November 18: Holiday Weather, Crafty Christmas, Hope and Light

Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such gladhearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile.

Even Ahab is not immune to the holiday season.  As serious as a hurricane, the captain of the Pequod is able to enjoy the "playful allurings of the girlish air."  Even the hardest of hearts can melt a little bit at this time of the year.

I have spent most of this weekend preparing my house for Christmas.  Yesterday, I cleaned my house with my daughter.  Then we dragged the plastic totes down from the attic, and last night we put A Christmas Story on the DVD player and set up the Christmas tree.  It's an artificial tree that my wife and I bought after our first Christmas as a married couple.  It was deeply discounted, and it has served us well ever since.  Twenty-three years.  That has to be some kind of record.

This afternoon, we went to work on our front porch.  It was my year to choose the theme for our outside decorations.  I have close to twenty years' worth of framed poetry broadsides that I've been giving to friends and family.  I decided to put them to good use this year, as well.  So, it's "Crafty Christmas" outside.  My daughter folded a bunch of origami animals for her English class last year.  We used her creations as ornaments for the tree.  I found some latch hook Christmas rugs that my sister Rosemarie made many years ago.  I hung those up, too.  Add a few of my framed poems, and I have a home-made Christmas that would make Martha Stewart proud.

Now, I'm sitting in my living room.  No lights in the house on, except for the Christmas tree.  Miracle on 34th Street is playing on the television, and I'm pretty darn tired.  But I'm full of holiday spirit.  Now, those of you who know me personally will not be surprised by any of my confessions here.  My coworkers hear me playing Christmas music on my computer all year long.  I listen to 'Tis the Podcast weekly.  (That's a podcast by three people who talk about Christmas movies and television specials and music all year long.  It's my new obsession.)  I love all things Christmas.

I know there are people reading this post who probably won't put up their trees and decorations until after Thanksgiving.  There are probably a few of you who even wait until Christmas week to glitter and light up your houses.  I also know that Christmas is not always the happiest time of the year for everyone.  I am sensitive to everyone's feelings about the holiday season.  I, myself, have had some pretty dark Yuletides.

This year, however, I'm determined to make the season bright, as the carol goes.  Sure. I have worries at work.  Still don't know if I'm going to have a job come January 1st.  Yeah, money is still really tight.  Always robbing Peter to pay Paul, as my mother says.  But, it doesn't cost any money to be cheerful or friendly.  To play a game of Trivial Pursuit with my daughter.  Watch The Year Without a Santa Claus with my son.  Bake some cookies.  Sing some songs.  Spread some goodwill around.  Because the world seems in short supply of all of that right now.

This isn't just about Christmas.  It's about hope and light.  Ever since President He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named took office, there hasn't been a whole lot of these things available.  Saint Marty intends to be an agent of hope and light this holiday season.

December 24: Christmas Wrapping, Church Musicians, "Bigfoot Noel"

Question:  What do English majors call Santa's elves?

Answer:  Subordinate clauses.

Okay, I couldn't resist that one.  My son is reading me Christmas jokes from an iPhone.  That one tickled my fancy, for obvious reasons. 

Last night, my wife and I wrapped Christmas presents.  And we wrapped and wrapped and wrapped.  We wrapped long enough for us to watch Miracle on 34th Street twice (I was too lazy to get up and pick out a different movie).  We finally crawled into bed about 2 a.m.  It was a long night.

I have already received one panicked phone call from one of the members of my band, desperate to find a piece of music that she's misplaced.  The life of church musicians at the holidays is not easy.  While everybody else is getting dressed up and ready for Christmas Eve services, we musicians are practicing and arranging and practicing some more.  Until about noon on Christmas, my work will not be done.

And then, it's all gravy.  Well, actually, it's all baked ham and turkey and hot chocolate (doctored with a little mint Bailey's Irish Cream).

I wish all of my faithful disciples a blessed Christmas Eve, full of light and hope and music.  And, if you like a song you hear tonight at a church service, thank the musician.

Bigfoot Noel

by:  Martin Achatz

He slouches through this night,

an eclipse of hair and muscle and foot,

guided by some wild nova

in the chambers of his Neanderthal

chest.  It’s an ancient story,

Precambrian even, about ice,

juniper berry in the deadest of winter.

