Christmas
12/25/2023
12/24/2023
"God in the doorway"
{My thoughts, not Annie Dillard's: Since it is customary to pretend, this time of year, to believe in peace, love, and goodwill towards all, I see nothing wrong with pretending briefly to believe in the myth of Christmas, the myth that, a long time ago in a land far away, a child was born whose very existence testified to the patently ridiculous notion that the Almighty Creator of the entire cosmos gave a tinker's damn for the human race. Let us praise God for sending that Child, let us sing hosannas to his name, and then let us resume hating and killing one another as usual.}
Annie Dillard, "God in the doorway":
one cold Christmas eve i was up unnaturally late because we had all gone out to dinner--my parents, my baby sister, and i. we had come home to a warm living room, and Christmas eve. our stockings dropped from the mantel; beside them, a special table bore a bottle of ginger ale and a plate of cookies.
i had taken off my fancy winter coat and was standing on the heat register to bake my shoe soles and warm my bare legs. there was a commotion at the front door; it opened, and the cold wind blew around my dress.
everyone was calling me. "look who's here! look who's here!" i looked. it was santa claus. whom i never--ever--wanted to meet. santa claus was looming in the doorway and looking around for me. my mother's voice was thrilled: "look who's here!" i ran upstairs.
like everyone in his right mind, i feared santa claus, thinking he was God. i was still thoughtless and brute, reactive. i knew right from wrong, but had barely tested the possibility of shaping my own behavior, and then only from fear, and not yet from love. santa claus was an old man whom you never saw, but who nevertheless saw you; he knew when you'd been bad or good. he knew when you'd been bad or good! and i had been bad.
my mother called and called, enthusiastic, pleading; i wouldn't come down. my father encouraged me; my sister howled. i wouldn't come down, but i could bend over the stairwell and see: santa claus stood in the doorway with night over his shoulder, letting in all the cold air of the sky; santa claus stood in the doorway monstrous and bright, powerless, ringing a loud bell and repeating merry Christmas, merry Christmas. i never came down. i don't know who ate the cookies.
for so many years now i have known that this santa claus was actually a rigged-up miss white, who lived across the street, that i confuse the dramatis personae in my mind, making of santa claus, God, and miss white an awesome, vulnerable trinity. this is really a story about miss white.
miss white was old; she lived alone in the big house across the street. she liked having me around; she plied me with cookies, taught me things about the world, and tried to interest me in finger painting, in which she herself took great pleasure. she would set up easels in her kitchen, tack enormous slick soaking papers to their frames, and paint undulating undersea scenes: horizontal smears of color sparked by occasional vertical streaks which were understood to be fixed kelp. i liked her. she meant no harm on earth, and yet half a year after her failed visit as santa claus, i ran from her again.
that day, a day of the following summer, miss white and i knelt in her yard while she showed me a magnifying glass. it was a large, strong hand lens. she lifted my hand and, holding it very still, focused a dab of sunshine on my palm. the glowing crescent wobbled, spread, and finally contracted to a point. it burned; i was burned; i ripped my hand away and ran home crying. miss white called after me, sorry, explaining, but i didn't look back.
even now i wonder: if i meet God, will He take and hold my bare hand in His, and focus His eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn?
but no. it is i who misunderstood everything and let everybody down. miss white, God, i am sorry i ran from You. i am still running, running from that knowledge, that eye, that love from which there is no refuge. for You meant only love, and love, and i felt only fear, and pain. so once in israel love came to us incarnate, and stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
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God in the doorway (tripod.com)
oblations: annie dillard | god in the doorway
12/23/2023
Da, Nikita, There Is a Ded Moroz!
{The following was retrieved from the Soviet archives after the Cold War. First published in 2020, it has become a Christmas classic, beloved by bourgeois and proletarian children alike. For the uninitiated, “Ded Moroz” is “Grandfather Frost,” a Russian version of Santa Claus.}
Dear Editor:
I am 8 years old. Some of my cellmates say there is no Ded Moroz. Papa says, ‘If you see it in Pravda, it must be so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Ded Moroz?
