Work With Hope

Tonight I saw (thanks to the miracle of MoviePass…talk about your Christmas miracles!” The Man Who Invented Christmas.  It was an enjoyable seasonal movie, mixing light biography, literary history, and fantasy, capturing the story of the creation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  The title is based on the widely-believed story that the modern Christmas owes its origins to people emulating Dickens’ novel (probably not true…at least overstated), but the story focuses on the precarious and chaotic series of events that led to one of the best loved Christmas traditions.

In attempting to capture the creative process (movies of writers sitting silently at the page are not compelling) the movie brings many of the characters to life, and Dickens interacts with them as he discovers this story after a dip in his critical approval.  The story is told large, with a Christoper Plummer Scrooge who alternately chews the scenery while acting as an antagonistic therapist for Charlie.  Dickens is tormented at various times by his writer’s block, his spendthrift father, his own crumbling finances, his memories of childhood in the workhouse, and a growing social conscience and concern for the poor.

Much of the drama in the second half is based in Dickens’ inability to finish the story against an impending deadline.  In this telling (and I doubt this is real) the character of Scrooge was originally intended as a cautionary tale for the unfeeling rich, a story drawn home by his inevitable final bad end, unloved and damned for all eternity.  In other words, there was no plan for Scrooge’s redemption.  His punishment was the moral of the story and vengeance for Dickens’ own anger over his impoverished childhood.  Only through coming to terms with this anger allows Dickens to save his old miser.  The story could have turned out completely differently.  Tiny Tim was supposed to die.

We know Christmas stories so well that we can no longer separate the beginning from the end.  Scrooge is redeemed, George Bailey is saved, Mary and Joseph find a stable (and don’t get me started on Hallmark Channel movies).  In reality life is much messier, Scrooges don’t change very often (even though everyone in a sitcom who has a similar experience in a Christmas episode has the same outcome). It is worth while sometimes to recognize the non-inevitability of the Christmas story…it didn’t have to go this way, and every time it happened…or happens…it is a miracle.

As always, I welcome your comments

Yesterday while I was riding my bicycle, I saw a BMW emblem on the side of the road. I went back to pick it up, wondering about the poor motorist who was driving around without any identification of his or her car’s superiority. I wonder if driving habits change when a BMW loses its hood ornament. Does speed come down just a couple of miles? Does a driver actually use turn signals? Is the privilege knob turned down a bit?

I brought it back, hoping that it would illustrate for me some profound moral about materialism of the season.  I put it aside and looks at it throughout the day, trying to weave gold out of straw.  And eventually I came up with….nothing.  I couldn’t think of any meaning to a car without a hood ornament…no matter how nice the car may be.

Not every mine shaft leads to silver or gold.  Sometimes you just have a plastic status symbol.

Everyone knows that much of the Santa Claus legend is based on Fourth Century Turkish Bishop, Nicholas.  In previous years I’ve written about some of the stories and miracles attributed to the saint (including raising children who had been carved up and stored in brine from the dead), but even after he died, St. Nicholas captured the capitalist spirit of the holiday.

The bodies of holy men and women after they were deceased were carefully watched for signs of sanctity.  Some bodies were incorruptible; some bones periodically oozed blood.  The bones of St. Nicholas were claimed by the monks of Myra in Turkey to secrete a rose-scented liquid called Manna or Myrrh.  A corpse that was identified as showing signs of sanctity was extremely valuable, as such remains were seen as direct contact to the Almighty and were capable of healing the sick or performing other miracles.

Unfortunately for the monks of Myra, stories of “Nick’s Miraculous Ooze” spread throughout Europe.  In the early Eleventh Century, a group of merchants from the Italian city of Bari visited Myra, and during their visit they overcame, beat, and tied up the monks that guarded the remains of Nicholas (fa la la la la) and stole the bones and brought them back to Bari where the townspeople built a Basilica as a reliquary for the remains.  Nick put Bari on the map, as pilgrims throughout Christendom traveled to the city on the southernmost tip of Italy to view and perhaps receive a blessing from the first department store Santa.

Like the Macy’s Santa though, the bones of St. Nicholas did not appear in only one place.  The people of Venice claimed that their sailors were in Myra and had brought the relics back to Venice during the First Crusade.  Gimbels had their own Santa to draw the customers into the store (this is such a dated reference that I doubt many will get it).

Twentieth Century scientists, given very limited access to the relics in both cities, determined that the bones of Bari and the bones of Venice likely came from the same skeleton, and they assume that whichever group came second took the remaining bones.  This marks one of the few cases of honest Christmas advertising.

As always I welcome your comments.

