I can see that Jim P. has taken care of the sacred sense of the season, so how about the mundane?
Mid-day today, I read the Raber's Christmas Letter, apparently resurrected after some years of quiescence. Witty, touching, and down-to-earth, why not request a copy from our correspondent Jean Raber.
And speaking of Christmas correspondence: Cards from nephews, nieces, and grandparents and friends has turned up a crop of photo cards featuring children (and a few babies). I have been struck by how many of these children are white. What a coincidence! So opening the mail today, I was delighted and relieved to have Mary and Harvey Flad's letter with a family photo of many African-American and Asian children,--along with a few whites..talk about diversity! Thank you Flads. I notice in retrospect there are also some Asian-Americans among other cards...and the Rabers have a number of multi-colored cats. We change slowly!
The tiniest family letter (3 x 3) came from CWL publisher Tom Baker and Sue McSorley; their letter has shrunk as the daughters and cats have left home. I am hoping that when and if there are any progeny, Tom will return to the larger format filled with wry observation on being the father of daughters. In the meantime, tiny is good.
Our own progeny have gone off to the "other family" for Christmas...such a sad side effect of the license to marry! As a result, my anxiety schedule is off tempo, which makes me very anxious! Result: we will be eating dinner out.
We did have Schubert's German Mass for the all the common parts. Even if English doesn't fit Schubert's meter, it was glorious, and unusually, the congregation sang! Christmas carols and hymns bring the body together. Maybe we should sing them all year round! Drown out the Fraudster in the White House.
I wish our parish had the GIA music edition, but we have the OCP series, which unfortunately doesn't have Schubert's German Mass. (I believe the arrangement is by Richard Proulx?) But thanks to youtube I could listen to it. It is beautiful and doesn't sound that hard for a congregation.
ReplyDeleteI was mad at my choir (but I forgave them) for singing "Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming" without me Saturday evening. It is my favorite carol, but I was on for EMHC that night.
The music (and words) for our parish Schubert are on "cheat" sheets...no attribution (except to Schubert). So I can't tell who or what rendered this into English or arranged it for the strange twists and turns of making words meet the tempo.
DeletePeggy, I was saying something similar to my wife this year about the Christmas card photos that came rolling in. Television commercials and maybe other media show interracial / multicultural young relationships these days, but economically we're becoming more self-segregating.
ReplyDeleteOr..perhaps, the interracial/multicultural youngers don't send Christmas cards, or letters. Time will tell.
DeleteYes I suspect you're right about Christmas cards and young people. Even un-young people are letting it slip away. I am thinking that Facebook and other social media reduce the need to share photos and family newsletters at holiday time.
DeleteAn unfortunate development...what with Facebook allowing Martians and others to inspect our photos, etc.
DeleteI think that, as one ages, what was once a labor of love is now just a laborious chore. Each year I keep saying to cut back, cut back. I have … but maybe because of the loss of former recipients over the years.
ReplyDeleteNext year, dammit!
In a unexpected and good way, we have boxed ourselves into the card habit.
DeleteWe were outlanders when we first came to NYC, and for many years returned to Chicago for Christmas. At a certain age, children rebelled: they weren't outlanders, so we stayed and some of Chicago came to us.
In the meantime, friends, neighbors who were also from elsewhere loved to get together, thus was born a New Year's Day Open House, started small, got bigger, has tapered a bit as friends have departed for the Great Elsewhere, or to retirement in Florida. But the invite keeps being generated, cards made, labels printed out, etc. There will be an Open House once again on New Year's Day.
When friends walk up the day after Thanksgiving to ask if we ill be open on January 1, who could say no? We are boxed in, as today's Feast of Boxing Day reminds us...
In return, of course, we get all those Christmas letters mentioned above.
DeleteWe didn't make it this year. Starting on Dec. 7 we have had only two days this month without visitors in our living room, dining room, kitchen and spare bedrooms. The cards and photos we got were from the anally retentive who "take care of" Christmas before Thanksgiving. Our insistence on putting Advent back into Advent always made us late starters. This year, the starting gate was removed before we got to it.
ReplyDeleteThis year's Advent Wreath was humongous; too big, too dry to become the Christmas wreath. The hunter went off 12/26 to find the last trees standing. Lo, a wreath! The Chinese vendor asks: Why now? The hunter explains advent, advent wreath not becoming Christmas wreath this year. The vendor mentions complaining to the WTO.
DeleteAll well. Wreath excellent, and only $10!
Margaret, Lucky to be where you are. Our trees typically arrive from Georgia at the end of October and go on sale by mid-November. Never many around when I decide we are deep enough into Advent to get one. Because of the Great Recession, there were fewer to start with this year. They sold out early. Because Thanksgiving was early, a lot were Sahara dry long before Christmas. I heard credible reports of trees at curbside waiting for trash pickup before Christmas. Needless to say, we had people (still have two. And a dog) instead of a tree. First time without.
DeleteTrees: In past years, our neighborhood was resplendent with trees and their merry sellers, some from Canada. They'd take up half of the wide sidewalk on Broadway, and you could pretend you were near a forest. This year something happened; only two sellers in twenty blocks. The suspicion: Amazon's announcement that it would deliver Christmas trees (don't know whether they did), may have discouraged the tree farmers from setting up shop. Some wit did announce that soon Amazon would be delivering babies too. Don't laugh! An auxiliary explanation: Hanukkah was early this year..and there were too many weeks between then and Christmas for it to be a profitable tree year (We need Paul Krugman to examine the economics of that!)
DeleteYes Tom, we are lucky to be here in Gotham City. I'm sure you made the right decision moving South...look at all the people who are happy and willing to visit you as the cold descends up north...and then there is your scintillating self.
I had no trouble getting a tree mid-December. No loss of needles prior or during setup. But it has no fragrance. Must be a GMO tree. Perhaps, on the Epiphany, it'll walk out on its own and expire in the forest.
DeleteWe have had an artificial tree for many years because of allergies in the family. Back when we did get a real tree and lived in Co!orado our favorite ones were sold by a guy who owned a gas station. He would go up in the mountains and cut his own ponderosa pines. It would be less than a week since they were cut. He always sold out. I loved the smell of those and the Douglas firs we got when I was a kid. Now I have a Frasier fir candle. Almost, but not quite, the same.
Delete