Had we but world enough, and time...

My Top 5 Christmas Movies:

5. Bridget Jones' Diary. Okay, so it's only partially set around the holidays, but it begins with Colin Firth in a reindeer jumper and ends with him and Renee Z kissing in the snow, so I'm not sure what else you could ask for.

4. The Holiday. Basically this is two movies and one is good, and one is very boring. When the Cameron Diaz/Jude Law storyline is on I just look at the picturesque shots of England in the snow. The adorable Kate Winslet and a seriously cute Jack Black more than make up for things in their story, which involves Kate Winslet's character striking up an unusual friendship with a retired Hollywood screenwriter.

3. Home Alone. A long-standing classic from my childhood, and for a good reason. I'm so glad my family has never been quite as bad as the McAllisters.

2. Love Actually. Even though the storyline makes no sense and I find more and more to annoy me with each viewing. It's now my go-to Christmas film.

1. The Santa Clause. Yes, so help me, I love this film so damn much, and eagerly look forward to its annual television airing. I'm not sure why. There's just something about Scott Calvin's transition from cynic to believer, and that tantalising possibility that Santa Claus might be real after all.

Yes, I'm missing so many, like Miracle on 34th Street, or any version of A Christmas Carol, but this is just what I've been watching over the past couple of weeks.

What is not a good Christmas movie: Surviving Christmas, a truly terrible film 'starring' Ben Affleck and Christina Applegate. Channel 7 is airing it tonight, which they did at exactly this time last year. I know because I watched it with my Grandpa a few days before he died. I hope this is not some new annual tradition at Channel 7, because this movie is not some kind of modern classic, nor is it so-bad-it's-good. I would rather not have to deal with it reminding me of my loss every year.

*

I went to Carols in the Domain on Saturday, and for all the kerfuffle of arriving early and getting a good spot and then having a family of brats arrive late and elbow into our spot and braving all the queues for the toilets and feeling hemmed in by the crowds and blah blah blah, it was worth it in the end to hear so many voices uplifted in songs of joy. I am excited by the news that there is another Mary to celebrate this Christmas, as Blessed Mary MacKillop is close to official canonisation. According to the newspaper that came with my carols goodie bag, 68% of Australians believe in God or some kind of universal spirit. Mary MacKillop worked so hard to spread her faith and establish an educational foundation in nineteenth-century Australia.

*

Here are photos of my Christmas tree, with and without lights. Strangely, the candy canes have all but disappeared – perhaps the elves have eaten them? I shall have to take the tree down before Christmas as I won't be here, but it has been worth it for the simple joy I gain in gazing at it with the lights on. That's really all it takes to keep me content at Christmas -- tree lights, a candy cane, and a Colin Firth movie.

It is, as always, family. I have blithely decided to spend about three straight weeks with my parents over Christmas and New Year, and am slowly realising that this may be a mistake. This year we perfected the two- or three-day weekend visit, which was just enough time to have some quality time together but not get on each other's nerves. Three weeks, however? It's... well, it won't be pretty.

This is complicated by the fact that we are coming up to the one-year anniversary of my Grandpa's death. None of us coped particularly well with that event as it happened, with the result that for about a month there we all just sort of drifted along being disorganised and snapping at each other. Then I got to move out, so I haven't seen the day-to-day effects of the grieving process on my father or my siblings. I just know that I had a really shitty time of it. The combination of latent grief and memories of the stroke and unhappy Christmas last year may really up the tension.

Then there is the combined nuttiness and bitchiness of my large extended family. I'll be hanging out with both sides over the course of Christmas, so I'll get full doses of the following: my braindead teenage cousins; my fun but vapid cousins; Uncle TMI; Aunt Opinion; my bossy aunts; my anal-retentive aunts; the uncles I don't know how to talk to; the extended relatives whose names I don't know but who all know me, and my well-meaning grandparents who don't understand my life choices. There will be several rounds of "Are you still single?" and "When are you going to finish uni?" as well as that holiday classic, "I like your hair/I hate your hair/I can't stop talking about your hair even though it's not my business."

I don't like crowds and I don't like inane conversations. I don't like sharing beds with people I'm not romantically involved with, or sleeping on couches without any privacy. I don't like being treated like a child. I don't like not having time to myself. I don't like trifle. I don't like being ordered to do the washing up when I've actually spent all day cleaning and cooking and doing more than my share of work.