I found this story on the Mental Floss website

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About a week ago I talked about the subject of Advent calendars and gave a few examples of non-traditional calendars.  However, today I learned about a truly non-traditional Advent calendar that might capture the meaning better than standard paper calendars.

The German city of  Gengenbach turns their city hall into an enormous Advent calendar.  The windows are decorated with art depicting a central theme.  At 6:00 pm every evening townspeople and tourists (in true Christmas spirit, this tradition was started 20 years ago to build tourism during the holidays) gather to watch as the lights come up and the shade on the window of the day is raised.  After Christmas all of the windows are illuminated for two weeks.

I like the true spirit of anticipation and community.  Since the windows change every year and since they are kept secret until they are revealed, people actively look forward to the moment of illumination. The experience is a completely communal one.  Families come out together nightly and cheer together when the window is revealed.

The form also reflects the season well.  The windows are opened one at a time and each is admired for itself.  The days of Advent (all days of life) are precious and beautiful, and when anticipation of Christmas loses mindfulness of the present it is a hollow experience.

One more light goes on tonight.  I wonder what it will be?

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The star on top of my tree is the same star that my family used from my earliest memories.  It is a light foil star, one sheet of silver behind a sheet of gold, held together with tabs and slots that would never be used today.  In the back a ring holds the star to the post and there is a hole to insert a light (usually gold or white) to make the star shine.  The star shows its age with slight dents in the foil sheets and a frame that has been reattached many times, but given its age and general delicate construction, it is amazing that it still stands at the top of my tree every year.  This star was actually retired by my mother (the tree designer) when we started to put our tree on a revolving base, as the patchwork repairs on the back didn’t work once there was no longer a back side of the tree.  I don’t remember how the star came to me, though I suspect I was the first to have a tree away from home, and I gathered surplus ornaments from Mom and Dad.  The other ornaments have all been replaced, but the star remains, and I have used it on trees for more than thirty years.

When I was getting the star ready for this year (always a little maintenance for the old star, like makeup on an aging ingenue), I took a moment to also notice the box in which I store it…in which as far as I can tell, it has always been stored.

It is a white box from JW Robinson, a store that I remember, but one that ceased to exist more than ten years ago subsumed in the great contraction of Broadway, Bullocks, Buffums, May Company, Sears…oh wait, I’m slightly early on that one.  The box, though cardboard, is solidly made and permanent, not one of the prefab flat boxes of today.  This box was constructed in the factory and delivered to the store where it was stacked, fully made, with no interchangeable lid and bottom parts.  These boxes must have taken enormous amounts of room and they were terribly impractical, and for this I love it with all my heart.

This box is likely as old as I am, yet it remains relatively unharmed because it has been carefully stored every year.  Christmas is a repository of memory in both the trimmings and the containers.  This container is the star box, and it says Christmas to me as much as any other decoration, food, or song.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Yesterday I introduced my new fascination with creating bespoke playlists to be used for occasions. Today I am going to talk about the decisions and steps that are going into the playlist I’m making for my friends’ Christmas party. My two previous experiences with this have been for dinners of six or fewer. Moving to a party environment obviously adds complexity of time and numbers and thematic purpose.

Analyzing the relationship of the crowd to the event is central to everything that follows. This is particularly tricky with Christmas, a holiday with profound but diverse meaning from person to person. A party for a church group would be relatively easy to program, choral favorites accentuating the “reason for the season,” punctuated occasionally with just enough tame secular standards to acknowledge the presents coming after church. A party for children equally simple, tons of Santa songs with a few sacred carols like vegetables to remind them of the other side of the day.

Most adult Christmas parties are more complicated, as there is little consistency in views of the holiday from person to person. Also Christmas is a complex holiday, usually provoking a deluge of emotions and memories, but not all positive ones. How does one find music that respects all of this, yet provides effective background for an enjoyable event?

I’ve decided for this list that my underlying theme will be nostalgia. After one’s early 20s, the sights, smells, tastes, and sounds of Christmas are carpet-bombed triggers of memory. The act of setting up a Christmas tree each year is a reliving of the oral history of family, comparing to past trees, remembering who did what, and laughing (or crying) about the stories of the past. The small of Christmas cooking is a Proustian link between the years. Everything is designed to remember the joys and the losses, like a crutch carefully preserved against an empty chair.

A word about timing. If I were really good at this, I would program the list in order to capture the different moods of the evening. However, that would take an inordinate amount of time and I believe I’m already over-thinking this 😉 . So I always shuffle the list, which means that songs have to flow somewhat in whatever order they occur. To test this I play the list on shuffle a few times and quickly move from song to song to see if anything sticks out or is an unpleasant transition and delete it.

