Here we are again at the holidays and our Society is busy with celebrations! We have Thanksgiving, followed closely by St. Andrew’s Day, which leads into our Christmas Pot Luck, followed by our own Christmas and New Year’s chaos. Then we have a January meeting on the 12th 2012 and Robert Burns Night on the 28th. If that doesn’t make your head spin—it surely does mine.

I am excited about getting to see you all at any or all of these special occasions. I do hope that your own Christmas and New Year celebrations are both happy and healthy. Try to make it out to our social affairs and greet your friends in person and share some hugs. St. Andrew’s Day is November 30th, a Wednesday and it starts at 5:30pm with a NO HOST bar, followed by some snack foods and includes some music and surprises. Our committee co-chairs for this fun evening are Jesse Lopez and Teresa Potts, so come out and get to know them. They also are Area Chairs at the Games. We will have the pleasure of hearing the choral group CELTICA at the Pot Luck on December 8. Then on January 28th, we will celebrate Robert Burn’s birthday with lots of traditional offerings—from food to the poems and music, with a few new surprises added to the program. This event will be at the Fiesta Inn, 2100 S. Priest Drive, Tempe, AZ. We have also asked them to hold a small block of rooms for us and they have agreed to a special price of $119.00 plus tax. The cost of the dinner will be $50 per person, and I am happy to tell you that we have been to this location before and we have the same chef in place and he is so very gracious about preparing the Haggis—he likes it: Surely he is one of us, eh?

Make your plans and mark your calendars now. Book a room if you have far to travel, as I do myself.

Warmest wishes to each of you Scots, as we close out 2011 and welcome 2012 ~ until then,

Jean Latimer, President

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Robert Burns Dinner

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Once again we will be celebrating Robert Burns at our annual dinner in his honor. This year’s dinner will be held on Saturday, January 28, 2012 at the Fiesta Inn located at 2100 S. Priest Drive, Tempe, AZ. Tickets are 50. per person. You can purchase advance tickets here. Join us for an evening of fun, food, music and a few surprises.

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Ed Miller Concerts

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The Irish Cultural Center, located at 1106 N. Central Ave, Phoenix will be presenting Cherish the Ladies in concert on Friday, December 16 at 7pm. Tickets are $25. Only 200 tickets will be sold for this event so order your tickets early by contacting the ICC at 602-258-0108.

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Hogmanay More Important Than Christmas in Scotland

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Until recently Christmas in Scotland was celebrated very quietly as a religious day or not celebrated at all. Many are not aware that Christmas celebrations were banned for nearly 400 years either by the Church or Government. Under Oliver Cromwell, Parliament banned Christmas celebrations in 1647. The ban was lifted after Cromwell’s downfall in 1660. But in Scotland, the stricter Scottish Presbyterian Church has been discouraging Christmas celebrations from as early as 1583. After the Cromwellian ban was lifted elsewhere, Christmas festivities continued to be discouraged in Scotland. In fact, Christmas remained a normal working day in Scotland until 1958.

The Scots made up for the lack of Christmas festivities with the celebration of the New Year—Hogmanay. As Christmas celebrations are winding down elsewhere, parties in Scotland are just getting underway. Hogmanay—a four to five day event including parties, street festival (including fire festivals that are Viking in origin) are starting.

The impulse to party, and to put the products of Scotland’s famous distilleries to good use, could not be repressed. In effect, Hogmanay became Scotland’s main outlet for the mid-winter impulse to chase away the darkness with light, warmth and festivities—just as their Druid ancestors did.

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A Story of Christmas
By Bill Vaughan

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No one is certain when Bill Vaughan’s “A Story of Christmas” first appeared in the Kansas City Star but it has become one of the most cherished stories in the newspaper’s archives. The Star began to reprint it as early as 1959. Vaughan was the longtime resident humorist at the paper. He wrote the Starbeams column for more than 30 years as well as witty essays. At the time of his death in 1977 Vaughan was associate editor of The Star.