Sincerely,
Nikita Petrov Ulyanov Ivanov Karamazova
Inmate, Lubyanka Prison
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Dear Nikita:
Your cellmates are wrong and enemies of the State. They have been infected by bourgeois deviationism. They do not believe what the Party tells them; they want to see for themselves. This is a condition called “independent thinking” and it is often fatal. Your cellmates think that nothing can exist which is not comprehensible by their own little minds. All minds, Nikita, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little compared with the collective mind of the Party. In this great nation of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, insignificant in his intellect as compared with the Party’s collective intelligence which alone is capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Nikita, there is a Ded Moroz. He exists as certainly as purges and show trials and gulags exist! How dreary would be the world if there were no Ded Moroz. It would be as dreary as if there were no little Nikitas asking their impertinent questions. Without Ded Moroz, we should have no enjoyment except that of serving the Party. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished, along with kulaks, Jews, Okhrana informers, weak-kneed liberals, unrepentant monarchists, obstinate Christians, Menshevik revisionists, and all other enemies of the people. Am I making myself clear, little one?
Not believe in Ded Moroz! You might as well not believe in Baba Yaga! If you were to be released from prison, you might get your local commissar to order men to keep watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Ded Moroz, but even if they did not see him, what would that prove? They were probably blind drunk and would not have been able to tell Ded Moroz from Oblomov.
Nobody sees Ded Moroz, but that is no sign that there is no Ded Moroz. You cannot see your family anymore either, but that does not prove they have been executed or sent to Siberia. The most real things in the world are those that no one can see. We cannot see the iron laws of history, or the process of dialectical materialism, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the glorious future of world communism, but that does not mean they do not exist. Did you ever see polevoi dancing on the lawn? Perhaps you did, Nikita, because you are an imaginative child or because some disgraceful elder slipped you some vodka, but we will soon put a stop to that sort of thing. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there will be once we have eliminated the counterrevolutionary element.
Do you believe in magic, Nikita? You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but, as you know, that will only anger the baby who will then make an even greater noise and you will be punished and sent to Lubyanka Prison. Was that your intention, Nikita? Were you attempting to sabotage the revolution? Whatever possessed you to examine the baby’s rattle? If you wanted to know how the rattle worked, you should have asked the Party. Ah, Nikita, you must stop your foolishness before you wind up in the dustbin of history. We are on the threshold of a brave new world.
No Ded Moroz? He lives, thanks to Lenin's mercy, and he lives forever, may Stalin be praised; he lives, that is, if he is reliable and does what he is told. A thousand years from now, Nikita, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, Ded Moroz will continue to inhabit the minds of useless eaters like you and your cellmates, and they will all be dealt with, everyone.
Now get back to work.
(signed) The Editor
[Note to Lubyanka authorities: you are not to forward letters of this kind to us in the future. The Party has yet to take an official position on Ded Moroz, and we must not get ahead of ourselves.]
Little children adore Comrade Ilyich--or else.
12/22/2023
"Christ's Christmas Tree"
{"Humankind cannot bear much reality," wrote T.S. Eliot. This Christmas tale by Dostoyevsky is Russian to its core, i.e., unbearably grim and unbearably real.}
Fyodor Dostoevsky, “Christ’s Christmas Tree”:
I am a novelist, and I suppose I have made up this story. I write “I suppose,” though I know for a fact that I have made it up, but yet I keep fancying that it must have happened on Christmas Eve in some great town in a time of terrible frost.
