I did not mention, when I wrote about Musée de
l’Armée, that I made a quick pass through the museum shop. I thought it
interesting that you can buy felt Christmas ornaments pertaining to les
Invalides (the complex of buildings of which the museum is a part).
The Dôme des Invalides houses the tomb of
Napoléon I. In all my visits to the museum I have never bothered with this.
Tombs—meh. However, he is rather a big deal, so his tomb is suitably
pretentious.
Here are ornaments shaped like Napoléon’s hat
and les Invalides:
And here’s the building IRL:
Bonaparte shares space with his son, Napoléon
François Charles Joseph (by Marie Louise of Austria). Styled the King of Rome,
the boy never ruled (except for 15 days in 1815, when he was four years old),
and died in Austria, age 21. Known as l’Aiglon (the Eaglet), his remains were
returned to France by Hitler in 1940 (except for his heart and intestines,
which stayed in Vienna, traditional resting place of Habsburgs). By that time, the
French would have preferred the return of coal mines and factories.
Anyhow, here’s a felt Aiglon:
And finally, I thought a Mme Bonaparte (Joséphine, not Marie Louise, but those empresses were fairly interchangeable)
was a nice touch:
I wasn’t going to post anything for today,
because I’ve just run out of…everything. But I saw this thread from one of the
best people on Twitter, so have this instead.
In honor of baby Jesus & his family of
refugees/immigrants, here are a 20 quick points to remember the next time a
loved one at the holiday party tries to make you fear the "illegals."
1. If US politiicians
really wanted undocumented immigration to end, they'd start locking up the
Americans who hire them. The demand for undocumented labor would swiftly end.
They never talk about that. There's a giant "Help Wanted" sign at our
border and it's not coming down.
2. The majority of
undocumented immigrants are people who overstay their visas, not illegal border
crossings. Politicians don't talk about this.
3. Undocumented immigrants
commit crimes at lower rates than US-born citizens. Legal immigrants also
commit crimes at lower rates than US-born citizens.
4. Undocumented immigrants
pay state, local & sales taxes. Over 11 billion in 2016,
6. "Illegals" is
a racist, dehumanizing, other-izing term. It's un-Christian and hypocritical -
if you drive 56 in a 55 zone, aren't you an 'illegal' too?
If you disagree, count how many other types of lawbreakers FOX News calls
"illegals."
7. Trump is an illegal.
$25 million for education fraud alone. And I don't really need to say this, but
more to come.
8. Politicians don't try
to punish people who give jobs to undocumented workers (driving down supply of
jobs) bc fear of Central American & Mexican immigrants & asylum seekers
gets massive votes & campaign donations. It's a racket.
9. From slavery to Chinese
railroad workers to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to today's overseas
sweatshops, exploited labor by marginalized peoples has always propped up the
US economy.
Without 'illegals' you'd pay $40 for a salad.
And I know, salads don't apply to Trump.
10. Trump hires
undocumented workers. Going back to the 80s w/undocumented polish construction
workers.
The same people who exploit undocumented labor also exploit fear of the
undocumented. You're being suckered by very rich hypocrites.
11. No national Democratic
politicians have called for any legislation or policies that could ever lead to
"Open Borders."
This is important. Any politician or media figure who uses the term "open
borders" is lying.
The Bible calls that "bearing false witness."
12. They are never going to
build a wall across thousands of miles of desert, rivers and forests, private
and commercial property - while forcing Americans to give up their land under
eminent domain law.
Wall fans are arguing for big govt to seize private American property.
13. The wall will not stop
undocumented immigration. Ladders and shovels are things that will still exist.
As will America's giant "Help Wanted" sign.
14. People who support
stealing migrant children are legally still allowed to call themselves
Christian. They are not.
15. America has crumbling
roads, bridges, a deliberately underfunded public school system, neglected
infrastructure and an underfunded VA.
A guy who's hired undocumented workers wants $5billion to keep undocumented
workers from coming here for work. It's all a scam.
16. Trump promised his
supporters that Mexico would pay for the wall.
He promised you, #MAGA.
Many times. Now he literally wants you to pay for his own broken promise.
(And the majority of 2016 voters rejected it, 74 million total (HR & 3rd
parties) vs. DT's 62 million)
17. The majority of
Americans still oppose the wall. They know it's expensive, bigoted, stupid and
won't work. The majority of Americans don't hate America.
18. Undocumented
immigration has dropped to a 12-year low. There is no 'crisis' and you have
been lied to:
20. Fear of
"illegals" is a scam designed to get alarmed FOX news viewers to vote
for an agenda centered on more tax cuts for very rich people, who don't need
more tax cuts.
Bonus #21. If you don't like our drug war refugees from
Central American drug war violence seeking asylum in America then stop
supporting the drug war.
Bonus #22. It's Jesus' birthday so here's his take. From
Matthew 25, which modern RW evangelicals seriously need to read:
"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you
gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,"
Today I am grateful that it’s Christmas Eve and
I’m not at work. Our CEO magnanimously gave us both today and next Monday off;
I imagine the executive crowd wanted the day, so we all got it. Yay.
So I’m here with Bach blasting on the stereo,
clearing away the detritus of Christmas prep, scrubbing down the kitchen
(powdered sugar from cookies this time, not the encrustation of granulated from
making candy). The bird feeders are filled, the larder is likewise full; I don’t
have to go out anywhere. Yipee.
I can spend this day entirely as I choose, for
which I give thanks.
Man, this year has been a son of a bitch, hasn’t
it? And we still have another week to go before we can slam the door on it. But
it’s Christmas Eve, the end of Advent, also known as la Noche Buena and Holy Night. Which is a
lead in to today’s offering.
The poem “Minuit, Crétiens” was written (by a
wine merchant, if you’re asking) to commemorate the renovation of the local
Avignon-area church organ in 1843. It was set to music and the resulting anthem
premiered in 1847. It’s quite the show piece, and there are plenty of diva-esque
performances.
However, I feel that it’s only appropriate that
I should close out the season with the Queen of Soul singing “O Holy Night”.
Fourth Sunday in Advent for many Christians is
devoted to the Annunciation, which was what got the whole thing rolling, as it
were. The Annunciation was when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary and announced that she’d been chosen to bring the Son of God into the world via virgin
birth.
We only have the (male) Gospel accounts of that
event and they pretty much gloss over what must have been quite the awkward conversation.
What we’re told is that, upon receiving the announcement (no discussion allowed),
Mary replies, basically, “Well, okay. I am the handmaiden of the Lord. Let’s do
it.”
A prayer for today is the Magnificat, a
canticle sung by Mary. Technically, this takes us to the
Visitation (which took place shortly after the Annunciation, thus long
before Advent, but is referenced in seasonal readings), but I am not
responsible for how this shakes out. “Magnificat” is the opening of how Mary
describes her condition to her cousin Elisabeth. “My soul doth magnify the
Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”
We had a discussion on this canticle at
Wednesday’s eucharist about the “magnifying” thing. People kept talking about
magnifying glasses, which I think misses the point. Magnifying glasses make
things look bigger; they stay the
same size, we’re just experiencing an optical illusion. Mary tells us that she
(through her soul) will add to the Lord; amplify
him, if you will. Or perhaps she’s saying that she’ll make God manifest, and thus larger in our lives; she’ll actually
add to the Lord.
So I think we should have a Magnificat today,
and what better than J.S. Bach’s?
If you’d like the full version, here’s a
performance held at the church for which Bach composed it:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
