Fire!

Yesterday I alluded to a Yule log video. I'll address that today. In the days after Thanksgiving, I started getting into the Christmas spirit. You may well wonder why I wasn't there in early November. I guess I'm not one of those types. I'm there now, anyway. I listen to Christmas music whenever it is reasonable, and I also do enjoy a good Yule log fire. I can't have a fire here at my place, regrettably, but there is Youtube.

The other day I decided I wanted to watch a Yule log video for the first time this Christmas season. I looked around a bit online, and went with the first one that looked very good from the thumbnail. It was a little under an hour long, which I figured was plenty long enough. I set up some seasonal tunes to go with it, and we were off to the races. It was a fairly standard fire in a plain-looking fireplace. I don't know if they get flashier than that, but I wouldn't want that anyway.

Christmas Music

It's the Christmas season, we must at last admit to ourselves. One of the critical aspects of Christmas is, of course, the music. We now have a lot of options for how we consume it (or, indeed, if we do). Friends of mine are breaking out their vinyl records of Christmas music. Others of us are streaming music online. There may even be those who are buying CD's, since I think they are still making those. Maybe those people are buying mp3s.

My favorite way to hear Christmas music is the traditional way, or at least what is the traditional way to me. I listen on the radio. Each year at this time, a town's soft rock radio stations switch formats to non-stop Christmas music. In this way I get all the conventional songs, sometimes sung by the likes of Bing Crosby and so forth, other times being sung by more recent artists like Mariah Carey or Michael Buble. It suits me well enough.

Eaten

I got some good eating done over the holidays. I manage to nourish myself tolerably well at all times, and so you won't hear me whining about starvation, but I don't eat such good food generally. I eat better when with my family during the holidays, and this Christmas just passed was no exception. Indeed, it was exceptional in a very positive way, if any. I shall delight in forcing an account of it upon you.

My visit commenced with fairly little food in the kitchen, and so there was a fair amount of scrounging in between burritos brought home by my saintly mother. I should say that the amount of food around at that time still far exceeds what I ever have at my apartment in Los Angeles. Typically I have six or seven cans of something, some cup o'noodle soups, and little else apart from mustard. It's economical.

Today's The Big Day

Today being Christmas, I ought to say something about it. I know that I oughtn't assume that everyone's Christmas traditions are like mine. I know how the holiday has gone for me, and how I prefer for it to go. For me, it's a small, private occasion. It's shared with the closest of family, and it's confined to the home. When the lead up to the day is so loud and busy and takes you all over the place in search of gifts, why must the day itself follow suit?

Other people do things differently, and I grant that it is out of some necessity sometimes. People who work on Christmas and celebrate on a different day are not to be condemned, nor are those who cannot be with their family. There are, however, those who could have a properly traditional Christmas and who decide against it. I don't know why it is that that they do that, and while I'm going to devote the time to analyze it, I suppose I shouldn't bother.

Heading Out

At this time of year, one's thoughts turn to the many facets of the Christmas holiday season. My mind conjures up various traditions, among them being reunion with family, the exchange of presents, the making and consumption of food and plenty more. Most of it is good, as one would expect given the popularity of the occasion, but plenty of it is bad. The bad is discussed fairly thoroughly without my help, and so I try not to pile on.

It's taxing to refrain from griping about such a thing as the unpleasantness of traveling. Even though I'm quite aware of its futility and that I have nothing original to add to that which has been said by those who are more enthusiastic about the matter, I want to vent my own feelings. I suppose that's reasonable, isn't it? One saxophone player isn't going to let his spit build up in the instrument just because all the others are letting their own out.

Ride Away

My day yesterday was marked by disappointment in my leisure life. My favorite football team suffered its worst loss in team history, and as if that wasn't enough, they also contributed towards a likely defeat in my fantasy football league. This defeat would keep me out of our playoffs, and so you can see how I was an insufferable basket case. I badly needed something to distract me and lift my spirits. Luckily something came up.

Some friends had concocted a plan to see Christmas lights. What kind of person could remain in a foul mood in the face of that? Although it was against my nature to disengage from the poisonous atmosphere I had, I forced it on myself in the hopes that I would become someone who would be grateful that the angry me had done that. I remained upset at the outset of the experience, but that began to melt away.

Tree

I was thinking idly yesterday that I would like to get a little Christmas tree. With a previous roommate, I had acquired and decorated a very small tree of perhaps a couple feet. When we went our separate ways, we had split up the stuff. I suppose that I had come out on the short end of it, because all I seem to have is the single string of lights we bought. I think he must have both the tree and the garland, although I can't say I miss the messy garland, which shed tinsel readily.

