The angels did say

“The First Noël” is another of those carols that children used to sing at school Christmas pageants, and it’s still part of carol services and the Christmas Eve masses. It’s one that has a great descant part on the chorus—a soaring descant—that even untrained kids can manage. And at church, if you have a great organ helping the congregation along, it’s quite the rip-roarer.

This version, “The First Nowell”, by the King’s Singers, is stylistically different from the traditional renditions. It starts out with a kind of thrumming, and concludes with just the faintest baroque ornamentation.

A friend of mine, The Pundit’s Apprentice, feels about the King’s Singers the way I do about Chanticleer, so this one’s for him.

Gloria, gloria

Caveat: we don’t know exactly when Ludwig van Beethoven was born, but today is the generally accepted date for celebrating his birth.

Beethoven didn’t write anything specifically ascribed to Christmas, but in his Missa Solemnis there is the “Gloria”. And deeply embedded in the Christmas story is the chapter of angels declaring to the shepherds, “Gloria in excelsis Deo”. So let’s have that:

Happy birthday, Ludwig. Thanks for all the glorious music.

Raise up cups of Christmas cheer

Sorry, dear readers. I’m recovering from hand surgery, and discovered that the limitations to my typing ability are greater than I’d anticipated. So today’s entry is brief.

I only discovered The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping” this year, although apparently it’s been on Christmas hits lists for, well, decades. And I confess—it has rather grown on me. And I like this video more than all the rest I’ve slogged through this month.

In fact, I’ve got it blasting on my computer speakers while I wait for the coffee to brew. Seems appropriate.

All seated on the ground

Let’s go back to a traditional Christmas carol today. “While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night”, about the annunciation of the Nativity to the shepherds, dates from the turn of the 18^th Century, and has been set to different music down the years.

You might have sung one version in a Christmas pageant. If you’re old enough to have been in institutions that had Christmas pageants. In the US, that version is likely to have been the one using an aria from Handel’s opera Siroe, arranged by Lowell Mason (who gave us “Joy to the World”, amongst others).

That one sounds like this:

(Let me just say that listening to this is a complete blast from the past. I can hear all the little piping city voices trying to understand the concept of shepherds being out at night… “And glo-ry shone around” always sounded like we were drunk. For the record, we were in the third grade, and no, we were not drunk.)

In the UK, however, the prevalent version is set to the hymn known as Winchester Old. You hear it quite often in productions of A Christmas Carol. This is it:

I’ll confess that this Libera choir kind of gives me the creeps. It’s the Cistercian robes, partly—they look like evil ghost monks-in-training. Also, the overproduced sound annoys the spit out of me, but YMMV, so I offer it up in the spirit of ecumenism.

A big commercial racket run by a big eastern syndicate

This is the day devoted to Saint Lucy, a Sicilian martyr during the Diocletian persecutions. The story is that, having become a devout Christian, she refused to marry and compromise her virginity. The spurned suitor denounced her; she was meant to have been sent to a brothel, but miraculously all the king’s oxen and all the king’s men couldn’t move her, so they built a pyre around her to burn her to death.

I find it rather interesting that she wouldn’t stop talking, not even while the fire was burning and not even when a Roman soldier speared her in the throat. Not until she was given the Christian sacrament did she die. And thus shut up.

The name Lucy comes from “lux”, meaning light, and her day is celebrated in Northern countries with young girls waking their families wearing lighted crowns (used to be candles; I’m guessing that Health and Safety doesn’t allow that sort of thing any more, so it’ll be LED jobbers) on this morning.

We in the US have our own Lucy tradition, so let’s have a couple of pieces from that great classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas, both featuring the Vince Guaraldi Trio. First up, “Linus and Lucy”:

And a somewhat more Christmassy song, “Christmas Time Is Here”:

Gratitude Monday: Email is my friend

Have I mentioned before that I’m pretty sure my manager has ADD? It’s a huge challenge trying to keep him on track in any particular conversation, because he’s like a pug chasing a housefly most of the time. I frequently find myself having to wait until he’s exhausted his diversion and then waving him back to the topic at hand.

(The one single comment I allowed myself on the 360-degree review I was compelled to give him was, “I’m never quite sure when he’s heard what I’m telling him.”)

This has, on more than one occasion, led to near disaster, as when I’d got down to words of one syllable explaining why, given everything that was going on organization-wide, we had to run a planned course every week for six weeks, he nodded agreement…and then sent a memo to senior management announcing that classes would meet every other week.

(Actually, it’s worse: I’d drafted the email and sent it to him, stipulating the weekly schedule, and he changed it to what he’d lodged in his mind.)

Last Monday, he sent round a meeting request for a “[department Name] Team Holiday Celebration”, for the early evening of Wednesday the 14^th. It occurred to me that, had he only looked at my Outlook schedule, he could have seen that this particular block of time was not free, but he doesn’t typically bother with such niceties.

