On which I write about the books I read, science, science fiction, fantasy, and anything else that I want to. Currently trying to read and comment upon every novel that has won the Hugo and International Fantasy awards.
Pachelbel's Canon in D wasn't a Christmas song. Well, okay, that's not technically completely accurate, since no one really knows why Canon in D was originally written, especially as it fell into obscurity for centuries and was only really rediscovered by the general public in the late 1960s. So it may have been written as a Christmas song, but we don't really know and have no evidence that would actually support that conclusion.
But the Trans-Siberian Orchestra got hold of the song, added some lyrics and some amplifiers and turned out this version of the song and probably cemented it in people's heads as a Christmas song forevermore. Although it used to be used for a lot of weddings and funerals, now it is holiday music, which seems odd. Repurposing non-holiday music as holiday music seems to happen every now and then - relatively recently the song My Favorite Things became a "Christmas song", an association it didn't have for its first fortyish years of existence.
I have to question the need to do this sort of annexation of non-Christmas songs by the Christmas season. I mean, we already have a lot of Christmas songs that were specifically written as such, and more are produced every year (although many, such as Last Christmas, are terrible). Does the ever-growing octopus of Christmas need to engulf non-Christmas songs as well?
I have a confession to make: Once I hear a Trans-Siberian Orchestra version of a traditional Christmas song, all other versions are pretty much ruined for me. I mean, I used to really like, for example, Josh Groban's version of O Holy Night, but now when I listen to it, the song just seems so slow and flat. I keep expecting a lead guitar to cut in and drive the song forward. I'm not really sure what this means other than I apparently prefer my Christmas season with lots of electric guitars, but there it is.
I'm not much of a believer. Culturally, my background is Christian - specifically small town Midwestern protestant Christian, but these days I mostly line up on the same side as Tim Minchin with respect to religious traditions. I share his love of Christmas as described in his song White Wine in the Sun.
But despite the fact that they are packed in layers of silliness, there are some ideas in the Christian tradition that are good ones, and this song by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra captures one of those good ideas almost perfectly. Specifically, this verse:
And he dreamed of another world
In another time
And another place
Where no man
Has to wear a sign
Saying where he's from
Saying what's his race
And he wants us to believe
This world that he sees
I fear that we may be entering an era in which this idea will be a forlorn hope. The United States has failed to rise to its ideals in the past, with the institution of slavery, followed by legalized segregation, the internment of Japanese-American citizens during world War II, racist immigration policies, and many other national moral failures. Over the last couple of decades, the U.S. seemed to be improving in this regard, and was slowly moving towards actually being a society that kept the promises that its founding documents made. And the majority of voters in the country seem to have wanted the country to keep moving in that direction.
But due to a fluke in the way that Presidents are selected, the incoming administration is headed by a man who campaigned on the idea of labeling people based upon where they come from, what religion they adhere to, and in a de facto manner, what their race is. I fear that we will see the implementation of a registry of Muslims in the country, whether they are citizens or not. I fear that we will see mass deportations of Hispanic immigrants, regardless of their legal status. Both of these policies will be motivated by xenophobic racism. I can already hear the reply - that neither Muslim nor Hispanic is technically a race, but both of those groups are dominated by people who are browner than the white Americans calling for these policies. The telling fact that reveals the racism behind such proffered policies is that those same people who clamor for the removal and exclusion of members of these groups are not making similar calls for people from Poland, or Hungary, and any number of other places. No, the only groups that they call for the government to move against are groups that are overwhelmingly non-white.
The truly sad thing is that many of the people who support these policies appear to be "conservative Christians". But as this song indicates, these proposed policies are entirely antithetical to the core of Christianity. In a larger sense, almost everything this incoming administration stands for is antithetical to the message and teachings of Christianity. If this administration tries to actually implement the promises they made on the campaign trail, then we are in for some very dark times ahead. I hope that the country can pull out of what I believe is the coming tail spin, but it will take a lot of work and effort to do it. I believe that the ideals that the United States was founded upon are the greatest one could choose, and I really hope that we pull back from this cliff that Trump's racism and xenophobia have pushed us towards, and we go back towards living up to those ideals.
