No Country for Old Christmas Trees

The curious snowless winter continues. There has to be some downside to this, besides a loss in seasonal income for workers that specialize in snow-related activity, but I'm hard pressed to think of what. No ice lurking on the sidewalks, no biting winds in my face, lower heating costs: all good things. But maybe waves of vicious insects that a cold winter would have otherwise killed in their pre-larval stage will rise to plague us in the summer. Guess we'll have to take that chance.

It's the time of year to anthropomorphize your Christmas tree. "Say, what are those plastic tubs you've put next to me?" the tree wants to ask. "I seem to remember them from somewhere."

Christmas trees, as a rule, have poor memories. The last time the decoration storage tubs were near the tree was about a month ago.

"When is it going to be time again for another -- I don't know what it was, but I seemed to be the center of attention," the tree further muses. "The small ones came to me and seemed quite excited. They spent a while right there on the floor, opening boxes and eating something. I thought that was a good time. Let's do it again. Ah, you're taking a few things off me. Good. I felt a little cluttered anyway..."

So it goes for another year. I never did get a good picture of the '11 Christmas tree. So here's one from 2005, taken on Christmas morning. That tree looks about the same as this year's tree. The girls, on the other hand, seem a bit different now.

Stille Nacht

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. Posting will resume again around January 2, 2012.

You'd think we'd hear this English version of the song more often, but no.

I'm Dreaming of a Brown Christmas

A solstice fact for the day, courtesy timeanddate.com: "December 20 and December 23 solstices occur less frequently than December 21 or December 22 solstices in the Gregorian calendar. The last December 23 solstice occurred in 1903 and will not occur again until the year 2303. A December 20 solstice has occurred very rarely, with the next one occurring in the year 2080."

Looks like Christmas Day in northern Illinois will not feature crystalline water ice coating the mixture of clay, sand and organic matter that serves as substrate for plant growth. That is to say, there's no snow on the ground today, and none predicted for the next few days. I wonder, was a "white Christmas" a popular idea before the Irving Berlin song, or did the song foster the idea? Probably the latter, considering how astonishingly successful the song has been.

Roy J. Harris claims in the article linked above that "longing for Christmas snowfall was hardly a common image before Berlin's song." But it is now. My own daughters are complaining about the prospect of a brown Christmas. But that doesn't bother me, since it's just like the ones I used to know.

I had a fine time driving home from Phillies (see yesterday), listening to Christmas music on WXRT, which has started playing it from 8 p.m. to midnight. That station, which normally plays a broader range of popular music than most, has figured out an alternative to the repetitive, unimaginative approach WLIT takes to Christmas music every year. First of all, XRT plays it only four hours a day; that should be more than enough for anyone. More importantly, countless artists have recorded countless holiday titles over the years, and the station dips deep into that well.

The selections include unheralded versions of classics, lesser-known songs, and a variety of demented holiday tunes. You never know what you'll hear next. I was enjoying the songs, but after awhile Lilly wanted me to change to WLIT, so she could hear "something I can sing along with."

"What, you can't sing along to 'Father Christmas'?" I asked. That was the song playing at that moment. (The Kinks, 1977; not exactly unknown, but the Christmas Lite wouldn't touch it.)

But the last time I played Father Christmas
I stood outside a department store
A gang of kids came over and mugged me
And knocked my reindeer to the floor

They said: 'Father Christmas, give us some money
Don't mess around with those silly toys.
We'll beat you up if you don't hand it over...'

I allowed that maybe "Father Christmas" didn't quite inspire the holiday cheer she was looking for, so we went back to the usual suspects for a few minutes. And what do you know, WLIT soon played the original Bing Crosby version of "White Christmas." I can't really complain about that. A few songs can take the repetition.

Christkindlmarket Chicago '11

I visited at the Christkindlmarket Chicago on Friday as an appendage to a longer visit downtown, as during previous years, since it isn't something I would make a special trip just to see. The ornaments are pretty and all, but not so dazzling that I'd drive to a Metra station, ride an hour on a train, and walk six or seven city blocks just to gaze upon them.

