All About Christmas

I love Christmas, all of Christmas, even the consumer bits like crowded malls. Not that I go to the crowded malls very often, but when I go during Christmas, I let myself enjoy the experience--no "I'll just be a minute" thinking; you have to let yourself be pummeled by other shoppers; you have to be prepared to wait in lines for twenty minutes; you have to get used to feeling overheated and sweaty. It's all part of the experience.

The only Christmas experience I can't say I like is getting stuck overnight in an airport, which happened to me once. There was really nothing redemptive about the experience. It just stank. But otherwise, I really, really like Christmas.

So below is a list of Christmas books/movies/traditions for your perusal:

1. The Bishop's Wife with Cary Grant (Movie)

The movie, which is practically plotless, is about an angel who comes down and goes ice-skating with an (Episcopalian) Bishop's wife, which somehow ends up convincing the Bishop that he should concentrate on connecting with his flock instead of building his big cathedral.

Best moment in the film: Cary Grant, named Dudley, sits down with the Bishop and his wife at the dinner table. The Bishop's favorite dog gets up and moves from beside the Bishop's chair to beside Dudley's chair. The Bishop looks nonplussed, and Dudley grins at him. Cary Grant is such a goofball that Dudley's grin, far from looking angel-like, is more of the "devil-may-care/boy, aren't we having fun!" variety. And he just keeps grinning. It's very funny.

2. "Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot (Poem)

I know T.S. Eliot is considered terribly politically incorrect these days, but he was a good poet. "Journey" is told from the point of view of one of the magi; it's a sad poem about the death of an age: a unique perspective.

3. Miracle and Other Christmas Stories by Connie Willis

Not one of her best short story collections, but fun anyway. She makes gentle mockery of things like It's a Wonderful Life and the Christmas card obsession. One story is about a woman realizing that people are being taken over by aliens; she figures it out because they've started being nice to each other during the holiday season--at the post office and the airport, etc. The best story is the last, "Epiphany" which is about the Second Coming of Christ and how all the imagery in Revelations, instead of referring to some cataclysmic event, refers to a Carnival. The Christ figure is the guy who drives the Carnival truck. (See below.)

Connie Willis has her own list at the end of Miracle. It includes, naturally, the Christmas story as it appears in the New Testament and, furtherly naturally, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson.

4. Fireside Book of Christmas Stories (Book)

I used to read from this all the time growing up. After I got older, I would get it out of the library every year until my mother got me my own copy through Amazon. My favorites are "The Pasteboard Star" and "The Husband of Mary." The latter is nice because Joseph doesn't get a lot of press, and he must have been a pretty cool guy.

5. Buffy (TV show)

Specifically "Amends" when Angel is saved from suicide by unprecedented snow in Sunnydale. Whedon willingly took on issues like sin and redemption--the natural outcome, I suppose, of creating a (sort of) consistent mythology. I think this creation of mythology may be one attraction fantasy/sci-fi holds for viewers/readers--the genre isn't afraid to tackle Joseph Campbell-like/religious ideas that, otherwise, get cloaked in sentimentality, angst or glib phrases. Touched By An Angel, for instance, was far less spiritual than either X-Files or Buffy.

6. Holmes for the Holidays (Book)

A collection of Sherlock Holmes stories written by admirers, not Arthur Conan Doyle. However, Doyle did write "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," a Christmas story, which justifies take-off Holmes Christmas stories, if such justification is necessary. My favorite from Holmes for the Holidays is "A Scandal in Winter" by Gillian Linscott. It is fantastic. It is not told from Dr. Watson's point of view, yet it captures Holmes perfectly.

7. Speaking of mysteries . . . (Books)

Tied Up in Tinsel by Ngaio Marsh
Hercules Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers (which actually begins at New Years)

8. Church Mice at Christmas by Graham Oakley (Book)

Not all in print anymore but The Church Mice series are incredibly funny picture books--one of those series where the illustrations coupled with the dry, tongue-in-cheek text provide a great deal of between the lines humor.

9. The Little Princess (Movie)

No! Not the Shirley Temple version (gag gag) but the BBC version which is now impossible to track down. It isn't really a Christmas movie, but the second half starts at Christmas time. There's some great scenes with the family next door, including discussions of going to the pantomime, as well as some very ironic scenes showing the disparity between the "Christian" values of Miss Minchin and the way she treats her staff.

10. Last but not least, some traditions from our family--

Weird fruit from California plus coffee table books.

Sweet cereal for Christmas (and only at Christmas).

Santa and his village set that had been played with so much all the reindeer had two or three legs. It was Santa and his specially challenged reindeer!

Star Wars' presents two years in a row, including a lightsaber that didn't look anything like a "real" lightsaber: I must have thought I could actually request and get a heavy metal object that produced a laser that slashed through people's bodies. Kids are very odd. Recently, I saw a lightsaber at Border's that actually looked more like the "real" thing. I even considered buying it but decided that shelling out $100 for sentimental reasons is not altogether a smart idea.

The Sears catalog--and I've just dated myself.

Woolworths crèche.

Weeble-wobbles & the parachute men in our stockings.

The mechanic peered over [Mel's] shoulder. "Oh, an ad for that crazy carnival," he said. "Yeah, I got a sign for it in the window."

A sign. "For behold, I give you a sign." And the sign was just was it said, a sign. Like the Siamese twins. Like the peace sign on the back of the kid's hand. "For unto us a son is given, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Prince of Peace." On the kid's scarred hand.

It got very dark. They continued west, through Glorieta and Gilead and Beulah Center, searching for multicolored lights glimmering in a cold field, a spinning Ferris wheel and the smell of cotton candy, listening for the screams of the roller coaster and the music of a merry-go-round.