So you see, there's a lot of things to dread.

Nonetheless, I draw strength from the love of my family and the love of God. We have always lived far from our relatives on both sides, so these gatherings are even more precious for their rarity. I can sacrifice some privacy and some mental health and I can even bite down bitchy retorts to my aunts because it's so nice for us all to be together, even if I have to leave the refuge of my home to do it.

You will remember that in The Santa Clause Scott Calvin learned responsibility and generosity as part of his transition to Santa Claus, the most advanced and self-actualised magical being on earth. During his twelve-month transition period Scott's physical transformation mirrored the change in his inner self; as his pot belly and beard grew so did his capacity to love and to care for his son. By the end of the film he had become his son's hero and a leader of unparalleled proportions.

The sequel film reveals that after eight years Scott Calvin/Santa Claus (for they are one and the same) is a fully integrated individual and at the top of the Christmas game. However, he once again failed to read the fine print on a legally binding contract and has to get married before Christmas Eve. To add to Santa's burdens, his son Charlie has grown and due to being awkward and only mildly attractive, has to act like a bad boy in order to get girls' attention. Santa must return to modern America to discipline his child's delinquent ways and attempt to get hitched.

Santa is still caught between the human and divine worlds, as evidenced by a meeting of the Council of Legendary Figures. Santa is distracted by thoughts of his juvenile offender son and impending nuptials to a still-unknown woman, but these are too-human thoughts for the beings who squabble over name-changes and duties. These beings – Mother Nature, Father Time, Cupid, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman – cannot help Santa Claus in his hour of need, for their concerns transcend the mere human. He is one of them and yet not. Santa Claus belongs nowhere.

To cover Santa's absence while he attempts to re-enter the human world, one of the elves creates a life-sized replica known as Toy Santa. Toy Santa looks like Santa Claus, only plastic, and while he can move and talk just like Santa, he cannot think in the same manner. He learns everything by the book, and thus judges by the book, without offering the grace and understanding of a human Santa Claus. He thus represents the ultimate Santa Claus, or the Platonic ideal of the perfect Santa: bestowing gifts only within certain parameters, and determined to punish the perceived naughty with far more gusto than he rewards the nice. This Santa is militant but effective. He is the least human part of Scott Calvin, and as Santa Claus in America becomes more and more Scott Calvin, Toy Santa becomes ever more fully Santa Claus. Toy Santa is the Santa Claus that Scott Calvin might wish he could be, in a perfect world without grace or mercy.

( Scott Calvin's humanity makes him vulnerable and flawed )

Without being incriminatingly specific, I am an editor of an academic journal. As so often happens, the way we do these things is the way the person before did it. The instruction manuals are incomplete and knowledge is always being lost in the transitions between editors.

This is particularly frustrating when it comes to the matter of house style. All we have are some rough guidelines -- use inclusive punctuation (*shudder*), use single and double quotes for different purposes, and use a particular citation style, one that I'm not familiar with. The library has the manual for that citation style but on restricted loan only, so I can't just take it out and refer to it. So whenever I run into a difficulty while editing, and this happens spectacularly often, I have to Google around to see what other people do, and ask for opinions on Facebook. You'd be surprised at the number of things that come up, often things that I wouldn't worry about in my own work but which suddenly seem vital to get right when editing the work of someone else.

I don't usually ask the other editors as they do not seem to care so much about these things as I do, and also, I suspect that they would advise me to do as I wish. (Like a Parisian vampire coven we have no leader but if there were one, it would be I.) The thing is, it's obvious from my searches that there are many, many people out there who care as deeply as I do about the exact way to render numbers or punctuate items in a list. However there are, of course, many other people who do not care at all. Nonetheless We Who Care are still anxiously searching for answers, asking questions, begging someone to tell us what to do. I suppose we crave the authority of convention, but usages become conventional through agreement and continued usage. All I really need to do is maintain consistency within and between all the articles in one issue, and preferably across issues as well, but without a proper house style guide that's difficult. I might have to write one. Ay me.

