From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Maine Folklife Center:
Across New England, and certainly throughout Maine, a tradition of baked bean suppers takes place in community institutions such as churches, granges, and firehouses…
While Boston is known as bean-town, only in Maine can you ever really get to know beans. B&M (Burnham and Morrill) baked beans of Portland still bakes beans in huge iron pots in brick ovens before they can them for distribution around the country. The Kennebec Bean Company in North Vassalboro packages a range of Maine-grown beans under the "State of Maine" label and also sells many of them prepared to an old Maine lumber camp formula. They cook varieties of beans only known in Maine…
While many people in Maine cook their beans in a ceramic bean pot, the most unique cooking process for beans in Maine developed in the Maine logging camps. Pork and beans, baked in a bean hole, remains the logger's main dish. The slow, long cooking makes the bean very digestible as well as tender and delicious. In the logging camps, beans were served at every meal. The bean hole is a stone-lined pit in which a fire is built until a good bed of coals forms. A cast iron bean pot (holds about eleven pounds of dried beans) is lowered into the pit, covered over with dirt and allowed to cook, usually overnight.
I feel privileged to have created the internet's most cherished War-on-Christmas eve tradition: eating beans buck-nekkid while swapping conspiracy theories (but only the true ones) with everybody on earth. Whether you're a regular participant or a newcomer, we invite you to join us below and bear witness as the holiday mirth oozes forth spontaneously like boogers of freedom conga-lining through the nasal passages of destiny. I'll be staggering between tables, dispensing rum balls and counting the silverware.
Returning to tend the fire is all-new Lil Bub:
Sleigh bells ring down yonder... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, December 24, 2015
Note: C&J will return on Tuesday for our Very Special Look Back at 2015, a year that actually didn't suck. So hooray for that.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til 2016: 7
Speed at which Santa will travel tonight: 5,083,000 mph (Source: The internet)
Approximate number of Xmas trees planted for every one cut: 3
Percent of people who say they wrap their gifts to others a day or two before Christmas: 27%
Real-life height of the young Rudolph figure used in the stop-motion animated TV holiday classic, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer": 4 inches
Shelf life of a store-bought Christmas fruitcake, if it's refrigerated: 3 years (Source: CNN)
Percent of U.S. voters who thought there was an actual war on Christmas in 2012 and who think that today, respectively, according to a new PPP poll: 47%, 37%
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Puppy Pic of the Day Eve:
Your lips to Mommy's ear
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I cede this space to Kossack DuzT, whose 2013 post is now an annual tradition:
Economic forces dictate that there can never be a day where everything shuts down, where everything gets put on hold and people just get to enjoy time with their families. […]
So, if you're working Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve, New Years Day; remember there's a shitload of us out here doing the same thing. Someone has to. I feel you my sisters and brothers.
And to those of you able to enjoy the holidays with family, please take just a moment to think of us. We are out here to facilitate your lifestyles. We are out here making sure everything works the way you expect. We are out here so you don't have to be.
And thank you for that. And speaking of people to be thankful for...
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
I have not heard of one good creche fight this year. We can normally count on a peppy creche controversy to add to the seasonal joy and festive cheer. This occurs when some citizen or public official suffering from an excess of Goodwill Toward Men puts up a religious symbol, often a creche, on public property. Then the ACLU or somebody files a lawsuit, and everybody gets mad at everybody else, leading to slightly less Peace On Earth. As Ann Richards once observed of a controversial star on top of the Texas state capitol: "Oh, I hate to see them take that down. This could be the only chance we'll ever get to find three wise men in that building."
My favorite Christmas visitor (so far) was the chief of the Pojoaque, N.M., Volunteer Fire Department. I love to hear true tales from the Pojoaque fire department (the time the food warehouse burned down and all the popcorn popped is a special favorite). The chief observes that they're getting more and more calls from people who don't have a fire, or even a raccoon in the house, but from people who are sick. The fire trucks come with EMTs (emergency medical technicians), who can handle any number of routine medical emergencies (if you can have a routine emergency) like a person in a diabetic coma or in need of a regular shot. The sick person then refuses to let the firefighters call an ambulance because the ambulance and the emergency room cost money, whereas the fire department does not charge. As a consequence, fire departments across the country are now becoming the frontline for a medical system in increasing disrepair.
So if some homeless woman by any chance had a child in a stable in Pojoaque last night, most likely neither shepherds nor wise men were summoned, but instead volunteer firefighters. Which makes me very happy because I think volunteer firefighters are, by and large, a perfectly wonderful set of people. Merry Christmas to all.
---December, 2003
Okay. Pass the beans.
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