December 20: Gift for Words, Christmas Party, Joseph Brodsky, "December 24, 1971," New Cartoon

"Well," said Wilbur.  "I'm no good at making speeches.  I haven't got your gift for words.  But you have saved me, Charlotte, and I would gladly give my life for you--I really would."

Wilbur really is a simple little pig.  But he does understand friendship.  Deep, abiding friendship.  Charlotte has given up everything she has for Wilbur.  In a couple of pages, he will discover her ultimate gift--her very life.  It's a beautiful lesson in love and sacrifice.

Tonight, I went to the Christmas party for the medical office where I work.  There was a great deal of food and alcohol.  Lots of laughter and dirty jokes.  And there was a Secret Santa gift exchange.  We were all given a $25 limit.  When I opened up my gift, there were two gift cards inside from a lovely woman in the billing office.  The gift cards totaled way more than $25.

"Cheryl," I said.  "You didn't have to do this."

"I know," she said.  "But I just love you."

I was speechless.  I gave her a hug and spent the rest of the evening basking in that moment.  I felt like Wilbur after Charlotte saves his life.  Humbled.  Blessed.  Loved.

Saint Marty is going to try to hold onto that feeling as long as possible.

Now, a Christmas poem and a cartoon...

December 24, 1971

by:  Joseph Brodsky

When it’s Christmas we’re all of us magi.
At the grocers’ all slipping and pushing.
Where a tin of halvah, coffee-flavored,
is the cause of a human assault-wave
by a crowd heavy-laden with parcels:
each one his own king, his own camel.

Nylon bags, carrier bags, paper cones,
caps and neckties all twisted up sideways.
Reek of vodka and resin and cod,
orange mandarins, cinnamon, apples.
Floods of faces, no sign of a pathway
toward Bethlehem, shut off by blizzard.

And the bearers of moderate gifts
leap on buses and jam all the doorways,
disappear into courtyards that gape,
though they know that there’s nothing inside there:
not a beast, not a crib, nor yet her,
round whose head gleams a nimbus of gold.

Emptiness. But the mere thought of that
brings forth lights as if out of nowhere.
Herod reigns but the stronger he is,
the more sure, the more certain the wonder.
In the constancy of this relation
is the basic mechanics of Christmas.

That’s what they celebrate everywhere,
for its coming push tables together.
No demand for a star for a while,
but a sort of good will touched with grace
can be seen in all men from afar,
and the shepherds have kindled their fires.

Snow is falling: not smoking but sounding
chimney pots on the roof, every face like a stain.
Herod drinks. Every wife hides her child.
He who comes is a mystery: features
are not known beforehand, men’s hearts may
not be quick to distinguish the stranger.

But when drafts through the doorway disperse
the thick mist of the hours of darkness
and a shape in a shawl stands revealed,
both a newborn and Spirit that’s Holy
in your self you discover; you stare
skyward, and it’s right there:

a star.

Confessions of Saint Marty

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January 5: Classic Saint Marty, Cold Night, New Cartoon

It is a cold night.  It's already twelve below zero and getting colder.  Schools all over the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are closed.  My daughter and son are heartbroken.  They were so looking forward to climbing aboard that bus tomorrow morning.  My daughter has been crying for three hours.  (If you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic.)

I went to church this morning.  It was a little strange.  The pastor seemed a little uncomfortable around me.  I spent most of my time working with the lead singer of the praise band on a couple songs.  I'm going to really miss the work I did at the church.  I'm going to miss the people.  But I'm not sure how much of a difference my absence in going to make.  I don't know how big of a hole I'm going to leave behind.

Which reminds me of a Classic Saint Marty that originally aired on Christmas Eve in the year 2011.  It's all about making a difference.

Saint Marty is going to make a difference right now.  He's going to make himself a hot toddy.  Heavy on the toddy.

December 24, 2011:  An Awful Hole

"Each man's life touches so many other lives.  And when he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?"

George gets pissed at Clarence

Clarence says this to George near the end of It's A Wonderful Life.  George has just visited his mother who, without having George as a son, has turned into an angry, bitter, old woman.  Mrs. Bailey runs a boarding house, and she tells George that Uncle Billy has been committed to an insane asylum since he lost the Building and Loan.  George's brother, Harry, died at age eleven when he fell though the ice on a lake and drowned.  George wasn't there to save Harry.  Without George, everyone's lives have become empty and dark.  George's wish of never being born has brought disaster to each person he loves.

No person really knows about how big a difference his or her life has made.  I often wonder if what I do every day has any impact.  Getting up at 4 a.m., registering patients, teaching writing and literature, singing in the church choir, playing the pipe organ--I'm not sure any of this really effects anything.  Living my life is like writing my blog.  I send these posts out into the ether, not knowing if anybody's reading them, if my words are making any kind of impact at all.  That's a pretty good metaphor for life, I think.

George really is given a great gift.  He gets to see what life would be like without him, and he learns what an awful hole his absence would leave behind.  I just found out a husband and wife from church lost their twenty-something son to a drug overdose yesterday.  An awful hole.  My wife lost her mother to ovarian cancer when my wife was 19.  An awful hole.  My aunt just lost her husband of over 50 years this fall.  An awful hole.  George gets a second chance.  Not many people get second chances.

I've actually gotten a few second chances in my life, and I'm grateful for each and every one of them.  I have a son because of a second chance.  I have a wife because of a second chance.  I've lived a George Bailey life.

Saint Marty really has a wonderful life.

Confessions of Saint Marty

December 15: Christmas Breathing Down My Neck, E-Mail from a Good Friend,Classic Saint Marty

Yes, Christmas is breathing down my neck.  I went to my kids' Sunday School Christmas program this morning.  It was a delightful disaster of tinsel halos and fidgety angels.  My five-year-old son was Joseph, and he ended up sitting underneath the manger at one point.

I'm not going to talk about all the Christmas preparations that await me in the coming week.  The shopping, baking, writing.  It's a little overwhelming at the moment.  Usually, I look forward to the holiday chaos, but, this year, I'm in survival mode.  I just want to emerge on the other side of Christmas with my sanity intact.  Well, that and maybe a few sugar cookies, as well.

This evening, I received an e-mail from a good friend.  This person has a way of lifting my spirits.  It seems like she has some sort of sixth sense about when I need some words of encouragement.  My wife and I had just returned from a cheap date night at McDonald's where the discussion centered around all things financial and an eggnog shake.  When we got home, I sat down, opened my laptop, and there was my friend's message.  It made me smile.

This evening, I have a Classic Saint Marty that originally aired on December 24, 2010.  It's body is a Christmas essay titled "Spooks of Christmas."  I chose this post because it never really got read by many people, and I think the writing is pretty damn good.

Saint Marty gives thanks for good friends and eggnog shakes this evening.

December 24:  All the Holy Ancestors of Jesus Christmas

I have always felt a particular kinship to the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz. To be precise, when the Lion is in the Haunted Forest, trooping to the Wicked Witch’s castle to get her broom, he witnesses the Tin Man lifted by a ghostly force and thrown like a chew toy. The Lion squeezes his eyes shut, cowers, and chants over and over, “I do believe in spooks. I do believe in spooks. I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do believe in spooks.” I’m not as big a coward as the Lion, although I do avoid walking past a house in my neighborhood that’s supposedly haunted by the specter of a little boy. Like my furry, Oz counterpart, I have a healthy respect for the power of the unseen. I do, I do, I do, I do, I do.

As a child, my respect for all things ghostly was more of an obsession. Saturday afternoons would find me in front of the TV, watching the latest offering from Sir Graves Ghastly, host of a local creature feature. Sir Graves was a middle-aged man with a goatee who rose from a casket at the beginning of his show and spoke with a bad Bela Lugosi accent. His movies ranged from Boris Karloff courting Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein to the 1950s sci-fi flick Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. My favorite offerings were released in the 1960s by the Hammer Film Studios of England. These movies invariably featured a lot of blood, copious dismembered body parts, and plenty of zaftig women in flowing white gowns who wanted to attach their mouths to men’s necks. The combination of horror and gore and sex was enough to drive my pre-pubescent mind wild.

Eventually, I graduated to the slasher movies of the ‘80s. Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and the Friday the 13ths. As a teen, these films had just the right amount of thrill, spill, and kill to satisfy my cravings for a good scare, plus there were always horny teens sneaking off to go skinny-dipping in Crystal Lake together. By the beginning of the 1990s, my taste for celluloid screams waned. Now, as a father of a nine-year-old daughter and two-year-old son, I’m appalled by the Goosebumps TV show. I refuse to let my children view episodes simply because, to be quite honest, they scare me. I’d like to say that my tastes have matured, that I find vampires and werewolves, zombies and ghosts childish. But when The Exorcist was re-released in the year 2000, I went to see it with a friend. I slept with lights on for two weeks afterward. I’ve become Don Knotts from The Ghost and Mr. Chicken.