I have a vision of a boy, a little boy, six years old or even younger. This boy woke up that morning in a cold damp cellar. He was dressed in a sort of little dressing-gown and was shivering with cold. There was a cloud of white steam from his breath, and sitting on a box in the corner, he blew the steam out of his mouth and amused himself in his dullness watching it float away. But he was terribly hungry. Several times that morning he went up to the plank bed where his sick mother was lying on a mattress as thin as a pancake, with some sort of bundle under her head for a pillow. How had she come here? She must have come with her boy from some other town and suddenly fallen ill. The landlady who let the “concerns” had been taken two days before to the police station, the lodgers were out and about as the holiday was so near, and the only one left had been lying for the last twenty-four hours dead drunk, not having waited for Christmas. In another corner of the room a wretched old woman of eighty, who had once been a children’s nurse but was now left to die friendless, was moaning and groaning with rheumatism, scolding and grumbling at the boy so that he was afraid to go near her corner. He had got a drink of water in the outer room, but could not find a crust anywhere, and had been on the point of waking his mother a dozen times. He felt frightened at last in the darkness: it had long been dusk, but no light was kindled. Touching his mother’s face, he was surprised that she did not move at all, and that she was as cold as the wall. “It is very cold here,” he thought. He stood a little, unconsciously letting his hands rest on the dead woman’s shoulders, then he breathed on his fingers to warm them, and then quietly fumbling for his cap on the bed, he went out of the cellar. He would have gone earlier, but he was afraid of the big dog which had been howling all day at the neighbor’s door at the top of the stairs. But the dog was not there now, and he went out into the street.
Mercy on us, what a town! He had never seen anything like it before. In the town from he had come, it was always such black darkness at night. There was one lamp for the whole street, the little, low-pitched, wooden houses were closed up with shutters, there was no one to be seen in the street after dusk, all the people shut themselves up in their houses, and there was nothing but the howling all night. But there it was so warm and he was given food, while here—oh, dear, if he only had something to eat! And what a noise and rattle here, what light and what people, horses and carriages, and what a frost! The frozen steam hung in clouds over the horses, over their warmly breathing mouths; their hoofs clanged against the stones through the powdery snow, and everyone pushed so, and—oh, dear, how he longed for some morsel to eat, and how wretched he suddenly felt. A policeman walked by and turned away to avoid seeing the boy.
There was another street—oh, what a wide one, here he would be run over for certain; how everyone was shouting, racing and driving along, and the light, the light! And what was this? A huge glass window, and through the window a tree reaching up to the ceiling; it was a fir tree, and on it were ever so many lights, gold papers and apples and little dolls and horses; and there were children clean and dressed in their best running about the room, laughing and playing and eating and drinking something. And then a little girl began dancing with one of the boys, what a pretty little girl! And he could hear the music through the window. The boy looked and wondered and laughed, though his toes were aching with the cold and his fingers were red and stiff so that it hurt him to move them. And all at once the boy remembered how his toes and fingers hurt him, and began crying, and ran on; and again through another window-pane he saw another Christmas tree, and on a table cakes of all sorts—almond cakes, red cakes and yellow cakes, and three grand young ladies were sitting there, and they gave the cakes to anyone who went up to them, and the door kept opening, lots of gentlemen and ladies went in from the street. The boy crept up, suddenly opened the door and went in. oh, how they shouted at him and waved him back! One lady went up to him hurriedly and slipped a kopeck into his hand, and with her own hands opened the door into the street for him! How frightened he was. And the kopeck rolled away and clinked upon the steps; he could not bend his red fingers to hold it right. The boy ran away and went on, where he did not know. He was ready to cry again but he was afraid and ran on and on and blew his fingers. And he was miserable because he felt suddenly so lonely and terrified, and all at once, mercy on us! What was this again? People were standing in a crowd admiring. Behind a glass window there were three little dolls, dressed in red and green dresses, and exactly, exactly as though they were alive. Once was a little old man sitting and playing a big violin, the two others were standing close by and playing little violins, and nodding in time, and looking at one another, and their lips moved, they were speaking, actually speaking, only one couldn’t hear through the glass. And at first the boy thought they were alive, and when he grasped that they were dolls he laughed. He had never seen such dolls before, and had no idea there were such dolls! All at once he fancied that someone caught at his smock behind: a wicked big boy was standing beside him and suddenly hit him on the head, snatched off his cap and tripped him up. The boy fell down on the ground, at once there was s shout, he was numb with fright, he jumped up and ran away. He ran, and not knowing where he was going, ran in at the gate of some one’s courtyard, and sat down behind a stack of wood: “They won’t find me here, besides it’s dark!”