Nice baubles.

It might be a misapprehension, but it seemed like there were more food vendors at the market this year than before. Such as this purveyor of pretzels.

It was a fairly cold day, though not actually freezing -- been a strange December that way so far, with little snow or ice. But it was cold enough for pigeons on Daley Plaza, site of the Christkindlmarket, to seek out warmth wherever they could.

That's Daley Plaza's Eternal Flame, dating from 1972, whose plaque says, Eternal flame in memory of the men and women who have served in our armed forces. Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, National Guard, Reserves and Merchant Marines. In Pigeon, it might be called "the Warm Place Always."

The Name Salad

Got an e-mail from Americans for Gary J today -- how did I get on that list? -- and the subject said: Gary Johnson is Angry! Find Out Why. I have a pretty good idea. He's asking himself, why isn't it my turn? Even the pizza guy got a turn.

We attended the Rosa Luxemburg Junior High Winter Band Concert this evening, in which Lilly participated as a trombonist. For anyone worried about the "winter" in that name at the expense of Christmas, I can report that the program included no fewer than four songs with "Christmas" explicitly in the title, plus others with obvious Christmas associations. Some tunes I wasn't familiar were "Santa at the Symphony," "Funky Ol' Saint Nick," and "Rhapsody in Red & Green."

I looked at the lists of kids in the bands (7th grade, 8th grade, the district junior highs' jazz band) and I'm pleased to report a multi-ethnic salad bowl of names, out here in the homogeneous suburbs. A selection: Avila, Begbaaji, Freiburger, Gonzalez, Hirjoi, Jones, Khokari, Kim, Li, McCoy, Nagorzanski, O'Connell, Patel, Popovic, Rizvic, Scalafini, Schmaus, Stribling, Takizawa, Walker, Woo. As for first names, the likes of Ann, Alex, Caroline, Jessica, Jonathan, Kevin, Lilly, Mike, Patrick, Rebecca, Sarah, Thomas and William are represented, but so are Aya, Ena, Jemi, Koryana, Malik, Mumbua, Reena, Sergio, and my own favorite, a kid named Vlad.

Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit

I saw about five minutes of the feature-length abomination known as Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas on TV this evening. That's all I've ever seen of it at any one sitting over the decade or so since it was new, and I've never formed a better opinion of it. An alternate title might have been, Dr. Seuss’ Heirs Eager to Cash In, No Questions Asked.

But at least it reminded me that I own this book, which goes by the fine title Quomodo Invidiosulus Nomine Grinchus Christi Natalem Abrogaverit. It's a translation by the husband-and-wife team Terence and Jennifer Tunburg, unless that's a ruse, and the original was actually on a fourth-century Greek/Latin codex rediscovered at Mount Athos in the 19th century (and updated a bit in modern versions, to exclude such details as the Grinch's heresy trial for following Arianism).

It was one of the better Christmas presents I've received over the years -- I think it was the Christmas after Lilly was born -- from some old high school friends of mine. Now that's an adaptation of a classic children's tale we call all get behind.

The Indoor Display of '11

Finding and setting up a Christmas tree was another weekend project. Find one we did, at a Lutherian church lot at some distance from our house. It's a balsam fir, about six feet high -- a shade shorter than usual, since that was cheaper, and I always have to trim a few inches off anyway to crown the thing with the golden plastic star.

So far, I haven't got a decent picture of the whole thing. But Ann took a couple of closeups. One is of a electric multicolor star-shaped ornament that I refuse to put on the top because the golden plastic star goes there, since it's exactly like the star on the top of the trees of my youth, except not silvery. This year, the electric multicolor star-shaped ornament is near the base of the tree.

Ann also set up a gang of Christmas characters at the base of the tree.

Be of good cheer, they seem to say, or else. Santa's got some muscle with him in the form of that Christmas bear. Sure, he's smiling. He enjoys his main job, which is keeping the elves in line.

