December 23: Cold Christmas, Sugar Cookies, Eve of Christmas Eve

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided.  It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased  us in ice, as in polished armour.  The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows.

The Pequod, gliding off on Christmas day, shagged in ice.

It is the Fourth Sunday of Advent.  Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and I feel completely unprepared for everything.  Gifts aren't wrapped.  Poem isn't done.  Music isn't rehearsed.  Driveway isn't shoveled.  I know Advent is supposed to be a time of preparation.  I've always imagined these four Sundays as a loaf of Christmas dough that needs to rise for a month.  It's almost time to bake now, and I feel like I've forgotten to add some ingredients.

Today, I should have spent writing.  Having trouble getting my Christmas poem to come together.  It's getting there, but it isn't done, and that makes me anxious.  I actually was planning to write all afternoon.  However, I decided to make some Christmas sugar cookies with my son instead.  And it was worth it.

My son was throwing sprinkles and green sugar on the cookies.  Pinching sprinkles and green sugar into his mouth.  Warm cookies were coming out of the oven.  My son looked at me and said, "This is the life!  Making Christmas cookies with my daddy!"  That was a great gift for me.  

Tonight, I'm going to an event at a meditation/arts center in my home town.  The place is called the Joy Center.  It's owned by one of my oldest friends.  We've known each other since the early 1990s, when we were in graduate school together.  Helen is always full of positivity and uplift.  Being around her always raises my spirits, even at very low times in my life.  This evening, it's Dinner and a Movie.  The dinner is potluck, and the movie is one of my favorite Christmas films.  Joyeux Noel.  I'm hoping to come away filled with some Yuletide spirit.

Those are my plans for this Fourth Sunday of Advent.  This eve of Christmas Eve.  

Saint Marty is thankful for his son tonight, who reminded him what Christmas is really all about.

November 29: Be Cheery, Christmas Essay, "Joyeux Noel"

So be cheery, my lads, let your hearts never fail,
While the bold harpooneer is striking the whale!

Thursday night.  I'm trying to be cheery.  I don't plan on doing a whole lot.  Teaching is done for the week.  One day of work left.  I'm celebrating a little.  I've made it five more days, and I still have a job.  That's a blessing, I suppose.  Certainly, things could change come Monday.  This weekend, however, I am still gainfully employed.  I'll drink to that tonight.

I have reserved these next few hours to prewrite and write.  After I'm done with a couple blog posts, I will get a start on my annual Christmas essay.  I have some ideas, but they are all unformed at the moment.  Scraps really.  I will throw them onto a page and see what grows.  If I'm lucky, I'll get the seed of something fruitful.

At the moment, however, I'm watching one of my favorite Christmas movies--the French film Joyeux Noel.  It's about the Truce of 1914.  It's a beautiful story and fills me with hope in the goodness of people.  French, German, and Scottish soldiers coming together on the front lines of World War I to celebrate Christmas Eve.  One holy night of peace between enemies.  No Santa Claus.  No singing snowman or reindeer with glowing noses.  Just people, being the best they can be.

Hope.  I need that right now.  It is the season of light.  The world is tipping toward the longest night of the year.  Winter solstice.  After that, light takes over.  I think that I've been focusing way too much on darkness.  It's been kind of hard not to.  That's why I put on this film.  It reminds me that, in the middle of all the struggle, there's goodness to be found.

That's what I'm going to leave you with tonight.  Goodness.  Light.  Hope.

Saint Marty is thankful for all of those things.

December 7: Eggnog, Maya Angelou, "Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem"

I am sitting in my classroom right now, not expecting any more students to arrive.  I don't care, though.  My work for the semester is over.  I have a cup of eggnog, a good movie, and about two hours to kill. 

Joyeux Noel, my film of choice, is about the Christmas Eve truce of 1914 during World War I, when German and French and Scottish and British soldiers laid down their weapons for one blessed night.  It's a beautiful piece of cinema.  Always brings me to tears.

The Maya Angelou poem I have chosen for tonight is about peace and Christmas.  Angelou first read it for the lighting of the National Christmas Tree in Washington, D. C., in 2005.  It was a time of war, and Angelou was making a case for peace.

Saint Marty thinks the world still needs to be reminded about peace right now.

Amazing Peace:  A Christmas Poem

by:  Maya Angelou

Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes
And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.
Flood waters await us in our avenues.

Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to avalanche
Over unprotected villages.
The sky slips low and grey and threatening.

We question ourselves.
What have we done to so affront nature?
We worry God.
Are you there? Are you there really?
Does the covenant you made with us still hold?

Into this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness high up in the bright air.
The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,
Come the way of friendship.

It is the Glad Season.
Thunder ebbs to silence and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.
Flood waters recede into memory.
Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us
As we make our way to higher ground.

Hope is born again in the faces of children
It rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets.
Hope spreads around the earth. Brightening all things,
Even hate which crouches breeding in dark corridors.