He sat huddled up and was breathless from fright, and all at once, quite suddenly, he felt so happy: his hands and feet suddenly left off aching and grew so warm, as warm as though he were on a stove; then he shivered all over, then he gave a start, why, he must have been asleep. How nice to have a sleep here! “I’ll sit here a little and go and look at the dolls again,” said the boy, and smiled thinking of them. “Just as though they were alive! …” and suddenly he heard his mother singing over him. “Mammy, I am asleep; how nice it is to sleep here!”
“Come to my Christmas tree, little one,” a soft voice suddenly whispered over his head.
He thought that this was still his mother, but no, it was not she. Who it was calling him, he could not see, but someone bent over to him, and … and all at once—oh, what a bright light! Oh, what a Christmas tree! And yet it was not a fir tree, he had never seen a tree like that! Where was he now? Everything was bright and shining, and all around him were dolls; but no, they were not dolls, they were little boys and girls, only so bright and shining. They all came flying round him, they all kissed him, took him and carried him along with them, and he was flying himself, and he saw that his mother was looking at him and laughing joyfully. “Mammy, Mammy; oh, how nice it is here, Mammy!” and again he kissed the children and wanted to tell them at once of those dolls in the shop windows.
“Who are you, boys, who are you, girls?” he asked, laughing and admiring them.
“This is Christ’s Christmas tree,” they answered. “Christ always has a Christmas tree on this day, for the little children who have no tree of their own …” and he found out that all these little boys and girls were children just like himself; that some had been frozen in the baskets in which they had as babies been laid on the doorsteps of well-to-do Petersburg people, others had been boarded out with Finnish women by the Foundling and had been suffocated, others had died at their starved mothers’ breasts (in the Samara famine), others had died in the third-class railway carriages from the foul air; and yet they were all here, they were all like angels about Christmas, and He was in the midst of them and held out His hands to them and blessed them and their sinful mothers. … and the mothers of these children stood on one side weeping; each one knew her boy or girl, and the children flew up to them and kissed them and wiped away their tears with their little hands and begged them not to weep because they were so happy.
And down below in the morning the porter found the little dead body of the frozen child on the wood stack; they sought out his mother too. … she had died before him. They met before the Lord God in heaven.
Why have I made up such a story, so out of keeping with an ordinary diary? And I promised two stories dealing with real events! But that is just it, I keep fancying that all this may have happened really—that is, what took place in the cellar and on the wood stack; but as for Christ’s Christmas tree, I cannot tell you whether that could have happened or not.
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The Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree / OrthoChristian.Com
12/20/2023
I'm Dreaming of a Dwight Christmas
{To the best of my admittedly limited knowledge, America has produced two exceptional Dwights, the first being a heroic general/President and the second being a rockabilly genius. 1 The following renditions of holiday tunes are the work of one of the aforementioned Dwights, but I won't say which one.}
(119) Santa Claus Is Back in Town - YouTube
(119) Santa Can't Stay - YouTube
(119) Run Run Rudolph - YouTube
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1 It is not my intent to denigrate other notable Dwights: Dwight from "The Office," for instance, and professional basketballer Dwight Howard. No doubt there are others. Stay tuned for my upcoming book, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Dwights".
Have yourself a rockin' little Christmas!
12/18/2023
Jimmy the Scarecrow's First Christmas
{I have abridged this story because, quite honestly, it was starting to annoy me. I prefer to remove the original ending and to leave the reader wondering just what Jimmy the Scarecrow plans to do with a crazy quilt and a doll-baby.}
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, “Jimmy the Scarecrow” (1913):
Jimmy Scarecrow led a sad life in the winter. Jimmy's greatest grief was his lack of occupation. He liked to be useful, and in winter he was absolutely of no use at all.