(As an aside: he was in the habit of not actually sending meeting request acceptances until one time when I queried whether he was, in fact, attending some meeting. He said he’d accepted; I said I hadn’t seen the response, and he replied, “I don’t send a response unless I’m declining.” I looked at him for some time before pointing out the blazingly obvious, “So, it’s up to me to root around and see if you’re coming or not? Oooookay.” Only since then has he expended the great energy suck of clicking, “Send response now.”)

I declined the “celebration” invitation and told him that I would be unable to attend that time on that day because I’m having hand surgery that afternoon and don’t know whether I’ll be fit for anything. His reply?

“We can help you numb the pain?”

No, I am not making that up.

Tuesday morning, he appeared at my office doorway in floppy puppy mode, full of enthusiasm about the opening session of that weekly course I mentioned above. When I did not display all the excitement he reckoned the occasion warranted, he eventually asked if something was wrong. I believe I exercised admirable restraint when I said, “You know, a better response to me telling you why I couldn’t join the party would have been something like, ‘Oh, right—I’ll reschedule, then.’”

He bounced right back—yes, yes indeed; I was 1059% (his figure) right. He’d been distracted by board issues, but, yes, he dropped the ball. He did not actually use the words “my” and “bad”.

However, the days of the week passed, and there was no rescheduling of the “team celebration”. Like I said—you just never know when he’s actually heard you, or he’s too busy googling dogs that are half poodle and half Saint Bernard. (Yes, that happened. In the course of one conversation, I referred to something as “a dog”, which prompted his announcement that over the weekend he and his family had seen a dog that of that half-and-half configuration. I couldn’t get him back to our topic until he’d found photos to show me.)

Fast-forward to Friday, when we were meant to have met for our weekly catch-up. (He ordinarily spends about 70%-75% of his time on the activities of the other, non-[Name] staff, which is fair enough, as there are seven of them and only one of me. I get 30 minutes, aside from whatever specific project meetings he needs to be a part of.) As it turned out, I was massively late getting back to the office from an external appointment, so we did not get the chance to meet before the company holiday lunch and his kid’s swim meet.

I got back to my office after the lunch to find an email from him suggesting we reschedule the catch-up for Monday. I replied with a single word, “Sure.” And this, I swear I am not making up, was his response:

“10a Monday? Also, buy you lunch the week of the 19^th to make up for messing up the holiday outing?”

Ah. Well.

I actually said a very, very bad word when I read that, directly into the sound-amplifying atrium outside my office, but fortunately no one else was back from the lunch, so I don’t believe anyone heard me. Because, look—the guy has degrees from Amherst and Harvard, and I do not have enough sock puppets to explain what I’d have thought shouldn’t have need dramatizing to begin with. I already pointed out what the issue was, and he professed to understand. But obviously not well enough, or obviously I did not give him the necessary quiz afterward to check that he really did understand the whole “team” issue.

(Or, well—perhaps I’m the one who doesn’t understand the definition of “team”? Could be, I suppose. Perhaps I should ask Mr. Harvard about that.)

I have to say that a lunch à deux with him under these circumstances would not be a pleasant experience for me. That being the case, and given the fact that I do not have what is known as a poker face, it’s not really anything I want to have to live through. Because: Career Limiting Move.

So I waited some time before I clicked reply and wrote, “With respect, that would not be equivalent to a ‘team celebration’, so no, thanks.” And I hit send.

Now, you might well be wondering what this story has to do with Gratitude Monday. So here’s the hook: I am truly grateful that the latest exchange in this comedy of errors did take place via email. Because I would not have been able to keep the disgust, disbelief and disappointment off my face if he’d popped by my office in floppy puppy mode and asked that.

(Also, tbh, I'm grateful that no one heard me bark that very, very bad word.)

Some days, you just put what you can in the wins column.

The luck of a beginner

Okay, I’m in a bit of A Mood, so here’s something to suit me: Paul Simon’s “Getting Ready for Christmas Day”.

Make of that what you will.

And again I say rejoice

Oh, Lord—is that the time? Yes, yes, it is. Gaudete Sunday, the day when the contemplative preparation of Advent allows itself a bit of full-on wriggling, tailwagging joyfulness.

So today we’re getting something from the 17^th Century English composer, Henry Purcell, “Rejoice in the Lord Alway”. This piece is sometimes referred to as the bell anthem, because of the way the vocal parts emulate a peal of bells.

But if that’s not enough joy for you, how about “Rejoice Greatly”, from Messiah by Handel? There are plenty of sopranos out there singing this, but I rather like Kathleen Battle’s interpretation—she captures the eager anticipation that we should feel on this Sunday.