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“Tell me a story of Christmas,” she said. The television mumbled faint inanities in the next room. From a few houses down the block came the sound of car doors slamming and guests being greeted with large cordiality.

Her father thought awhile. His mind went back over the interminable parade of Christmas books he had read at the bedside of his children. “Well,” he started, tentatively, “Once upon a time, it was the week before Christmas, and all the little elves at the North Pole were sad.”

“I’m tired of elves,” she whispered. And he could tell she was tired, maybe almost as weary as he was himself after the last few feverish days.

“OK,” he said. “There was once, in a city not very far from here, the cutest wriggly little puppy you ever saw. The snow was falling, and this little puppy didn’t have a home. As he walked along the streets, he saw a house that looked quite a bit like our house. And at the window…”

“Was a little girl who looked quite a bit like me,” she said with a sigh. “I’m tired of puppies. I love my Pinky, of course. I mean puppy stories.”

“OK,” he said. “No puppies. This narrows the field. But I’ll think of something. Oh, sure. There was a forest, way up in the North, farther even than where Uncle Ed lives. And all the trees were talking about how each one was going to be the grandest Christmas tree of all. One said: ‘Christmas Tree? You? Who would want you?’

“No trees, Daddy,” she said. “We have a tree at school and at Sunday School and at the super market and a little one in my room. I am very tired of trees.”

“You are very spoiled,” he said.

“Hmmm,” she replied. “Tell me a Christmas story.”

“Let’s see. All the reindeer up at the North Pole were looking forward to pulling Santa’s sleigh. All but one, and he felt sad because…” he began with a jolly ring to his voice but quickly realized that this wasn’t going to work either. His daughter didn’t say anything; she just looked at him reproachfully.

“Tired of reindeer, too?” he asked. “Frankly, so am I. How about Christmas on the farm when I was a little boy? Would you like to hear about how it was in the olden days, when my grandfather would heat up bricks and put them in the sleigh and we’d all go for a ride?”
“Yes, Daddy,” she said, obediently. “But not right now. Not tonight.”

He was silent, thinking. His repertoire, he was afraid was exhausted. She was quiet too. Maybe, he thought, I’m home free. Maybe she has gone to sleep.

“Daddy,” she murmured. “Tell me a story of Christmas.”

Then it was though he could read the words, so firmly were they in his memory. Still holding her hand, he leaned back:

“And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed…”

Her hand tightened a bit in his, and he told her a story of Christmas.

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Moore

The name More can be associated with Clan Gordon and also Clan Leslie. It would be natural to find the name with more than one clan since it is a general description that fit a variety of individuals within the “Gaeltacht”. Notice the spelling More, not Moore. Moore is one of those Scottish names that has two sources of origins and can be spelled in a variety of ways so that it is not always possible to determine the exact source for any particular family that bears the name.

In a Highland setting, the most likely origin of the name is derived from Gaelic. Mor, (or Mhor) depending on the grammar and sentence structure used as an appellation is a descriptive term for large, older, or senior and when anglicized is often spelled Moor, Moore, More and sometimes Moir.

In the Lowlands, where the majority of names are under the influence of Scots Inglis, the name had its origins in generic place names descriptive of a moor or heath. It has become entrenched in Scottish nomenclature as Muir and from it stemmed Moor, More, Moore and Moir.

The chief of the name were the Mures of Rowalian in Ayrshire. The oldest documentation of the name was one Thomas Delamore {Thomas of the moor) in 1291 who served as executor for the mother of King John Balliol. The famous naturalist John Muir who, born in Dunbar in 1838, was a pioneer in forest conservation and was instrumental in getting Yosemite made a National Park in the United States.

The name is also very strong in Ireland. In county Leix just west of Dublin, there was a clan by the name of O’More, a name derived from the Gaelic for descendants of the large or senior as described above.

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The Caledonian Society of Arizona
General Meeting Minutes

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