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Saturday, December 25, 2010

Christmas Music


Here's your own personal  Holiday juke box...just click on the one you want to hear....
Also check out the beautiful pictures that come with each one.  If you check on  the Elvis Christmas box there are no lyrics, but it takes you to a page with a box that says "Back to the 50's" that has a bunch of Elvis recordings (but no Christmas ones)
Fabulous 50's
Christmas Songs

 
Away In A Manger
Loretta Lynn
Christmas Alphabet
The McGuire Sisters
Christmas Country Christmas
The Statler Brothers
Christmas Song
Alvin & The Chipmunks
Christmas Times A Coming
Bill Monroe
And The  Bluegrass Boys
Christmas Waltz
Frank Sinatra
Christmas Without You
Kenny Rogers
Dolly Parton
Its Beginning To Look
A Lot Like Christmas

Bing Crosby &
The Andrew Sisters
Jingle Bell Rock
Bobby Helms
Jingle Bells
Roy Rogers
Most Interesting Middle!
Jingle Bells
Perry Como
Jingle Bells
The Jingle  Bell Piggie
Joy To The World
Nat King Cole
Let It Snow
Andy Williams

 
Little Drummer Boy
Neil Diamond

 
O Christmas Tree
Nat King Cole
Please Come Home
The Platters
Pretty Paper
Roy Orbison
Silver Bells
Bing Crosby/Peggy Lee
Silent Night
Dean Martin
Sleigh Ride
Johnny Mathis
The First Noel
Andy Williams
White Christmas
Bing Crosby
White Christmas
The Drifters (1954)


Here Comes The Snow!

Significant snow is expected across the East Coast on Christmas Night through Monday. Blizzard conditions are more likely in New England and possible across New York City and the mid-Atlantic Coast.

The low pressure is now expected to become stronger farther south and track closer to the coast. This means more than 6 inches can fall from eastern North Carolina to New England.

Early Christmas morning, snow has spread across northern Mississippi, Alabama and most of Tennessee. Lighter snow is falling across most of the Ohio Valley into Virginia.

On Sunday into Monday, the storm will parallel the Northeast coast and strengthen in the process. There is growing confidence here at AccuWeather.com that the storm will be close enough to the coast to bring a heavy snowfall to most of the Eastern Seaboard.

Accumulations from the Delmarva to New England will be at least 6 inches with more than a foot possible.

Accuweather
The NOAA Forecast:

...WINTER STORM WATCH IN EFFECT FROM LATE TONIGHT THROUGH LATE SUNDAY NIGHT...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN WAKEFIELD HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WATCH...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM LATE TONIGHT THROUGH LATE
SUNDAY NIGHT.

* AREAS AFFECTED: THE NORTHERN NECK AND EASTERN SHORE OF VIRGINIA.
  THE LOWER MARYLAND EASTERN SHORE.

* PRECIPITATION TYPES: SNOW DEVELOPS LATE TONIGHT AND CONTINUES
  THROUGH SUNDAY NIGHT. THE HEAVIEST SNOW IS EXPECTED SUNDAY
  AFTERNOON AND EVENING.

* ACCUMULATION: 4 TO 8 INCHES OF SNOW IS POSSIBLE ACROSS THE WARNED
  AREA. LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS OVER 8 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE.

* TIMING: ACCUMULATING SNOW IS EXPECTED SUNDAY AND SUNDAY NIGHT.

