Archive for Holiday
New Music Dropping Today
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- Marie Barnett – Heaven Came Down
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- Newsong – Give Yourself Away
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- Ryan Gilmore – The Spirit, the Water and the Blood
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- Thea Gilmore – Strange Communion
The Washington Redskins Thanksgiving Food Giveaway
Originally posted on the Washington Post by Henri E. Cauvin
The Washington Redskins are keeping their turkeys a little closer to home this year.
Only residents of Prince George’s County will be eligible to receive free turkeys during the team’s annual Thanksgiving food giveaway Tuesday at FedEx Field in Landover.
And to make sure the free food reaches families most in need, only residents who have been qualified by the county Department of Social Services will be given the turkeys and side dishes.
It is a big change for the event, which has drawn people from across the Washington region since it was started in 2003.
But the head of community relations for the Redskins said the giveaway has always been intended to serve the people Prince George’s, where the team began playing in 1997.
“Each year our focus has been to serve those in need in Prince George’s County, home of FedEx Field,” said Betti-Jo Corriveau, the Redskins’ vice president of community and charitable programs, in an e-mail. “We made this adjustment because we wanted to be sure that we were super-serving Prince George’s County and those with the greatest need within the County.”
Harvest Feast, as the giveaway is called, is expected to distribute 3,000 turkeys and more than 100,000 pounds of other food, Corriveau said. The event is sponsored by the Redskins, the charity Operation Blessing, Harris Teeter supermarkets and the Prince George’s Department of Social Services.
“It’s important in this uncertain economy for the public and private sector to partner wherever possible and appropriate to address the gaps in services for residents in need,” Gloria Brown, the agency’s interim director, said in a statement.
Residents interested in receiving a free turkey can call 301-909-7153 to see whether they qualify. A social services spokeswoman would not disclose the income eligibility requirement, saying only that it “meets federal standards.” About 1,600 people have been qualified, she said.
The Salvation Army Plans To Serve 10,000 Free Thanksgiving Meals
Originally posted on the Associated Press by Verena Dobnik
The Salvation Army plans to serve 10,000 free dinners across the city this Thanksgiving – meals planned by a star chef, cooked by one of New York’s ritziest caterers and cleaned up by employees of one of Wall Street’s most vilified financial firms. The number of meals is 10 times as many as last year and come at a time when more and more Americans are struggling to put food on the table.The turkey dinner will be prepared by Great Performances, a catering company that stages banquets for the grand ballroom of The Plaza. Leading the culinary team is star chef Marc Spooner, a winner of the Food Network’s “Chopped” TV contest and the caterer’s chef de cuisine.
Three hundred employees of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Wall Street’s richest firm, have volunteered for the holiday feast and will be tasked with taking out the garbage.
For more information, visit: http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf
ICE! Presented by Coca Cola
The thrilling, chilling, one-of-a-kind holiday attraction ICE! is here in the DC area for the first time this Christmas season… and it’s only at Gaylord National Resort.
This 15,000-square-foot attraction–a unique, interactive indoor wonderland created entirely of ice–is the crowning jewel of Christmas on the Potomac, Gaylord National’s more than 50-day-long celebration of the holidays.
Open to guests from November 19 to January 10, ICE! will feature TWO MILLION POUNDS of ice carved into a walk-through attraction of ten larger-than-life, three-dimensional holiday scenes, including a Nativity Scene with a 25-foot-tall ice angel and a Christmas Castle with ice slides standing more than two stories tall. Visitors will marvel at the striking detail and beautiful, theatrical renderings of beloved Christmas icons and memorable holiday scenes, all housed in a custom-built structure maintained at a temperature of nine degrees… Winter coats will be provided!
Cost – $10 – $24.50
For more information, visit: http://www.gaylordhotels.com/gaylord-national/christmas-on-the-potomac/the-ice-experience.html
Maryland Christmas Show
| Location: | Frederick Fairgrounds | ||
| Hours: | 10am – 6pm Friday/Saturday | ||
| 10am – 5pm Sunday | |||
| Admission: | Adults: $7.00 | Parking: | $1.00 * No Pets Allowed |
| Children: $4.00 (12 and under) | For Information: | (301) 898-5466 |
The show offers seven buildings and big top tents. You’ll enjoy the works of 500 top artists and craftsmen offering fine art, pottery, furniture, quilts, jewelry, clothing, wreaths and garlands, toys and Christmas ornaments – just about anything related to your Christmas shopping enjoyment. Not all of the same exhibitors participate in both weekends.
