent upon cold.

* Rudolph only got to drink from the white reindeer fountain because his red nose could be seen through snow.

* Songs about snow include Let It Snow, Hazy Shade Of Winter, Snowblind, Frosty The Snowman, No Quarter, Jingle Bells, Freeze Frame, Winter Wonderland, She's So Cold, The Immigrant Song, Winter Wars, Cold Shot, and just about every Christmas song. I'm not sure if The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald involved or mentioned snow.

- Rappers love chilly names, as Ice Cube, Ice T, Vanilla Ice, LL Cool J, Snow, and Kool Moe Dee prove. White guys who rap stand a strong chance of getting a snow-related nomme de guerre.

* No, Walt Disney is not cryogenically preserved, and yes, Ted Williams is.

* Military engagements with Cold themes include Cold Harbor, the Battle of the Ice, the crossing of the Delaware, the Battle of Quebec, the Battle of the Bulge, Napoleon's invasion of Russia, the Winter War, and the Cold War. There was even a Snow King, but Gustavus fell at the Battle of Lutzen.

* The ditzy blonde on Three's Company was named Christmas Snow, aka Chrissie.

* If a substance is brought down to Absolute Zero, even the molecules in it aren't moving.

* The first documented snowman in history dates back to 1380 AD.

* The tallest snowman ever stood 122 feet high. She was named Olympia Snow, after a Senator in the state (Maine) where the snowman was built.

- Famous New England Cold Events

* The Year Without A Summer

Volcanic activity leads to climate abnormalities, lowering the planet's temperature by a degree.

Frosts in June, July and even August 23rd killed food crops. Famine followed. Massachusetts had snow on June 8th. Massachusetts was not getting western grain at this point, and the death of her corn crops led to spikes in food prices.

The effects were felt world-wide, and didn't go away until several years later.


* The Great Blizzard of 1988

This one followed the unspeakably tragic Schoolhouse Blizzard in Nebraska, although it was not the same storm. This storm was known as the Great White Hurricane. It set up over Cape Cod and beat the Northeast for 2 days.

It dumped 50 inches of snow on parts of Massachusetts and New York. Hurricane force winds mauled the coast. They had just figured out telegraphs at this time, and this was the storm that made them realize that telegraph wires suffer heavily in ice storms.

If your city has their telephone and power wires underground, this is the storm that made them do it. Boston was isolated once her telegraph lines fell, and the drifting snow made it impossible to move goods (especially food and fuel) into the city. New York and Boston were cut off from the rest of the world for some time after the storm.

Factory workers had to work to eat, and many died trying to get to work. This, and the isolation after the storm, is why Boston started working on the nation's first subway system.


* The Blizzard of '78

This is the benchmark storm for anyone over 45 or so. Any large storm since has been compared to it. Storms that dumped more snow in recent times are still considered to be less fearsome than the Blizzard.

This was the perfect storm, and not just in a weather sense. Forecasting figured into the chaos. They actually called the storm properly, but people tended to not believe them. They were still blowing storms as recently as 1991, so some sympathy can be extended in this instance. As it stands, almost everyone went about their daily business, and did nothing to prepare. This is where the bread and milk panics as storms approached were born.

Boston had also had 35" of snow in January (including a 20" storm a few weeks before the blizzard), and it was all still on the ground when this nightmare hit us in early February. This snow would either blow around and drift, or stay on the ground as an shovel-impossible bottom layer of ice.

Snow fell for 2 days, and ended as an ice storm. Boston picked up 27 inches of snow. Highways were full of abandoned cars, and people were trapped in their homes for weeks. The coast was smashed by a full moon storm tide, and the damaged matched or surpassed that done in hurricanes.

I lived on Duxbury Beach for this storm. We never saw a flake of snow, but waves were tearing houses in half. We were evacuated on a fire truck, and lived at either the Governor Winslow School or the Kingston Howard Johnson's for the next few months. Winds passed 85 mph before my wind gauge thingy was torn down.

