Dozens of Christmas trees in Arlington, Wash., not only were recycled, they became a meal for goats to munch on.
KING-TV in Seattle says the trees were taken to the New Moon Farm Goat Rescue and Sanctuary, where the evergreens were fed to about 38 goats.
Sanctuary owner Ellen Felsenthal says people like the idea of turning trees into goat food. She says she’s looking for good families to adopt the rescued goats.
A British department store has worked out a formula it says will make sure festive feasters are never again left holding the short end of a pulled cracker.
“Success is mainly down to the angle, grip, cracker size and ‘lines of failure’ or where the cracker is likely to tear,” said Debenhams.
When pulled, a cracker will always rip at a weak point connecting the reinforced barrel section to the tails, the store added.
By pulling backwards and down at the same time, it is possible to concentrate the force across the top face of the opponent’s line of likely failure.
The cracker should be gripped about an inch from the end of the tail closest to the barrel. The tail should be kept in line with the barrel as it is pulled backwards and downwards, with an even force.
For the serious puller, the store has worked out a mathematical formula: O = 11xC/L + 5xQ, where O is the optimum downward angle for pulling the cracker.
C stands for the circumference of the barrel, L is the barrel’s length and Q is the quality of the cracker — pricier versions are often made from stronger material which will increase the optimum angle of pull.
Q has a value of one, two or three depending on whether the cracker is cheap, standard or expensive.
Debenhams said the formula should produce a two-digit figure between 20 and 55 degrees, which is the optimum pulling angle below the horizontal.
“Don’t worry, it’s less complicated than it looks,” it adds.
How many unwanted gifts did you get under the Christmas tree?
If you’re Australian, the number is likely to be more than one, amounting to a nationwide total of 20 million “useless” presents, according to a survey.
The survey, commissioned by online marketplace eBay, found that although Australians spent A$8.5 billion ($7.5 billion) buying gifts this Christmas, at least A$1 billion worth of these presents will either be left to gather dust in a cupboard, binned, regifted, exchanged or sold.
Examples of unwanted gifts ranged from underwear, ugly sweaters, socks, bath products and inappropriately sexual items to a tandoori spice rub for chicken given to a vegetarian and a dog bowl for a dogless recipient, a brick and cellulite cream, an eBay statement said.
The eBay survey of more than 1,200 people also found that more women than men received unwanted gifts this year, while youth aged between 18 and 24 years got the most unwanted presents, which they were likely to throw out or hide away.
An earlier survey showed that more than 825,000 gifts will go straight into the garbage bin in Australia this Christmas because their recipients just hated them.
With Australia’s economy still battling to shake off the effects of the global financial crisis, more than a third of Australians had planned to spend less on Christmas gifts this year, compared with the previous year, according to a recent survey by the Melbourne Institute and Westpac Bank.
Authorities say they confiscated a teddy bear at a Southern California toy store that was stuffed with marijuana.
The owner of Toy Town said Monday that he got the package last week, opened it up and found a 2-foot-tall blue teddy bear that felt “hard and crinkly.” The bear turned out to be stuffed with three large, vacuum-sealed packages of marijuana.
Owner Joshua Vecchione says he called Orange County sheriff’s officials.
The package was addressed to someone in Colorado and mailed from Thousand Oaks with the toy store, in Ladera Ranch, as the return address.
A suburban Philadelphia teenager was suspended for a day for wearing a Santa Claus suit to school.
Michael Hance says he told his principal that he planned to wear the suit to Strath Haven High School in Wallingford and hand out candy canes. The 18-year-old senior says the principal told him that wasn’t a good idea because it would be a distraction. But he wore the suit anyway, with regular clothes underneath.
Hance got nabbed a few minutes after he walked into his first class on Tuesday. The school district says in a statement that Hance was suspended for the day for “defiance of authority.”
Hance says the school could have just given him a detention.
A living nativity scene in near the Colorado ski resort of Vail almost had to go without two crucial actors when two donkeys escaped.
The nativity scene is an annual tradition for Eagle River Presbyterian Church in the Vail Valley. Pastor Rob Wilson says two borrowed donkeys were being held in a fenced-in pen for the event Wednesday night, but the animals pushed their way through it.
