Christmastime is my favorite time of the year but I am not so much a fan of the cold and the darkness. Regardless, I love all that Christmas is supposed to be about along with some of the trappings of the pop culture effect on Christmas. Growing up, much of the Christmas time celebration with family didn’t take place until just after December 25th. I enjoyed the old-world twelve days of Christmas style of celebrating Christmas time. Starting December 1st we would celebrate Advent but would generally put the tree up on or near Christmas Eve. The First day of Christmas was understood as December 25th and we would keep our tree up through at least to Epiphany. Today, it seems like Christmas starts November 1st, if department stores merchandising has anything to say about it. I realize that this early debut of Christmas irritates many but I don’t mind at all. For me, when I stop passing out Halloween candy at 8pm, I turn on the Christmas music and begin that transition. It is what makes the cold, dark days of the winter so much more bearable.
There are some downsides to this time of year, the elevated levels of hustle and bustle which makes it easy in which to get lost in the chaos. Keeping everything straight and on the right course is a continual challenge. This is where Linux makes the holiday season much better, more efficient. It is kind of like a life-hack that makes doing more possible. Beyond the obvious like tracking everything in a calendar, there are other tools Linux makes easily available. Life gets real busy this time of year, and without the right tools it is real easy forego the activities for which you look most forward, the things you enjoy, like put up Christmas lights.
Every year, I make it a point to add to my Christmas movie collection. You can’t have Christmas without the seasonally appropriate movies. I’ll pick up a DVD or two and use Handbrake to create a digital copy and use VLC to play them back throughout the Christmas season.
Another great thing about Christmastime is the baked goods. There are a number of things I like to bake, cookies, pies, pumpkin rolls… I do it as often as I can for school, church and family functions. Keeping it all straight and accessible is easy, thanks to software like Gnome-Recipes.
Sure, you can use books, papers and sticky notes to save your recipes but utilizing technology makes it so much more efficient. Thanks to the power and efficiency of openSUSE Linux, I am able to keep my recipes at the ready on my Kitchen Command Center.
I am not a fan of the cold, but I do enjoy Christmastime very much. The dark and cold of Southwestern Michigan is much more bearable when you have a joys of family, delicious food and the lights of Christmastime. All the more reason to extend the season to the right and left of December 25th.
The way I see it, today is the first day of the twelve days of Christmas, but maybe the next eleven days think about some way you can spread some Christmas kindness to the people around you. Just because the presents have been exchanged and the terrestrial radio stations stopped playing the Christmas classics doesn’t mean the season is over. There is nothing stopping you from giving the gift of Linux… The hustle of the season is over, take a little time to genuinely share some Christmas kindness with those around you.
Further Reading
https://software.opensuse.org/package/handbrake
Gnome Recipes on openSUSE Tumbleweed
openSUSE Tumbleweed on Dell Inspiron 20 3048 All-In-One Desktop
