It was a dark night

Oh, my god, they partitioned Ireland!

@gparted OMG, they Kilkenny?

Well, that only shows how many people in GB work in retail.
For those, christmas IS a horror story.

Let's tell British creepy Christmas stories.

Same procedure as last year?

Same procedure as every year, James!

VERY OLD JOKE:

Why do programmers always get Halloween and Christmas confused?

Because Dec 25=Oct 31!

Anyway, Happy Winter Solstice, everyone.

@Dan

There are 10 kinds of people. Those who get that joke and those who don't.

@Ernest There are 10 kinds of people. Those who get the joke, those who don't, and those who don't know about ternary.

@rlb There are 10 kinds of people. Those who get the joke, those who don't get the joke, those who don't know when to stop telling the joke, and those who don't know about quaternary.

@Dan That should be "Why do very old programmers..."

Last time I programmed in Octal was 1973.

@Dan

Must admit it took me a couple of seconds to get that. Used to do different bases at school and of course old enough to remember imperial weights and measures and the old lsd rather than decimal currency so you really had to be familiar with different bases. Not sure I ever programmed in octal but definitely used hex in the 80's when I started my career as a programmer, although a long time since I did that.

@Dan We neet to make November 27th International Programmers' Day.

@rlb
Why? We already have Ada Lovelace Day.

This might explain why Gremlins is my favourite Xmas movie!

Well, Germany has a number of tales to scare the crap out of kids, even if it's not Christmas time.

@comrade_Comrade A long time ago, before the dawning of YouTube...that was indeed the case. Nowadays the only way to scare kids is by tossing their iPhones into the grinder.

This explains all the weird Christmas episodes of Doctor Who.

It was Christmas time in Scandinavia. Harald woke up to find himself standing outside in the cold, at a funeral procession. The moon shone through the snowy trees, shining a beam of light onto the casket. Harald heard ominous music playing in the background as he walked towards the casket. Finally, he arrived. He opened the casket, and saw himself inside.

Not the story we deserved but the story we wanted?

America doesn't have that tradition, so please explain to me WHY THE EFF Die Hard is considered a Christmas movie!?

@Zealian Because it depicts freedom at its finest level..?

@Zealian

It's a story about a man trying to reunite with his family in time for the holidays.

But really, saying it's a Christmas movie is really a more polite way of saying "ugh, look, rather than watch some awful holiday special about the 'spirit of giving' that's so terrible they would never dare show them any other time of year, can we please just watch something decent?"

@Zealian It's a fairly recent thing to consider any movie that takes place at Christmas to be "a Christmas movie", and some people just want to be contrary to the sentimentality they grew up with. So, along with Die Hard, Batman Returns and Lethal Weapon are high on contemporary lists of favorite Christmas movies. *Dawot?* There are also a whole bunch of Christmas-themed horror movies, with killer elves, ax-wielding Santas, and that sort of thing, which has been playing frequently this week on the awful-movie TV channel. I think a lot of that attitude is from people my age wanting to get away from the Fifties values that most conventional Christmas movies express.

@Zealian It's set at christmas, that's a good enough excuse to watch a decent film rather than the awful "real" christmas films that get trotted out or remade

@Zealian Because it has a Santa hat, a winter setting, lots of guns and a good shootout and explosion here and there? I can't imagine Americans celebrating anything without guns and shootings. I'm still waiting for Michael Bay to make the Americanest Christmas movie ever. ;)