Better Living Through Literature
Words + Projects + Stuff I Like
File this one under the “IDGAF” category of Christmas songs: Augie Rios’ 1958 recording of “Ol’ Fatso,” which announces, “Don’t care who you are, old fatso–get those reindeer off my roof.”
I kinda love how dismissive it is. Carols about peace and joy? Nope, how about judgy ones about strangers getting off your lawn. Or roof.
1950s, you had the best novelty Christmas music!
Christmas is upon us and, depending on how the SAD is affecting me, I go from excited and happy to filled with dread and despair. In that mood, Christmas carols and standards can make me cry–so this week I’ll share weird old tracks that will merely fill you with confusion instead of bothersome feelings.
The first one is something by Mel Blanc, the voice of Looney Toons. His Christmas song sounds like it should be in a cartoon, but as far as I can tell it was just released as a standalone track in 1953.
It’s…festive? I know I’m hearing it wrong, but at :24 it really sounds like “f*** the merry Christmas tree.” Either way, an effective distraction!
I took down the tree and the rest of the decorations yesterday and had this line from William Carlos Williams’ “Burning the Christmas Greens” in my head:
Their time past,
relief! The room bare.
Christmas is a week from today. I am trying very hard to not leave the house this coming weekend so that means epic list-making–although if we’re honest, I’ve been in crazy planning mode since early November. I just found this Elizabeth David quote, though, and I feel a little better about my organizing going overboard:
“Christmas does tend to unbalance people, particularly those people responsible for the catering, the coking, the presents, the tree, the decorations.”
Toby had to get up and investigate the greenery I brought home from Trader Joes. I think he was pretending he was a wild cat in the forest:
But at least he wasn’t as naughty as these kitties:
If it’s December, it’s time for the Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar: a new picture from the Hubble Telescope posted every day until Christmas. It’s one of my favorite parts of the year.
For bonus space goodness, you can watch this animated film about potential human exploration of space, with bonus (bonus) Carl Sagan narration. Very cool.
Wanderers – a short film by Erik Wernquist from Erik Wernquist on Vimeo.
..Happy Solstice, Happy Yule, and Io, Saturnalia! Here’s a sonnet to read. “There is much we do not understand” indeed. Peace.
December
by Gary Johnson
A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here—and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels singing overhead? Hark.
If you can’t tell from how late I’m posting, I’m on Christmas vacation for the rest of the year–and I already started partying over the weekend.
The party started with reading a headline I never thought I’d read in a paper in my home state (and tearing up over the photo galleries and mentally cheering the judge*):
It also involved decorating gingerbread cookies with the nephew and “Gromma” and “Grompa”:
And it ended with watching the actual Christmas Vacation while somebody waited for Santa:
It’s a good time of year.
*As quoted from the Tribune article linked to above, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby issued the nicest and most rational “suck it” that I have ever heard to conservative arguments:
Shelby took issue with the state’s argument that the plaintiffs “do not possess the qualifications” to enter a marriage relationship, saying there is “no dispute that the plaintiffs are able to form a committed relationship with one person to the exclusion of all others” and to raise children within that union if they desire.
Shelby said the state’s argument about the ties between marriage, procreation and optimal child-rearing were not compelling, nor was its assertion that the plaintiffs were seeking a new right.
“However persuasive the ability to procreate might be in the context of a particular religious perspective, it is not a defining characteristic of conjugal relationships from a legal and constitutional point of view,” the judge said. “The state’s position demeans the dignity not just of same-sex couples, but of the many opposite sex couples who are unable to reproduce or who choose not to have children.”
What same-sex couples seek is simply the same right “currently enjoyed by heterosexual individuals: the right to make a public commitment to form an exclusive relationship and create a family with a partner with whom the person shares an intimate and sustaining emotional bond,” he said.
From William Carlos Williams’ “Burning the Christmas Greens,” here is something to think about as you admire your decorations.
At the winter’s midnight
we went to the trees, the coarse
holly, the balsam and
the hemlock for their green
At the thick of the dark
the moment of the cold’s
deepest plunge we brought branches
cut from the green trees
to fill our need, and over
doorways, about paper Christmas
bells covered with tinfoil
and fastened by red ribbons
we stuck the green prongs
in the windows hung
woven wreaths and above pictures
the living green. On the
mantel we built a green forest
and among those hemlock
sprays put a herd of small
white deer as if they
were walking there. All this!
and it seemed gentle and good
to us.
There were trees in Millcreek Canyon doing silhouette-y things on an afternoon hike:
There were tiny fake trees and shatterproof IKEA ornaments arranged on the back deck:
And there was a Christmas tree with ALL the colors set up inside:
What goes in trees? Birds, of course.