I wonder if the time is now to buy a tree and all. It seems likely enough to me that there will be severe discounts on things following this Christmas season, as stores never do seem to accurately assess their needs where such things are concerned. That would mean not having what I want in time this year, but being ready next year. I did razz a roommate for operating alone those lines in another matter, so perhaps I ought not do the same if I am to be consistent.

The Creep

There's nothing new about the Christmas season creeping up on us earlier and earlier every year, although it had seemed that nothing would push it back past Thanksgiving. That, I know I thought, was a popular enough holiday that it would stand its ground as a firebreak against further Yuletide creep. There's the big meal, the iconography, the associated football games and all the traditions, few of which honestly require any unpleasant activities such as giving. Still, it ultimately was no match for the juggernaut.

I say that Thanksgiving has given way because of something I have been made aware of recently. Each radio market has at least one station which gives way to Christmas music every year as the holiday grows near. Typically it seems that it is a soft rock station, which says much about the nature of that genre's appeal. In LA, the station best known for its Christmas music is KOST. They have not yet begun their Christmas music programming.

Christmas Music

An interesting thing happens as the Christmas holiday rolls around. I'm not going to dredge up old complaints about the festivities beginning earlier every year or the other things, because I think that's just too boring to bear. No, what I still find interesting has to do with the music. Like clockwork, soft rock stations in each American radio market scrap their regular format of Rod Stewart and Barry Manilow for Christmas music. It's true enough that both men along with other practitioners of the strange art called soft rock stay in the game with their own renditions of holiday tunes, but that's besides the point. Isn't it interesting that no other format judges itself to be unworthy of staying on when something so necessary as yuletide hits must carve out some room for a month. It must be at least a little demoralizing. Jazz music, God bless it, is uncommercial enough to require the fostering care of public radio stations, and the blues are worse off than that, often relegated to a few hours a week on the same stations. Still, it's soft rock that takes the hit. Well, we must count our blessings at this time of year- at least it's off the air for a little while.

At this time of year, I always find myself embroiled in an argument over the fanciful standby 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus'. My entire life I have interpreted it to be a song depicting an affair between a little boy's mother and Santa Claus. It seems like a tame affair, entailing no more than kissing as it does, but an incidence of infidelity nonetheless. I swear that if you pore over the lyrics and listen to it again and again, you will find nothing in it explicitly stating that it's merely the boy's father posing as Santa Claus, and yet the preponderance of people I speak to say this is the case. Show me the proof. No matter what comes to light, there's not adequate subtext to effectively convey it, but I'm open to having my mind changed about the songwriter's intent. Prove me wrong.

Viernes Negro

Yesterday was what they call Black Friday. It always sounds to me like one of those terrible tragedies that goes down in history, like some massacre of citizens by government soldiers or an economic collapse. I think they ought to consider renaming it, because naturally it's nothing like that. In fact, the name is meant to describe something basically as good as those things are bad: it's considered the first shopping day of Christmas, and the month or so which follows tends to make the difference for businesses between a profitable year and an unprofitable one. It's Black Friday because the business then begins operating "in the black". Supposedly accountants have traditionally used black ink to mark gains and red ink to mark losses in their books. I can't confirm or deny that, but it's mildly interesting.

More than mildly interesting is the shopping hysteria which is as baffling as it is appalling. I don't really understand it, and I feel it shows us at our worst. As the clock strikes midnight to end Thanksgiving Day, the first stores are already open for business. I for one got up at 8:30 in the morning and spent the day binging on all the gastronomical trappings of the occasion. Apart from that and a brief hike, I mostly sat in front of TVs to watch football. It was a long, full day, and I cannot imagine doing anything but turning in at an eminently reasonable hour. Who would have it in them to troop out to the stores not early in the morning but that very night? It defies all reason.

The day

It was a good, full day. We got started later than in past years, but had a nice breakfast. Thereafter, it was present time, and I served as distributor of gifts. The gifts all seemed to be successes, so it was a good Christmas in that regard. We then watched a little basketball, breaking it off for hiking and other endeavors. Upon return, we got back to sports until it was time for dinner. This was very good.
Christmas certainly changes as a family gets older. There were many around today, whereas years ago it was just the four of us. More ruminations may possibly come tomorrow.

Christmas

It looks to be as good a Christmas as ever for the family. There's plenty of food and plenty to do with those I care about. Very little gives me pause apart from the many changes that take place here in between my visits home.

Should it interest anyone, I will say that I got a haircut. It's very short right now. The mustache has been trimmed, but lives still. I also had my first professional shave that I can recall. I can't say that it's likely to recur, but was pleasant and worth doing at least the once.
More about the holidays likely to follow.