I want a lot of unrealistic things this holiday season. In most cases, what I want are big things that would require a time machine and some serious alterations to the past year. I wouldn't change the whole year, just large chunks of it. Asking for the return of Firefly seems almost plausibly achievable in comparison. I mean, as long as we are asking for things we can't have, we may as well ask for some nice things as well. I'd trade in Serenity in exchange for a couple seasons of episodes. Plus, it would be nice to have Wash back as well, although there's no way to have Shepard Book in a rebooted Firefly, which is a real shame. Hell, as long as we are asking for impossible things, we may as well ask for Ron Glass back too.
Fuck this year. Fuck it straight to hell. Merry Fucking Christmas.
A Charlie Brown Christmas is one of the most popular Christmas programs in American history. Originally aired in 1965 to high ratings and critical acclaim, the special has been aired during every Christmas season since its debut. In the story, which most people now know by heart, Charlie Brown is depressed over the increasing commercialization of Christmas, as evidenced by Lucy van Pelt's desire for gifts of real estate and Sally Brown's extensive Christmas list capped off with a request for a (for the time) relatively sizeable cash gift if shopping is too hard for Santa Claus. After trying unsuccessfully to direct the school play while saddled with a cast made up of kids indifferent to the "true meaning of Christmas", Brown receives some guidance from his friend Linus in the form of a recitation of the annunciation of the Angels, and then heads for home. Along the way, he tries to decorate the tiny tree that he had acquired earlier in the story, and thinks he has killed it, running away in despair. After his departure, Brown's friends show up and restore the tree before he returns. Everyone then joins Charlie Brown in singing Hark the Herald Angels Sing, apparently having learned the true meaning of Christmas as well.
This Christmas program, created more than fifty years ago now, shows that the "good old days" weren't really that "good" to begin with. After all, Charlie Brown could plausibly lament the commercialization of Christmas as long ago as 1965, and Lucy could claim that the entire holiday was run by a "big Eastern syndicate", and while Lucy's claim was supposed to be mostly ridiculous, it was also supposed to be something that someone might actually believe. When Charlie Brown goes to buy a Christmas tree, the place that sells them is a gaudy showplace with spotlights, and almost all of the trees available are artificial. Even "back then" the world was commercialized, no matter what our hazy nostalgic gaze might tell us.
The bigger issue that I see is that the message of A Charlie Brown Christmas is just as relevant today as it was then. Every year, we are regaled with scenes of the stampedes of shoppers nearly rioting at "Black Friday" sales. Black Friday itself has encroached upon Thanksgiving: Once you had to wait until stores opened as normal on Black Friday, then the sales started earlier and earlier, eventually commencing at midnight of Thanksgiving. But even that wasn't enough, now you can get up from your Thanksgiving dinner and rush over to the mall at six in the evening on Thanksgiving itself to satisfy your urge to purchase Christmas goodies. Well, you can do that if you aren't one of the unfortunate people who has to work at the stores during those shifts. The commercialism that Charlie Brown complained about in 1965 hasn't just polluted Christmas, it has infected Thanksgiving as well. Americans love A Charlie Brown Christmas, but even fifty-one years worth of viewings seem to have had limited effect on getting its message through to them.
More than fifty years ago, Charles Schulz pointed the way to a better Christmas season. For more than fifty years, Americans have professed to love the story containing that message. Every year for the last several decades, we have commercialized Christmas to an even greater extent than the year before. Every year, people lament that Christmas is bleeding over into Thanksgiving and tut-tut over the mad rush of Black Friday while getting into line for a store opening at 6:00 P.M. after they eat their turkey dinner. It is possible to change this, but it starts with our decision, one by one, to say no. To reject the over-commercialization of Christmas requires a few thousand individual decisions. It is what Schulz would want us to do.
Every year over the last few years, starting some time in December I post a couple of Christmas-related songs as Musical Monday selections. There isn't really a lot that connects these songs other than the fact that most of them are a little bit nerdy, many of them are fairly funny, and they are all about Christmas in some way. The songs on this list range from country songs about a gloriously red-necky Christmas celebration to a nerd-folk science fiction song about people ruled over by robot overlords (excuse me, I mean protectors) to an a capella celebration of the season by two of the student singing groups at the University of Virginia. For the most part, the only thing that truly connects these songs (other than their Christmas theme), is that I like them.