In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.
At first it is too soft. Then only half heard.
We listen carefully as it gathers strength.
We hear a sweetness.
The word is Peace.
It is loud now. It is louder.
Louder than the explosion of bombs.

We tremble at the sound. We are thrilled by its presence.
It is what we have hungered for.
Not just the absence of war. But, true Peace.
A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies.
Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.

We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you, to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.

It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.

On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.

At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ
Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope.
All the earth's tribes loosen their voices
To celebrate the promise of Peace.

We, Angels and Mortal's, Believers and Non-Believers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.

Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.

December 7: Started Home, Daughter's Christmas Concert, Grandma Bonnie's Dream

I started home.  And one more event occurred that day, one more confrontation with restless life bearing past me.

Starting home for Dillard is never going to simple, even if she is simply walking from her car to her front door.  Ten feet.  Dillard will always encounter something complicated.  Or something that reminds her of something complicated.  That's because Dillard loves complexity.

Today was the end of complexity for me.  I finished all of my grading.  I went to the Public Radio station and recorded my Christmas essay (didn't make a single mistake).  And I attended my daughter's Christmas concert.  In about a half hour, I will head down to my Intro to Film classroom for the final time.  Some of my students will be coming, and we will watch one of my favorite Christmas movies--Joyeux Noel.  A simple, easy night.

At the Christmas concert this afternoon, I could barely see my daughter.  Something was wrong with the lights on the stage, and the entire top row of singers (including my daughter) was on the dark side of the moon.  Couldn't see if my daughter was smiling, frowning, or throwing up.  Nothing.  But the music was enjoyable.  I just sat in my seat and sort of blissed out.  It was lovely.

Before the concert started, a woman behind told me a story.  We call her Grandma Bonnie because she used to volunteer at my son's preschool.  My son absolutely loved her.  Grandma Bonnie used to work with my sister who died a year ago.  "I wanted to tell you about a dream I had last night," Grandma Bonnie said.

It seems that she dreamed she was at the hospital where she used to work with my sister.  "The whole inpatient surgical floor was really busy," Grandma Bonnie said, "and I was looking for a wheelchair.  I walked down to the end of the hallway, and there was you sister.  Just standing there with a wheelchair.  I asked her if I could use the chair.  She said sure and smiled at me."  Grandma Bonnie sat in her seat for a second, then she said, "She looked so beautiful."

I couldn't speak.  I just nodded.

Grandma Bonnie put her hand on my shoulder and said, "She looked so beautiful."

Saint Marty has been blessed today.

December 11: Inspiration, Paul Muldoon, "Truce"

Another day, another Christmas poem.  This one comes from Paul Muldoon and is about a Christmas truce that happened on the battlefield during World War I.  German, English, Russian, and French soldiers getting together on December 24 to celebrate.  It's one of my favorite Christmas stories, and it's the basis of one of my favorite Christmas movies--Joyeux Noel.

Still haven't come up with an idea for my Christmas poem.  I'm definitely going to work on it tonight.  Do some free writes.  Try to find a little inspiration.  Paul Muldoon.  Lisel Mueller.  Maybe some Robert Frost.

Saint Marty doesn't discriminate when it comes to his muses.

Truce

by:  Paul Muldoon

It begins with one or two soldiers
And one or two following
With hampers over their shoulders.

They might be off wildfowling

As they would another Christmas Day,
So gingerly they pick their steps.

No one seems sure of what to do.

All stop when one stops.

A fire gets lit.
Some spread
Their greatcoats on the frozen ground.

Polish vodka, fruit and bread
Are broken out and passed round.

The air of an old German song,
The rules of Patience, are the secrets
They'll share before long.

They draw on their last cigarettes

As Friday-night lovers, when it's over,
Might get up from their mattresses
To congratulate each other
And exchange names and addresses.

Joyeux Noel

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December 15: It's A Wonderful Movie

Nothing can beat George Bailey

I'd like to conduct an informal survey about Christmas movies.  This time of year, I am usually watching yuletide films nightly with my wife and kids.  So far, we've watched Elf twice, A Christmas Story once, a few movie adaptations of A Christmas Carol, and various TV specials like Frosty the Snowman and A Charlie Brown Christmas.

The final movie I watched with my Intro to Film class at the university is, in my opinion, the best Christmas movie ever made.  It's inspiring.  It makes me cry.  It stars Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed.  That's right.  I'm talking about Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life.  My students loved it.

My informal survey is simple.  If you read this post, leave a message for me, telling me what you think the best Christmas movie ever made is.  You may be a White Christmas fan.  You may have a soft spot for National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.  I myself could make a case for the French movie Joyeux Noel.  The title is up for grabs.  There may be a movie I haven't even considered.  For instance, the film Gremlins is set during the Christmas season.

Drop Saint Marty a line.  Let him know what Christmas movie warms your chestnuts.