Several groups, including religions, have celebrations to honour the longer days and future promise offered at the winter solstice.

Christians have encompassed? taken in? (stolen?), embraced various celebrations and activities, including the Christmas Tree, originally used by others.

If you celebrate Christmas, I offer my good wishes for a memorable, merry celebration, this year, with good friends and relatives, remembering God's great gift to us. Save the family squabbles, jealousies and envies for another time - but deal with them later. Bury the hatchet (not in a relative's head ... please)!

Life's too short to carry around such negative baggage which separates us from our loved ones.

Let your primary gifts be gifts of love.

Good wishes to each of you, including folks to whom Christmas is, if not unknown, not an important event.

As you look forward to the New Year, I hope that it brings the fulfillment of several of your hopes and dreams and the generation of some new and worthy ones. Some new friends and much happiness as you go.

Here's a gift idea from Ole Ed - that will build friendships for you, as well as save you hundreds or, more likely, thousands, during your lifetime. Unless you have one foot in the grave, at present.
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Sit down at your computer.

Write the name of everyone that you know: relatives, friends, colleagues in community, social, sport, fraternal, church, workplace, etc.

Add phone numbers and email addresses of each, over time.

Write down their professional training, type of work, other interests, hobbies, places where they've vacationed and anything else about them that may be of interest later.

Add amendments and updates as you go - much easier on computer than with paper records!

When you meet friends, note items that may be of interest to add to your list later. Ask a few questions from time to time, but - please - don't give them the third degree!

You'll soon find that when such information comes up, your ears will prick up and you'll note the information, to feed your computer later.

If you hear of possibly an older person who trades vehicles every three or four years, next time your jalopy shows signs of giving up the ghost, give her a call to see whether, if she plans to upgrade soon, she'd be interested to have her car price evaluated by two or three mechanics, then you buy it privately: she'll get a better deal on her new one if she doesn't have a trade-in. You both win.

From time to time, ask friends for recommendations of professionals that they use: doctor, plumber, day care service, renovator, house cleaner, dentist, financial advisor, tire dealer, lawyer, etc. Better to get such recommendations ahead of time of need, especially for emergency issues.

Get out an interesting little newsletter from time to time, e.g. pass on some of the good ideas that you learn here. Can send to those with email at no cost. Ask for their suggestions about other ideas that may be of interest to pass around. You'll gain popularity, and if you make some recommendations to others, they'll owe you one.

I'll be surprised if that list won't save you hundreds, more likely thousands, during your lifetime.

joyful Ed

P.S. As a short-term-in-teen smoker sharing a family tendency to weak lungs, thankful I had the good sense to quit long ago, I share with others on a website www.quitnet.org where people are trying to Quit smoking.

Recently someone was discussing saving money with in-laws, they referred to having seen me talk on this site of saving a lot of money by quitting smoking. The person came here to check it, then went to quitnet, saw a person's post saying that he felt as though he'd lost his best friend - precisely what this person felt.

So s/he quit about Father's Day, "cold turkey" (without chemical aids) and, after something over 4 days, came on quitnet forum to thank the other person and me.

We appreciated her/his thoughtfulness in doing so - as someone said there some time ago - when someone has helped you, thank them.

That person may enjoy better health, a longer, more enjoyable life and greater prosperity - huge dollars saved.

What did it cost me? Some time to make some keystrokes, which I, being retired, have.

When you drop a pebble into a pond, the ripples run a long way - and the internet is a large pond!

As you surf the net, offer such information - it may be a lifesaver to someone.

And it cost some bandwidth on That Home Site and on Quitnet, administered by Boston University, both offering wide variety of useful services.

Both, being free sites, need our contributions. The $15.00 here actually costs us Canadians about Cdn$23.00.

A bargain, don't you think?

EB

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Thanks. (;^0)

My family has weak lungs - Dad, a farmer near here in Ontario when I was a kid, in several damp-weather autumns, spent time in bed with bronchitis and developing asthma - less than three pillows under him, day or night, and he suffered ongoing coughing.

Moved in mid 40's to farm on the (dry) prairies in Saskatchewan and enjoyed good health for his remaining 40 years.

I started to smoke at age 16 and, after a few months, decided that I liked neither taste nor, (being frugal), cost, so I quit.

Now enjoying healthy retirement, improbable had I continued smoking, I now encourage current smokers to alter lifestyle in order to have a much better possibility of enjoying the same.

Many say that tobacco is more addictive than cocaine or heroin.

Many smokers recently quit seem to find it hard to keep their awareness of their perfectly valid, multiple reasons to have quit, in perspective. They want to smoke.

In addition, quitting smoking SAVES MONEY.

That one can invest in order to finance a longer, healthier retirement - unfettered by the stress and time needed to go to work daily!

Good wishes to all,

Uncle Ed

Christmas gift, recycled herewith.

No cost (except time), as was the case in the first place.

Enjoy.

Ole Joyful

As I didn't give you all a Christmas gift this year, will you allow me to offer last year's, without being too ticked off? Or calling it just a retread?

If you hadn't done it prior to then, and didn't do it last year - perhaps you can use this refresher to decide that it would be a good idea to put it into practice.

The part about setting up a database including all of your friends, with their skills, interests, experiences, etc. could really save you hundreds, or, more likely, thousands, during your lifetime.

At a cost of some time updating the database from time to time.

Quite a bargain, I'd say.

ole joyful

Keeping up with friends and families is on the top of our list of priorities for this year. Life is so short.

Thanks for sharing your wisdom.

This still works, if you didn't hear about it before.

The gift that keeps on giving.

Hope it helps your system a good deal.

ole joyful

If you're an old-timer around here - you've seen this before, so just press, "Next" and carry on.

If you're new - this might be a good idea that could be really helpful in future days.

Hope you don't mind getting a gift that's a bit worn around the edges.

Have a great Christmas - and a New Year full of health, interesting things to do and friends to do them with ... plus enough income to meet your needs.

ole joyful

If one of your daughters, at age 15, invests One Whole Dollar ...

... and manages to have it earn 5% rate of return throughout ...

... through 50 years of time ...

... when she hits the ripe old age of 65 ...

that dollar will have multiplied 2-1/2 times - it'll be worth $11.00 and change.

If she can manage a 10% return, it'll grow to $117.00 and change.

No allowance in either case for the erosion of annual income by income tax, and of the value of one's dollar-denominated assets due to inflation.

And when she buys a pack of cigarettes - she pays a lot more than a Buck for each one of them.

Most of which goes up in smoke - though some stays in her lungs.

And the residue can cause a lot of trouble.

Can she imagine what people would think of her were she to stand on a main street corner in town and set on fire as many dollars as she spent on smokes that week?

And do that at that street corner - every week?

People would say that she was nuts.

But - that would do her a lot less harm than using those dollars to buy smokes.

Trouble is, though - in the U.S., I think that she'd go to jail: it's a Federal offence to destroy money, as it is Federal property.

I do hope that your daughters decide that it is a destructive habit - and one of the worst addictions.

I don't want to be a slave to a person - much less to a white paper tube filled with dead leaves!! That sounds some stupid, to me. As Dad used to say, "Looks like that person drove their pigs to a darned poor market"!!

Good wishes to you - and especially them - for a New Year filled with common sense.

ole joyful

o j