This storm ended the weather complacency ("Hurricanes are the South's problem, and blizzards are the midwest's concern.") that many New Englanders felt. This monster, plus the additional media focus on weather and weather forecasting technology, meant that future storms wouldn't sneak up on us any more.

If you say nothing more than "the Blizzard" to someone over 50 from Massachusetts, they assume that you are talking about '78.

* 1997 April Fool's Blizzard

April is usually when you start preparing for summer, but that all went up the chimney when this beast laid into us.

Very much like the Blizzard, it dropped tons of snow and gashed the coast with heavy surf. It actually put down more snow (25.something inches) in one day than the Blizzard of '78 did, although '78 rallied to take the overall title on Day 2.

Prior to this storm, the snowiest MONTH of April in history could only ring up 13.3" of snow. This storm beat that in 6 hours.

I was still in Duxbury for that one. I had the only fireplace in a neighborhood of cottages, and I had 10 neighbors sleeping on the floor in front of it once the power was knocked out.

I also had an Australian nanny in the neighborhood, and she was from the part of Australia that has Florida's climate. She had seen snow before, but nothing like this. She kept calling my house and asking "When does the Army come for us?" and "How and where does all of this snow go away to? Does the Army move it?"

April storms are rare, but they are hardcore when they do hit. Coastal New Englanders do no yard repair at all until mid-to-late April.

* The Blizzard of 2003

There are actually two of these, a December storm and one that hit on President's Day. Both dropped 30-40" of snow on Massachusetts.

The PDII storm owns Boston's single day and full-storm total of 27.5 inches of powder.

Everyone had The Weather Channel by this point, so the only people who got snuck up on by this deserved it.


* The Blizzard of 2005

As far as Cranberry County goes, you can choose between this one and the Blizzard of '78. The '78 storm did worse damage and fell on a deeper snowpack, but this storm generally owns the local snowstorm total records.

Sagamore Beach got 40" of snow, while a Bridgewater-Plympton stretch of tiny Route 106 got between 30-38". Most of Cranberry County, from Duxbury to Cape Cod to New Betty to Brockton got between 2 and 3 feet of snow.

I was teaching in the area for this storm, and I got 2 weeks off from it. Highlights include driving a Jeep through the whiteout to pick up some smoking supplies, falling off my roof and landing unharmed on my back in a snow drift, and having my border collie dig our way out of the side door through a snow drift.


* February 2013 Nor'easter

This was our most recent monster. It was like a B+ version of the Blizzard of '78.

This was notable for a few things. It dumped 24.9 inches of snow on Boston, and more on surrounding areas. It was the 5th highest storm total for Boston, and Portland, Maine set a town record with 31.9"

Fearing a sea of abandoned cars of the highways, Governor Deval Patrick declared a state of emergency to send everyone home, and then implemented a driving ban. It was the fist time we have had a ban since the '78 storm.

This was also a storm, along with Hurricane Irene, which showed us that NSTAR needed to step up their game. This storm ravaged much of the eastern USA, and NSTAR crews were spread thin. It took a long time to get the power back on, and this- unlike Irene- was during a period where low temperatures were in the teens during the blackout.

I got home from work one day during the blackout to find an empty house. Soon, my girlfriend called. "I have the kid and the cat, and we're driving South until we find a hotel with electricity." A state trooper turned her around in Connecticut.

Making The World A Better Place: Deep-Sea Surfcasting Methods

Duxbury Beach, MA

I'm not really going to make any drastic changes to the world. I'm not a charismatic politician, I'm not a hero like a cop or an EMT, and- pertaining to today's column- I have almost zero skills as an inventor.

I say "almost zero" because I do have an active imagination. Imagination is an important part of inventing, but there are other skills involved in the invention process that I lack, perhaps even aggressively so. I'm sure that plenty of guys thought that it would be nice to build a flying machine, but it was a task left undone before the Wright Brothers came along. I'm sort of in a group with the do-nothing guys.