A church member who stopped by the church Wednesday morning noticed the donkeys were gone. He and a sheriff’s deputy followed footprints in the snow and eventually caught up with them.
The donkeys had wandered near some railroad tracks but were OK.
A nativity scene featuring a dark-skinned Jesus, Mary and Joseph that has gone on display in a Verona, Italy courthouse has created heated debate in a city with strong links to the anti-immigration Northern League party.
The nativity’s appearance coincides with the League’s controversial operation “White Christmas,” a two-month sweep ending on Christmas Day to ferret out foreigners without proper permits in Coccaglio, a small League-led town east of Milan.
The Christmas scene — featuring a dark-skinned baby Jesus dressed in a red shirt and lying in a manger — was the idea of Mario Giulio Schinaia, the chief Public Prosecutor in Verona.
“History teaches us that baby Jesus and his parents were very probably dark-skinned,” Schinaia told Reuters. “This nativity belongs to a universal Christmas tradition that brings together the whole of Christianity in celebration.”
The nativity has caused heated reactions in the rich northern town, where resentment toward foreigners has spread as the number of immigrants, particularly from north Africa and eastern Europe, continues to rise.
“It is a useless act of provocation, just like the suggestion not to have a nativity scene at all, in order not to offend Muslims,” Northern League farm minister Luca Zaia told one paper, referring to proposals in recent years that town halls and stores should no longer sponsor Christmas scenes.
“Magistrates have other problems to deal with: I hope they spend as much time thinking about lawsuits and trials,” he said.
The Northern League, an ally of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi with key cabinet posts including the interior ministry, has used its growing political clout to secure tough new laws including making illegal immigration a crime.
League proposals have ranged from separate buses and trains for immigrants to banning new mosques and forbidding the serving of Chinese food and kebabs in towns under its control.
Schinaia defended his black nativity scene, saying it was not intended to be polemical but to encourage debate.
“There shouldn’t be a white or black Christmas, only a merry Christmas for everyone, of every skin color, ethnic background and nationality.”
A church billboard showing an apparently naked Virgin Mary and Joseph in bed together has sparked the ire of conservative Christians in New Zealand.
On the poster a sad-looking Joseph lies next to Mary, whose face is turned heavenwards under the words: “Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow.”
The billboard was erected outside the progressive St Matthew-in-the-City Anglican church in Auckland on Thursday.
St Matthews’ vicar, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy, said the billboard was meant to challenge stereotypes about the way Jesus was conceived.
In the bible, the Virgin Mary becomes pregnant after an angel appears to her and tells her she will give birth to the son of God.
Cardy said the billboard was meant to challenge literal interpretations of the Bible.
“It is intended to challenge stereotypes about the way that Jesus was conceived and get people talking about the Christmas story,” he said.
Conservative Christians have criticised the billboard as offensive.
Auckland Catholic Diocese spokeswoman Lyndsay Freer said the poster was disrespectful to the church.
“Our Christian tradition of 2,000 years is that Mary remains a virgin and that Jesus is the son of God, not Joseph,” Freer told the New Zealand Herald.
“Such a poster is inappropriate and disrespectful.”
One protester was so incensed, just hours after the unveiling of the poster, he climbed on top of his car and covered the images of Joseph and Mary with brown paint.
US Santas want swine flu vaccine so that sneezing children don’t give them an unwelcome present this Christmas.
Ernest Berger, head of “Santa America,” told NPR radio that the organization’s 200 volunteer Father Christmases want to be given the same priority as school teachers and health care workers for getting the H1N1 vaccine.
The website of “Santa America,” which visits sick and traumatized children in the Christmas season, instructs the men in red to take no chances.
“As wonderful as it is, be cautious of children burying their faces in your beard for a hug. If this happens, use sanitizer in your beard,” the website advises.
“Avoid touching your face, nose, eyes, or mouth. Do not touch children?s faces. If you do, immediately sanitize your hands,” the site urges.
“Santa should be taking needed vitamins and other doctor approved boosters to keep his immune system at peak performance.”