Christmas always seems to be an odd mix of melancholy and hope. Coming in the middle of winter, the weather is always cold and grey. Coming at the end of the year, the holiday reminds everyone that they are getting older. In short, the whole season is kind of sad and depressing. Even the pretty Christmas lights and decorated trees often seem like a kind of desperate attempt to make a gloomy season artificially cheerful. There's a reason that Charlie Brown feels down and disconsolate in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
But it is also a hopeful time of year. It is a time when families get together. When people tend to be a little nicer to one another than they normally are. Amidst the melancholy, there is a little brightness. One doesn't have to believe in Santa Claus or any of the other elements of mythology surrounding the season to feel the cheer and good will that surround it. Sarah's challenge in this song is for everyone to reach for each other to find something to believe in. At the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas, Charlie's friends get together and do something kind for him. That's what I hold on to: That people are willing to extend themselves for others just because it is the kind thing to do.
For the record, neither of my grandmothers ever cooked a dog. Or a cat. That I know of.
I have come to the conclusion that just about every family has some recipe that they have at the holidays that isn't really anything special to anyone else, but they simply can't live without. The redhead's sister has a recipe for sausage balls that her family absolutely has to have for holiday celebrations. I've had them, and they are okay, but since I came into the family as an adult, they don't really excite me all that much.
When my grandmother was alive, she used to make homemade noodles with turkey and gravy. After she died, my aunt took over making this holiday food. After she died, the recipe kind of got lost. A few weeks ago my uncle called me to ask if I knew how to make the noodles. For him, the holiday apparently just isn't complete without some noodles in turkey gravy. For my mother, the holidays are synonymous with her mother's recipe for Swedish sugar cookies. And so on. Food traditions are sometimes weird, and always idiosyncratic.
So while I'm not going to guarantee that there is a family for whom the holiday food traditions include a cocker spaniel stuffed with yams and served with chestnut stuffing, I wouldn't rule it out either.
So, amidst all the holiday cheer, what is often lost is the true reason for the season. Which is the axial tilt of the Earth. Actually, no, that's not it. Or rather, it is, but that's not really important right now. The true reason for the season is Patrick Swayze's classic action movie Road House. Okay, no it isn't. But after listening to this song written by Crow T. Robot, you'll wish it was. Because what Christmas really needs is a good mullet, Sam Elliott, a terrible contrived plot, and some really good action scenes. And robots and spaceships. Well, Road House didn't have any robots or spaceships, but it should have. Because robots and spaceships make everything better. And dinosaurs. I'm imagining Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliott piloting a Christmas ship powered by dinosaurs and crewed by robots, jetting about the world distributing gifts. What a great movie that would have been.
I know its not Monday. But for this week, I'm just going to post music and call it Monday. Because I can. And because it is Christmas.
I've lived and worked near Washington D.C. for most of my adult life, but my mental home is, and probably always will be in Charlottesville, because that is where the University of Virginia is. I haven't been a student at the University for more than twenty years, but I am, now and forever, a Cavalier. One of the best events of the year when I was a student was the Virginia Gentlemen giving their annual holiday concert. So here are the Virginia Gentlemen and the Virginia Sil'hooettes to spread some holiday cheer into the world.
The Trans-Siberian Orchestra is probably best known for their rock anthem version of Christmas carols such as Christmas Eve/Sarajevo, or for adding lyrics to classical pieces of non-Christmas music and making them into Christmas themed power ballads like Christmas Canon Rock, but I think the group is at its best when they are working with quieter, more reflective pieces like Old City Bar. And this performance captures the tone of the song perfectly. In some concerts, the vocalist singing the song plays up the comic nature of an old drunkard, which I think is a mistake, because that doesn't really fit the nature of this song.
The song is, at its heart, a tale about a Christmas miracle. Its a small miracle to be sure - the only miraculous part is that a bartender is supernaturally alerted to the plight of a lost traveler and a broken pay phone seems to work. I think, however, that the smallness of the "miracle" is the point: To the extent that there is any kind of Christmas magic, we make it for one another. A person with no reason to did something for someone they didn't know, and will likely never see again. That's the miracle, and that's humanity at its best. I don't believe there is a higher power watching over us. I also don't believe that we need one. What we need are other people, and some of the kindness and good will that the season is supposed to be known for. It seems to me that the world could use some more of it.