I do have a few ideas that I wouldn't mind sharing out, in hopes that someone a bit more handy than I am can solve the little problems inherent in the design process. I'd have no problem taking zero credit and seeing zero dollars, if only I could see my beloved ideas brought to life by a better craftsman than myself.

I grew up on Duxbury Beach. Those of you who are familiar with Duxbury Beach know that there is some good surfcasting to be done there. You can pluck a striper or a bluefish out of the ocean while standing on the beach. I actually caught one from INSIDE my house once. It rules.

However, Duxbury Beach is long, flat and it takes a while to get to the deep water. That's not a problem if you have a boat, you just park it somewhere with 45 feet of water under you and see what the ocean has to offer. If you don't have a boat, you can only work the shallows, even if you are an awesome caster.

It's only a matter of time before a fisherman on shore starts to wonder what goodies could be had if he or she could land a cast wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy the hell offshore. I'm not a real fisherman, not even close to one... but I do love these ideas, and I'd like to float them down the line to a more crafty angler.

Before I start to invent stuff to aid this process, let's find out if it is even worth getting a cast a few hundred yards offshore. There are several factors to consider.

First, your average spool of fishing line is, oh, 300 yards or so. That's further than any human can cast, to my knowledge. Maybe Stan Gibbs could cast further than that, but he's fishing with Jesus now.

300 yards is a lot of friggin' fishing line. Look at a NFL game. That field is 100 yards. 300 yards is plenty of room for potential line snags, caught-on-the-bottoms, and some guy on a jet-ski slicing your line. In that light, it may be better to fish 50 yards offshore.

All of that reeling back and forth also trolls your line through a lot of seaweed. Your 20 pound test won't hold up if you need to tow 50 pounds of seaweed. In New England, you can also reel in lobster pots, which is an offense that I think a lobsterman can shoot you for.

Littering is something to consider. My surfcasting balloon idea may seem like harmless fun, until a duck gets caught in the balloon or whatever and dies. I had similar problems when experimenting with my Empty Six Pack Rings fishing gear.

Deep-sea surfcasting also lines you up for an ass-kicking, as you will be putting a lot of line into the water that might tangle up with that of other fishermen. Inventors might appreciate your deep-sea surfcaster innovations, but a serious fisherman won't be so forgiving if you keep messing up his line. I'm using Duxbury Beach as an example because you can get a lot of empty beach to yourself.

Remember that every cast is an adventure in Cape Cod Bay. You may even snag a Beast. However, you may also go through some ridiculous extremes to get your line out 400 yards offshore, only to have a crab steal your bait or even get your hook caught on the Lusitania. There are 1000 shipwrecks off of just itty-bitty Truro and Wellfleet.

Also, should you catch a fish, you may be in for a 7 hour fight to beach a schoolie fish that you should have to throw back unless you're really hungry and no one official is looking. If you get too much line out there, you may have a fight that runs from Duxbury to Scituate to Plymouth and back to Duxbury. There is a ratio between how long you fight the fish and how big that fish you beach is, and if you are on the wrong side of that ratio, the other fishermen can call you Chumpy.

The question that I actually have to call experts to ask about is if there is a great advantage in Kinds Or Sizes Of Fish You Catch. A good way to get laughed at in the inventor parties is to invent something useless. "Look, I made a seven foot Q-Tip!.... Why are all of you laughing?"

Using this chart of Duxbury Beach as a guide, you can see that a really good human cast would get you in 8-10 feet of water. If you wade out a lot and cast (a dangerous practice, seeing as Great White Sharks work off Duxbury Beach), you may get into 12-18 feet of water.... not too shabby, but we're thinking we can double that if one of our half-fast inventions works.

Generally and disappointingly, you aren't going to get a much greater variety of fish a few hundred yards offshore. You have go deep-deep to get tunas and stuff like that. However, unusual fish do make it close to shore, with "close" meaning "a few hundred yards." Why not take a crack at them, especially if you get to shoot a crossbow (see below) or something?

Anyhow, here are the ideas we have pondered and abandoned.