My approach to this list is similar to trimming a tree, lights, ornaments, tinsel. First I lay down a base of standards, familiar songs by familiar artists. For this list I’m going for a Rat Pack, crooner vibe to help the nostalgic feeling. Sinatra, Martin, Crosby, Clooney, Garland, Cole, Mathis and others bring standard melodies by familiar voices but with instrumentation that contrasts the crass pop sounds and gives a warm feeling to the room. Next I add color with finds. New songs with a clear Christmas feel, older recordings of unfamiliar songs, or familiar songs sung by unsuspected singers. I’ve put quite a few treasures on this list, an old song by Bessie Smith, a couple from the Lawrence Welk family, and one by the Platters. There are also a few familiar songs in different musical styles, ukulele, surf music and Cajun. Finally I add just a few (very few) novelty songs to wink at anyone who is listening. “The Christmas CanCan” by the a cappella Group, Straight, No Chaser was one I struggled with, but I decided the feel and musicality of the piece merited including it despite the silly message.

The list is currently 62 songs, and I’m aiming for 100. I’ll share the list after the party so you can weigh in on my choices.

But until then, I welcome your comments.

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Last summer I was invited to a dinner party at the house of some friends.  When I asked what I could bring, the hostess suggested that I make a playlist to accompany the evening.  So my covered dish for the evening was a curated digital list of songs to set background to our conversation and enjoyment of excellent food. I was called on to bring a similar dish to Thanksgiving, and I am currently working on the menu for a Christmas party this weekend.  I have found this new style of cuisine as challenging and exciting as any recipe I have prepared for guests, and as much as I may stress over choices, I have come to really love it and see it as my attempt at a gift to all who attend.

Of course, the playlist is nothing new.  From written lists to prepared mixtapes, music lovers have been putting together thematic groupings of favorite songs for years.  However, these efforts have always been limited by the practicalities of storage and portage.  The advent of the digital era has made the combining of long lists of songs possible, and services like Spotify give access to nearly unlimited resources from which to choose, elevating playlist composition to a true art (I am not suggesting I am an artist in my playlists, or if I am, it is on the level with “sandwich artist”).

It is risky and intimidating to share a playlist with those for whom you have respect.  Musical taste is one of those credentials that joins groups.  We assume that our friends have similar tastes to our own, and though we are understanding of a degree of idiosyncrasy, finding another’s tastes completely different is like being surprised by a major difference in political beliefs.  There is a legitimate fear of being judged for ones choices, which makes the creation process a tightrope of the safe and the authentically personal.

Another challenge of bespoke playlist creation (yes, I am using that word ironically) is fitting choices to the occasion. While you are bringing songs for your friends to hear, you are not bringing songs for them to listen.  A playlist like this is background music.  If everyone is silently listening to the songs, the party is failing.  However, you hope for your effort that the music isn’t essentially white noise, that there is some recognition of what’s playing and that this is not accident, but curation. A perfect reaction would be an occasional pause, punctuated by someone commenting on how much they like a song, or a comment about the artist, or an anecdote about seeing the band, before resuming other topics.  A nod with the comment “good choice,” is all the thanks I ever need.

Tomorrow I will comment on the specific challenges of composing a playlist for a Christmas party.

As always, I welcome your comments.

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I was working on a Christmas playlist for a party (more on that tomorrow), and I came across a song I hadn’t heard before.  Though I didn’t include it in the playlist, I must have listened to it a dozen times as I was going around today.  The song is called “Elf’s Lament” by the group Barenaked Ladies. It was recorded in 2004 and features vocals by Michael Buble (no stranger to Christmas music) Here is the song

and here are the lyrics

I’m a man of reason, and they say
“‘Tis the season to be jolly but it’s folly when you volley for position”
Never in existence has there been such a resistance
To ideas meant to free us
If you could see us, then you’d listen
Toiling through the ages, making toys on garnished wages
There’s no union
We’re only through when we outdo the competition
I make toys, but I’ve got aspirations
Make some noise, use your imagination
Girls and boys, before you wish for what you wish for
There’s a list for who’s been
Naughty or nice, but consider the price to an elf
A full indentured servitude can reflect on one’s attitude
But that silly red hat just makes the fat man look outrageous
Absurd though it may seem, you know, I’ve heard there’s even been illegal doping
And though we’re coping, I just hope it’s not contagious
You try to start a movement, and you think you see improvement
But when thrown into the moment, we just don’t seem so courageous
I make toys, but I’ve got aspirations
Make some noise, use your imagination
Girls and boys, before you wish for what you wish for
There’s a list for who’s been
Naughty or nice, but consider the price to an elf
You look at yourself, you’re an elf
And the shelf is just filled with disappointing memories
Trends come and go, and your friends wanna know
Why you aren’t just happy making crappy little gizmos
Every kid knows they’ll just throw this stuff away
We’re used to repetition, so we drew up a petition
We, the undersigned, feel undermined
Let’s redefine “employment”
We know that we’ve got leverage, so we’ll hand the fat man a beverage
And sit back while we attack the utter lack of our enjoyment
It may be tough to swallow, but our threats are far from hollow
He may thunder, but if he blunders, he may wonder where the toys went
I make toys, but I’ve got aspirations
Make some noise, use your imagination
Girls and boys, before you wish for what you wish for
There’s a list for who’s been
Naughty or nice, but consider the price
Naughty or nice, but consider the price
Naughty or nice, but consider the price to an elf

