Himmlischer Ruh

If there’s one universal Christmas carol, “Stille Nacht” must be it; it’s the lingua franca of the holiday. You cannot have any kind of Christmas production without it. I’ve learned it in three different language classes; it must be translated into scores of others. It is so embedded in Western European sensibilities that in the two great wars of the first half of the Twentieth Century, it is credited with spanning the combatant divide.

Since it cannot require any introduction, I’m just going to give you a few different versions. First, representing the First World War, we have a commercial that was produced in 2014 for the British grocery chain Sainsbury’s, on the centenary of the Christmas Truce that occurred in the first winter of the war, when soldiers from Germany on one side and England, Scotland and France on the other reached out across No Man’s Land to celebrate the holiday.

The December holidays—so family focused—are when the men and women in uniform most feel the cold and isolation that serving in the front lines brings. December 1914 was no exception; especially since everyone had confidently expected that the war would be over by Christmas. It must have been other-worldly when Allied soldiers heard the Germans singing “Stille Nacht” and other carols across the frozen landscape, and then seen the lights on trees perched above the trenches. Sainsbury’s would have us believe that the overture came from the Brits, but historical accounts agree that the Germans made those first, dangerous moves. Up and down the trenches, front line soldiers from both sides mingled, exchanged small tokens, played football, shared meals.

Naturally, once commanders found out about it, threats were made and the fraternization was not repeated for the rest of the war.

Thirty years later, there were German and Allied (this time, American) armies facing one another across freezing turf in Belgium. The clip I’m giving you here is from Band of Brothers, so it’s an embellishment on Christmas Eve around Bastogne, but…it could be.

This year again, we have forces stationed in places far away from family. I have no doubt that they will be singing this on Monday night, wherever they are.

Dance in seven time

The first time I heard a first-person description of depression, I was in Cary, N.C., cleaning the living room with the talking lamp yapping in the background. A reporter was interviewing a woman with clinical depression, and her words stopped me cold: It’s not that you feel bad; it’s that you feel like you’ll never feel anything other than bad. Oh, I thought, so that’s what this is.

About the same time, I saw an ad for a clinical trial at UNC of a new anti-depressant, and I signed up. The doctors confirmed that yes indeedy, I had clinical depression, so I trotted over to Chapel Hill every week or two to have my vitals taken and answer a battery of questions, one of which was, “On a scale of one to ten, ten being very good, how are you feeling today?” I consistently scored myself in the two to four range. At one point, the Hungarian doctor put down his fountain pen (this was before laptops and internets, children) and asked (out of genuine curiosity), “On your best day ever, what score would you give it?” I had to think hard on that one, but eventually I said, “A seven.”

(After several months of this, I finally asked Dr. Hungary, “At what point should I start feeling different?” He hesitated to respond, because it was double-blind and all. But the answer was that if I were in fact getting the drug, I should have felt the difference long before. I was getting the placebo, so we ended my participation then. However, for whatever reasons, that drug never made it to the marketplace.)

I have to tell you that three decades later, I struggle almost every day with that unrelenting darkness that Winston Churchill referred to as the black dog. It’s not passing through the Slough of Despond, it’s being imprisoned there with no key to the door. Every joy is muffled, while every rejection, pain and fear is magnified. No amount of telling me to get a grip, look on the bright side, count my blessings or anything else helps. And despite my best efforts, medically, I’m beginning to think nothing is going to help. Ever.

When every day is the exact same shade of charcoal, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s Valentine’s Day, your birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving or even Christmas. You watch others diving into it, but can't muster up the energy. This tends to make the delta between the Season of Mandatory Joy that’s relentlessly shoved down our throats by pretty much everything and everyone, and what I'm experiencing, feel like a knife between the ribs. That's why I try to focus on the music of Advent during December. I keep looking for the light that I often don’t believe is there for me.

