Christmas Greetings From PA Pundits International – 2020

Christmas 2020

Each and every year I write up these Christmas Day Posts and say that this has been a momentous year. That is usually always the case, but here and now, this year especially, it really has been one of incredible moment, and it was a year that will haunt our memories for a very long time. There has been what can only be described as a huge upheaval in the way we live, and go about our everyday life, and everything about that, due to the terrible scourge of the Coronavirus COVID-19. However, life did not stop because of that. Life went on, and we soldiered through it, well nearly all of us anyway, and our thoughts and prayers go out to those who have suffered loss because of this. Now, at Christmas time, let us take the time to be thankful that we are on the way to some sort of recovery, and what sort of recovery that will be is still playing out. Especially at Christmas, let us think of our family, our close family, and our extended family, and also be thankful that we have that family to be with.

The regular contributors at PA Pundits International would like to take this special time to wish you all a wonderful and a peaceful Christmas, and we hope that you can share that day with your family, because after all, Christmas started out with a family, and it is a time when we should remember this with our own families.

We all hope all our readers have a wonderful time on this Christmas Day. Stay close to your children, or, if you are older, be close to your grandchildren if they are with you, and you’ll see the happiness in their faces. That is what makes us happy, and while there is so much turmoil around us in our own Countries, and also in the wider World, our family, our children, and our grandchildren are what keeps us grounded. Most of you have mobile telephones and these have the facility to take images, so if you are in a position to see the faces of your children as they unwrap their presents, take the time to take some images of them to have a permanent reminder of the joy that all children experience at Christmas.

There is so much in the wider World which gives us cause for concern, so on this day, let’s just forget about that stuff and concentrate on our families, and by doing just that, those wider concerns will fade away, even if just for one day.

Take the time to give thanks for what we have.

Message from TonyfromOz in Australia

For me personally, this year has been a good one, as they all are, because life is good.

Even though this year was a nightmare in the wider World, and luckily to a lesser extent here in Australia than in other parts of the World, this actually came as a bit of a blessing in disguise for me, although, at the time, I didn’t think that. Now why was it a blessing? What it did was to make me do things differently to how I have always done them, and in fact, that made life easier. As my good lady wife has marginal health at her age, well, we are both getting older now anyway, but I made a conscious decision for her not to leave the house as often, to lessen any risk whatsoever of even the slightest of chances that she might be exposed to this awful Coronavirus. I became the designated shopper, and the supermarkets actually introduced shopping hours specifically designated for older people. The odd thing about that which made me smile was that these special hours for older people were from 6AM to 7AM. That was incongruous as in the main, as older people take longer to get ready, and tend to sleep later, so the idea that older people could actually be up and ready to shop in the supermarket at that 6AM time was all but laughable. It was a novelty at the start, and what I did notice was that most of the shoppers were men of my age, and I took that to mean that the ladies had no way of being ready to go out that early. It was a good idea for one reason, in that the shelves were restocked during the night, so we had first choice, as usually, after lunch normal shopping hours a lot of items had already been snapped up. The idea of shopping in a supermarket with not many shoppers was also a good one as I had the run of the place at times. The novelty wore off after a few weeks, and by week six and later, there would only have been three or four of us shoppers at that time, so the process was discontinued after a while. But I could get in and out and back home within an hour, so that was the good part of it. Even I stopped doing that after six weeks or so. We both had some health issues, to be expected these days as we both age, but they were sorted out quickly. One thing I did notice about hospitals was that the cost of parking is astonishingly high, almost as much as the cost inside the hospital itself.

I also shared emails on a regular basis with my extended family, my brother and sisters and Mum, keeping in touch more this year than any other year, so that was also a bit of a bonus.

My son also hooked me up with a couple of subscription television outlets, so we could watch an absolute endless supply of whatever we wanted, and at our leisure, as it seems that free to air television has become so boring and predictable now.

Today, Christmas Day, we will be going next door to our Son’s Apartment where he lives with his wife. His adult daughter will also be visiting with us with her fiancee, so there will be just the six of us. Ron is barbecuing some chicken on his Webber, and there will be other cold meats and a salad. There will be nibblies before, and we will all share a couple of drinks, and share gifts before settling into the food.

Elsewhere across the Nation, there will be outdoor family Christmas celebrations, typical for Australia in the Summer. Seafood is, as usual, the huge thing at this Christmas time, and seafood sales are far and away the highest at this time of year than at any other time. Some of the larger Capital City major fish markets stayed open for 36 hours to cater for the increased sales, and in the major Capitals, they would sell hundreds of tonnes of Prawns alone, along with every other type of seafood known to man.

So, while our Christmas time here in Australia is well under way, and in some cases, over, by the time you read this, I wish you all a wonderful and peaceful Christmas, a special time we celebrate the birth of Jesus. So, just as that small family were the origin of what is Christmas, may you be happy with your own family.

Also, remember, this is not The Holidays. This is Christmas.

Have a Blessed Christmas!
The King has come!

From Al, ed and the rest of the gang.

UPDATE – RECIPE

It’s now 10.00PM our time here in Queensland Australia (so 7AM on Christmas morning Eastern time in the U.S.) and we are home after a wonderful time of almost eight hours spent with our family. We handed out presents and along with a 6 Pack of Corona beer, (which has sold out of sight here in Australia this year, gee, who would have thought) I received an Amazon Firestick so now I can stream all I want on our TV, almost limitless access to anything at all online. Now all I have to do is to learn how to best use it. As I mentioned above, this year of crisis has also been one of learning, and I have found that there is so much that technology can now offer that I just was not aware of.

As I also mentioned above, our Son was barbecuing chicken on his Webber Barbecue. I thought it was a recipe he found, and it probably might actually be found somewhere in online recipe sites, but evidently it’s one he did for the first time. I asked him what it was and he said, somewhat tongue in cheek I now realise, that it was called Chicken Paradisio, so I reminded myself to later look that up. Lucky I pressed him about it, because he said he made the name up, and when I did look later, any recipe I could find for something that sounded even partly similar, Chicken Paradiso (different spelling) was completely different.

So here it is, mainly so I can remember it while it is still fresh.

There were six of us, so here, we used three full and thick chicken breasts whole. Each breast is cut in half. Place the whole breast flat on a cutting board. Running the knife parallel to the cutting board surface, slice the chicken breast in half lengthwise , so you now have two full sized breast sized slices, and still relatively thick, almost the thickness of a thick steak.

Barbecue these until done, and as they cook in around the same time as a steak, that’s around six minutes a side.

Once done, the rest of the ingredients are placed on top of the now cooked chicken.

The first thing placed on is shaved ham, and here, he found a quality ham for that purpose. Around three quarters of an an inch or so of this shaved ham along the whole length of the half chicken breast. Then, on top of that one slice of pineapple, and that’s a round circular cored pineapple slice. Then on top of that, place one slice of Mozzarella Slices of cheese. Before today, I did not even know you could get Mozzarella in slices.

Then close the lid of the barbecue. He had the lid down for around three, maybe four minutes. When he lifted the lid, the Mozzarella Slices had all but melted down, and the ham was warmed over, with the pineapple also warmed over.

Then he dished it up. We had it with a salad, and it was just so yummy, and perfectly cooked. He has what I would term as a small Webber, but these six chicken breasts were quite comfortably catered for on the grid, and not on the flat plate.

Now I know how to do it, it’s something I will try on my own barbecue.

Ahh! Life is just so darned good.

Tagged: Christmas 2020, Family

Posted in: Christianity, Personal