Darkest Christmas: December 1942 and a world at war

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Poor UX of Electronic Patient Records is often cited as a major cause of burn out in the USA but not something we often talk about here, and yet last year’ s national usability survey commissioned by NHSX (R.I.P.) revealed the NHS to have some of the worst IT UX in the civilised world and it is causing burn out.

Christmas Songs That Are Darker Than You Realized Classic Christmas Songs That Are Darker Than You Realized

Gryla is a giant ogre who lives in a cave. During Christmas she emerges to hunt for children, which she kidnaps, takes to her cave, and cooks in a vat of stew. Now this Christmas, I know thousands of NHS staff are feeling burnt out. Record numbers are leaving. 12 years of Tory government has left the NHS where they generally leave it, where it was for me in ‘86. Gryla has a variety of companions, including the Yule Lads – her 13 unruly troll children/ Large Adult Sons – and the Jólakötturinn, or Yule Cat. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" has been covered by everyone from Amy Grant to Barry Manilow, but it was originally written for the 1944 movie Meet Me in Saint Louis and sung by Judy Garland. Hugh Martin was given the task of creating a song that could show the family's sadness over celebrating the last Christmas in a home they were soon moving from. With lyrics like "Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last," Martin did such a good job of writing a melancholy tune that Garland complained it was too depressing.

It could be worse, I could be an NHS Equality and Diversity manager appointed to ensure compliance with equal pay, gender pay gap, social mobility and ethnic diversity targets invented by central government who awoke this week to find cabinet ministers using me as a right-wing meme for what is wrong with the NHS ignoring the fact that my role is a symptom of their over-regulation of the NHS after 12 years of their control. Genuine monsters from the fires of Hell would probably have caused less destruction. These 'Krampus Runs' continue today and are a little more organised but still terrifying to witness. For years, people have dressed up as Santa to delight little children around Christmas time, but SantaCon has somewhat tainted the tradition. An infamous pub crawl that started in New York City and has now spread to many other cities, and not only does having hundreds of people dress up as Santa spoil the illusion for the kids that witness the event, but their drunken antics cause damage and public nuisance every year. This is book which will resonate with every reader. Its ability to capture and articulate the human dimension of war is powerful. Traveling through the numerous World War II offerings is certainly difficult for a potential reader. However, the uniqueness and quality of Darkest Christmas make this one you want to stop for." Military Review What did I say above? Thanks for the supporting comment. I have had a couple of takers for my offer of process templates (layman style to show the principles not real life health processes.

Christmas Horror Movies Ranked by Tomatometer | Rotten 40 Christmas Horror Movies Ranked by Tomatometer | Rotten

Beneath some of the great Christmas classics runs a current of darker, older beliefs underlying the cosy festivities I understand how hard it is for NHS staff this Christmas. We have 3 kids and 2 of them are junior doctors on the front line. Their workloads are overwhelming, and I can see them developing the character-armour and detachment from people required to survive. An annual tradition, this year’s Joe McDonald Christmas column looks at Christmas past, present and future with regards to digital health and NHS IT and the issues and pressures facing the NHS. His telling of the Yule Lads became the 'official' version and his playful but macabre poem on the Christmas Cat captured the ferocity of the beast and the terror it inspired. In 1987 Björk did her own version of the poem, in one of her earliest solo recordings. Chief among Santa's entourage of shady characters is Krampus, a demon with massive horns whose main job is to drag naughty children to Hell. Apparently, Santa doesn't really want to know if you've been naughty, so a few weeks before Christmas, he sends Krampus around to weed out the bad children.

Do You Hear What I Hear?" has been covered by many artists, including Carrie Underwood and Whitney Houston. The lyrics describea lamb pointing out a star to a shepherd boy, who then tells the king to bring silver and gold to a special child. It sounds like a sweet, not overly religious tune,and thank to the repeating verses, it's a classic holiday selection for choirs. You've heard Bing Crosby declare it, "he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake." No wonder yourchild can't sleep, an omnipresent old man with a beard is lurking somewhere around their house or bedroom. The Dark is Rising is a disturbing book, in a way that children’s stories rarely are now. At the beginning, Cooper describes Will’s fear of the dark in a way that makes the hairs stand up on your arms; she draws out echoes of the old powers of the English landscape – now hostile, now beguiling – in a way that recalls the Gawain poet. However, a few centuries ago Norway celebrated Lucia (or Lussi) in a very different form. For the night before 13 December – Lussi’s Night - was the night when evil spirits and demons rose up to wander the Earth. Children needed to be good and the adults warded off evil by protecting their homes with the sign of the cross. What were the gleefully blasphemous British anarcho-punks Crass (who also brought us Christ—The Album) doing making a Christmas record? Having a laugh, as usual. “Merry Crassmas” is a chirpy instrumental medley of holiday favorites: “Jingle Bells,”“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,”“Nagasaki Nightmare,”“Punk Is Dead”…most of Crass’ early repertoire, in fact, gets the twinkly Casio treatment between snatches of Christmas carols. The record’s sleeve offered a competition to identify all the Crass songs included herein: “First prize, bath salts. Second prize, one Exploited single. Third prize, two Exploited singles.” D.W.

Top 5 Darkest Christmas Songs - Holidappy Top 5 Darkest Christmas Songs - Holidappy

Since Berlin was Jewish, he didn't really celebrate the holiday.But he had developed a yearly tradition of visiting his son's grave; the child had passed away on Christmas Day when he was three weeks old. The melancholy Berlin associated with Christmas certainly came through in the song, and it became a hit after resonating with sentimental listeners during World War II. Nativity scenes seem like a pretty standard Christmas tradition, but in Catalonia they’re a little… different. Specifically, they feature a character called a caganer. There’s no good way to say this: caganer means “defecator,” and in the scenes they’re squatting, with their pants down, with a pile of poop on the ground beneath them. Seriously. The Trusts involved had gone into great detail over technical functional requirements but there was no clinical context to provide a framework for change management – just reams of Word documents describing Standard Operational Procedures. Hans Trapp was said to be a rich, cruel man who lived in the Alsace region of France. He worshipped the devil and would do anything to become more rich and powerful. He was eventually excommunicated and had to live in the forest. He became a cannibal and would go out on Christmas dressed as a scarecrow, trying to kidnap and eat bad children. To this day, children in Alsace and Lorraine still fear him. This book is of interest to any scholar of World War II, particularly those focused on bridging culture and war. Highly readable, this text is suitable for undergraduate and popular audiences as well. Many should find its analysis to be a refreshing take on the well-trodden field of World War II histories." — Journal of Military HistoryWhen a large tomb is discovered by a research team in Lapland, the investigators and locals discover the tomb of "Santa Claus" and soon discover he's not as jolly as they'd like to believe. Twisted barely scratches the surface of the horrifying truth the cast discovers upon finding the truth about Santa. John Masefield’s 1935 novel The Box of Delights perfectly captures this tension between the civilised rituals of Christmas and the wilder, pagan forces beneath that threaten to overturn it, like the Green Knight bursting into King Arthur’s Christmas feast. The central plot revolves around the wizard Abner Brown attempting to prevent the thousandth Christmas service at Tatchester cathedral; clergymen and bishops are kidnapped, and representatives of the church shown as helpless against a more potent, ancient magic. In his sixth book, best-selling author Peter Harmsen provides a profound account of human resilience at Christmastime in December 1942, in the midst of World War II. An artful storyteller with a sharp eye for revealing details, Harmsen takes us on a wide-reaching holiday tour that spans continents and embeds intimate, personal experience in the context of broader wartime developments … In eminently readable prose, and amply illustrated with contemporary images, Darkest Christmas offers new insights into the history of World War II and one of the world’s most popular and important holidays alike ." Joe Perry

Dark Christmas Movies to Watch Over the Holidays | Time

There’s a reason the NHS invested in Microsoft office. It works. Even if you’re not an excel whizz, & you only scratch the surface of pivot tables, someone who is can send you their work, and you can open it, and embed it in Word, forward it via Outlook and discuss over Teams. Christmas 1986, the snow fell silently in the ambulance reception area of the Ingham Infirmary, South Shields. I was half an hour in from the end of my day shift when the Ambulance Service hotline rang and we were told to expect a road traffic accident (RTA). When I was in 4th grade, we wrote letters to kids in the hospital, I wrote, “It is a bumpy road but soon it will be a straight path”. Perchta would let you be as long as you followed her rituals on Perchta’s night, such as eating a traditional meal and special cakes baked in her honour.Sometimes she appeared as a mischievous, dishevelled old woman. Alternatively, her appearance could depend on how you perceived her and whether you had pleased her. Lynne Ramsay’s tale of a shiftless young woman named Morvern Callar (Samantha Morton) begins with her lying next to her boyfriend’s dead body in the glow of a small Christmas tree. His name is the same as the lead character in Ramsay’s 1999 drama Ratcatcher, set in Glasgow in the mid-1970s, and his suicide hints at a sad sequel to that harrowing film. Yet Morvern finds a way to seize pleasure and adventure in the midst of tragedy. The visuals and soundscapes of this film are hypnotic and haunting.