Dec 25

Holiday greetings

Well, I had a wonderful Christmas today with my parents, two of my siblings and their families; I’ll get to see the third sibling and his family next week when the parents and I meet them halfway, in Pigeon Forge. Everyone was happy and healthy, my presents were well-received, including some about which I was worried, and I got some good stuff too.

I hope you had a happy and meaningful holiday as well, and that all of us will continue to remember the meaning of the season. Remember, for those of us in denominations which observe the liturgical calendar, the celebration of Christ’s birth only begins today; it continues for 11 more days, until Jan. 5.

Dec 18

A not-so-quiet week in Lake Wobegon

Well, this is just bizarre.

Garrison Keillor, author of “Lake Wobegon Days” and host of “A Prairie Home Companion,” has written a column expressing frustration with the co-opting of Christmas by non-Christians — from Unitarians changing the words to “Silent Night” to secular, holly-jolly Christmas carols by …. well, I’ll let him say it, just to make clear it’s Keillor speaking, not me:

And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah”? No, we didn’t.

This is astonishing. Keillor definitely has a history of leaning left, and for a while his weekly radio show was a little too curmudgeonly political for me, even when I agreed with him on a particular issue. I had always thought of “APHC” as something timeless and above the latest political squabble. But now, here’s Keillor with a conservative-sounding “War on Christmas” screed.

Keillor’s column has caused a firestorm of controvery. Some non-Christians have responded along the lines of, “we’ll leave your holiday alone if you’ll stop shoving it down our throats.”

The trouble is that Christmas has been two different holidays since long before I was born, and really before Keillor was born. There’s secular Christmas, the Christmas of silver bells and materialism, and there’s religious Christmas, the Christmas of the little baby in the manger.

There was a line about Christmas in “Good Night, and Good Luck” which made me laugh out loud. Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) tells a CBS executive (Jeff Daniels) that he and his collaborator Fred Friendly will personally make up the ad revenue for a controversial episode of “See It Now,” since the normal sponsor objects to it.

“We just won’t have Christmas gifts for our kids this year,” Murrow sighs.

“Friendly’s a Jew,” shoots back the executive.

“Don’t tell him that,” responds Murrow. “Fred loves Christmas.”

It’s about a century or two too late to start declaring that Christmas is exclusively a religious holiday. Christians need to be respectful of those who are, by simple cultural fact, obligated to live through our holiday schedule even though they belong to another tradition. Non-Christians need to recognize that this is a special holiday, with a deeper meaning, to some (but not all!) Christians. (Even here in Bedford County, we have some churches that consider Christmas an unnecessary and anti-Biblical contrivance).

How that balance of mutual respect works itself out in practical situations — school programs and nativity scenes in public places and what have you — is a healthy and ongoing discussion, one that I fear is not at all helped by the chip on Keillor’s shoulder, or the risk that his comments will be perceived as anti-Semitic.

I seem to recall the characters at the center of the Christmas narrative being Jewish, after all.

Dec 13

Holiday spirit for free

Here’s a bargain: Amazon is offering 25 days of free Christmas MP3s. You do have to have a credit card, as if you were purchasing an MP3, but there’s no charge.

I like “Elf’s Lament,” by the Barenaked Ladies.

Between these free downloads and a holiday CD Christmas card I received today — what a great idea! — I have beefed up the Christmas playlist on my little MP3 player so that I can take it to work Monday and play it on my external speakers.

Dec 06

Parade fuel

I will be riding in the back of the pickup truck which pulls the Times-Gazette float in tonight’s Shelbyville Christmas Parade. I have to be at the paper at 2 to do some final work on the float, then the lineup and judging are at 4, and the actual parade won’t start until 6. (My brother and my nephews will also be in the parade, with a float representing one of my nephews’ Cub Scout troop.)

It will be cold.

So when I was shopping for a few groceries yesterday, I picked up some HamBeens 15-bean soup. I soaked the beans overnight and the soup is cooking as we speak.

I’ve blogged about this company’s products before — and even got some feedback from the company for doing so — but it bears repeating.

The nice thing is that it’s really more like a recipe than a processed food. All that comes with the soup are the assorted dried beans and a small packet of ham flavoring (or Cajun seasoning, for the Cajun variety). You add meat, vegetables and other seasonings, which adds a lot of room for personal taste.

For example, today I’m making the regular 15-bean soup. But instead of the suggested ham or smoked sausage, I’m using breakfast sausage, just because it sounded like a good idea. I’m using a larger size can of tomatoes than the directions called for, and a little more onion, and since I am out of lemon juice I’m going to replace it with a little shot of hot pepper vinegar. I also threw in some bay leaves while the beans were cooking.

A good hearty bowl of this stuff should help prepare me for a long, cold evening.

The leftovers freeze well, so I’ll be able to enjoy this batch of soup on several more occasions.

Dec 05

The forgotten miracle

I just saw a promo — our local MyNetwork TV station, WUXP (MyTV30), is going to air the 1973 TV movie version of “Miracle on 34th Street” Saturday night.

I haven’t seen this in ages and ages. It’s nowhere near as good as the classic 1947 original, but it’s not bad (and it is much more faithful to the original than the 1994 Elizabeth Perkins / Dylan McDermott version). It’s like a classic TV time capsule: Sebastian “Family Affair” Cabot as Kris Kringle, David “Good Morning America” Hartman as his defense lawyer, Jane “Eleanor and Franklin” Alexander, Roddy “Planet of the Apes” McDowall as the haughty Macy’s psychologist, Tom “Happy Days” Bosley, Jim “Gilligan’s Island” Backus, David “Charlie’s Angels” Doyle, Conrad “Mork and Mindy” Janis and James “Barney Miller” Gregory.

I read at IMDb just now that Sebastian Cabot, who played the unflappable butler Mr. French on “Family Affair,” had to shave off his real-life beard and wear a false one for the movie, because the makeup artists couldn’t get his real beard full or white enough!

I know David Hartman had a dramatic TV series, “Lucas Tanner,” but I still think of him as the original host of “Good Morning America,” and the occasional ABC documentary after he left his morning routine. It’s weird to imagine him as an actor.

Dec 25

Good stuff

I had a wonderful Christmas with family. That’s obviously the most important part of the holiday, but since that doesn’t translate well into a blog post, I’m going to brag about my gifts instead.

I wanted to show off a couple of gifts in particular, because they were handmade:

HPIM2188

My father made CD cases like this one for me and my three siblings.

Go Preds!

My sister-in-law in California knitted hats and scarves for several of us, tied in with one of that person’s favorite sports teams — in my case, you will note the exact colors of the Nashville Predators. I got a Predators collector pin to wear with this as well.

I also got some great clothes, and several great books — an autobiography of movie director Preston Sturges, a Food Network Kitchens cookbook and a book which I didn’t even know existed by Steve Martin about his days as a standup comic and variety performer, from Disneyland to “Saturday Night Live.”