Christians Urged to Boycott Gap Inc. Over ‘Christmas’ Censor
Originally posted on The Christian Post by Jennifer Riley
A conservative pro-family group is urging Christians to boycott Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic from now until December 25 for “censoring” the word Christmas in its ad commercials and promotions.
The American Family Association said that despite “tens of thousands of consumer requests to recognize Christmas” and requests by the organization, San Francisco-based Gap Inc. has refused to use the word.
“Christmas is special because of Jesus,” maintains AFA in its e-mail newsletter. “It’s not just a ‘winter holiday.’ For millions of Americans the giving and receiving of gifts is in honor of the One who gave Himself.
“For the Gap to pretend that isn’t the foundation of the Christmas season is political correctness at best and religious bigotry at worst.”
AFA joins Christian legal group Liberty Counsel in defending the use of the word Christmas for the celebrations that take place at the end of each year.
Earlier this month, Liberty Counsel launched its annual “Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign” that pledges to be a “Friend” to those who recognize Christmas and a “Foe” to those who censor it. The campaign offers free legal assistance to anyone who faces criticism for celebrating Christmas.
“Over the past few years the ‘Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign’ has successfully put the ‘grinches’ on the run,” commented Mathew D. Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law.
“This year millions of Americans will join us to help save Christmas,” he said. “If a government entity censors Christmas in violation of the Constitution, then we will first seek to educate but, if necessary, we will litigate. If retailers choose to profit from Christmas while pretending it does not exist, then we will patronize their competitors.”
Liberty Counsel also publishes a “Naughty or Nice” list, which categorizes retailers who either censor (“Naughty”) or recognize (“Nice”) Christmas.
The Christian legal group has handled numerous cases concerning Christmas, including those that involved nativity scenes on public property, school officials who censored religious words from Christmas carols, and companies that renamed Christmas trees “holiday trees.”
The “Naughty & Nice List” can be found on the Liberty Counsel Web site: www.lc.org
Veterans Day: We Will Remember
"Thank you to all the Veterans and Soliders that continue to risk their lives for my freedom, may God forever bless you and your family."
Originally posted on NJ.com by Star-Ledger Editorial Board
Veterans Day is about remembering — remembering those who went to war for us, especially those who didn’t come back. But in the hurly-burly of life today, we too often forget to remember.
Americans of a certain age can still recall the parades and pageantry, the red poppies and grand speeches that marked Veterans Day (earlier Armistice Day) in the 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s and into the 1960s. But that was a different era.
The two world wars they celebrated were noble wars. The sons those Gold Star mothers gave to their country died for lofty ideals that rallied the entire nation — freedom, liberty and an end to barbarous dictatorships. There was no talk of an “exit strategy” in those years. Every family had someone in service.
That’s all gone. The wars we’ve fought for almost 60 years now have been political wars, beginning with Korea, a forgotten conflict denied even the label of “war.” It was merely a “police action,” but also an inferno that consumed 35,000 American lives in three years.
The men didn’t cheer and the boys didn’t shout and the ladies and girls didn’t all turn out when Johnny came marching home from Korea. To be honest, there was little to celebrate then — or later in Vietnam or Bosnia or in our endless political wars in the Middle East. All the grand rhetoric and patriotic prose of the old days would ring hollow today.
But perhaps the worst part of what’s happened to Veterans Day is the gap that has grown up in 21st century America between our military — some say the best we ever fielded, certainly the best trained and equipped — and the American people.
The reason is plain enough. This isn’t a military of all the people drawn by lot in a national draft as in the two world wars, Korea or Vietnam, with almost everyone subject to call. It’s a volunteer force in which only a tiny segment of the population serves. And their fighting and dying is for too many of us more an abstraction than a flesh-and-blood reality.
Go to a Veterans Day parade or speech today? We’d rather go shopping.
The era of the gala parades and fine Veterans Day oratory may be over, but still, even a modest remembrance would be nice. The simple British Remembrance Day salute might serve as an example. After lights are dimmed and a period of silence observed, this verse from “For The Fallen,” by Laurence Binyon, least known of Britain’s World War I poets, is read every year:
“They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old/Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn/At the going down of the sun and in the morning/we will remember them.”
We should do no less.