So I get it that, for the generations of humans before the proliferation of manmade lights, people kind of held their breath through the longer nights and made a big splash on the night of the Winter Solstice. Bonfires, songs, feasts, alcohol—calling on the Higher Powers to do their thing and drive back the darkness. And why Christians co-opted those celebrations to mark the birth of the Messiah (which more likely occurred in the Spring, if we go by the astronomical and meteorological clues in the Gospel narratives). God-made-man = light of the world. We can follow that light and find our way out of the Slough of Despond, which for some is merely seasonal.

For today’s piece, then, I’m taking a curve in this pilgrim’s progress and heading back to the music of my youth—"Solstice Bells”, by Jethro Tull. Yes, not really Advent. My blog, my rules, my prerogative.

And I’m cranking up the volume.

Two out of three

When I was in Berlin recently, I stayed at a Radisson hotel, which—in addition to the gigantic aquarium in the atrium—had a spa and a pool somewhere on the level below the lobby. A few times during my stay, I rode the elevator down with someone wrapped in one of the white terrycloth guest bathrobes, who was headed for either the spa or the pool. It’s a little disconcerting, tbh, to get on one of those glass fishbowl jobbers and find it’s occupied by a substantial guy in a bathrobe.

I got on one time with just such a bloke. Because the elevators at work don’t have keys inside the cars—you input your floor on a keypad outside and an algorithm sends up JIT elevator—I often get into strange elevators and forget to punch a destination floor. Anyway, this happened with Robe Guy. He noticed my confusion at having gone a floor too far and said I could check out the spa (or maybe it was the pool), but I declined.

Anyhow, another time a mother and what I took to be her two sons—about 9 or 10 years old—were clearly headed to the pool. I know this because the boys were completely engulfed in terrycloth robes, which practically swept the floor. They reminded me of kids dressed up as the Three Kings in Christmas pageants. (I wanted to get a photo of them, but reckoned that would be creepy.)

So, in honor of two of the wise men in Berlin, let’s have “We Three Kings”, sung by a children’s choir for today’s Advent piece. It’s not really jumping the gun, since those Magi must have been on the road for some time before they got to Bethlehem; it’s legit.

Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem

My favorite Old Testament book is Isaiah. There’s so much flowing beauty in that old prophet. And a lot of that beauty forms the backbone of many carols, since he’s all about the coming of the Messiah.

“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”, “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”, “Joy to the World”, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” are examples of Isaiah-based carols. Christmas-related hymns include “Come, Thou, Long-Expected Jesus”, “To Us a Child of Hope is Born” and “Comfort, Comfort Ye, My People”.

Isaiah also is deployed in seasonal oratorios, including the one most often trotted out around now. Let’s have Handel’s version of “Comfort Ye, My People”, followed by “Ev’ry Valley”. I find the imagery of the latter striking: Every valley shall be lifted up; every mountain and hill made low. Uneven ground will become smooth and the rugged land a plain.” If that doesn’t comfort the people, I don’t know what will.

Slumber deep

Let’s make another trip to Czechia for today’s Advent carol. It’s jumping the gun, some, because it’s about the baby in the manger. But, look—we’re within a week of the big night, so I’m going for it.

We in the English-speaking world know “Hajej, Nynej, Jezisku” as “The Rocking Carol”. It’s a lullaby, as sung by the animals in the stable. They open with, “Little Jesus, sweetly sleep, do not stir, we will lend a coat of fur,” and they promise to rock him gently.

Technically, the animals in the stable—the oxen, the ass, the sheep brought in by the shepherds—they don’t have fur, really. But if there were stable cats—I can see them offering to snuggle up to the baby and purr him to sleep. Even a sheepdog—entirely possible that, with the sheep all corralled, the dog would be off duty and overjoyed to curl up with the infant. I love the image this conjures up in my mind.

Here’s what I take to be a Czech choir singing it:

If you want it in English, here’s Chanticleer:

(I searched around for something from England, but I swear all their choirs sing it at an excruciatingly slow pace. It’s a lullaby, not a dirge.)

Gratitude Monday: I've got a little list

It’s kind of odd that—in this season of, well, you know—I’m having a really difficult time coming up with something to be grateful for today. I’ve tried; really, I have. It’s just…

Well, let me see what I can do.

