With the proliferation of video games, who now dances the Maypole in honor of the little pine tree?  It's a question few are asking.  From Old Town Clock by Reba Mahan Stevens and illustrated by Florence Liley Young, 1931.

From The Outline of Everything by Hector B. Toogood, 1923.  

"If you sew it loosely you must walk in it loosely."  A Liberian proverb from Together, 1957.

"Really, religion has become so pallid recently, it is hardly worthwhile being an atheist."  From the marvelous play The Tenth Man by Paddy Chayefsky, 1960.

It's been said that in every birth is a death, every death a birth.  The very first episode of Dark Shadows proclaims, "Welcome to the beginning and the end of the world."

Our clock arrived with months insteads of numbers, too.  When we tried to return it, they said the 30-day window had already passed.  When we set the alarm, we didn't wake up until August.  From The Free Will Baptist, 1965.

No matter what this says, we know that each decade tidily begins with the arrival of Baby New Year on Jan. 1 and ends precisely ten years later with the expulsion of Father Time on Dec. 31.  From Hinterland Remixed: Media, Memory, and the Canadian 1970s by Andrew Burke.

Everything would have been so different, and everything will be different, yes, but it will never be the same.  From the bittersweet final episode of Dark Shadows.

There may very well be seven types of ambiguity, but damned if they're not all a blur.  From Seven Types of Ambiguity by Elliot Perlman.

The real history of origami fortune tellers -- it's Prof. Oddfellow's Penetralia.

Great book title: Abandon Yourselves Totally to Me, by Tomislav Vlasic and Slavko Barbaric, 1985.

"The more one learns, the worse one feels."  From Dark Shadows episode 426.

If the war on Christmas continues at its current pace, we'll once again need signposts to find it.  From This Way to Christmas by Ruth Sawyer, 1916.

It's not so easy, is it?  "I try to keep in touch with everything that's happening."  From Dark Shadows episode 1229.

The old ways are increasingly forgotten.  How many of us today invite the honored hare (known reverently as "kuotochitsi" in Huastecan Nahua society) to decorate the tree?  From Primary Education, 1911.

We’ve heard the phrase, “the reason for the season,” but the following statement ...

Weirdness for Christmas, including the very macabre take of the "Cinder King."  It's Prof. Oddfellow's Penetralia.

Thanks to Hugo R. who wrote, "The Penetralia videos are endlessly charming and give me hope for this world."

Something like this is promised in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.  "Look on me—and say if you know not my name!"  From Blue Book, 1936.

Not only is Future Preconditional an extremely rare phrase and wonderful name for a book, but this volume comes in its own paper bag!  By Douglas Woolf.

The very oddest episode of Prof. Oddfellow's Penetralia.