I love Christmas, but am not going to do an Advent calendar thing like I did last year. I update too infrequently and had enough trouble thinking up ideas last year! Today I trundled off to Target to buy a Christmas tree and ornaments, my very first Christmas tree of my own since leaving home. I felt a brief moment of nostalgia and longing for my family as I began to put the tree up by myself, but then I remembered how last year my sister had a strop for one reason or another and refused to help with the tree but just sat there being grumpy, and then I was not so nostalgic. I am unsatisfied with the current level of ornamentation on the tree; it was difficult to find enough decorations that were in the colours I wanted and also not completely fugly. I don't have a star for the top yet as they were all hideous, and I want more angels and traditional designs. It's all very boring right now, just baubles and some stars and a couple of Santa Clauses, plus lights and candy canes. I am now waiting for the sun to set so that I can turn on the lights. Another disadvantage of having daylight savings here (Queensland doesn't) is that your tree looks tawdry and tacky in the daylight for EVEN LONGER. Christmas cards are going out tomorrow, but I couldn't find much glitter either, so there will be strict rationing.

Dudes! I'm writing my Christmas cards today (check it, I'm so organised), but if you didn't leave your address on my earlier Christmas card post there's still time! Reply here or there, and comments are screened.

It's a hot one, but I can smell someone in the building cooking onions.

The end.

Okay, so I finished exams today and have a small window in which to breathe before moving on to the 10,000 next things. And this window is to say: CHRISTMAS CARDS! If you would like to receive a Christmas card full of glittery joy from me, please leave your address in a comment. Comments are screened so only I will see your address.

Goodness, it's far too hot for 11pm. *wipes fevered brow*

This is zhonghua2000 filling in for saffronlie for the next few days.

Taking the idea from a recent entry in this journal, I give you a poll that asks:

Poll #1319855
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

What do you LOVE about Christmas?

Holiday Foods: Do You Know What You Are Eating?

Food plays an important part in many holiday celebrations. We eat certain foods on certain days, we give special foods as gifts--sometimes, we even sing about food! Yes, holiday foods are pleasing and familiar--but do we really know what we're eating? Here's your chance to find out!

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/quiz/Quiz.aspx?QuizID=30

I'm heading off on a few days of travelling. Advent duties will be taken over by mothergoddamn for tomorrow. She's a legend, she's a glamour queen, God I'm running out of words but you know what I mean! And then zhonghua2000 will cover the next few days and be all sleek, velvet, gold lamé, patent leather, enchanté!

Wishing you all safe and happy holidays. <3

Thanks to gypsytonijane, moon_chylde, and larks for their beautiful cards, which I received this week!


Christmas Bells
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till, ringing, singing on its way
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The Carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
‘There is no peace on earth,’ I said;
‘For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!’

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
‘God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!’

Last night I went to Sizzler with friends so I could finally satisfy the year-long craving for potato skins and cheese toast caused by reading Joel and Cat Set the Story Straight while overseas. They close at 9.00pm and we were the last ones there and they didn't bring any mints, so we made P's boyfriend ask, and the girl took him to the giant drawer of mints and said he could take as much as he wanted. SCORE. We're so classy. I've been eating Sizzler mints all day.

As is usual, I begged avariecaita for inspiration for today and she said: "Write about the first time you knew Santa wasn't real, but kept playing along because you had a younger sibling."

That's not quite how it went. I don't know when I stopped believing in Santa Claus, but I was really young, and I didn't really find out, I just always knew that it was a highly improbable and illogical idea. I mean, I was a child who read all the time and had a huge imagination, and while I loved the thought of fairies at the bottom of my garden, I knew they weren't there. I would sometimes sit for ages staring at my dolls and trying to compel them to come to life, but I knew they never would. And yet, I loved the possibility. I loved the thought that maybe there really were giant fat men, and rabbits, and fairies with an inappropriate love for teeth, who could flit about the world at night and give children money and presents just because we are young. And to think that sometimes, in the state between dreaming and awakening, you might catch a glimpse of a friendly being going about its work...

But I knew. And my mother says that I knew before my brother did, even though he was two years older than me. For a long time I never said it out loud, not because of my younger sister but because I still liked the possibility that the red light we saw in the sky one Christmas Eve when going to Mass might actually be Rudolph's nose. Definitively, the year I was eight I helped my mother with the Christmas grocery shop and she bought a bag of birdseed. I asked why, and she said my sister was getting a bird for Christmas. When the bird came, the tag said it was from Santa, and that was it. I needed no clearer proof. I didn't speak of it for ages though, and I still don't like having illusions shattered quite so bluntly. Once when I was lying in bed reading the night before Easter my mother came in and unceremoniously placed my Easter eggs on the desk right in front of me, at which I protested and now the Easter bunny leaves eggs on the table, so that there's still a thin veneer of possibility.

