While many people in Maine cook their beans in a ceramic bean pot, the most unique cooking process for beans in Maine developed in the Maine logging camps. Pork and beans, baked in a bean hole, remains the logger’s main dish. The slow, long cooking makes the bean very digestible as well as tender and delicious. In the logging camps, beans were served at every meal. The bean hole is a stone-lined pit in which a fire is built until a good bed of coals forms. A cast iron bean pot (holds about eleven pounds of dried beans) is lowered into the pit, covered over with dirt and allowed to cook, usually overnight.

Once again I feel blessed to have created the internet’s most cherished War-On-Christmas eve tradition: sitting in a giant kiddie pool eating beans while swapping conspiracy theories (but only the ones deemed true by my researchers over at BillyFact) with everybody on earth plus the microbes on Mars.

Whether you’re a regular participant or a newcomer, we invite you to join us below and bear witness as the holiday mirth oozes forth spontaneously like boogers of freedom conga-lining through the nasal passages of destiny. I’ll be staggering around, dispensing rum balls and counting the silverware.

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Scheduling Note: No C&J on Monday. Regular C&Js return next Tuesday through Thursday. Thank you all so much for successfully invading and conquering Christmas again on behalf of the hippies and socialists and caravans and, of course, the deep state. It was a splendid little war, and you’ll all be receiving an extra candy cane pin for your epaulets in the mail. With Louis DeJoy still in charge that means they’ll arrive sometime around 2047.  —Mgt.

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By the Numbers:

Days ’til 2022: 8

Speed at which Santa, vaccinated personally by Dr. Anthony Fauci, will travel tonight, according to the internet: 5,083,000 mph

Approximate number of Xmas trees planted for every one cut: 3

Percent of people who say they wrap their gifts a day or two before Xmas: 27%

Height of the Rudolph figure used in the stop-motion animated TV Xmas classic, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: 4 inches

Shelf life of a store-bought Xmas fruitcake, if it’s refrigerated, according to CNN: 3 years

Percent chance that I’ve pissed off Franklin Graham and Tony Perkins by writing “Xmas” four times in a row just now: 92.6%

Age of Kwanzaa, which was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga in 1966 to celebrate family, culture and heritage, and is modeled after the first harvest celebrations in Africa: 55

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Before We Go Any Further…

I cede this space to Kossack DuzT, whose 2013 post is now an annual tradition:

Economic forces dictate that there can never be a day where everything shuts down, where everything gets put on hold and people just get to enjoy time with their families. […]

So, if you’re working Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Eve, New Years Day; remember there’s a shitload of us out here doing the same thing.  Someone has to.

I feel you my sisters and brothers.

And to those of you able to enjoy the holidays with family, please take just a moment to think of us.

We are out here to facilitate your lifestyles. We are out here making sure everything works the way you expect. We are out here so you don’t have to be.

And thank you for that.

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Your Holiday Molly Ivins Moment:

And a Merry Christmas to all, including people who have white Christmas trees decorated entirely with purple balls. Merry Christmas to the Red states and the Blue states, to the R’s and D’s, and to all the troops stationed in Afghanistan, including the French troops there—Mais oui, Chwistmas, y’all.

Merry Christmas to all the people who had to eat bugs on reality shows this year and to all the professional athletes who have not gotten into duke-outs (lumps of coal to the rest of you jocks). Merry Christmas to the homeless and the people in the shelters, and especially to those who are feeding the people in the shelters. Season’s Best to all the cops who collected for Blue Santa this year, and a Tiny Tim Salute to all the prisoners, including Martha Stewart. Her cell-wing lost the prison’s Christmas decorating contest this year—when it rains …

Feliz Navidad to all our immigrants, legal and otherwise—may La Migra be far away and tamales close at hand. By the way, there are some new legal rights groups that will go after the scum who hire you and then refuse to pay you.  Joyeux Noel to all our friends in Canada, and please overlook the pifflebrains who keep insulting you. …

And here’s to all the rest of us, imperfect though we are. One thing I have learned over the years is that you should go ahead and eat the fudge, because the diet starts next year. And to all, a good night.

—December, 2004

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It’s a Christmas miracle!!!

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Puppy Pic of the Day:

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Christmas Day Forecast

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And one more important matter to tidy up:

Happy Birthday, Dr. Fauci!

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Okay, pass the beans and let’s get tootin’. Against my better judgment I’ll light a fire…

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