Roger Aubrey

Christmas Facts

The carol, Silent Night, was composed to avert a disaster. In 1816 the Austrian priest Joseph Mohr wrote the original poem. Two years later, the church organ in the alpine village of Oberndorf, where Mohr was the priest, broke down on Christmas Eve. Mortified that his flock would be unable to sing their carols on Christmas Day, Mohr gave the poem (Stille Nacht) to his friend Franz Xaver Gruber. Gruber put a simple guitar melody to the text, enabling the congregation to sing it for the first time at that night at Midnight Mass. The rest is history.

Christmas Facts

I'm trying desperately hard to get into the Christmas spirit. So, over the next week or so I'm going to drop the occasional Christmas fact on you.

The first fact concerns the word Xmas, which many Christians (should that be Xians?) find offensive. Well, we shouldn't be, since it was the church that introduced it in the first place. In Greek, the first letter of the word Christ is chi, which looks like our X. Xmas was originally an abbreviation that was used by the church in various charts to denote Christmas. Impressed? I thought so.

I never said that

Did you know... 

James Cagney never said, 'You dirty rat.'

Sherlock Holmes never said, 'Elementary my dear Watson.'

The Bible never says 'money is the root of all evil.' It actually says, 'the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.' (1Timothy 6:10)

Elbow lickers (2)

This is Russell; he can lick his elbow. And they said it couldn't be done.

Elbow lickers

In spite of the widespread assertion that it's impossible to lick your own elbows, the Guinness Book of Records receives five claims every day from people who say they can.

Can you? Or do you know anybody else who can? Photographic evidence will be needed to prove the claim. (If only you could see how ridiculous you look right now, with your tongue hanging out trying this!)