I get really into the whole idea with young children, especially my younger cousins. I always want kids to have that possibility. I don't think it's lying to tell your child that there's a Santa Claus. I mean, it's one of the weirdest customs ever when you think about it, but because it's so absurd it's sometimes hard to imagine as an adult that you ever fell for the tale when you were a kid. How gullible are we?

No, really, how gullible were you? When did you stop believing in Santa, or fairies, or that you had to be a good person in order to get gifts?

Family friends have two beautiful border collie dogs, and have owned them for years. And yesterday, someone deliberately gave them poisoned bait. They've been in the doggie equivalent of intensive care for the last 24 hours. The younger dog is probably going to live, but the elder dog probably won't.

I'm sorry, but who the fuck does that? Who deliberately tries to kill someone's pet? By throwing poisoned bait over the fence? Just what the fuck?

---

Moving onto slightly happier things. Today, more Dodgy Aussie-Themed Christmas Music!

Aussie Jingle Bells. Warning, this page loads the music automatically. If you just want to read the lyrics or get an explanation of some of the slang, go here. This song is novel but completely fails to take into account the fact that riding in a rusty Holden ute is actually no fun at all.

There's also Christmas Where the Gum Trees Grow although this page spells 'Jacaranda' incorrectly, as did all the other lyrics sites in the first page of my Google search. Check out this blog post for some stunning photos of jacaranda trees in bloom.

Here's a version of the Aussie Twelve Days of Christmas, also with an irritating automatic midi, apparently a mainstay of dinky di Christmas webpages.

My favourite Aussie music for this time of year, however, is Peter Combe's Christmas Album, which is sadly out of print. None of the tracks or lyrics are available online. However, I still have the cassette from my childhood. The other holiday music we listened to in my childhood was the Peppermint Candy Kids, a saccharine American choir thing. We even used to have them on vinyl.

Today we have a guest post from the one, the only, rebness. She's like a magic time reversal clock, or the fries on the side with a cherry on top.

---
It is September. The sun is cracking the flags on the terrace and I’m preparing some salad for lunch. The ‘phone rings.

‘Hi, Becky. So, what are you getting me for Christmas?’

My sister. For her, Christmas is a time to cash in on whatever you absolutely can. She has to know exactly how much I’ve spent on her and then she’ll buy me something to that value, usually feeling like she’s bested me by spending a couple of pounds less.

So I’ve been fielding these calls and Facebook messages for three months. And I keep maintaining that she’s just being silly, that she’ll get her present at Christmas and to leave me alone. I’ve enjoyed telling her she’s nuts, that she’s paranoid. And now I’ve realised that payday may be a little too late for me to order her things from Amazon for them to arrive in time for Christmas. I have set myself up for self-righteous nagging. This is going to be fun.

Here’s where I rant about Christmas and how stupid it is and how I’m going to spend the next few weeks sneering and hiding in the garden like some angry troll. Except I won’t, because I LOVE IT. There, I said it. :D

Christmas shouldn’t work, really. For me, it’s going to mean a tiresome wait at the airport. My cold, murky village. Two weeks with my extended family and all the noise and chaos and bickering that can possibly entail. There won’t be snow, but slush. Christmas television will be the same depressing British style: re-runs of Only Fools and Horses; heavy, sluggish family meals; hellish shopping expeditions in crowded city centres; sprouts.

The anticipation is always so much better than the reality, isn’t it? And sometimes I sit back and wonder why I look forward to this orgy of materialism and bickering so much, why today I can barely concentrate on work because I am anticipating what I’m going to do next week.

The answer is saccharine and mundane: because of the feeling of Christmas, that feeling that even jaded adulthood can not exorcise. It’s that one day where my family strive to be on their best behaviour. The only day in the entire year I sit down with my siblings at a candlelit table and talk. I wanted to write something funny for this entry, some dark little piece. But I can’t. I love Christmas just that much. I love the tacky songs and the tinsel and the presents and walking my dog on a crisp December morning, thanking God for this day. I love nothing more than being cynical and deconstructing every false little joviality, but Christmas is still sacrosanct. I spend 364 days a year escaping my family, but on this one day, I am happy to be with them. And you know what? I bet you most of you feel the same. Tell me about your Christmases. And if you hate Christmas, let’s play pain Olympics!