He wondered how many such miserable winters he would have to endure. He was a young Scarecrow, and this was his first one. He was strongly made, and although his wooden joints creaked a little when the wind blew, he did not grow in the least rickety. Every morning, when the wintry sun peered like a hard yellow eye across the dry corn-stubble, Jimmy felt sad, but at Christmas time his heart nearly broke.
On Christmas Eve Santa Claus came in his sledge heaped high with presents, urging his team of reindeer across the field. He was on his way to the farmhouse where Betsey lived with her Aunt Hannah.
Betsey was a very good little girl with very smooth yellow curls, and she had a great many presents. Santa Claus had a large wax doll-baby for her on his arm, tucked up against the fur collar of his coat. He was afraid to trust it in the pack, lest it get broken.
When poor Jimmy Scarecrow saw Santa Claus, his heart gave a great leap. "Santa Claus! Here I am!" he cried out, but Santa Claus did not hear him.
"Santa Claus, please give me a little present. I was good all summer and kept the crows out of the corn," pleaded the poor Scarecrow in his choking voice, but Santa Claus passed by with a merry halloo and a great clam
or of bells.
Then Jimmy Scarecrow stood in the corn-stubble and shook with sobs until his joints creaked. "I am of no use in the world, and everybody has forgotten me," he moaned. But he was mistaken.
The next morning Betsey sat at the window holding her Christmas doll-baby, and she looked out at Jimmy Scarecrow standing alone in the field amidst the corn-stubble.
"Aunt Hannah?" said she. Aunt Hannah was making a crazy patchwork quilt, and she frowned hard at a triangular piece of red silk and circular piece of pink, wondering how to fit them together. "Well?" said she.
"Did Santa Claus bring the Scarecrow any Christmas present?"
"No, of course he didn't."
"Why not?"
"Because he's a Scarecrow. Don't ask silly questions."
"I wouldn't like to be treated so, if I was a Scarecrow," said Betsey, but her Aunt Hannah did not hear her. She was busy cutting a triangular snip out of the round piece of pink silk so the piece of red silk could be feather-stitched into it.
It was snowing hard out of doors, and the north wind blew. The Scarecrow's poor old coat got whiter and whiter with snow. Sometimes he almost vanished in the thick white storm. Aunt Hannah worked until the middle of the afternoon on her crazy quilt. Then she got up and spread it out over the sofa with an air of pride.
"There," said she, "that's done, and that makes the eighth. I've got one for every bed in the house, and I've given four away. I'd give this away if I knew of anybody that wanted it."
Aunt Hannah put on her hood and shawl, drew some blue yarn stockings on over her shoes, and set out through the snow to carry a slice of plum pudding to her sister Susan, who lived down the road. Half an hour after Aunt Hannah had gone Betsey put her little red plaid shawl over her head and ran across the field to Jimmy Scarecrow. She carried her new doll-baby smuggled up under her shawl.
"Wish you Merry Christmas!" she said to Jimmy Scarecrow.
"Wish you the same," said Jimmy, but his voice was choked with sobs, and was also muffled, for his old hat had slipped down to his chin. Betsey looked pitifully at the old hat fringed with icicles, like frozen tears, and the old snow-laden coat. "I've brought you a Christmas present," said she, and with that she tucked her doll-baby inside Jimmy Scarecrow's coat, sticking its tiny feet into a pocket.
"Thank you," said Jimmy Scarecrow faintly.
"You're welcome," said she. "Keep her under your overcoat, so the snow won't wet her, and she won't catch cold, she's delicate."
"Yes, I will," said Jimmy Scarecrow, and he tried hard to bring one of his stiff, outstretched arms around to clasp the doll-baby.
"Don't you feel cold in that old summer coat?" asked Betsey.