Tim Minchin is mostly known for his funny, silly, and satirical songs. What sometimes gets forgotten is just how good a songwriter he really is, and how good he is at capturing just the right emotional tone for a song - which is why he is so good as a musical humorist. But that's not the important point here. What is important is that in a beautiful, pointed and poignant song, Minchin is able to capture exactly what is truly wonderful about Christmas while giving it the melancholy tone that always seems to run as an undercurrent to the holiday. My writing skills are too feeble to adequately express the mixture of almost cloying forthright love for Christmas mixed with a mild amount of cynicism that is found in the song, so I'll mostly let Tim's lyrics do the talking here.
This song also kind of makes me want to move to Australia, so that Christmas will be a time of sunny days and white wine. Maybe. It's a long way away though, so it would make it less likely that I would see the people I want to see on Christmas, so moving there for the sunshine and alcohol to share with them would probably be somewhat self-defeating.
Christmas is aggressively marketed as a season of happiness. Every year one is supposed to be filled with holiday cheer and have the best Christmas ever, even though that is actually impossible. Because of this, what it often really does is remind people of other, happier Christmases they had in the past. Or, more often, it reminds people of how not full of holiday cheer they are. And it scolds you for feeling that way.
There are two versions of this song. The other one, titled Music Box Blues, seems to be more popular, and is a pleading and soulful rendition originally sung by now-deceased former Trans-Siberian Orchestra vocalist Daryl Pediford. But I chose this version, sung by Katrina Chester, because it has a more resigned, almost defeated tone. And that's where I am now, dealing with the fact that some things probably cannot be fixed, no matter how hard you might try. I don't want to use the phrase "irretrievable broken", but I fear that there are relationships between me and two people that I care about quite a bit for whom I might have to say exactly that. Even now, I keep trying to think of ways to repair the damage that has been done, and yet I know that it likely isn't possible.
This is not going to be a Christmas full of happy cheer for me. And probably not for them. I don't regret many things that brought me to where I am now, but I do regret my ever deteriorating connection with them. I'm almost out of hope, but I'll leave a candle burning in the window and live on memories.
So today is December 23rd, a day that is only really notable because there really isn't anything notable about it. It isn't the Winter Solstice. It isn't Christmas Eve, or Christmas, or even Boxing Day. It is just the day that seems to be the pregnant pause between the frenzy of holiday preparation and the actual Christmas holiday celebration. As Paul & Storm say, the 23rd seems to be a day that is mostly about waiting for other days to arrive.
But as frustrating as a day like December 23rd is for those who are young enough to be looking forward to Santa's arrival, I think it is more and more necessary to have this day and other days like it stuck into the middle of the hectic holiday season. More and more it seems that people run themselves ragged trying to create the perfect Christmas, and in the process it seems like we are missing actually enjoying ourselves during the Yule time. Instead, we have to put up piles of Christmas decorations, cook enormous amounts of food, drive insane distances, shop for a myriad of Christmas gifts, and put in a lot of other work in order to meet the artificial standards we think we must meet. And in the process, we tire ourselves out so that instead of being an enjoyable, relaxing time with family and friends, we are exhausted and must crawl back to work after the holidays just to recover.
So I'd like to suggest that we should all take December 23rd and do nothing. Make it a national holiday of rest so we can all sleep late and not do anything productive at all. Require all of the stores and businesses across the country to close, and let everyone have the day off work. We'll all be better off.
Sometimes an adaptation improves upon the original work. I don't much like the traditional song The Twelve Days of Christmas. It is tedious and dull, mostly consisting of mind-numbing repetition. The only song I can think of that is more repetitively boring than The Twelve Days of Christmas is 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, and that song is only useful when used by elementary school students on field trips who want to annoy their teachers. But 99 Bottles of Beer seems to be intended to be annoying, whereas Twelve Days has no such excuse.
