There's love in our world

Let’s lighten Advent up a skosh. And by “lighten”, I mean, “Let’s get silly.”

And let’s face it—who does silly better than otters? I’m talking Muppet otters, in this case.

Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas was a book by Russell Hoban; Jim Henson made it into a TV film in 1977. The plot revolves around attempts by Emmet Otter and his mother to win a $50 prize at a Christmastime talent show. They actually compete against each other, but in the end they collaborate on this number, which combines Ma Otter’s song with Emmet’s piece, creating "Brothers in Our World". You don’t need details.

But wait—there’s more. To be exact, there’s an outtake reel.

You’re welcome.

 

Quit this crazy scene

Singer-songwriter-artist Joni Mitchell was one of the 2021 recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors this past weekend. Long overdue, but still welcome.

Mitchell was one of the iconic chroniclers of the ‘60s and ‘70s. I myself wore the grooves off her Ladies of the Canyon album, but they’re all stellar. Each release marked another waystation on the journey she has taken, courageously redefining her approach.

For today’s Advent entry, let’s have her singing “The River”, from her Blue album. I love this song. The way she soars on the "fly" of "teach my feet to fly" is absolutely stunning.

 

 

 

Gratitude Monday: a little help from my friends

The last two weeks were actually pretty ghastly for me…in every aspect of my life. So my gratitude today is for three friends and a proto-friend colleague, because the conversations I had with them between Thursday and Saturday kinda got me down from the ledge. I still have miles to go, but they helped inestimably.

Also, I can’t stop laughing at the colleague telling me that people are like trees: the older they get, the more rings they develop.

 

 

The bishop's carol

Today is the feast day of Saint Nicholas, the Fourth Century Bishop of Myra who is the patron of Russia, Greece, children, sailors, unmarried women, merchants, pawnbrokers and charitable organizations. Nick has a lot on his plate.

He’s also the progenitor of Santa Claus (via the Dutch Sinterklaas and the story of the bishop lobbing bags of gold through a window and to land in shoes left by the fire, thus providing doweries for three impoverished girls).

We in the US envision Saint Nicholas/Santa Claus as a fat white bearded dude wearing a white fur-trimmed big red suit, mostly on account of Clement Moore’s 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas”. In other places he looks more clerical, travels with a single donkey instead of eight reindeer, and is accompanied by a dark-skinned dude named Zwart Piet (or sometimes, Krampus). The sidekick dishes out coal to children who’ve been naughty, while Nick leaves gifts for the good kids.

One recent alteration in Santa came from Tim Burton’s 1993 film, The Nightmare before Christmas. This happens when the chief of Halloweentown, Jack Skellington, tries to fulfil the duties of the man he refers to as Sandy Claws from Christmastown, makes a mess of things and has to scramble to put it all right. Right after Thanksgiving, my Halloween-spider neighbors took down their web and stalky-eyed monster and put up Christmas lights. Not unsurprisingly, their display had Jack/Sandy and an assistant:

Sadly, within a couple of days of that going up, the Tim Burton additions disappeared; I’m thinking they were stolen, which is pretty Grinchy, if you ask me.

But back to our actual saint—in addition to Russia and Greece, he’s kind of a big deal in Romania, and here’s “Colindul Sf. Ier. Nicolae”—“The Carol of Saint Nicholas”, sung by the nuns of the Buna-Vestire monastery (or maybe convent) in Călărași.

 

Prepare ye

Here we are at Advent II, preparation Sunday. 

I think everyone prepares in different ways—whatever you need to clear the channels to receive God’s message. (If you believe, of course.) Whether it’s going inward to contemplate or immersing yourself in the beauty around you wherever you happen to be—just be open. Like Frank Cross in Scrooged.

I guess today’s piece is not quite Advent, but it is a call to prepare, and this is my blog, so…here’s “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord”, from Godspell.

I gotta tell you, it’s not much for lyrics, but it has fantastic energy.

Prime your matin chime

Today’s Advent carol came together about a hundred years ago, when English composer George Ratcliffe Woodward set his lyrics to a French (secular) dance melody by Jehan Tabourot in the 16^th Century.