Crossbow

The vision you're having is correct... attach fishing gear to a crossbow bolt, aim the crossbow at an upward angle, and fire that sucker towards the deep water. The arrow could even act as the bobber, and you'd get the arrow back if everything works out right.

I just chose a crossbow because it looks like the most fun. A longbow may be superior, I'm not really sure. "Agincourt" keeps looking for an avenue into this conversation, although that was more of a rate-of-fire thing than a superiority-of-thrust thing. If Agincourt was a battle to catch the most fish, we might all be speaking French right now.

My last name is Bowden, so I really wanted this invention to work, because I could call it the Bow-Caster and make an informercial. I've got a pretty strange Bucket List, people... be happy that I'm not telling you all of the Bad Things on it. You'd have to sanitize your medulla oblongata if I did.

Before we get into the engineering problems with this, there are two distinct psychological problems.

One, you don't want the joy of casting to surpass the joy of fishing. This might happen is you get too into casting by crossbow. Eventually, your surfcasting experience boils down to something like watching pornography for the wooden acting scenes that bookend the hardcore stuff.

Two, if you get THAT into shooting the arrows, you may as well just buy a wetsuit and go spearfishing. This will take you offshore- and, thusly, out of this article.

The flight of an arrow is really a splendid thing, a little miracle of aerodynamics. You apply great and sudden force to the arrow, and it flies through the air... goddamnit, I'll say it, as straight as an arrow.

That miracle is messed up if you add the weight of a lure, a hook and whatever else you might have on the line. I say "messed up" because I don't know the scientific terms like lift, drag, bouyancy, flight-to-drag ratio and thrust-to-weight ratio. What I do know is that it will slow the arrow down, make it drop faster, and have a poor effect on the accuracy.

The arrow pre-dates recorded history, and is common among all cultures. If this idea actually had any merit, some Navajo or Mongol would have figured it out long ago.

A friend of mine who plays Dungeons and Dragons told me that I may need something called a Ballista.


Skyrocket/Cannon

I look for examples of my ideas being tried out somewhere on Earth while doing my research, and I was really counting on Redneck America to bail me out on this one. I found nothing on it, although it may be done in parts of the South where they don't have the Internet yet.

I like this one because it is almost 100% against the law. The lawbreaking occurs when we realize that a skyrocket only goes 100 yards or so, and that's before you somehow hook fishing gear to it. You need more power than a skyrocket, and at that point, you start getting into a private-citizen-discharge-of-artillery.

The basic idea is to use skyrockets to propel your bait into the deeper water. We'll get to cannons in a moment, but we can use skyrockets to illustrate the problems we have encountered.

The first issue is one of performance difficulties. A single skyrocket will not lift fishing gear, let alone carry it very deep into the sea. No, you can't tie 10 skyrockets together. You'll still only go 100 yards. I don't think that firing them off in a rifled barrel would help either, but I'm also not that into ballistics. Anyhow, at that point, you may as well buy some hip-waders.

A problem we encountered was that the fire-discharge of the skyrocket damages the fishing line. It's bad when you shred the line and it never gets to the water. It's worse when you get it out there in a damaged state, latch onto a fish, and the strength of the fish is the last straw for your damaged fishing line.

We also tried cannon. No, not a howitzer like they use to level Iraqi villages, but a personal-use cannon. If the TSA is really reading our email and Google searches, they'll have a few frightened moments when they see me looking for terms like "personal use artillery."

I had one of these cast-iron cannons as a kid, we used Bangsite to power it, and we could shoot a marshmallow about 100 yards. If we could do that legally, imagine what could be done if we were willing to live outside of the law a bit?

You want to be careful, because it will be very bad for your ego to be at the hospital, telling a nurse, "I was using explosives so I could add 150 yards to my surfcasting." You don't want the surgeon giggling while he's trying to re-attach your fingers.

Like I said, Johnny Law may not share your enthusiasm for alternative casting methods, especially if there are explosions involved with it. Check your local regulations.


