Sybil Bruncheon’s “Holiday Hospitality!”… reach out and touch someone!

Facebook Friends! During this Holiday season, won't you do your part to make everyone feel welcome?? At the Ice Cream Sociable, the Fruit-Cake Exchange, The Overseas Tollhouse Cookie Drive, or even the Office Mambo-Mixer, please make sure to ask that shy "wall-flower" for a spin on the dance floor. ...And nothing says "Merry Christmas" better than a dance card with YOUR name in it!!!!! Go on... she probably smells wonderful... even if holding her close does make you itch... or if she's infested with squirrels... (With thanks to George Sweet for the photo of Douglasina Furr!)

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SYBIL BRUNCHEON’S STORY BOOK CORNER: Holiday Traditions AROUND THE WORLD!! ... PRIPYAT!

Hello, Children from around the world! Are you all writing your special gift-wishes to Santa Claus, Pere Noel, Mr. & Mrs. Weasel, Quetzalcoatl, Cthulu, Zizz X#56Hhsuzsi, or Nan-Cy Boy O’Reilly??? …what!? I haven’t told you about Nan-Cy Boy O’Reilly yet??....well, that’s another story for another time! But today, I want to tell you about the magic Yule trees of the Ukraine. That's where we get the funny little guitar called the Uke-relele. Can you say, "You-Cray-Lay-Lee"??

Our Ukrainian friends who live in a nice little town called Pripyat had a Christmas adventure many years ago….can you say “Prip-Yat”?? It means “Glows-in-the-dark”. Well, one day, all the papas and mamas (or батьки і матері, as the little ones call them!) went into the woods on December 24th or The Feast of the Talking Forest to gather the special Christmas trees for the Holiday. The tradition was that the elders of the villages would sing special songs and dance around the trees to ask the tree-spirits for their blessing before they were cut down. If the tree-spirits gave their blessings, then there would be mild whispering winds through the air almost like music and the squirrels and little birds would bring nuts, berries, lost coins, and stolen costume jewelry, and the grown-ups would know that the coming year would be full of health, prosperity, and good omens.

That night hundreds of trees were cut down and dragged through the dark to cozy homes with toasty fireplaces and waiting children, singing loudly, clapping their hands, dancing and leaping, and breaking things. The trees were brought into all the front rooms, stood up and braced into waiting pots of fresh mountain water and spiced cider with cloves and raisins “to make them happy”, and decorated with candles and beautiful handmade ornaments, many of which dated back for generations in each household to ancestors fondly remembered in stories, songs, and crayon drawings.

Then, as the custom dictated, every family member would approach the tree and kneel with a special gift and a poem of thanks and love written especially for the tree on that occasion. All the gifts would be laid at the foot of the beloved tree, in dedication to its arrival in the household, and to ask that it would tell Santa to leave special presents for its household and the sweet children it watched over. Then everyone would scamper off to bed, laughing, singing, bragging about who would get what presents, and giving one last wink and a wave to the tree as it stood silently in the great room lit by firelight and the cheer of the Holiday.

Oh, Children! Oh, dear sweet Children!! Imagine what people thought on Christmas Day when they ran down the stairs as the sun just began to clear the horizon line at 2 in the afternoon!! There were NO presents of any kind! NONE!...because Santa had been prevented from getting within a 200 mile radius of little Pripyat….and there were fighter jets chasing him away with bad missiles…and even guns and shouting over loudspeakers! But that wasn’t the worst of it! Oh NO! For not only were there NO presents. The trees themselves had grown! YES!! GROWN!! Many of the sweet trees had now reached the ceiling with their topmost branches. The Holy Christmas stars were now pressed against the plaster, breaking it in places, or bending the points off of the fine heirlooms that grandpas had made with their own wrinkled hands.