The Amazing Grace Of Christmas Morn


The malls and the Main Streets fall silent. The ringing of cash registers fade in ghostly echoes across silent streets. But the Christ born in a manger 2,000 years ago lives through the centuries, liberating the hearts of sinners and transforming the lives of the wicked.
The authentic story of the redeeming power of the Christmas message is illustrated in the incredible life of an English slaver named John Newton, born 300 years ago into a seafaring family in England. His mother was a godly woman who died when John was 7, and he recalled as the sweetest remembrance of childhood the soft and tender voice of his mother at prayer.
His father married again, and John at 11 went to sea with him. He eagerly adopted the vulgar life of seamen as he grew older, though the memory of his mother's faith remained. "I saw the necessity of religion as a means of escaping hell," he recalled many years later, "but I loved sin."
On shore leave, he was seized by a press gang and taken aboard HMS Harwich. Life grew coarser. He ran away, was captured, put in chains, stripped before the mast, and flogged. "The Lord had by all appearances given me up to judicial hardness," he recalled. "I was capable of anything. I had not the least fear of God, nor the least sensibility of conscience. I was firmly persuaded that after death, I should merely cease to be."
The captain of the Harwich traded him to the skipper of a slaving ship, bound for West Africa to take aboard wretched human cargo. "At this period of my life," he later reflected, "I was big with mischief and, like one afflicted with a pestilence, was capable of spreading a taint wherever I went." John's new captain took a liking to him, however, and took him to his home on an island off the African coast, where his wife, a beautiful and cruel African princess, waited for him. She soon grew jealous of her husband's friendship with John.John fell ill, and when the captain sailed he left John in his wife's care.
The ship was barely over the horizon when he was thrown into a pigsty. The jealous wife blinded him, and left him in delirium to die. He did not die, but was kept in chains and fed swill from her table. Word spread through the district that a black woman was keeping a white slave, and many came to taunt him. They threw stones at him, mocking his misery. He would have starved if captured slaves, waiting for a ship to take them to the Americas, had not shared their meager scraps of food.
When the captain returned five years later, John told how he had been treated. His old friend scoffed, and called him a liar and a thief, but agreed to take him home to England. John was treated ever more harshly on the voyage, fed only the entrails of animals butchered for the crew's mess. "The voyage quite broke my constitution," he recalled, "and the effects would always remain with me as a needful memento of the service of wages and sin."
Like Job, he became a magnet for adversity. When his ship crashed in a storm he despaired that God's mercy remained after a life of hostile indifference to the Gospel. "During the time I was engaged in the slave trade," he said, "I never had the least scruple to its lawfulness." Yet the wanton sinner, the arrogant blasphemer, the mocker of the faith was at last driven to his knees: "My prayer was like the cry of ravens, which yet the Lord does not disdain to hear."
Miraculously, he was rescued, and made his way home to England to reflect on the mercies God had shown him in his awful life. He fell under the preaching of George Whitefield and the influence of John Wesley, and was born again into the new life in Christ. Two days short of Christmas 1807, he died at the age of 82, and left a dazzling testimony to the miracle of Christmas. "I commit my soul to my gracious God and Savior, who mercifully spared and preserved me, when I was an apostate, a blasphemer and an infidel, and delivered me from Africa into which my obstinate wickedness had plunged me." He set down the story of his life, and it became the most beloved hymn of Christendom.

More from The Washington Times.

Merry Christmas

From all of us to all of you, Merry Christmas.

HISTORICAL COMMENTS BY GEORGE CHEVALLIER

Christmas

Let me begin by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. Even though the Christmas season has changed dramatically since I was enthralled by the prospect of the arrival of Santa Claus, everyone can still bring back the spirit of Christmas.
           
 When I was in the second grade in 1950, St. Francis held a midnight Mass. Being one of the two smallest boys, I was one of the lead pair of acolytes in the Christmas procession that led to the altar. The adrenaline rush that got me up the aisle quickly wore off and I was just like any other seven-year old at that time of night. When we had finished marching up the aisle and were seated, I think I immediately fell asleep. I continued this ritual throughout my early years at St. Francis.
           
Christmas did not officially begin until well after Thanksgiving. It was about the second week of December that the stores started decorating and displaying their Christmas wares. The stores downtown all had fabulous merchandise. White and Leonard Drug Store had a toy display set up on the second floor. L. W. Gunby Hardware Store had a special “not-for-sale” Christmas display in their window that showed many antique toys.
           
The annual Christmas parade was always on a Saturday. This was because the stores were prohibited from opening on Sunday, and the local merchants loved the fact that the parade brought many shoppers downtown. The parade had bands from the local high schools and many floats from local organizations.. At the end of the parade was good ol’ St. Nick. We had one motorcycle in the Salisbury Police Department fleet at that time, and it was always ridden by Sgt. Paul Barnett. In time, he donned a red suit and became known as Sgt. Santa Claus.
           
 Many organizations spent a lot of time on their floats, and the results were everything a young boy full of the season could ask for. It always seemed to instill in everyone a generous amount of Christmas cheer that carried over throughout the entire season.
           
Usually, the majority of presents were clothes that were sorely needed. But there was always that special large toy that I had been asking for since October. One year, my father and mother (Santa) got me a tin filling station. Years later, they admitted that putting it together after I went to bed was quite a task for my Pop. Now, he was a mechanical engineer, but I don’t think his work included tin filling stations. He was much better at the gas pumps at real filling stations. It was a great thrill when I raced downstairs on Christmas morning and saw it.
           
We were never the type of family that scrimped all year and went all out at Christmas. As I came into my years of having a car, I might get a set of tires in September along with a hearty “Merry Christmas”. My father’s brothers and sisters were all in Buffalo, and their package was always eagerly anticipated, because they always gave toys. Mom set up her nativity scene every year with the babe Jesus carefully missing until Christmas day, and we always had a real tree. The only outside lights we had was one string of Christmas lights around the front door. Early on, my parents didn’t put up the tree until my sister and I had gone to bed. That must have been a lot of work in a very short time. But, I’m sure the looks on our little faces as we came down the stairs on Christmas morning made it all worthwhile.
           
Christmas can still be a time of magic if you just remember why we are celebrating the occasion. No matter what the stores proclaim in their never-ending pursuit of the almighty dollar, we can still wish someone a “Merry Christmas”. If you have the proper spirit, nothing can diminish the joy you will feel at this very special time of the year.

MERRY CHRISTMAS !!!!

A Little Good News


Joe:

I found this old song today, done in 1983. I wish everyone would just listen to it today, and think of it during the holiday season. Everyone should listen and take it to heart. I feel this song has true meaning, and I really feel this way.

Thank You.

A Concerned Salisbury Citizen