Balloon/Kites

This method involves attaching the bait to balloons, floating it out to a desired distance, and then snapping the fishing gear away from the balloon and dropping it into the sea.

This is the only idea I had where I actually found people doing it somewhere. In Australia, bait is floated out on balloons to catch fish such as shark and marlin. A black marlin weighing 200 pounds was caught off of Jervis Bay using balloon casting. They also go after tuna, kingfish, and sharks.

I was thinking more along the lines of a kite, but balloons are the only wind instruments being used in reality anywhere.

Check that... the guys who charter out of Scituate Lobster Pound use kites to fish for tuna, although they are usually off Stellwagen Bank, not standing on the shore.


Drones

This would be very similar to kite-fishing, but even cooler. You can kill the Jack Of Spades in Al Qaeda with a fishing rod, but it would be difficult. They kill them with drones all the time, however.

My nephew just got one of these for Christmas, and it is iller than Ben Stiller. It is some hyrdroplane looking device, with 4 mini helicopter turbines. It has a range of a few hundred yards, and even has a camera. If you're a pretty girl laying on Duxbury Beach and a strange machine is hovering over you and filming, it's probably my nephew.

This would be handy to adjust for surfcasting. You'd attach the gear to it, get the gear over the desired fishing spot, and disattach it somehow. You'd even have the camera to spy out the water you're working, maybe even drop the bait right into a school you've seen on the camera.

The problem here is that a good gust of wind could blow your drone into the Atlantic, and they are rather costly. You also don't want to get too technical about fishing. It is a man vs. nature sport, and using a mobile air camera to fish is sort of like Sea Rape. Tuna boats do it, but they're doing it to pay their mortgage, not because they want to cast 300 yards offshore on a lark. They're off the scale.



Boat-casting

This is cheating, and real fishermen will snap their lines at you and try to hook your ear if they see you doing it. It is essentially like what Rosie Ruiz did in that Marathon. However, if you're not after style points, this could just be right up your alley.

As a boat or jet-ski is leaving the shoreline, have them tow your bait way the hell out and drop it. Make sure they are prepared for your fishing line to suddenly snap back when the line goes taut, lest you catch a 200 pound Angrius Boaterus.

Again, this could be a lot of effort and energy for an affair that might see your bait eaten by a crab in 30 seconds.

Know that real fishermen call this Punk-casting. You won't get your ass kicked directly over it, but the resulting conversation could be filled with many forked roads of potential diplomatic transgressions that would have you reading Nikes. Again, at this point, just buy the hip-waders.

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I suppose this is why they invented boats, but that doesn't mean that a guy can't use his imagination a bit.

"Trust in God, but row away from the rocks."... old fishing proverb

A Flash Degree In Christmas

We thought that we'd share out a little holiday trivia to liven up your Christmas season. We're not working in any particular order, so bear with us.

The Big Man

- "Christmas" is a compound Middle English word for "Christ's Mass." "Christ" is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word for "Messiah."

- Jesus can, depending on which Gospel you favor, trace his family tree back to Abraham or even Adam. Jesus shares ancestors with David Lee Roth, Bowser from Sha Na Na, Tom Cruise's agent and Adam Sandler, but not Hall of Famer Rod Carew (he converted).

- He had 4 brothers (Simon, James, Joseph and Judas) and an unknown amount of sisters, although this may have been a Brady Bunch family mixing situation with Joseph and Mary. Catholic families tend to be large.

- No one is sure what year Jesus was born in, nor are they sure of what time of year he was born in. Wikipedia kicks up 7 BC-2 BC. Very few scholars claim that there was no historical Jesus, but the only two events of Jesus' life that are universally accepted by historians are his baptism and his execution.

- The three wise men were Melichor, Balthazar and Caspar. M was Persian, C was from India, and B was from Arabia. They are variously referred to as kings and/or scholars, and are saints in Western Christianity. They brought gold, frankincense and myrrh.

- The New Testament doesn't offer much of a physical description of Jesus, didn't discuss race much in general, and rarely has physical descriptions of people mentioned in it. "First century Palestinian Jew" could look like anything, although Jesus would most likely look more like Yasir Arafat than Menachem Begin.

- I have, while researching this, seen Jesus estimated to be between 5'5"-5'7" and to have a sinewy appearance from all the walking people back then did. I even saw references to Jesus most likely being very suntanned. So, you basically have Anwar Sadat meets Moshe Dayan with a bit of George Hamilton sprinkled in, and Michael J. Fox height.

- Jesus is often referred to as a carpenter, or at least an artisan of some sort, and you did all of the work by hand back then... so paintings showing a buff Jesus may not be far off the mark. There are biblical tales of Jesus physically throwing people out of the Temple.

- Judaism denies Jesus as a divine figure, and especially denies him as the promised Messiah. Islam is very pro-Jesus. Denying Jesus is blasphemy in Islam. Islam views Jesus as a Muslim ("one who submits to God's will"), as a prophet/messenger of Allah, and note that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God.

The Big Day

- The first records of December 25th for Christmas start turning up in Rome by 354 AD. The Council of Tours established the 12 days of Christmas (12/25-1/6) in 567 AD. Christmas was celebrated in Constantinople by 379 AD.

- Even before Christmas, winter solstice festivals were the most popular festivals of the year among people of various cultures. Pagan Scandinavia had Yule festivals, Saturnalia and Sol Invictus festivals were popular in Rome, and elements of all were worked into the Christmas routine.

- Christmas became more prominent when Charlemagne was crowned on Christmas Day 800 AD as emperor of the Carolingian Empire.

- Elements of pagan celebrations such as gift-giving and caroling were brought into Christmas celebrations by the Middle Ages. "Misrule," which was binge-drinking, promiscuity and gambling, were also part of the show. Gift-giving was taken from Saturnalia.

- After the Protestant Reformation, the celebration of Christmas took a big hit. Puritans banned the celebration of Christmas in both England and America. Christmas was not a holiday in Scotland until 1958.

- Christmas was banned in Boston, Massachusetts from 1659 through 1681. Christmas was not widely celebrated in Massachusetts until the 18th Century. Longfellow wrote of the changing attitude towards Christmas among the former Puritans in 1856.

- Christmas became unpopular in the USA during and especially after the Revolution, as the Americans considered it to be an English custom. George Washington had little use for Christmas, and his attack on Trenton the day after Christmas was enabled because Old Dollar Bill Face knew that the Hessians would be celebrating Christmas (drinking), and that his troops wouldn't be.

- Even in England, Christmas was celebrated more by the rich than the poor. An apple was a good Christmas score for a working-class kid in, say, 1800.

- Christmas remained popular in America among German immigrants, and the first Christmas trees and nativity scenes in America were found in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

- The Soviet Union banned Christmas celebrations in 1917, and the ban lasted until 1991.

The Big Comeback

- Christmas made a big comeback in the 1800s, and has been large and in charge ever since. Anglo-Catholicism surged, and the celebration surged with it.

- One of the main factors bringing the celebration to English speakers was when King George III took a German wife, Queen Charlotte. She introduced several Germanic Christmas customs to English nobility, and eventually to regular English folk.

- Charlotte introduced the Christmas tree to Britain, and eventually America. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert also helped popularize the Christmas tree via a widely circulated picture of their tree.

- By the end of the Civil War, the Christmas tree had become popular in America. German-American troops serving in the conflict helped socialize the tradition among non-celebrants.

- Another factor in the Christmas resurgence was the publication of two books between 1822 and 1843,  A Visit From St. Nicholas and  A Christmas Carol. These gave us or helped make popular the concepts of family gatherings, seasonal food and drink, and generosity. Dickens greatly sought to show Christmas as centered on the family, as opposed to the Church or the community.

- The phrase "Merry Christmas" comes from A Christmas Carol, as does "Scrooge" and "Bah Humbug."

