Good Old Days

Next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children - last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."

Houses had thatched roofs - thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the dogs, cats and other small animals (mice, rats, and bugs) lived in the roof.

When it rained it became slippery, and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof, hence the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying "dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (the straw left over after threshing grain) on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they kept adding more and more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. To prevent this, a piece of wood was placed in the entrance way - hence a "thresh hold."

They cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been there for quite awhile, -- hence the rhyme, "peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old."

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man "could bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat."

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with a high acid content caused some of the lead to leach on to the food, causing lead poisoning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Most people did not have pewter plates, but had trenchers (a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl). Often trenchers were made from stale bread that was so old and hard that they could use them for quite some time. Trenchers were never washed and a lot of times worms and mold got into the wood and old bread. After eating off wormy, moldy trenchers, one would get "trench mouth."

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, "the upper crust."

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up hence, the custom of holding a "wake."

England is old and small and they started out running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a "bone-house" and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the "graveyard shift") to listen for the bell.

Thus, someone could be "saved by the bell" or was considered "a dead ringer." And that's the truth.

Who said that History is boring!?

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at www.God-101.com

The other shoe!!!!

With the ongoing controversy over remarks made by the Pope, some of the reasons for his observations are becoming more evident.

Barbara Amiel wrote an interesting article in Canada’s MacLean’s magazine over the weekend and I find her remarks are dead on target.

She talks about how Christianity is now a mild creed that was tamed over the last millennium by European Civilization, starting with two centuries of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, European enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

Unfortunately, while Christianity has reconciled itself with reason, Islam continues to be a Medieval system that hasn’t. To quote Ms. Amiel:

Christianity was displaced as a political force by the secular state. Exit the sword-wavers attempting to create Christian theocracies or massive conversions.

Today the Pope runs the Catholics and the Lutherans and Anglicans have their head honchos as well.

This is not the case with Islam where self-appointed - so called - clerics can set up shop at the local mosque and start to disseminate wisdom, both spiritual and secular, in any manner they choose.

Islam’s jihadists celebrate when their actions send shivers up the spines of the Western moral elite. As an example Berlin's opera performance of Idomeneo was cancelled last week because it was considered too great a security risk for depicting a scene showing the decapitated head of the Prophet Muhammad, along with the heads of Christ, Buddha and Poseidon.

(By the way, NO Christians, Buddhists or Greeks were making similar threats!)

The Pope dropped the first shoe in a message to Islam that there finally appears to be someone in Christendom who isn’t resigned to Christians being harassed, imprisoned, tortured and even executed in Islamic countries simply for their beliefs.

This Pope has his eye on the beleaguered part of his flock that is living under Islamofascism. No one else seems to care a whit about them!

The United Nations certainly doesn’t give a fig about Christians. (Now I would have said they don’t give a flying fuck, but these are gentle Barbara’s words and not mine!) It is too heavily influenced by third world countries and the Muslim vote.

Its special relationship with human rights groups in occupied Palestinian territories makes it a whiz at stoking up anti-Israel resolutions and their record on freedom of religion is even more dismal.

The list of anti-Christian societies is lengthy. Christians have had their homes attacked or are jailed in Muslim countries across the globe from Indonesia to northern Nigeria, but no General Assembly debates on the matter!

While it’s common knowledge that it’s dangerous to publicly practice Christianity or convert from Islam virtually anywhere in the Middle East except Israel, concerned Muslim intellectuals worry about Islam’s refusal to reconsider the Quran in light of modernity.

However, they are the moderates, and by definition at the movement’s centre, not the steering edge. Instead, direction comes from the far-out rudder.

The extremists steer the Muslim ship and will continue to do so until it rights itself, sinks, or is righted by outside forces!

The Pope has already met with Muslim representatives to attempt a dialogue. The sad part is that such language lessons usually go one way.

Islam is unlikely to learn to talk like the Pope, but the Pope may yet learn to talk like an Ayatollah.

When he does, the other shoe will no doubt fall!

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) at; www.God-101.com
And the petition to have people mind their own business instead of yours at; http://www.petitiononline.com/moses/petition.html