I even find most of the current movie versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol a bit too much. Dickens, aside from creating the stereotypical image of the white, Currier and Ives Christmas, also inaugurated the tradition of telling ghost stories during the holidays. The tale of Ebenezer Scrooge is just one of many Christmas ghost stories Dickens published. For Dickens, if you heard a noise in the living room on Christmas Eve, it was more likely to be long-dead Great Grandpa T paying a visit than a jolly, fat elf in red fur. And Great Grandpa T wasn’t usually having a great night.

The recent crop from Hollywood based on A Christmas Carol takes full advantage of computer-generated horrors. Marley’s ghost has a jaw that falls open to gargoyle proportions. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is a terrifying wraith in black with the hands of a skeleton and hell-red eyes. Watching these films, I slip into full Cowardly Lion mode, peering at the TV through laced fingers, waiting for Marley to don Freddy Krueger gloves and carve up Scrooge like a Christmas goose. I much prefer Waldorf and Stadler as the heckling Marley brothers in A Muppet Christmas Carol. That’s more my speed now.

But it makes sense to me, this focus on ghosts at Christmas time. Even in the accounts of the birth of Christ in the Bible, there are moments of sheer terror. Every time an angel appears to someone, the first words out of the angel’s mouth are not, “Do these wings make me look fat?” The first words, without fail, are, “Fear not,” which leads me to believe that angels are pretty scary-looking creatures, not like Connie Stevens, sporting dove wings and singing “You Can Fly.” No, angels inspire horror at first, not awe. So Charles Dickens was just following the lead of the writers of the gospels when he wrote Christmas ghost stories. Plus, at Christmas time, people tend to put a little more stock in the possibility of unseen powers. The veil between reality and possibility is just a little more transparent. Angels and ghosts are not just figments of fiction. They’re as real as snow, ice, and i-Pads.

Kids, in particular, are more open to such possibilities. In fact, I believe young children have a vision for the unseen that adults either ignore or completely lack. I’ve been creeped out on more than one occasion by my daughter and toddler son suddenly going still in the middle of play and staring into an empty room as if they’ve just caught sight of Santa Claus. My five-year-old nephew once told me, “You know, Uncle Marty, when I get older, I won’t be able to see the angels any more, and that will make me sad.”

Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve—my wife and I came home from a midnight candlelight church service. Our daughter was sleeping the sleep of childhood Christmas, deep as a Robert Frost winter woods. Our son was in his crib, for once still and calm. We sent the babysitter home and prepared for bed. Pajamas. Toilet. Teeth brushing. I went through the house, turning off lights. I paused for a moment in front of the tree. The living room glowed a muted red, green, white, and blue, full of the sort of warmth you find in a hand-stitched quilt. I reached down and unplugged the Christmas tree.

As I prepared to climb over my wife into bed, I heard my son make a mewling sound, which usually meant he had lost his pacifier. I sighed, craving the comfort of pillow and blanket, but I turned and went to his crib in the next room to avoid an all-out session of screams and tears from him. I was tired, but I still felt the peace of the candlelit church, “Silent Night” fluting out of the pipe organ. I looked down at my son in his crib.

He was on his back, staring up at the ceiling with eyes as big, round, and dark as tree ornaments. The pacifier was still between his lips, and, behind it, he was smiling the way he did when I washed his feet during baths, all gums and delight. He didn’t look at me, didn’t seem to notice I was there. His gaze never shifted from a place on the ceiling, directly above him. His stare was focused, full of some kind of knowledge.

I felt my Cowardly Lion self stir in the depths of my chest. I imagined Linda Blair levitating above her bed, the girl from Poltergeist standing in front of a snowy TV screen, chiming, “They’re baaaaaaa-aaack.” I slowly looked up at the ceiling.

Nothing. Just empty, white ceiling. I was half-tempted to mutter, “Humbug,” but, somehow, I knew the sound of my voice would violate the air, cause it to fracture like ice on a mud puddle. I looked down at my son.

He’d started to slowly suck on his pacifier, as if he was working over some great, complicated calculus problem in his head. His gaze remained fixed on the ceiling above him.

After a few minutes of standing beside him, waiting for an alien to burst from his chest or him to start speaking fluent ancient Greek in a guttural drawl, I went back to my bed and climbed in beside my wife.

In the dark, I listened to the still house, half-expecting to hear the clink of chains or disembodied footsteps in the attic. Instead, my son started to make noises, soft, quiet, musical sounds, as if he were talking with some unseen spook or singing with a distant angel choir.