My move to an office closer to “the team”—the ones who disrespect me overtly and covertly and who are, by grabbing tasks that fall within my remit and which they are unqualified to perform, steering this project ever closer to the iceberg—has been delayed because of a comedy of errors. This started with me checking out the target office and pointing out it was chockablock with books and signs stating, “Do not touch these books”. Which apparently no one in either the department or Facilities had thought to do. There’s a long and tedious tale between that and the current “plan”, but I’m now slated to move into a different office, which is two doors further away from “the team”. This is not nearly far enough, but it’s something.

The concierge primary care practice that the untruthfully-named CareFirst plan moved out of network last year is now back in-network, and I’ve got an appointment with one of the doctors today, after skating near the edge for the past 12 months. This is a relief, because it turns out that finding a primary care practice accepting new patients in the District They Call Columbia and its environs is like prospecting for gold in the Mojave. (Not helped by CareFirst’s utterly useless “provider directory”, with its outdated and outright false data.) So there’s that.

I determined that I still had two and a half days of use-it-or-lose-it vacation hours on the books, so I’m taking Wednesday through Friday off work. Coupled with us being granted Monday off as well makes for a nice stand-down period before Christmas. I’m going to use this for some last-minute gift-making, and nail down my list of things to burn for this year’s El Año Viejo. This should help with my resting bitch face in coming weeks, so it’s a good thing.

I loved being in Europe and having that excuse to shoot hundreds of photos. I’d completely forgotten what a joy that is. That’s a recovered blessing, one I hope I can hold on to.

Oh—and I lost about five pounds while on that trip; yay!

And that should do it for this Gratitude Monday.

In the thorny wood

Back to Germany for today’s Advent carol, which is about the Visitation of Mary to Elisabeth—the mother of Jesus and the mother of John the Baptist, both miraculously pregnant. “Maria durch ein Dornwald ging” describes Mary’s journey, and themes related to the mother and child during this season are woven into the narrative.

We know from Luke that when Mary arrived (early in her pregnancy), John in Elisabeth’s womb “leapt for joy” at the recognition of the godhead Mary was carrying. So, there’s joy.

In other carols, the divinity of yet-to-be-born Jesus is made apparent, as in “The Cherry Tree Carol”, where he causes the eponymous tree to lower its boughs so Mary can pick the fruit that a somewhat churlish Joseph refuses to gather for her. In this one, as Mary walks through the woods, a thorn tree—which hasn’t bloomed in seven years—suddenly flowers. (Possibly a reference to Elisabeth, who had aged childless out of her fertile years becoming pregnant with John, who was quite the thorn in the Establishment’s side, both Roman and Hebrew.) The “thorn bush” is also a frequent Christmas symbol—in the form of roses. Lotta carols about roses.

The part I like is that it refers to the pregnancy by saying that Mary carries Jesus “beneath her heart”. Just as how—in the Annunciation—she is said to have “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” As you do when an archangel pays a call and tells you you’ve been chosen to give [virgin] birth to the Messiah.

I’m thinking Mary’s heart must have been large, strong and welcoming.

Anyhow, we’ll have two versions of “Maria durch ein Dornwald ging”; first from Patricia Janečková, she of the sublime voice, and singers from the Janáček Conservatory in Ostrava (Czech Republic).

Voces8 have a different take, so have a listen to this one, too:

In sweet rejoicing

It’s Gaudete Sunday in Advent—the day when Christians preparing for the arrival of Christ rejoice. The other Sundays are all about hunkering down in preparation; this is when we’re meant to cut loose a bit because we’re so close to the end of the waiting. So it’s time for us to cut loose a bit musically, as well.

“In dulci jubilo” is a concatenation of Latin and German text, set to music by my man Michael Praetorius, among others—including J.S. Bach, today's choice. We know it in English as “Good Christian Men, Rejoice”. It speaks of “our heart’s joy” in the mother’s lap, and that appeals to me.

I’m giving you two versions. The “straight” one is from King’s College, Cambridge:

Here’s also a riff on it by the San Francisco a capella group, Chanticleer: