The pagan season . . .

It's Tiw's day . . . Northerlies return this evening to TulseyTown, as the roller coaster continues toward the Solstice.

Today would mark the beginning of the seven-day celebration of Saturnalia in ancient Rome. For the winter festival, the Romans made and exchanged gifts, decorated their homes with holly and ropes of garland, and carried wreaths of evergreen branches to honor the god Saturn.

Pope Francis is celebrating his 88th birthday today.

Poet John Greenleaf Whittier was born on this day in 1807 Haverhill, Massachusetts.

For the first time, Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker was performed on this date in 1892 St. Petersburg, Russia.

“The continuity of life is never broken; the river flows onward and is lost to our sight, but under its new horizon it carries the same waters which it gathered under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad by the offerings which are borne down to them from the past,--flowers, perchance, the germs of which its own waves had planted on the banks of Time.” —John Greenleaf Whittier