- AVFSN, also known by the first line, "Twas the night before Christmas," popularized the giving of gifts. It is seen as the beginning of the holiday shopping season craze. It predates Scrooge by 21 years.

- 1843 also saw the publication of the first commercial Christmas cards. 668 million were sold in 2008 alone, the average American home gets 20 a year.

- The Christmas carol (singing, not the book) became popular in the mid-1800s. "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman," "Hark The Herald Angels Sing," and "The First Noel" all came from this period, and are mentioned by Dickens in ACC.

- I closed the page and the spelling will be tough, but among the first Middle Ages carols were Good King Wenceslas and the Belichickian Personal Hoodie.

- 1885 saw Christmas established as a national holiday in the USA.

The Big Red Elf

- Saint Nicholas actually existed. He was a Greek Christian bishop in 4th Century Turkey, known for his generosity. His most famous act of giving was to bestow money upon 3 poor daughters for their dowries, so they would not have to become prostitutes. He is the patron saint of children, sailors, archers, pawnbrokers (no, I don't know how), Moscow and Amsterdam.

- The Reformation led to people being opposed to the veneration of saints, which made the people just shift St. Nicholas to Santa Claus or Sinterklasse.

- Santa also owes some debt to Odin, the Norse god. In particular, he is using Odin's winter festival, Odin's beard, and Odin's great hunt, where Odin rode a grey horse through the skies. Odin also entered homes through the chimney.

- Santa got huge right around when Christmas made a comeback, and Jesus definitely owes Santa a steak dinner for all the help. AVFSN made Santa into a rock star.

- The original AVFSN reindeer names were Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Dunder and Blixem. Dunder and Blixem were Germanized into Donner and Blitzen, German words for thunder and lightning.

- Rudolph was added to the team later, in 1939 or so, during a blinding snowstorm or (less fun) the efforts of a Montgomery-Ward copywriter. Rudolph is clearly shown to be the son of Donner in his animated special. 1939 was a high period of US creativity, as 1939 was also the year Batman was created, as well as The Grapes Of Wrath and The Wizard Of Oz.

- AVFSN also establishes Santa landing sleighs on roofs, entering houses through the chimney, and having a huge bag of toys. It also permanently established him as an elf.

- An artist named Thomas Nast popularized Santa's look, as well as him living at the North Pole (many Europeans think Santa lives in Finland). Mrs. Claus turned up in 1889 or so. Coca-Cola did not invent Santa's suit in their colors. The army of toy-making elves came around in the early 20th Century.

- Santa is probably the world's most prominent smoker, followed closely by Frosty (who, I might add, was born on Christmas Day), Clint Eastwood and Jimmy Page.

- NATO paid a settlement to a Danish reindeer farmer after low-flying F-16s killed his reindeer farm stock via a series of heart failures.

- Brockton, MA was the location of Santa's first (1890) department store visit. In 1924, he made his debut in the Macy's Thanksgiving parade, which was when "Santa" was taken to Macy's to meet kids.

The Big Tree

- The decorated Christmas Tree goes back to 15th Century Germany. Martin Luther is often given credit for it. The evergreen tree symbolizes life. It moved beyond the Fatherland in the 1800s.

- "O Tannenbaum" means "Oh, Fir Tree." The German word for Christmas tree is Weihnachtsbaum (pronounced Weihnachtsbaum), which rolls right off the tongue.

- The first Rockefeller tree went up in 1933. It is almost always a Norway Spruce.

- Every year, Boston gets a tree from Nova Scotia, as thanks for her help in responding to a 1917 ship explosion in Halifax. Boston stopped calling it a Christmas Tree in 2005, choosing the non-denomenational Holiday Tree moniker instead.

- Christmas trees were originally not set up until December 24th. It slowly got pushed back, with the dawn of Advent often being the put-up date. Ideally, you should have it down by January 6th, the 12th and last day (Epiphany) of Christmas.

- Early trees were lit by candles, which must have been fun. That's where the tree skirt came from, by the way.

- The first tree decorations included apples, flowers, and cookies cut into various shapes. The Germans also made the first glass ornaments.