Synchronized Electric Holiday Cheer

While visiting a drug store this weekend, I noticed that A Christmas Story has become a cottage industry -- a fairly major cottage industry, I'd say, to get a whole endcap display of its themed merchandise at this particular large chain. Maybe this year I'll get around to seeing that movie, since somehow or other I've missed it over the years. I'd never even heard of it until some years ago, when I read that the house in Cleveland used for exteriors had been converted into a museum devoted to the movie. Or I could just read about the movie, so that I'll understand the significance of a female leg table lamp in the story.

Until this weekend, I'd also never seen home Christmas lights synchronized to flash in time to a musical score, though I'd been vaguely aware of such displays, which are still fairly new. An early example of synchronized Christmas lights "was the work of Carson Williams, a Mason, Ohio, electrical engineer who spent about three hours sequencing the BB Light-O-Rama channels that controlled the 16,000 Christmas lights in the 2004 version of his annual holiday spectacular," says Snopes. "His 2005 display included over 25,000 lights that he spent nearly two months and $10,000 to hook up. So that Williams' neighbors wouldn't be disturbed by constant noise, viewers driving by the house were informed by signs to tune into a signal broadcast over a low-power FM radio station to hear the musical accompaniment."

Another source says that Williams spent three hours sequencing each minute of his display, but whatever the total, I'm sure it was a lot of work. Now, in the holiday season of 2011, either the techniques involved in creating this kind of light show are being defused to the benefit of Christmas-display enthusiasts, or Christmas-display specialists have learned Mr. William's strategies and are finding a market for their services. Or both. But when you chance across an elaborate synchronized display in the heart of the northwest suburbs, you know the thing's got some legs, at least among homeowners for whom static Christmas lights just aren't enough.

One of Lilly's friends told us about a synchronized display a block from her house, and when Lilly and I were in the area on Saturday evening, we stopped in front of the house for a few minutes and watched. It's exactly as described above: thousands of lights and a hand-lettered sign advising us to tune into a certain unoccupied FM frequency. As we watched, the lights flashed in artful on/off patterns to "Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairies" and a few other songs. A remarkable sight. I plan to take Yuriko and Ann to see it soon.

Lighting the December Nights

This weekend proved to be unexpectedly warm (that is, not biting cold) and November-like. Much rain on Saturday morning instead of snow. Go figure.

I took the opportunity to light the outdoor lights, which have been in place since last year, when I had to replace most of the older strings. I also festooned one of our small evergreens with the new, aforementioned LED lights. Then I put out one plastic and one ceramic snowman, neither of which lights. Yuriko acquired the ceramic snowman last summer at a yard sale, and he's not bad looking.

Here in our suburban neighborhood there seem to be about as many inflatables as ever, but icicle lights, so popular in the late '90s and early '00s, are now pretty scarce. Replacing regular outdoor, wall-mounted lights with red and green bulbs, once a novelty, now seems fairly common, sometimes to supplement other decor, sometimes as the only decor. One house not far away put in red and green lights to replace the usual white, but also opposite-colored lights at ground level, shining up at the wall-mounted lights. That is, green shines up to a red light, and red shines up to a green light. It's a pretty effect.

One family down the block, who always decorates for Halloween with items that include an animated dark figure sporting sinister blue-light eyes, also decorates with some elaborateness for Christmas. They've put out my favorite lawn decoration so far this year: some Christmas chickens. No, really. The ensemble includes lighted figures, the largest of them a chicken with a scarf and a top hat and a raised baton. Smaller chicken figures (chicks?) are nearby, apparently taking musical direction from the larger chicken. I've never seen the likes of it before.

Chistmas Light Transition

We've slipped into the first extended freezing period of winter, but at least no snow is predicted for the first real day of the hard-cold season, December 1. But any time now, we'll get that first coating.

Not long ago we visited a big box store that specializes in DIY goods, but for the holiday season the store has a sizable section devoted to Christmas decor, gewgaws and gimcracks. We bought a net of LED lights promising eight square feet of coverage. They are indoor/outdoor lights, and I have a front-yard bush in mind for their use. This marks a small technological transition, our first Christmas LEDs. Future generations might marvel that anyone ever put incandescent lights on their trees, just as I puzzle about lighted candles on Christmas trees.

”While more expensive in stores than their incandescent brethren, LED lights burn for more than 4,000 hours compared with less than 2,000 for standard bulbs, cost 14 cents to operate a 50-foot string for 300 hours compared with $8 for C7s and $11 for C9s, going by Consumer Reports figures," says The Street in a slide show called "Six Holiday Traditions Fading Into Obscurity," which it says includes intensely hot Christmas lights. (Another "tradition" cited is the aluminum Christmas tree; my grandmother had one, and it fascinated me as a small child; but I'd call that more of a mid-century fad than a tradition.)

C7s and C9s are terms I'd never heard for Christmas light-bulb sizes. More detail than anyone needs to know about "Christmas lighting technology" -- except Christmas-light manufacturers, who would probably want to read it in Cantonese -- is at this Wiki page. But it is good to learn that bubble lights inspired a series of complex and lengthy court cases over patents, if this charming page, "The History of Bubble Lights," is accurate.

Until well into the 1980s, my family's Christmas tree included a '50s-vintage string of six or eight bubble lights, except that all but two of the globes had been broken or had burned out in the misty years before I was old enough to appreciate them. The missing lights had been replaced by regular globes. I took over the annual decoration of our tree some time in the early '70s, and had a great fondness for the two surviving bubble lights, one blue, one red, which I unpacked and handled and repacked with great care.

Give November Its Due

I went outside at about 1 p.m. and it was snowing. Big, full flakes. The snow came and went for a while, but none stayed on the ground. Later it was sunny. Then bleakly cloudy again. Cold but not quite freezing. This evening, we had a bright full moon. How much more November can you get?

November, not December. This happens every year, and every year I'm going to complain about it. Lilly was changing radio stations in the car today and came across "Do You Hear What I Hear?" Even Lilly was astonished, commenting that it's too soon for Christmas songs. It's enough to make you go home and queue up something to blast it right out of your head.

The Christmas Lite station is back on the air -- before Veterans Day, much less Thanksgiving. No thanks. Christmas (that is, the marketers' Christmas) needs to leave November -- chilled, melancholy, bittersweet November -- alone.

Santa in June

"Daddy, is Santa Claus real? Or do parents give presents and say it was Santa Claus?"

That came out of the blue today, at least as far as I was concerned, but maybe Ann had heard something about the subject on TV.

"What do you think?" I asked, switching to Jesuit mode.

"I think it's the parents."

"You're right. You're old enough to know that now."

That was pretty much it. No fuss about the movement of Santa Claus from literal to figurative. Lilly had been much the same way, except she waited until right after Christmas one year to ask, probably in case the jolly old elf turned out to be real after all.

Not Yet Off to Storage

The post-holiday pattern is settling in, even though the season ought to last until January 6. Only a scattering of houses still have Christmas lights aglow; spent Christmas trees are appearing curbside, naked and forlorn; and stores are marking down holiday items 50 percent or 75 percent off, at least in the case of candies whose sale can't be delayed much longer. I got a package of six Russel Stover chocolate santas and snowmen for well under a dollar yesterday. I think they were priced at about $3 not so long ago.

Our tree still stands. It comes down next weekend, with its ornaments packed away for the next 11 months. I suppose one-twelfth of a year isn't too bad a run for seasonal decor.

Speaking of storage, Geof Huth reports that his latest contribution to the archives of the University at Albany has been completed, just before the old year expired. Even though I've known Geof going on 30 years, that wouldn't be of any particular interest to me except that about four years' worth of my correspondence to him has been included in the transfer, as well as my brother Jay's.

Geof calls what we send him "mailart." I call it a hobby based on sending (mostly) postcards to people who will appreciate them. Geof gets more than anyone else because he sends (mostly) postcards in return.

True Grit Holidays

New Year's Eve 2010: the Great Melt here in northern Illinois. Three or so week's worth of snow started melting in earnest with overnight above-freezing temps early on the 30th. By the 31st, all except the hardiest of snow islands were gone and the air pleasant, like a lost day of spring. A parting gift from the year 2010, which will not be remembered fondly for a while, and then forgotten in its particulars, except by historians and other eccentrics.

I finished True Grit, the Charles Portis novel, on Christmas Day; and saw True Grit, the movie now playing, on New Year's Day. Like a lot of people, I hadn't ever read the book, but had seen and enjoyed the famed earlier movie version, though it's been a good many years now.

The prospect of seeing the new movie led me to the book first, and I was rewarded with the best novel I've read in years. Guess I'm a sucker for books about tough yet sympathetic characters on harrowing journeys as opposed to, say, books about unhappy academics who commit adultery and struggle to write books about unhappy academics who commit adultery.

The Coen brothers' movie hews pretty close to the book, which helped make it satisfying, though they usually make satisfying movies in a lot of other ways, such as by hiring a talented cast and paying close attention to the details of time and place, as they did with True Grit. The arresting visuals, with Texas passing for Oklahoma, greatly added to the effect.

I dragged Lilly, protesting, to see the movie. She's old enough now to see an occasional movie that hasn't been dumbed down for an adolescent audience, male or female. She was one of the youngest members of the New Year's Day audience at the suburban multiplex we visited, a fact she pointed out. But after it was over, she said it was "not bad." High praise indeed for something her dad likes.

All of You on the Good Earth

Merry Christmas to all, and a Happy New Year thrown in, since I'm not going to post until around January 2, 2011. Every new year I ask myself, how did that year-number get to be so high? Every year, the answer is tempus fugit, dude.

Apollo 8 Christmas Message link for Facebook readers.

Holiday Ham

As if to emphasize that today was the shortest day of the year, it was also the foggiest around here. But barely cold enough to keep the fallen snow from melting, which was pleasant compared with the near zeros last week.

I'm scheming to put pork on the table this year for Christmas dinner. It comes highly recommended, after all.

Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?

Lisa: No.

Homer: Ham?

Lisa: No.

Homer: Pork chops?

Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.

Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

Item From the Past: Christmas Pageant

There's only one thing written on the back of the photograph below: Dec. 19, 1969. At that moment in time, I was in the 3rd grade. I've long had the urge to date documents, and sure enough the date on this pic is in a childish hand that I recognize as my own handwriting, back when I was fairly new at it. I have to add that the Dec. is in cursive, which I hear that some short-sighted pedagogues do not teach any more.

I didn't write down the names of the kids in the pageant, but oddly enough I remember most of them. From left to right: Jack (standing, no costume), Leslie (holding the Star of Bethlehem), kid I don't remember (shepherd), Cole, David (more shepherds), another David (Joseph), Maura (Mary), Ruth Ann (standing, no costume), Donald, me and Art (as Wise Men). I'm not including them here, but I remember everyone's last name too, except for the kid I don't remember at all and the David with red hair.

The adult in the picture is Mrs. Bigelow, our third-grade teacher at Woodridge Elementary School. What astonishes me about this picture isn't that I was in a Christmas pageant (which I don't really remember, except for making the crown I wore). It's that we had a Christmas pageant at a public school. I doubt that anyone complained about it. Lilly and Ann experience "winter festivals," but that's not the way it was 41 years ago and a 1,000 miles south of here.

Tannenbaum '10

It's a cold, snowy night in mid-December. The kind of night when one's thoughts naturally turn to that coldest of planets, Pluto. Provided there's an interesting discussion about its planetary status within easy reach, that is.

Closer to home, I'm glad we got a little snow, enough to cover the roof again. I'm pretty sure that helps the house keep its heat.

Our Christmas tree went up on Saturday, but because it was raining when we bought it, I insisted that we let it dry out until Sunday before decorating it. Amazingly, the girls didn't complain about that plan. On Sunday, they were all over the task, leaving only the lights and the star on top to me.

We have two stars that could be on the top: a gaudy, multicolored electric light star that plugs in, or a golden-colored hard plastic star with an elongated point on top that looks exactly like the star that went on top of our tree when I was growing up, at least in shape. My childhood star, older than I am, was silver instead of gold.

At some point about 10 years ago, back when I started putting up Christmas trees again, I acquired the golden star somewhere, and no fancy electric rainbow star is going to muscle it out of the top spot. But the girls wanted the more colorful star somewhere near the top, so now it sits a few inches below the golden star. Like Pluto, its status will not change in this house if I can help it.

Wednesday Macédoine

Temperature when I got up this morning, just after sunrise: zero Fahrenheit. By midday, the air had warmed into the mid-20s F. Remarkable how pleasant that seemed by comparison.

The neighbors who put up an electric-light simplified Serbian flag last year for Christmas didn't do it again this year. For whatever reason, this year they were later in stringing lights -- last weekend -- and instead of a glowing Serbian flag, put up a string of blue icicle lights near their roof, plus blue lights in the shape of stylized Christmas trees closer to the ground. A nice effect.

We received another odd business-advertising 2011 calendar in the mail yesterday. A calendar after my own heart: this one includes more presidential birthdays than the standard Lincoln and Washington. But not all of the presidents. Chronologically through the year, these chief executives made the cut: Franklin Roosevelt; McKinley; Lincoln; Washington; Jackson; Madison; Jefferson; Grant; Kennedy; John Quincy Adams; Hoover; Benjamin Harrison; Eisenhower; Teddy Roosevelt; and Wilson.

Fifteen out of 43 (Cleveland counts only once for this purpose). I guess the calendar-maker didn't want to clutter it up with all the birthdays, but still -- Benjamin Harrison but not Cleveland? John Quincy Adams but not John Adams or James Monroe? Hoover but not Truman? And what about poor President Fillmore? He would have been first on the calendar (January 7) had he been included.

Our annual Think Geek catalog came recently as well. High amusement value, as always. This year I noticed an entire page devoted to The Big Bang Theory merchandise. The TV show, not the cosmological event. Maybe the page was there last year, but I hadn't seen the show then, so wouldn't have paid attention to its merchandise. Lately we've been working our way through TBBT DVDs, because the show has that certain something that most sitcoms lack. Namely, it's funny. Hard to believe that the same producers are responsible for the not funny Two and a Half Men, but the strength of TBBT seems to lie in its talented writers and cast, especially Jim Parsons, who's probably stuck with Sheldon Cooper for the rest of his career. These are examples from the first, second and third seasons.

I'd order a Periodic Table shower curtain if it weren't $30. It would have to sing Tom Lehrer's "The Elements," and maybe some other songs about elements, to be worth that much. That isn't far-fetched: you can buy a "personal soundtrack" t-shirt from the Think Geek catalog.

Chicago Christkindlmarket, Kristkindlmarkt 2010

I made it downtown on Friday to the Christkindlmarket Chicago. So did a lot of other people.

If, for some odd reason, Google has referred you to this page for information about Christkindlmarket Chicago, go to this page on eHow instead. I wrote that too, and the more hits, the more I get paid for it.

Last year, I spelled it Kristkindlmarkt, which may or may not be more German, but it isn't how the event is styled in Chicago. In any case, that entry got hundreds of hits, even though I provided scant information about the festival itself, and more about a guy getting arrested during it.

Friday's crowding wasn't a fluke, though it probably helped that it was above freezing. It's a very popular event. People come to look at the ornaments, of which there are many, from Germany and a good many other places besides.

Beer and other refreshments were served, of course. At least one booth specialized in beer steins.

This web site claims there was a Golden Age of Beer Steins. I had no idea. Naturally, we've all missed it by a century.