"If I had a little exercise, I should be warm," he replied. But he shivered, and the wind whistled through his rags.
"You wait a minute," said Betsey, and was off across the field.
Jimmy Scarecrow stood in the corn-stubble, with the doll-baby under his coat and waited, and soon Betsey was back again with Aunt Hannah's crazy quilt trailing in the snow behind her.
"Here," said she, "here is something to keep you warm," and she folded the crazy quilt around the Scarecrow and pinned it.
"Aunt Hannah wants to give it away if anybody wants it," she explained. "She's got so many crazy quilts in the house now she doesn't know what to do with them. Good-bye—be sure you keep the doll-baby covered up." And with that she ran cross the field, and left Jimmy Scarecrow alone with the crazy quilt and the doll-baby.
Jimmy Scarecrow's Christmas (americanliterature.com)
12/17/2023
Christmas with the Bobster
Luckily for us, and for children everywhere, Bob Dylan graciously lends his mellifluous voice and his good humor to the Christmas season:
(119) Bob Dylan - Must Be Santa (Official Video) - YouTube
This video should be preserved in a time capsule, along with William Shatner's rendition of "Mr. Tambourine Man" ((119) William Shatner - Mr Tambourine Man - YouTube), Richard Harris' recording of "MacArthur Park" ((119) AI music video: MacArthur Park by Richard Harris - YouTube), and the collected poetry of Rod McKuen. Let future generations make sense of these things, if they can.
And you thought Jacob Marley's ghost was scary?
12/16/2023
Almost Christmas
{Who better to sing about Christmas than a man who believes "Kids are like sailboats"?}
Have a merry ChrisIsaakMas!
(119) Chris Isaak | "Almost Christmas" (Official Video) - YouTube
(119) Chris Isaak | "Everybody Knows It's Christmas" (Visualizer) - YouTube
(119) Chris Isaak | Winter Wonderland (Visualizer) - YouTube
Want to know more about Chris Isaak? According to Wikipedia:
Isaak is a lifelong bachelor. Regarding his bachelor status, Isaak stated, "The longest relationship I've been in is with my band. My personal relationships have never lasted because my work was always number one. It's not that I never thought about marriage and kids, but I was either busy writing and recording music, acting, or on the road. Kids are like sail boats: they look good on a sunny day and in the distance, but they require a lot of maintenance." Isaak enjoys drawing and exploring salvage shops and secondhand stores.
12/15/2023
Run Rudolph Run
A mystery for the ages: is Chuck Berry's classic Christmas song to be known as "Run Rudolph Run" or as "Run, Run Rudolph"?
The following versions of the song may help us decide:
(116) Ducks Deluxe - Run Rudolph Run - YouTube
(116) Run Rudolph Run (Live) - YouTube Brinsley Schwarz
(116) Run Rudolph Run - YouTube Foo Fighters
The original: (116) Chuck Berry - Run Rudolph Run (Official Video) - YouTube
Hey, Vevo, are you sure you're right about that?
12/13/2023
Song for a Winter's Night
It’s only fitting that a Gordon Lightfoot song be covered by Canadian musicians:
(116) Winsome Kind - Song for A Winter's Night (live Gordon Lightfoot cover) - YouTube
Who, you may ask, is the Winsome Kind? Well, they are a duo, originally from Canada, and they are life partners as well as musical collaborators. They are also, it seems, Latter-Day Hippies, Aquarians, or free spirits of some kind:
After taking the leap to live in Mexico, where we rediscovered ourselves, we were called back home to Canada to free-birth our beautiful daughter by a lake in the woods. We moved into a 32" camper and reconnected with the land. Spirit called us West to Salt Spring Island, where we completed the album, thanks to a magical series of serendipitous events. 1
[I’m going to hazard a guess that the “32” camper” was in fact a 32’ camper. Then again, the Winsome Kind are from Canada, so who knows?]
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1 “A magical series of serendipitous events” ought not to be confused with Lemony Snicket’s oeuvre.
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