Happy New Year!  Special holiday greetings to our friends Shawn and Pat!  Today is Sunday, January 4 and there are only 41 days until Valentine’s Day.  Stores already had cards and candy out, even before New Year’s Eve.  Get that candy now so you can watch it get stale in the comfort of your living room.  Today we remember the birthdays of Willem Teellinck, Wilhelm Beer and Deb Sonnenberg.  On this day in 1493 Columbus left the new world on his return from his first voyage, in 1780 a snowstorm hit Washington’s army in Morristown, NJ and in 1971 Ohio agreed to pay $675,000 to relatives of Kent State victims.  It is Independence Day in Burma, Admission Day in Utah and tomorrow is Handsel Monday in Scotland.

Before going on, I want to comment on a couple things from the opening paragraph.  The first item regards the erstwhile explorer Christopher Columbus.  As we all know, he left to find spices and treasures in the Indies.  He got lost and ended up in North America.  My question is if he was lost and did not end up where he was going, how did he know how to get back?  His trip was based on charts sending him to the Indies.  If he followed those charts back, how could he be sure they would get him back to Spain?  Just wondering.

The other item I wanted to discuss is Handsel Monday.  I know that when you read that you wondered, as I did, what it was.  Fear not!  I am pleased to elucidate.  Handsel Monday is the first Monday of the year and is a Scottish tradition.  The word “handsel” originates from an old Saxon word which means “to deliver into the hand”.  It refers to small tips and gifts of money given as a token of good luck.

An 1825 glossary marks Handsel Monday as an occasion “when it is customary to make children and servants a present.”  On this day, tips or small gifts were expected by servants, as well as by the postman, paperboy and all persons “who wait upon the house.”  If the handsel was a physical object rather than money, tradition said that the object could not be sharp, or it would “cut” the relationship between the giver and the recipient.  It is said that money received during Handsel Monday is supposed to insure monetary luck for the rest of the year.

So there you have it.  Just another piece of information you can place in your Virtually Useless Knowledge book.

Well, we are now into another year.  I remember when I was a youngster that the turn of the century was a long time off.  My friends and I were convinced that we would be dead long before the year 2000 arrived.  Here we are in 2015 and I am not dead yet.  Either I have been very lucky or we were rather dumb when we were kids.  As much as I hate to admit it, I have to go with the latter.  I was watching parts of New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest and several things came to my mind.  One is that I cannot help but wonder where Ryan Seacrest came from and who thought he was the perfect person to take over for an icon like Dick Clark.  No offense, Ryan, but you are lucky that there are cue cards.

The other thing that I wondered about was what made all those people think that standing out in the freezing cold for a number of hours with no food or bathroom facilities was a great idea?  The lovely Elaine and I were with friends, having a good time.  We were inside, warm, well-fed, with easily accessible bathroom facilities and we had a much better view of the entertainment (?) than people in Times Square did.  Plus, we did not have to go through a security check point to get in.  There are a number of people who always talk about wanting to go there once in their life, including the lovely Elaine and our friend Dave.  I have always said, “Go ahead.  I will watch for you on TV.”  They have not gone yet.

If I were to go to Times Square for New Year’s Eve, there would have to be a lot of preparation before I went.  First, I would need to be catheterized, because there is no way I could be out in the cold that long without being able to go.  Next I would need a couple layers of long underwear to help keep me warm, along with a good winter coat, thermal gloves and a wool cap.  I would also need to take along a cooler with drinks and sandwiches.  The cooler would also give me something to sit on rather than standing out there for a long time.  And I mean a long time.  I read an article that said people were showing up as early as noon to get a good spot.  Frankly, if I am going to be out there, freezing, for that long there better be entertainment of a higher quality than Taylor Swift.  The short story is you do not have to look for me on TV on New Year’s Eve.

On another topic, I wanted to mention something that I have become aware of during my forays into people watching at the various malls.  I have noticed that men and women carry beverages differently, specifically coffee.  Men carry their cup with their arm, bent at the elbow, at a 90 degree angle across their chest.  I do that so that it is easier to just lift the cup to drink.  Women are different (in so many ways).  They carry their coffee with their arm out to the side, as if they were handing out water to marathon runners.  The only reason I can come up with for this is that women are afraid to get bumped and end up spilling hot liquid on themselves and their clothes.  Men, on the other hand, are not worried about that and are more concerned with having the coffee close and not wanting to take the chance that someone might bump it and cause it to fall and spill and then they would have to go stand in line and get another cup and that costs money and time and … well, you get the picture.

This week our fact tells us that every year four people in the UK die putting their trousers on.  How?  Are they so unsteady that they fall over when they lift one leg?  This makes me concerned when I think about the phrase “he puts his pants on one leg at a time just like you do.”   That may be, but at least here in the US we don’t risk death while we do it.