Things are pretty rough this Christmas.   We've got the heat turned down about 5 degrees compared to last year.   And it has been quite a bit colder than the last couple of years.   Probably that's due to global warming or something else related to human activity.   But we'll "suffer" through it.   At least we're not living like the hurricane victims in the South who are living in tents and trailors this Christmas.

I had to drive all over high heaven just to find a single ipod for a loved one's present.   The stores were in short supply of this "necessity" but I got lucky after a lot of effort and found one.   There were other gifts which were hard to find.   It seems as if a lot of stores are in short supply of a number of items and many things can only be found on the internet.   Even there, many things are backordered and you really had to place your orders early to have anything by Christmas morning.   But what can you do.   Things are tough all over for late shoppers this year.

I look forward to all the Christmas light displays to pick me up and give my holiday spirit a little boost.   But these are in shorter supply this year as everyone cuts back and does there part to reduce the reliance on foreign oil, everyone except Congress.   The Senate filibustered drilling for oil in ANWR yesterday so a couple polar bears could have better views when they look far off from where they usually live.   We all just have to face up to the fact that heating oil and gasoline are in short supply and will cost a lot more this year.   Congress has other, more important work to do.

There has been a lot of discussion about torture in the news.   Much of the Senate has been preoccupied with the notion that terrorists deserve the protection of, if not the geneva conventions - they don't act like a conventional army, some parts of the United States Constitution.   We don;t want to make their living conditions substandard so we can't screw around with the temperature of their abodes and we can't leave or boom boxes turned up too loud.   We can't even ask them too many questions about where they plan to kill our civilians next or where their buddies making these plans might be.   That's unconstitutional!

Of yeah, there's also that "domestic eavesdropping" filling the discussions.   I almost forgot about that one.   Can you believe Bush had his minions actually listening in on telephone conversation between suspected terrorists and American citizens or foreigners who are here legally?   I mean these terrorists likely all have family too, right?   Can't they place calls to their loved ones without being spied on, especially when their loved ones happen to be in the good ole US?

There's other fighting going on in Congress who seems about worn out by all this and looking forward to the Christmas break.   But the Senate changed the playing field and made the House come back for a quick vote on the Patriot Act extension.   One representative complained about having to interrupt his Christmas break which had already started several days in advance of the holidays.   But he did, to his credit, manage to come back and vote.   I guess two extra plane rides for the year qualifies as deprivation these days.

It's all very depressing and ruining my Christmas spirit.   But now it's time for me to tell my children a Christmas tale from long ago.

I'm not going to tell the story of Jesus' birth or even the classic "Night Before Christmas" this time.   I can't vouch for the authenticity of the traditional Jesus story, according to several recent TV shows, and they're getting too old for the "Night Before" since they no longer believe in Santa Claus.   So instead I'll tell them a story about someone to whom they are actually related.   I'll tell them the story about my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great uncle (I'll call him "my uncle" from here on out in the interest of brevity) and his Christmas experience in long ago.

My uncle didn't have to worry about finding an ipod, they weren't invented back then.   He didn't have to worry about turning the heat down.   He didn't have any.   And he couldn't even put on extra clothing to stay warm.   He didn't have any.   He didn't even have to worry about Congressional fighting since no real Congress had been established by this particular Christmas.   And he was too busy fighting for the right to establish one to be worried about anything else.   My uncle's Christmas story begins before and ends after the actual Christmas celebration of 1776.

My uncle's Christmas party was a very large affair which involved climbing aboard a bunch of let's call them canoes in the middle of a Snowstorm.   The only thing I can think of that's similar today is what those "Polar Bear" club members will do on New Year's Day.   But those guys leave and return to heated houses when they aren't swimming in the frigid ocean.   My uncle was freezing cold before during and after his Christmas party.   He and about 2,400 other men climbed aboard small boats, paddled across a river and then went on to Trenton to defeat the Hessian mercenaries stationed there in the morning after the Christmas holiday.

The historical record makes it sound like it was an easy party to have organized.   Sure making a military attack in the middle of the night during a snowstorm sounds difficult but the men had easy paths to follow since there was snow on the ground and because those who were lucky enough to have shoes, still bled through them because the shoes were ill-fitting and mostly "broken."   Many had no shoes so their bleeding feet paved the way.   The historical accounts say the soldiers had an easy time following the blood trails through the snow so nobody got lost.   And from what I understand, the only real casualties on this assault were a couple of men who froze to death.   That's not too bad for 2 out of as many as 2,400 to freeze to death.   And walking barefoot on snow for just a couple miles can't be all that bad.   Hey, you want to get a kick, try it.   But before you begin, you need to get yourself cold.   Strip down to a simple pair of pants and one shirt with no shoes and socks.   Now stand in your garage for an hour.   Now walk just a half mile through some snow.   Now go seek medical treatment.

But that Christmas was remarkable because the Continental Army was really getting its butt kicked back then.   They had won no battle to that point.   In fact, they hadn't even comported themselves well in any battle.   They were, after all, not a real army.   They were a bunch of farmers who had picked up arms and joined what only can be called an army in the most humourous meaning of the term.   And Washington needed this win at Trenton because in just a few days, most of these men had completed theis commitment.   They were going to go home and live in somewhat more comfortable circumstances.   Likely the whole darn shootin' match would have been over at that point and the colonies would have remained British.   There would have been no United States, at least not then, and all that effort and debating would never have needed to take place.   That Christmas changed the history of the world in remarkable fashion.   But those men did who walked barefoot through the snow after crossing a frigid river on that Christmas evening didn't know their actions would have any positive effect.   They were just following orders.

After their win at Trenton, these brave men including my uncle, would receive incredible rewards.   They would end up with a "real camp" at Valley Forge where another of my uncles would join his brother to get in on all the fun.   They would still have no shoes for the frigid winter months of January and February but, heck, their deprivation wouldn't last forever and neither would winter.   They would even get some shacks built in which to live although their was little to eat besides the horses who died from the cold and nothing to burn to generate heat.   And the sanitary conditions in the camp were incredibly bad.   Just about everyone would get really, really sick as a result.   On the TV show MASH, one of the main characters describes his plight as including "hot and cold dysentery" but, at Valley Forge in 1777, they only had the cold kind and not enough toilets with which to dispatch it.

But winter ended and there were more battles ahead.   About 7 months after the miraculous victory at Trenton, the soldiers would undergo a different kind of battle.   This time the temperature was in the other direction as the men fought the British regulars in the battle of Monmouth (NJ) Courthouse to a stalemate.

Just when and where the militias and Continental Army won our right to buy ipods, have heated homes, conduct extensive debates in Congress, extend Constitutional rights to terrorists bent on killing us and bringing down our society, etc. is subject to debate but I'm willing to go out on a limb and say it was somewhere near the blood stained snow in Trenton on the day after Christmas in 1776.   So that's the Christmas story I'm going to tell my kids about this year.