Christmas

And what did I do?

You see, I'm far too exhausted to consider reviewing a CD this Monday, so I've come to this neglected blog site, instead.

Christmas is first of all, about food. Let's just face facts. Holidays always fell in winter, traditionally, to follow the harvest and use up surplus. Obviously, if you had no surplus, the harvest was bad and the holidays would be consequently thin. If you can afford to celebrate, then you already have just cause, and if you can't afford it, you don't.

Food: I did make cookies. Chocolate, with carob chips (which work far better than you'd think). We had homemade hummus in tortilla wraps for Christmas Eve, and then the rich food came out for the next day. Raisin Pie, with lots of sour cream (I made that) and a Shepherd's Pie with homemade seitan (my mother made that). We also helped ourselves to eggnog, and I have to admit it was store bought.

Do I come across as a food snob?

The family sat down on Christmas Eve to watch Reginald Owen's take on Scrooge. Highly inept, deserves to be forgotten. He made Scrooge so angry I expected him to have a coronary on the spot. A prototype Glinda the Good appeared as the ghost of Christmas Past (which so outraged me I expected to have a coronary). Marley's ghost was somnambulant, the sentiment tipped over into treacle, and there were various scenes of snowball fighting and sliding on ice for some physical comedy.

We put it all to rights the next day with Alastair Sim's masterpiece. Sim played Scrooge as a man who'd ceased to care, and believed Christmas to be simply one more attempt made by people to hoodwink him. Yet he made the man likable simply by giving him a droll sense of humour. Unlike Owen, there's no snap your fingers and he's better. Scrooge in this film fights it all the way. Christmas Past might remind him of things he put away, make him repent and regret his losses, but he persists in the defeatist idea that he's "too old" to change his ways. So when he makes so astonishing a change at the end (one that must be seen to be believed) it is not overdone, partially because Sim can put a damper on the pure joy Scrooge is feeling, and partially because laughter is, as Dickens said in the story, catching.

Two favorite moments: Scrooge tipping back into self-loathing for a moment "I have no right to be this happy," and then the laughter coming out again as he says that he just can't help it... And the scene in his nephew's hallway with the maid who says not a word. That wordless moment cannot be explained as such, it has to be seen.

So, it's not Christmas in this house without that film.

But the miracle of the day was the weather. Warm enough to walk outside without gloves or hat, yet not melting. Snowing gently in big, feathery flakes, with only a mild breeze and coating everything from the tree limbs to the thistle heads. The sun even turned out, behind such layers of clouds that you could look right at it without being blinded, yet not so many as to obscure it. The sun looked like the moon when full, while still giving all the light it had. And not a car on the road, not an interruption to this tranquil scene, because all the neighbours had gone elsewhere for the day. Fresh snow on the ground, yet unploughed, the only company in my faithful dog, the horses and cattle in the pastures yonder....

Since nothing could top that, Christmas was over when I walked back indoors. And after a Boxing Day spent feasting on leftovers, it is now back to business as usual. Literally one day, one day to put off cynicism and conversations about politics and what Obama's done to the country, and how horrid all your relatives are, and did you hear about the Johnson's getting busted for drugs and all the other usual topics. It seems a shame.

Well, that was my Christmas. It was good, yet now it's passed by. I hope everyone reading this felt a similar sense of peaceful joy that day. Or at least had a good day. Believe you me, Christmas can go horribly wrong, and it pays to be thankful for the years when it goes right.

All's well that end's well.