MERRY CHRISTMAS!  A nice way to start the day is Feliz Navidad with Jose and his grandson: As I neared #1 on my favorite songs list, I wondered why I had a couple of days to spare before the year ended.   Turns out I skipped #53.  How that happened is I just goofed.  But this gives me a slot for what I should have included anyway.  The Christmas season is when we've had the most songs that keep returning.  They never quite go away. If you Google the Top 10 Pop Christmas Songs of All Time, you might not even recognize one.  Again, try the 50 Greatest Christmas Songs , and at least some are more conventional.  In both ratings, #1 is  All I Want for Christmas is You by Mariah Carey.  She also wrote it and published this song more than a quarter century ago.   Wikipedia lists it as the best-selling Christmas single with 3.2 million digital downloads.  So I had to listen to it.  Amazingly, never heard it before. I searche...

For the next two days, nothing about Trump and COVID-19, except that yesterday was one of the worst for the USA, with 232,342 new cases and 3401 new deaths.  The ominous development might be South Africa, now into their mid-summer, but with cases and deaths suddenly increasing.  With the UK, they have the highly infectious coronavirus. If this mutation spreads across Africa... I was sent the following Christmas lights display from  Dyker Heights in New York .  Nice, but nothing compared to other exhibits the world over .  The thought of Christmas and something extra might have started in Germany with their evergreen trees brought inside the home in the 16th century.  Poinsettias?  This idea came from Mexico, and more specifically, U.S. minister to that country, Joel Poinsett.  The British in the 18th century changed the image of the mistletoe from a poisonous plant to a festive kissing trap. But all those lights at Christmas?  An American tra...