And the song is also somewhat deceptive, because when people start singing it, you've forgotten how incredibly mind-numbingly long and awful it is. So for the first couple of verses, when you're skipping through the first couple of numbers of quirky bird-themed gifts, you are thinking that the song isn't as bad as you had thought. But then it drags on. Somewhere about the time the gifts start being milkmaids or pipers, you get tired of the song, and realize with some small horror just how much more is left. And you look at the people around you, and know that some of them share your distaste for continuing, but that there are some truly awful and evil people who have cherubic smiles and too much holiday spirit and who expect that everyone will continue right to the drummers at the bitter end. And so, out of social obligation, you continue to sing this awful song. Unless you're me. I just stop singing and go into the other room. Because life is too short to spend it singing interminably long and boring songs.
But this version of the song is brilliant, because it takes the song and cuts it down to a manageable size while throwing in some variety and humor. Straight No Chaser managed to capture the spirit of the song, the portion that makes it joyful and exciting, and excises all of the tedium. This, unlike Peter Jackson's incredibly overlong and padded out adaptation of The Hobbit, is an adaptation that takes the source material and makes it better. Plus, given that I lived in Africa for several years, the song strikes something of a resonating tone for me.
I love Tolkien's work. In his prose, Tolkien was able to capture a fantasy world that felt undeniably real, filled with mystery, wonder, and a little bit of whimsy, but organic, and without a feeling of forced artificiality that some fantasy fiction falls into. Consequently, I have been both delighted and disappointed by Peter Jackson's adaptations of his work, mostly because Jackson's vision, although very close to the mark, is sometimes just a bit off target, resulting in a product that is excruciating because it is so close to being spot on and yet not.
The Lord of the Rings is a story of an epic nature, and so Peter Jackson built an epic series of movies to tell the story. But The Hobbit isn't an epic story. Sure, it is about a quest to slay a dragon and restore a nation of dwarves to their homeland, but that's just the excuse for the real story, which is the journey and self-discovery of a very small and provincial hobbit. The story of the hobbit is small, personal, pastoral, and in many cases childish. And so when Peter Jackson decided to try to make it a series of big, epic movies just like the one he had made for The Lord of the Rings, it was the exact wrong thing to do. The first movie was overlong and tedious, bloated with a level of self-importance that the story just couldn't hold up. Instead of elevating the movie and making the story more interesting, the added material doesn't build the story up, but instead weighs it down. And the second movie doesn't look to be any better in this regard.
But that doesn't stop the Doubleclicks from making the perfect Hobbit song which captures the wonder and spirit of Tolkien's book while wishing and hoping for a Hobbit movie that they can love unreservedly. Granted, they wrote and recorded the song last year, before the first installment of the bloated trilogy was released, so they were justified in some of their happy optimism. And I shared that optimism. I desperately wanted a beautiful Hobbit movie that would capture the tone of the book in the same way that Angela and Aubrey have captured the book's tone in their song. But even though I was disappointed by An Unexpected Journey, I'll still go to see The Desolation of Smaug, and I'll still love the joy and happiness in this song.
At first glance, my family appears markedly upscale. In my "real job" I am a lawyer who works for the Federal government. I am a graduate of the University of Virginia. I attended a private all-boys boarding school. My sister lives in New York, teaches English as a second language, and is married to a banker. She and her husband attended the College of William & Mary. My brother also works for the Federal government, is married to an engineer, and is posted overseas. He and his wife attended Vanderbilt University.
But the reality is that we are just a small branch off of a larger family tree, a sizable chunk of which is very much like the family depicted in Keen's song. And this is why I love this song - because I recognize and am related to the people Keen is describing. While Keen's lyrics do exaggerate for comic effect, they only exaggerate a very small amount. And it doesn't matter that Keen is from Texas, and my family is from Illinois and Indiana. The small town blue collar world that he describes is almost exactly the same - and is probably very similar no matter where you go in the United States, and probably beyond.
In the world of wood paneled houses and mullets, the Christmas party he describes wouldn't be out of place at all. And it is this core of truth that makes the song hilariously funny, at least to me. The song works so very well because it hits so close to home: I have been at holiday celebrations that were similar to this. I will say that I don't think I've ever been at one at which Mom got drunk and Dad got drunk, although I have been to more than one holiday celebration where the alcoholic cheer was flowing pretty freely, sometimes with moderately unfortunate results. But I'm pretty sure that I've seen some variation of just about every other vignette described.