And the star went before them.

--Connie Willis

CSI, Haggard and Fun Television

CSI: Vegas

So far, this season of CSI: Vegas has been all over the place. It has produced rather pointless dramas--glitzy but utterly substanceless. And then it has given us some good episodes, such as last week's about the priest. When the priest says to Grissom, "I wanted to be a father and a husband," I thought, "Yes! Finally, a believable motive!" When Ballykissangel had Father Clifford contemplate leaving the priesthood, they couldn't come up with a plausible motive, and the show suffered. In order for a believing, committed priest to leave the priesthood (and not lose his concept of his own soul), he would have to believe that he was "called" to another role in life. CSI got that bit of psychology dead on; the other interchanges regarding religion were also well-written.

On the other hand, the episode with the evil teenagers was awful in terms of plot development and preachy dialog. I mean, what was that all about? I felt like the writers sure wanted to say something, but sure didn't know how to say it, so we got a bunch of platitudes instead. Again, the episode relied too much on the visuals. Don't get me wrong. I think the music video quality of LV's visuals can be downright stunning. But I start feeling manipulated when the visuals take the place of plotting or insightful dialog.

I do like the way Grissom and Sarah's relationship is playing out in the workplace.

Rider Haggard

Rider Haggard was the original Da Vinci Code guy. He didn't write gnostic-gospel type stuff, but he wrote the original archealogist chase novels. And I have to say, Dan Brown looks pretty wimpy in comparison. In She, which I'm reading now (Haggard also wrote King Solomon's Mines), Haggard invents an ancient text, obligingly translates the ancient text into Greek letters, then translates that into Greek cursive and THEN, translates that into English. There's about a chapter of this kind of thing in She. Well, thank you, Haggard. This creation of a whole imagined past is much more in the Tolkien tradition than the Brown tradition.

Poirot and Cool Television

I was watching a Poirot episode the other day. Hastings and Inspector Japp are walking along a wharf. They skirt a couple of men playing a chess game with huge pieces. I've seen this episode before, but this time, I thought, "Wait a minute," and backed up. Yup! Two guys in 30's style dress, playing chess with human size chess pieces. I went back a few more frames and yup, you can see them from the window of the hotel before the close-ups.

This is so cool. You see, Poriot is a period piece, and the episode is set at a seaside resort. What the chess pieces mean is that someone, whilst researching 1930's seaside resorts, came across this huge chess piece stuff and decided to stick it in the episode. For all of 1 minute!

I love that. I love that people care to do stuff like that. I love that there are writers and craftspeople and set designers and directors out there who think that it is worth the expense to hire two non-speaking actors, design extra props (or borrow them from somewhere) and film a sequence including said props, even though the props are mainly background. All for the sake of . . . ambience, tone!

Of course, this sort of thing gets really expensive, which is why Joss Whedon, who does it quite often, makes networks nervous. But I love it that there are people who think it is worthwhile to do stuff like that.

Pet Peeves

Friendly Drivers

Don't get me wrong. I always appreciate a driver who lets me into a single line of traffic on a right hand turn. Mucho thanks. What drives me crazy are extra friendly drivers who try to get me killed.

Here is the scenario: you're trying to make a left hand turn out of a driveway or a shopping center across two lanes of traffic. It's all very legal, but if the lane you want to turn into is at all busy, it can be a bit, well, tense.

Friendly driver comes along and stops. Usually, the friendly driver stops in the lane closest to you. So now you can't see the second lane. On top of that, none of the cars behind the friendly driver have a clue why the friendly driver stopped, so they start to go around the friendly driver. In the meantime, the lane you want to turn into is jammed with cars (or it temporarily clears but you can't get to it because of all the cars going around the friendly driver).

And the friendly driver looks at you and waves. Like "Go on. I'm looking out for you." The more you stall, the more puzzled the friendly driver gets. And because there's several inches of glass, metal and air between you, you can't yell, "I don't want to die!!" Because there is no way you are going to get safely across that second lane of traffic AND find the lane you want to turn into magically clear. All of a sudden like.

It's one of the few times in my life when friendliness doesn't exert much pressure on me. In the case of friendly drivers, I consider what they are doing so incredibly dangerous, I don't much care how they feel. Neither do I feel obliged to play "No, you go. No, you go" hand signal games with them. So I just ignore them--eyes to the sky--and eventually, they go away.

I'm all in favor of courtesy on the road. What I'm against is people who try to exercise noblesse oblige on the road. It's one thing to do it when you're walking into a restaurant. It's quite another when you are dealing with a ton of steel.

Sitcoms in Syndication

Why don't they show them in order? I have probably seen the same Frasier episodes about four times now, but I've never seen the continuing storyline for when Roz gets mad at Frasier and takes another job. I would prefer to watch shows like Frasier in syndication, rather than renting them, but I get frustrated at the lack of consistency. (I consider syndicated sitcoms to be the equivalent of eating cotton candy; I enjoy them very much as freebies, but I'm not going to invest in the stuff--except British sitcoms, that is.) Does showing episodes out of order really pay off for networks? Or do the TV people show the episodes based on requests?

The Gerund

It's evil. The gerund is the -ing form of the verb. My family and I have discussed reasons why college freshmen feel compelled to use the gerund in every single sentence that they write: "Singing, I was in the middle of thinking about going to my uncle's to be seeing him." My sister Beth suggested that we ask students questions that invite the gerund response: "What are you doing?" "I'm snorkeling." If anyone has any ideas on the subject, please let me know! The gerund must be stopped!!!