St. John presents: "The Long Version"

Join me for a 2024 republishing of a 2012 college class project essay about the 1989 Christmas that most likely remains the most meaningful, impactful, emotional, and special Christmas of my life - shared again today on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the events contained therein! Today is also the 30th anniversary of our getting the Sega 32X as teenagers for Christmas 1994, and today was also my very first time ever celebrating Hanukkah.....so a pretty big day for me. Nevertheless, here's the story of 1989! Enjoy! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------...

Monday, December 16th, 2024: It was one year ago today that I received my DNA results, and learned to my "shocked delight" that I am a far more complex and nuanced pile of flesh than I had ever imagined...or ever dreamed! In addition to affirming all the European sub-variants that I've always known about, including pretty much all of greater Britain (including Irish, Scottish, and Welsh), Norwegian, Swedish, and small amounts of German and French, as well as revealing a few European sub-variants which I didn't previously know about, such as Dutch, Icelandic, Finnish, Spanish, and Portuguese, I learned that I possess really small amounts of West (i.e. Sub-Saharan) African, North (i.e. Saharan) African - including a little Coptic Egyptian, and the one that blew me away the most....Ashkenazi Jewish! To my tremendous delight, and even a little relief, it turns out that I am not simply "the box of assorted crackers" from the meme that I always thought I was, and...