One phenomenon that I have noticed is that people who don't have a family that is at least somewhat like the one described in the song simply don't find this song funny. It seems that unless you have family that you cannot remember how you are related to them, you're simply not close enough to realize that this song is so humorous because it is so brutally honest. I distinctly remember taking long car rides to attend family reunions and spending most of the travel time quizzing my mother so I would know how I was related to the approximately seven hundred and eighty-nine second and third cousins who would be attending the get-together.
I think almost every book lover, gamer, or nerdy individual can identify with this song. With very few exceptions it seems that most people simply don't believe you when you tell them you'd like a copy of John Scalzi's latest book, a copy of the Rankin-Bass animated Hobbit, some Star Wars Legos, or an obscure gaming supplement published by Wizards of the Coast. They figure that because they would never want something like that, you don't really want it either, so instead they get you a copy of the latest Adam Sandler movie, even though you have said several times that you loathe Adam Sandler. "This one is funny!" they say, "You'll like it, I promise". And because throwing their thoughtlessly acquired piece of crap in the trash right then and there is considered impolite, you smile, say thank you, and die a little bit inside.
And, of course, because social custom demands this sort of false politeness, the cycle continues. Because you can't ever tell the gift giver that they suck at buying you gifts, you get a constant stream of junk you have no use for at every gift exchanging event. And turnabout is not seen as fair play - if you start buying everyone else geek oriented gifts then you are seen as being impolite. Because you bought them something that they didn't want, or even like. Never mind that they've been doing the same thing to you for years. Their gifts are good gifts that you, the ungrateful geek, should like, because they are "normal". Because we all need to be "fixed" so that we'll give up the things that we love and love "normal" stuff.
So, if you are a geek, holidays are, and sadly probably always will be, a time to practice your "present face".
I know Christmas is supposed to be happy and uplifting, but I increasingly find the holidays to be wearing and a little bit sad. As Jon Coulton says, he started writing this song with the intent of making a cheerful and funny tune, and ended up writing a sad song. I understand completely where this sentiment comes from. And when you think about it, so many of the stories he references in the video are filled with a certain amount of sadness layered within the ostensibly happy message that they try to hit you over the head with.
Even the happiest and most child-like of tales, such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, referenced in the lyrics "So you're and elf, but you want to be a dentist/Maybe you're a train with square wheels/Maybe you're a squirt gun that only shoots jam", carries an undertone of unhappiness. In the story it is only when the "defective" people and toys are found to be useful that they are accepted into society. Fairly early on, I started hoping that Rudolph would tell Santa to solve his own damn problems when the big man comes and asks for help after spending the entire movie taking part in making Rudolph's life miserable. Though the story is supposedly joyful and full of Christmas cheer, it seems to me that it is about excusing bullies and accepting differences only when they are able to be exploited by the existing order.
Is Christmas a happy time when families get together and share goodwill and make memories? Sure. But that's generally true any time a family (at least a reasonably happy family) gets together. But the truth is that so many of the accompanying stories and images that go along with Christmas are sad and depressing when you spend any amount of time thinking about them. And of course, if you are sad and depressed during Christmas everyone thinks something is wrong with you and you need to be "fixed". So people put on an artificial happy face and pretend that the forced cheerfulness is actually real.
The Nightmare Before Christmas is my favorite Christmas movie. I don't know exactly what that says about me, but at the least it probably means that there aren't any Norman Rockwell paintings in my future. I love all of the music in this somewhat demented fairy tale, but some songs stand out, including this sung by Halloween Town's best trick or treaters Lock (Paul Reubens), Shock (Catherine O'Hara), and Barrel (Danny Elfman). The trio have been tasked with kidnapping the monstrous ruler of Christmas Town, the red coated lobster man "Sandy Claws". And so they sing about all the inventive ways they will ensnare their scarlet prey, although in some cases it seems like they would kill their target rather than kidnap him, and a kidnapping is what Jack had explicitly told them to do. Perhaps this sign of inattention to detail explains why they trapped the Easter Bunny on their first try rather than Sandy Claws.
But the real point is that this is what Christmas should be like: Terrifying and scary, with a side helping of scorpions and walking claw foot tubs. Enough of the saccharine elves with their sugar plums and happy thoughts. Let's have a holiday in which the mistletoe means the druids are going to sacrifice Santa to appease the gods and throw a giant Saturnalian party. And children who will boil Santa until he's ready to be handed over to Oogie Boogie.