And that was only the beginning….as each day went by, the trees grew taller and taller…some of them began to sprout new and oddly shaped limbs with strangely colored pine needles that looked like faces or toes, and smelled like grandma’s old socks… or her underpants. By the 6th day of the Holiday week, many trees had broken through windows and doors, had eaten food out of the larders and pantries, and even chased pets and stepped on them. By the 12th and final day of the celebration, most homes were now abandoned to roving gangs of gigantic, grotesque “tree-things” that set fires, urinated in public places, pinched ladies bottoms, and told overly long jokes with no punchlines. And THAT was the terrible/wonderful Christmas present that everyone got from Chernobyl. Tell me, Children, how many of you would like to visit exciting places like Pripyat someday???

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Sybil Bruncheon's LAW & ORDER CHRISTMAS MARATHON!!!...

I have received special recognition by the Law & Order franchises!.... it seems that I have appeared as a dead body in more Holiday episodes’ opening credits than any other actress! They are as follows;

1) "aged ballerina dressed as Suzy Snowflake… melted by blowtorch",

2) "department-store Mrs. Santa Claus sliced neatly into 36 pieces by runaway sleigh",

3) "candy counter lady dipped in very expensive chocolate ganache and boxed as a giant truffle",

4) "Salvation Army volunteer stewed in her kettle with bell....and loose change",

5) "naked ex-pinup girl bent into candy-cane shape… and painted with red and white stripes",

6) "temporary saleslady at luxury candle shop turned into lavender scented wax dummy of Joan Of Arc ....and burned",

7) "professional gift wrapping manageress origamied into an 8x11 legal envelope…with a Burl Ives postage stamp",

8) "sober socialite at AA mixer water-boarded in giant punch bowl of alcohol-free egg nog… cinnamon sticks found in nose",

9) "customer in Bergdorf's fine shoe department trampled by hooves of eight tiny reindeer",

10) "homeless woman found frozen to death inside an orphanage Frosty-The-Snowman... near the swing-set",

11) "wealthy dowager stuffed up chimney in Park Avenue triplex on Christmas Eve and found later in the Spring",

12) "mother of Amahl raped and murdered by three deranged night visitors…in drag!... and smelling of patchouli… and nutmeg!",

13) "television baking chef made into huge gingerbread lady in front of millions of viewers ..with strategically placed raisins"

Chris Meloni sent me a special fruitcake that I'm sure will make a great door stop! (He even autographed it in frosting.... at least, I think it was… frosting....)

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Christmases Past!".... Prudholme's Falls, Kansas... The Home of Gaston Cruller:

       The home of Gaston Cruller. Gaston was born blind but had a wide circle of friends at the university where he taught Comparative Anthropological Historiography in a Geo-Literal Matrix...101. His colleagues felt that he always missed out on the immense beauty of the Christmas tradition because of his handicap and so they decided to surprise him by putting up a Christmas tree fully decorated and lit with tapers by the time he got home from evening classes.... His best friend, Ricardo Farabont, professor of Romance Linguistics & Limericks had invited everyone over...There was Phillip Coffey from the Archaeology of Housewares Department, his fiancee, Miss Gwedolyn Linkeny from Advanced Calculus & Cuisine, Dr. Klaybourne Fench of the Department of Particle (and Larger Pieces) Physics, and Edith Shmedski of the Doctoral Program of Home Ec. What a charming circle of loyal and loving friends they were, and more were expected within the hour.... 

      Sadly, one Christmas, while all of them went to the kitchen to begin assembling the refreshments and buffet supper to be served, Gaston wandered away to enjoy the tree with the only senses left to him.... smell, taste, hearing, and touch. While plucking various branches of the fresh evergreen to smell, and possibly eat, he accidentally ignited one of the nice angels in the branches that promptly plummeted down to “Bethlehem” and into the middle of the stable in the creche below... within seconds, most of the barnyard animals were incinerated along with two of the wise men (possibly Melchior and Balthazar according to investigators later.) The innkeeper and his wife were also badly burned along with various villagers who had come to see what was happening in the stable. The villagers were indeed “sore afraid”! 

