Have a Happy Christmas and fabulous New Year! See you in ’04….

Mandy

These panoramas are spectacular. Especially the Royal Gallery. You can tell who is who in the paintings, the panorama is that good.

Written by Mandy S.

http://www.mandysroyalty.org

http://www.geocities.com/britishamerican_group

I am strongly in favor of a British Heritage Month. It is not only to celebrate the culture of Britain, but the fact that the house that is America was built on a British foundation.

It is unfortunate that many Americans do not know of their British roots. They should know. It is important because the roots don’t stop in the UK – that is what is so fascinating. Depending on the area of Britain your family came from, you could have a German or even a Norwegian bloodline.

Britain was a central part of ancient times, a host to Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Scots and Celtic tribes. It is all an incredible tapestry of history, and one that should be known and celebrated by Americans today. Too often we forget, and this is what will diminish our bonds with our cousins outside our boundaries. Thanks to Britain, we have a heritage that is rich and historical. We should freely celebrate our heritage and pride. Europeans and native-born Americans come together in the United States and succeed through their common bonds and ancestry. The more we build together, the stronger we will be as a country.

This article was written by Mandy S. (MandysRoyalty) © 12.6.2003 and may not be copied or reprinted without permission/copyright.

The earliest story relates how British monk and missionary St. Boniface (born Winfrid in A.D. 680) was preaching a sermon on the Nativity to a tribe of Germanic Druids outside the town of Geismar. To convince the idolaters that the oak tree was not sacred and inviolable, the “Apostle of Germany” felled one on the spot. Toppling, it crushed every shrub in its path except for a small fir sapling. A chance event can lend itself to numerous interpretations, and legend has it that Boniface, attempting to win converts, interpreted the firís survival as a miracle, concluding, “Let this be called the tree of the Christ Child.” Subsequent Christmases in Germany were celebrated by planting fir saplings.

We do know with greater authority that by the sixteenth century, fir trees, indoors and out, were decorated to commemorate Christmas in Germany. A forest ordinance from Ammerschweier, Alsace, dated 1561, states that “no burgher shall have for Christmas more than one bush of more than eight shoesí length.” The decorations hung on a tree in that time, the earliest we have evidence of, were “roses cut of many-colored paper, apples, wafers, gilt, sugar.”

It is a widely held belief that Martin Luther, the sixteenth-century Protestant reformer, first added lighted candles to a tree. Walking toward his home one winter evening, composing a sermon, he was awed by the brilliance of stars twinkling amidst evergreens. To recapture the scene for his family, he erected a tree in the main room and wired its branches with lighted candles.

By the 1700s, the Christbaum, or “Christ tree,” was a firmly established tradition. From Germany the custom spread to other parts of Western Europe. It was popularized in England only in the nineteenth century, by Prince Albert, Queen Victoriaís German consort. Son of the duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (a duchy in central Germany), Albert had grown up decorating Christmas trees, and when he married Victoria, in 1840, he requested that she adopt the German tradition.

From http://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/tree.htm

Hello to all. I have just received a couple of emails from the Mail Demon. Er, Mailer-Daemon. They all say the same thing:

“This message was created automatically by mail delivery software. A message that you sent could not be delivered.

“If you meant to send this file then please package it up as a zip file and resend it. If you did not send this message originally it is likely that a virus falsely used your address.”

Well thanks all the same, but I DID NOT send any emails. So therefore a virus stole my bloody email address!? Yikes. Well, just so you know, I do not send messages with the subject line of “honey” or anything else bizzarre.

I have dealt with my security and everything should be fine now. Please be careful when opening all mail.