Hodie Christus natus est

Well, not exactly hodie, more like the day after tomorrow, but I may not post again before Christmas.

As we used to say in Old English, wolcum yol.

Shooting Parrots expressed his admiration of the nativity tableau in my last post. Ian, this close-up is for you. Yorkshire Pudding expressed his dislike that my photographs overlap into my sidebar. As my mother used to say, like it or lump it.

I thought I skipped the Bah, Humbug phase this year, but apparently it is trying to rear its ugly head.

I won't let it.

I will listen to Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols.

I will listen to the Christmas portion of Handel's Messiah.

I will listen to the King Singers sing "Lo, How A Rose E'er Blooming".

I will listen to the good folk in Gloucester Cathedral sing Christina Rossetti's words, "In the Bleak Midwinter".

I will listen to Karen Carpenter sing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas".

I recommend that you do the same. If those won't get you out of any residual pre-holiday funk, nothing will.

I have used U.K.-style end punctuation throughout this post (the periods outside the double commas).

I repeat, Wolcum yol.

It’s NOT beginning to look a lot like Christmas, plus a 7-year-old’s advice to President Obama

This is a bifurcated post. For those of you in Alabama, that means it has two parts.

Let’s begin.

It’s NOT beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Oh, there’s this:

and this:

and this:

and even this:

but so far there’s not any of this:

The temperature around here has been in the 70s this week. That’s Fahrenheit, kiddies, not Celsius. Let’s not be ridiculous. Global warming hasn’t gone quite that far yet. Although I did read that it was 93 in Brisbane, Australia.

Which brings us to Part 2 of this post.

I also heard on the radio that a father explained to his 7-year-old son, after they both had listened to President Obama speak last Sunday night, what terrorism is and what global warming is. The father happened to mention that Earth’s temperature is expected to rise by two degrees in the next 100 years. The son sat down and wrote two letters to President Obama.

The first letter said, “Don’t be afraid of the bad guys. Just go and fight them.”

The second letter said, “Buy some sunblock.”

Out of the mouths of babes.

Thus ends this bifurcated post. As it is my 87th post of the year, I probably will not make it to 100 posts in 2015. Still, seven or so times a month for a 74-year-old man is pretty darned good, n'est-ce pas?

Mary’s dream

[Editor’s note. A friend sent me the following in an email. It isn’t particularly profound, but I must admit I was intrigued by it. --RWP]

I had a dream, Joseph. I don’t really understand it, but I think it was about a birthday celebration for our son, Jesus. Yes, I think that was what it was all about. People all around the world had been preparing for it for over six weeks. They went about decorating their homes both inside and out. They shopped till they dropped! But it was also peculiar, though, because the presents weren’t for our son, but for their children and each other! They wrapped them in beautiful paper and tied them with lovely bows and then stacked them under a tree. Yes, a tree, Joseph, standing in their homes! They even decorated the tree. The branches were full of glowing lights and sparkling ornaments, and they placed a figure on top of the tree. It looked like an angel might look. Oh, it was all so beautiful. But doesn’t it seem strange for all this preparation for someone’s birthday and yet no one even mentioned his name. I had the strangest feeling, Joseph, if Jesus had gone to this celebration, he would have been intruding! How sad for our son not to be wanted at his own birthday celebration! I’m glad it was only a dream. How terrible, Joseph, if it had been real.

Christmas: It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over

...and you wanna know something? It ain’t over. Not until January 6th, when it’s Epiphany.

Here is the funniest, saddest, most poignant, most hilarious radio skit I have ever run across. It’s “Family Christmas,” complete with scripted sound effects, from Garrison Keillor (one of America’s treasures) and friends on A Prairie Home Companion.

Unless this one is.

I just can’t decide.

I know I’m rushing the season

...but I think every day should be Christmas.

I love the poem “In the Bleak Midwinter” by Christina Rossetti (1830 - 1894).

I love the tune called CRANHAM.

I love that CRANHAM was composed by Gustav Holst (1874 - 1934) during the time he lived in Cranham, a village in Gloucestershire, England, in a house now known as Midwinter.

I love that Rossetti’s poem has been set to Holst’s tune.

I love the sound made by the choir and congregation of Gloucester Cathedral (3:29).

I love that even though Israel is a land of warmth and palm trees and that the three wise men or magi or kings or whatever they were are always pictured as riding on camels across arid deserts, Christians in northern climes have managed to project their winter weather patterns into the Christmas story.

I love that Jesus was probably born in March or April, since spring -- the time lambs are usually born -- was the only time of year that shepherds stayed in the fields all night to assist the ewes rather than herding the flocks into the sheepfolds, and that early Christians chose to observe the birth of the Savior in December because they were less likely to be detected while the Roman Empire was celebrating Saturnalia.

If you love any of these things, even though it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet, click anywhere on this post.

Just when you think you’ve heard it all

...along comes The Homeless Man With The Golden Voice.

This sort of heartwarming story -- there have already been more than 15,000 comments on the original article, and the video itself has gone viral on the internet -- usually comes along just before Christmas, sending me into a “We’re just being manipulated by the media so that we can feel all warm and fuzzy about ourselves at Christmas before we go back to ignoring people in need during the rest of the year” rant, but this story waited to surface until the first week of January.

Somehow I don’t feel like ranting as much in January. Perhaps this year the “peace on earth, good will to men” message of the Christmas season actually penetrated my subconscious. Better yet, perhaps it has a residual effect that can never be displaced.

Come to think of it, I didn’t even go through my usual “Bah, humbug!” phase in December.

I must be slipping.

P.S. - The man in the video has a name: Ted Williams (not the famous major-league baseball player who died at the age of 83 in 2002 but whose body his children have had frozen in case he can be revived one day; another Ted Williams. I don’t really know how much demand there will be in the major leagues of the future for a revived formerly 83-year-old player, but then I don’t follow sports all that closely).

Here’s Ted Williams the baseball player in his pre-frozen days:

P.P.S. - Actually, in churches that observe the liturgical year, most of December is known as Advent. Christmas starts on December 25th and lasts twelve days, until the Epiphany on January 6th. And if you are a member of an Eastern Orthodox community, you celebrate Christmas on January 6th anyway because of differences in the Eastern and Western calendars.

Hey, no wonder this story of the other Ted Williams has such a Christmas feel to it. Today is January 6th! It’s still Christmas!

There’s still time for my rant, after all.