Digging through dermal frost

to root and worm.  Mushroom

caps in frozen moss, strips

of pine gnawed into sweet paste.

And moon held in knuckles of sumac.

Yes, it’s about need and hunger,

a bottomless lake carved by glacier.

It’s wilderness, the blind

sound of nebulae exploding seventy

million miles a day.  Ice Age.  Meteor

rain.  Seraphim screaming hosannas

over panicked rams.  Starlight and manure.

The coming of Something

ferocious, untamable.

He knows all this somehow,

the way he knows where salmon leap, spawn.

He stands at the edge of a clearing,

stares up, into the hills, toward

an empty cave.  He tilts back

his head, opens his throat, sings a song

for the evolution of love.

Please vote for Saint Marty:

Vote for next Poet Laureate of the U. P.

December 25: Christmas Night, "Miracle on 34th Street," Christmas Poem

I am at home.  My son is in bed.  I'm watching Miracle on 34th Street.  The chaos of Christmas is over.  Yes, my living room looks like a a Walmart war zone.  It's going to take a day or so to get things into some kind of order.  But I'm breathing easier.  Not stressed.

I wanted to share the Christmas poem I wrote this year.  As you may recall, I struggled quite a bit with my holiday poem over the last few weeks.  Many false starts, wrong turns, and dead ends.  However, it came together a couple days ago.  I think it's pretty darn good, but you'll have to be the judge of that.

Well, Kris Kringle is going to trial in the movie, and Saint Marty has some prayers to say.

Merry Christmas.

Truce, 1914

for everyone we love, 2014
 
Between “Stille Nacht” and “Adeste Fideles,”

they came together in that no man’s

place.  Climbed from the trenches,

eyed each other like distant cousins

at a family reunion.  The German boy

maybe gave the British boy fruitcake

soaked in whiskey because they both

missed their mothers.  Maybe

they showed each other snapshots.

Younger brothers.  Dead grandpas.  Pretty sisters.

They pointed at them.  Said names.

Benjamin.  Opa Franz.  Beatrice.

Candles stuttered in fir trees.

The dead littered the earth,

staring into the dark heavens,

frozen in the violent moment

of payment.  The cost of conflict.

These enemies, these brothers,

helped each other bury

their friends, prayed together.

And peace fell on them that Christmas

Eve like snow.  It was soft.

Quiet.  It felt like

a coming home, where everybody

is happy to see each other

after a long season of separation.

That is what I hold onto

one hundred years later.

That they looked into

each other’s eyes, saw

something familiar, foreign, wondrous:

hope.  Newborn.  Naked.  Fragile

as a mother’s lullaby on a winter’s night.

Merry Christmas

VOTE FOR ME FOR U. P. POET LAUREATE (voting ends December 31):

U. P. Poet Laureate Voting 

December 23: Miracle on 34th Street, Believe, New Cartoon

I'm watching Miracle on 34th Street as I type this post.  It's one of my favorite Christmas movies.  Of course, it's the original version with Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle.  While I don't mind the 1994 remake with Richard Attenborough as Santa Claus, it doesn't really hold a candle to the original.

The reason this film is one of my favorite things is its focus on faith.  Santa Claus is put on trial for insanity, and the plot hinges on a question of belief.  The lawyers, psychologists, and judge, basically everyone, are all forced to reevaluate their ideas about love and charity and compassion.  At the end of the movie, Maureen O'Hara says, "Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to."

I was listening to a program on NPR this past week.  It was a bunch of scientists discussing the origin of the universe, the Big Bang and what came before.  These scientists all kept circling back to the same question:  how did figgleblank come into being?  (You can substitute anything for "figgleblank":  hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, dark matter, whatever.)  Not once during the entire hour-long discussion did the word "faith" or "God" get mentioned.  It was the elephant sitting in the middle of the room that everyone was ignoring.  I was actually laughing at the end of the show.

Those scientists need to watch Miracle on 34th Street this Christmas.  They need to learn that not everything can be measured or calibrated or distilled or equated.  This time of year, belief takes center stage.  Santa Claus does ride around the world on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer.  The Son of God was born in a stable in Bethlehem.  As the hymn says, Love came down at Christmas.

Saint Marty believes that with his whole heart.

Confessions of Saint Marty