'Twas the Night before Christmas' Poem

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"



http://www.sfgate.com/decade/ (look how much has happened in the last 10 years!!!)
Thieves steal infamous Auschwitz death camp sign December 18, 2009

Thieves on Friday stole the infamous Nazi German "Arbeit macht frei" sign from the entrance to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, police said, an act that sparked widespread outrage.

The sign, which means "Work Will Set You Free" in German, has become a symbol of the horror of the camp where about 1.1 million mainly Jewish prisoners died during World War II, most in the notorious gas chambers.

Police said the theft may have been ordered by a private collector or a group of individuals.

"A worldwide symbol of the cynicism of Hitler's executioners and the martyrdom of their victims has been stolen. This act deserves the strongest possible condemnation," Polish President Lech Kaczynski said in a statement.

His Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres expressed "the deepest shock of Israel's citizens and the Jewish community across the world".

"The sign holds deep historical meaning for both Jews and non-Jews alike as a symbol of the more than one million lives that perished at Auschwitz," Peres was quoted as saying by his office.

Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfelt told AFP that thieves carried out an expert operation to take the metal sign just before dawn on Friday.

"It's a profanation of the place where more than a million people were murdered. It's shameful," he said.

Camp survivors also decried the theft.

"In taking this historic symbol, the perpetrators wanted to destroy history and committed this perverse act in order to revive Nazism," said Raphael Esrail, 84, president of the Union of Auschwitz Deportees in France.

The five-metre (16-foot) long sign was forged by prisoners on the orders of the Nazis, who set up the camp after invading Poland in 1939. It was not hard to unhook from above the entrance gate "but you needed to know how," Mensfelt said.

A police dog team was tracking the thieves while detectives combed through video surveillance footage from the site and neighbouring areas, and other officers set up roadblocks.

Mensfelt said it was the first serious case of theft at Auschwitz, located on the outskirts of the southern town of Oswiecim, which was annexed and renamed by Germany during World War II. The site has been a Polish state-run museum and memorial since the war ended in 1945.

"All leads are being considered, but we are focusing on a theft ordered by a private collector or a group of individuals," Oswiecim police spokeswoman Malgorzata Jurecka told AFP.

Police offered a 5,000-zloty (1,200-euro/1,700-dollar) reward for information leading to the recovery of the sign or the arrest of the thieves.

Kaczynski urged the public to help. "It's our collective duty to return it to its rightful place from which it has been ripped by force," he said.

Meanwhile, museum staff placed a replica sign above the gate.

Nazi Germany initially created the camp for Polish resistance fighters in an army barracks in 1940.

Auschwitz was later expanded into a vast complex, after the Nazis razed the nearby village of Brzezinka -- Birkenau in German.

About 1.1 million people perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau -- one million of them Jews from Poland and the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe -- some from overwork, starvation and disease, but mostly in the gas chambers.

It was one of six death camps set up in Poland by the Germans, who murdered six million Jews during the war.

Some of the other death camps had the same sign, erected in a cynical ploy to maintain the illusion that they were labour camps.

Auschwitz-Birkenau's other victims included non-Jewish Poles, Soviet and other Allied prisoners of war, Roma and anti-Nazi resistance members from across Europe.

It was liberated by Soviet troops in January 1945.

The theft came a day after Germany donated 60 million euros (88 million US dollars) to a global fund to preserve the site.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum said the money represented half the total it needs to ensure the site's future as a permanent memorial to Nazi victims. About 4-5 million euros are needed each year to maintain it.