     Fortunately, Mary, Joseph, and the Blessed Savior were thrown completely clear when the barn exploded.... two camels were lost, an ox and lamb, a small drummer boy, neighbouring hovels and cottages...all lost. ….Indeed, if Edith Smedski hadn't run in with a seltzer bottle, all of Bethlehem and the Holy Star itself might have been consumed! (Thankfully, her father had been a clown!) The place smelled of charred wood with a hint of myrrh, papier-mâché, and Elmer’s glue. Gaston was miraculously uninjured although the lime green plaid cravat he always insisted on wearing with his tangerine polka-dot waistcoat and purple elephant suspenders was singed beyond repair. His friends used it all as an excuse to buy him a new wardrobe to THEIR specifications.... and they decided a menorah might be a better choice for the next year... but, oh, how wrong they were.....

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Sybil Bruncheon's "Christmases Past!".... Little Cyrus At Christmas Time....

...Little Cyrus felt so grown up since he'd decided not to go trick-or-treating with the other neighborhood children at Halloween. Dressing up as a vampire, a werewolf, or a mummy were "kid's stuff" in his sober opinion. But passing out candy to the kids that came to his own home still elicited screams of horror and panic in the street. He retreated to his room to study biology with his microscope… or to look through his telescope. At Thanksgiving, as "the man of the house", he offered to help carve the turkey, but his mother thought that might be dangerous... because of his slight ...um… “depth-perception problem” while holding a knife.

    ...And then at Christmas time, Cyrus began to feel sad. None of the neighbor kids would go sledding with him, or build a snow fort, and his snow man would always end up with one lump of coal in the middle of its forehead in the morning. On the day his mother put up the tree in the parlor window, Cyrus would spend the whole afternoon by himself. It was his job to carefully unwrap all the lights and ornaments and tinsel... he would string the cranberries and popcorn, and untangle the garlands, and after working several hours, his Christmas tree would be the loveliest and most famous in town!!.

    ...Then, as the darkness would gather, and the lighted tree would take on its magic, he would make his own special secret Christmas wish... for the present he wanted more than anything! ....He wished that he was a grown-up, and distinguished, and respected. Like a professor! Or a scientist! Or a senator! Or a President! Or even a King!!! ...with his very own monocle.

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Sybil Bruncheon’s “Christmas time!!! ..... the Hohenzollerns!”

.......oh yes! Everyone remembers the tragedy of the Romanov family being deposed from their thrones in Russia and executed in a basement, but how many historians talk about the royal Hohenzollerns of Eastern Rumelia?? Dating back for 700 years, they ruled placidly until 1903 when an uprising of Communists, Anarchists, Bee-Keepers, and Limerick reciters stormed their palace in the capitol of Plovdiv, and seized the royal family ...including the children! Their horrible fate??.... to be given the most forlorn Christmas presents that could be found anywhere in the kingdom and then to be forced to play with them until all family members had died of boredom.

This included early proto-types of board games like "Uncle Wiggly in Somno-Land", "Chinese Dumpling Checkers", and "Monotony" by the Parker Brothers. What was especially disturbing to the international community was the added cruelty of hideous neckties on the men depicting elves sledding down Poppa's tummy...and electrified "Holiday sweaters" with added ornamentation of the 8 not-so-tiny reindeer doing bad things with each other on the women.

The bodies of the royal family and their servants were found in a heap in a butler's pantry along with hundreds of unmailed "thank you" notes they had been forced to write in crayon (!) to imaginary gift givers in Ohio.... It was clear they had been fed nothing but fossilized fruit cakes, probably left over from the 19th century.... Horrible! HORRIBLE!! 

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Sybil Bruncheon’s “Christmas time!!!... Nancy!”

......Nancy was so excited in her new apartment! It was her first Christmas away from home! She had started her job as a bank teller in Tucson, and had promised herself that she would take no help from her family. She watched her budget and was very careful. And now three months later, she had just enough money for a sweet little Christmas tree, a few ornaments, and a nice doggie from the pound that she used as her sofa, two armchairs, a footstool, a vanity and dresser, mattress with two pillows, dining table with chair, and bath mat. .... and he only bit her once....

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