Oh, welcome back, cynicism.

For palelaura, who asked for Christmas decorations in the sunlight. Here is our Christmas tree at night:


And in the day:


It is a sad truth that tinsel and baubles tend to look kind of tawdry in the daylight, and this is why they only invented Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere where it is dark all the time. FACT.

Christmas in other languages:

Late Old English/Early Middle: Cristes Maesse
Dutch: Kerst-misse
Latin: Dies Natalis
Italian: Il Natale
French: Noël
German: Weihnachtsfest

I stole this information from The Catholic Encyclopedia, which is a hundred years old. FACT.

No Advent Calendar yesterday. It was probably Becky's fault. So a few different things today.

I asked avariecaita for a suggestion, and she proposed Top 10 Favourite Christmas Traditions Down Under. We only have one, and it is: getting drunk. Although, okay, not really. Complaining about the heat and going for a swim is another. Also, in our house we light a candle to place in the window on Christmas Eve to guide Jesus into our hearts. In the street we used to live on when I was in primary school, everyone lined the curb with lanterns made of candles and dirt in paper bags on Christmas Eve, producing a beautful glowy effect. I also really like going to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

There's a barbecue at ours this afternoon, so I've been cooking and cleaning. The apparent temp is 36 degrees and I'm melting. I exist on sorbet and fruit ice blocks. I've made this no-bake slice, but I still had to roast sweet potato for a sweet potato and spinach salad, and that nearly killed me. As soon as the sun clears off the pool I'm going in.

"Six White Boomers" by Rolf Harris, one of a few disastrous attempts to create an Australianised Christmas mythology.

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that -- as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!" -- A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

( Two more videos and a poem )

Taking a break from Christmas cheer for Friday Rant Day, with a poll!

Poll #1313979 Holiday Hates
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

What do you hate most about the holiday season?

What triggered a Scroogish mood in me was my battles with an online shopping store over the last couple of weeks. It's too annoying to get into, but the site is Shopping Safari, and it sucks.

Time to share some blurry photos of Christmas lights overseas last year! YAY OUT-OF-FOCUS LIGHTS!



Briggate Street, the pedestrian mall in Leeds. Hello, Random Guy! We will see you again soon, in disguise.

Now I shall show you scenes on Oxford Street, London, on Christmas Eve. We wanted to see lights!

( Read more... )

I'm going to get a little Christian for a minute here.

"Rejoice" is the word I associate most strongly with Christmas. A time for rejoicing. When you look at the word, the etymology seems straightforward: re+joice, the joice part being related to joy, of course. So it's joy again, new joy, a second go-round for joy. That's not the meaning now, though; 'rejoice' means to exult, to experience an intense joy -- no second time about it.

Nonetheless, both meanings work for me at Christmas. Even though Easter is the season of rebirth, rejuvenation and new life, as Christ triumphs over death and sin, the days leading up to the Resurrection are dark and joyless. What we celebrate in Jesus' birth at Christmas is the coming of the Christ who is born an innocent child. All his sufferings are yet to come and not to be remembered now. His future does cast a shadow over the proceedings, but not a dim one. He is the light in the darkness of a world without previous salvation, the long awaited saviour, and above all, He is Hope. That's worth exulting, worth rejoicing.

And the "re" part comes in because we celebrate Christ's birth again, not once in all eternity, but every year, because His salvation is eternal. I rejoice because the time of sorrow is not yet here. Jesus is born again each year so that we too can be born again, like light through darkness, like the tree that grows evergreen throughout winter, like the star that always shines.

This is a repeat from two years ago. But it's fun! Guess the carol/song title from the cryptic clues. Ready?

1. Oh, member of the round table with missing areas

( Read more... )


Answers! No cheating!

( Cheaters get coal in their stockings )

In which I am highly unoriginal! First, check out giveaway winner phfa's documentation of the glittery carnage that ensued when she received her prize.

Second, Christmas and New Year memes that a lot of you have already done:



I would love to see what a Hanson in an orc poetry looks like.

( And my New Year's resolutions )