- The angel on top of a Christmas tree is supposed to represent Gabriel, who was the guy who had to explain the whole Virgin Birth thing to Mary. The star is supposed to represent the Star of Bethlehem, which the Magi used to track down Baby Jesus. Tree-toppers came into popularity in Victorian England.

- Stringing popcorn on an outdoor tree was originally done as a treat to the winter birds. New Englanders used cranberries when they adopted Christmas celebration again.

- Popular trees for Christmas include many varieties of spruce, pine, and fir.

- Artificial trees came around in Germany in response to deforestation in the 1800s. The first ones used dyed goose feathers. We sold 17 million artificial trees in the USA last year, 20 million live ones. As you might imagine, artificial trees are more popular among urban types.

- The art of spraying fake snow on tree branches is called flocking.

The Big Feast

- Roast turkey is the most popular Christmas dinner in English-speaking countries. Ham, goose, pheasant, prime rib, roast beef and even a call to the Chinaman are alternative Christmas dinners.

- Turkey started showing up on English Christmas tables in the 1500s. They got the taste from the Middle East, who got it from Spanish traders. Henry VIII was the first English monarch to have turkey as a main course on Christmas.

- Scrooge sends Tiny Tim's family a turkey, not a goose. Poor families would save up all year for their Christmas goose, an early form of layaway. Scrooge sprung for the good ish.

- Richard II of England had a Christmas celebration in 1377 AD where 28 oxen and 300 sheep were eaten.

- Muslims have a Christmas feast, the main course in Lebanon is usually turkey.

- Swedes work herring into Christmas dinner. Slovakia favors carp. Italians often celebrate the Night Of The Seven Fishes on 12/24. Romanians prefer pork.

- Meatless dinners are served on Christmas in Poland. The Dutch often have everyone prepare their own meal, rather than having a host preparing for everyone. Southern Italians will eat eel on Christmas day. Austrians favor carp. Danes eat duck.

- Iceland's typical Christmas meal is, I'm sorry to say, reindeer.

The Big Sale

- Christmas is the absolute peak season for retailers all around the world. Christmas Day, however, is the slowest business day of the year.

- The average American spends $800 on Christmas, 73% in gifts.

- Department stores are expected to do $616 billion in sales for the 2014 US holiday season.

- There is a phenomena known as Christmas Creep, in which retailers are gradually extending the Christmas shopping season. It has extended presently to the day after Halloween.

- FDR set the official date of Thanksgiving specifically with extending the Christmas shopping season in mind. It is the date we still presently use.

- Despite the imposition of commercialism on Christmas, the Christmas shopping season is set via religious dates. Officially, Christmas season runs from the Advent (November 27) through the Epiphany (January 6th).

- Wal-Mart, Sears, JC Penney, Lowe's, and Sam's Club all put out Christmas stuff in October, via store policy. Halloween and Thanksgiving gear doesn't fill enough shelf-space once the summer merchandise is put away.

- The 20th Century generally saw Christmas music appear in radio programming by the second week of December. The turn of the century saw the onset of certain radio stations playing nothing but Christmas music from the day after Thanksgiving through Christmas Day. Recently, some major-market stations turn to an All-Christmas format by November 1st, and Internet radio stations like AOL Radio offer Christmas music stations year-round.

- 40% of Americans start their Christmas shopping before Halloween, and a smaller % get a great deal of their shopping done during the after-Christmas sales.

- Black Friday is a mass shopping event, held the day after Thanksgiving. $50 billion was spent on the 4 day Thanksgiving weekend in 2014, down from $61 billion the year before. People have been killed in Black Friday shopping incidents. The term can be traced back to Philadelphia.

- Black Friday just recently (2003) passed Super Saturday (the last Saturday before Christmas) as the busiest shopping day of the year in the United States.

- Grey Thursday is a shopping day based on post-dinner Thanksgiving.

- Cyber Monday, an online sales marketing ploy, churned up $2 billion in business in 2013.