I confess that I cannot hear “Ding Dong Merrily on High” without picturing the scene from “Hercule Poirot’s Christmas” where Inspector Japp is stuck at his wife’s Welsh family’s house where everyone but him is “Gloria-ing” to beat the band. His face, when they tuck into the second verse after a pause, is classic. Sadly, that is not available on the Interwebz, so here’s the King’s College, Cambridge, choir singing it.

Mega shout-out to all the bell ringers in all the church towers around the world. Except for a certain Sir Mouth Almighty, who only shows up for photo ops, wearing military medals he did not earn.

The road is so long

My laser jet printer is running out of toner, so I had to order a new cartridge. (Interestingly, I paid about $120 for the machine; HP is charging $75 per cartridge. Wut?)

I went to Amazon, which had two cartridges for $23. But all the (Prime) possibilities were to arrive in two days, and I found myself whining, “What happened to same-day delivery? What about one-day delivery? Why do I have to wait two days to get my printer toner?”

That got me to thinking about The Supply Chain Issues that have Republicans foaming outrage. I also thought about World War II, and the very real privations most of Europe experienced for six years (not to mention horrors in East and Southeast Asia between 1932-1945). We, in the United States, had Supply Chain Issues between 1942 and 1945; while there were grumbles and cheats, mostly folks sucked it up and got on with things.

That made me wonder what would have happened if today’s FREEDUMB morons were around about 80 years ago and I quickly concluded that I’d be writing my blog in German. (Ha-ha, just kidding: there would be no blogs, no platforms for conspiracy theories and probably no Klepto cultists because those genetic structures would have been culled from the pool.)

Well, for today’s Advent piece, let’s have John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”. I’d really like to think about this long, slogging war between democracy and fascism being over.

P.S. Amazon surprised me: my toner cartridges arrived yesterday. So I whined and moaned all for nothing.

 

Wacht auf zu dieser Freudenzeit!

We can’t have an Advent without Michael Praetorius; we just can’t. So today’s entry is “Der Morgenstern ist aufgedrungen” ("The Morning Star Is Risen"), written by a Lutheran minister named Daniel Rumpius in 1587 and set to this melody in 1609.

Rumpius pulled on an older song about the morning star waking lovers after spending the night together; presumably they are illicit lovers, but I don’t judge. Just goes to show you how Christians will turn all kinds of things—Saturnalia, pagan tree worship, adulterous love—into the service of the Gospel.

The lyrics speak of the morning star rising—perhaps prefiguring the light of Christ—and urge people to awake to joy and prepare for the new day.

The performers are the Dresdener Kreutzchor. I bought the CD this is on when I was there in 1999 for the Christkindlmarkt, so it has a special place in my heart.

Like a knucklehead

As you know from years past, I take a somewhat small-c catholic view of Advent music. This season covers such a vast territory of human expression, I have to go with the flow. So today’s piece is slightly out there, “I Yust Go Nuts for Christmas”, by Yogi Yogesson.

Yogesson was an entertainer of Norwegian ancestry who forged a career in comedy and novelty songwriting in the 1940s and 1950s projecting a Swedish persona. (Real name: Harry Stewart.) “I Yust Go Nuts” was his biggest hit, and re-released by Capitol Records for a number of years at Christmas.

The part about shopping for a Christmas present for his wife reminds me of a commercial for a drug store back in the last century. Might have been Thrifty. Guy is in a frenzy rolling his shopping cart around the store, getting wrapping paper and ribbon because, "When a man gives his wife a vacuum cleaner for Christmas, nothing is too good for her."

All dressed so fine

The story of the birth of Christ is all about journeys. Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem, for the census. The three magi “from the East”, seeking the king, guided by a star. The holy family fleeing to Egypt, to escape Herod’s slaughter of the innocents. A lot of miles, a lot of dust, a lot of new scenery.

Well, when you think of it, we’re all on journeys, even if we never live anywhere outside the county of our birth. Some of us travel externally; some are trekking inward. Some—me, for example—both. We do it to learn, to share, to find new perspective; to grow; to become.

So today’s Advent song is about journeys.

“Children, Go Where I Send Thee” is an African-American relation of an old English song called “The Twelve Apostles”. It’s a counting song, with repetitions, but it is not as deadly as “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, which I absolutely, categorically loathe with an incandescent hatred. The artists are The Fairfield Four, a group that has existed for a hundred years (although not with its current members, obvs). I love this version.

You will note that the song is not about the where, but about the how. This is an important element of journeys that we often overlook.