The song appeals to me musically, thematically, and linguistically.  First, the music has a decidedly un-Christmasy pop beat, characteristic of other songs by the group (someone will tell me what this style is, but I can’t think of it)  The song follows a standard verse-chorus-verse format, but there is a complexity to the interwoven melodies that does not allow the listener to fall into complacency.  Despite the “less than merry” message, the musical feel is happy but slightly plaintive, musically capturing the dichotomy of the tortured symbol of the joviality often season.

in terms of message, “Elf’s Lament” takes the by now somewhat tired trope of Santa as a harsh taskmaster and fleshes it out in a quasi-Marxist commentary on the dehumanizing effect of Capitalism on the workers.  Our speaker multiple times refers to his aspirations.  He has dreams beyond the merciless, rewardless, drug-assisted, grind of production, not the least are his ideas for improving the situation for himself and his co-workers.  In the third verse our hero laments not only his existence as part of the proletariat machine, but also the banality of what is produced, “And the shelf is just filled with disappointing memories,” (a poignant reference the the further humiliation of the whole “Elf on a Shelf” triviality).  In the final verse, the unnamed cog in the Santa machine plans (or are these plans only a fantasy brought on by the delirious of overwork?) a coup d’elf, bringing the master to his knees with a threatened work stoppage.  It is a victory, but at what cost? “Consider the price to an Elf.”

However, it was the wordplay, ahead of anything else, that first drew me to the song.  The verses are tied together by a complex interlacing of rhyme, alliteration and assonance.  The pairings, though not always a perfect rhyme, are ingenious: “Toiling through the ages, making toys on garnished wages,” “Absurd though it may seem, you know, I’ve heard there’s even been illegal doping, And though we’re coping, I just hope it’s not contagious,” “We know that we’ve got leverage, so we’ll hand the fat man a beverage.”  Through these sound techniques, the listener is handed off from image to image, from idea to idea in a whirl of frosty Christmas snow.

Whether it is as Christmas classic or not, it is ingenious and made me happier than any other song I heard today.

As always, I welcome your comments.

 

Christmas tree went up today…always a wonderful day.

That’s all.

For obvious reasons, I have not talked much about leaving my position as Superintendent last summer.  However, I can say that my approach to this leaving has been as complete a severing as possible.  That part of my life is over, and though I have been invited to visit schools or attend events, I Have consistently declines. I have no desire to stay attached to the life that made up 35 years of my career.  I’m sure this decision was based on a mixture of not wanting to be caught in the past as well as anger over everything that happened.  It has been easier to maintain a very few friendships and put the rest behind me.  It was another life.

So I have turned down every invitation to participate in the schools where I no longer had a role.  That is, until this week.  Every year I have attended the Mater Dei Madrigal Feast.  This yearly celebration of Christmas always was an essential kickoff to the holiday, presenting excellent choral music of many periods and styles, and of all the things I was missing, this stood out for me.  So I decided to break my rule and come to the concert portion of the evening.

I was very nervous about coming back, and very much wanted to just fade in to the crowd.  However, once the music began, I knew that I had made the right choice.  The choir always begins the program with “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” a perfect Advent song, and the arrangement is so beautiful, contrasting male and female voices and culminating with a very dramatic final verse with the voices of several hundred choir members as the stage is bathed in dazzling light.  This was followed by nearly two hours of choral pieces, handbell selections, and solo songs.  The evening ended with the traditional singing of “Peace, Peace” overlaid with “Silent Night,” which was appropriate because that was exactly what I was feeling.  For all my nervousness and concern, I was so happy that I was there.

Today is the Second Sunday in Advent.  The readings for the day begin with primary theme:  Comfort.  I found comfort, joy, and peace in tonight’s concert.   Not everything has to be left behind.

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