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The power of Christmas

You might be surprised when you learn where the following comes from.

Christmas is such a unique idea that most non-Christians accept it, and I think sometimes envy it. If Christmas is the anniversary of the appearance of the Lord of the Universe in the form of a helpless baby, it’s quite a day. It’s a startling idea, and the theologians, who sometimes love logic more than they love God, find it uncomfortable. But if God did do it, He had a tremendous insight.

People are afraid of God and standing in His very bright light. But everyone has seen babies and almost everyone likes them. So, if God wanted to be loved as well as feared, He moved correctly here. And if He wanted to know people, as well as rule them, He moved correctly, because a baby growing up learns all there is to know about people.

If God wanted to be intimately a part of Man, He moved correctly. For the experience of birth and familyhood is our most intimate and precious experience.

So, it comes beyond logic. It’s what a bishop I used to know called a kind of divine insanity. It is either all falsehood or it is the truest thing in the world. It is the story of the great innocence of God the baby. God in the power of Man. And it is such a dramatic shot toward the heart, that if it is not true, for Christians, nothing is true.

So even if you did not get your shopping all done, and you were swamped with the commercialism and frenzy, be at peace. And even if you are the deacon having to arrange the extra seating for all the Christmas Christians that you won’t see until Easter, be at peace. The story stands.

It’s all right that so many Christians are touched only once a year by this incomparable story. Because some final quiet Christmas morning, the touch will take.

Lovely sentiments, from a unique angle. Ready for the Big Reveal, then? Here it comes.

Of all the great and small events of 1991, the death of CBS News’ “60 Minutes” co-host Harry Reasoner probably rates near the bottom in the amount of attention afforded it by the public.

When Harry died, I recalled a commentary he did when he worked for ABC News in the early 1970s. The commentary was an unlikely one for a man of his position. Most people believe that news people, particularly those at the network level, rarely think of much beyond current events and their own careers. But Harry was different, and his easy-going manner allowed him to address subjects others might approach with more difficulty.

On Christmas Eve, 1973, in the midst of growing turmoil over the Watergate scandal, a troubled economy, wars and rumors of wars in the Middle East and uncertainty over the future of U.S.-Soviet relations, Harry delivered the following commentary…

Not only a journo, a 60 MINUTES journo at that. Go ahead, pick your chin up off your chest as Cal Thomas takes us on home.

Christmas has a power over those who observe it, and those who do not, that is unlike any other holiday or event. The other 364 days of the year we can be caught up in affairs of world-shaking significance, but on Christmas it is as if all systems shut down and we are given a chance to focus on something of greater significance than the headlines or the vacuous babble of television. Perhaps for some this Christmas, the touch will take.

I imagine so. I’ll take it as my cue to excerpt one of my own Christmas posts of yore.

Most of my pleasures in life somehow seem to involve loud noises. The sound of a full-auto .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun rapidly slinging a ton of lead, the “tink” of the shattered shards bouncing off steel targets: ecstasy. The full-throated roar of a finely-tuned, straight-piped, and hot-rodded Harley as you wind it up way too high in second gear and blast like a bullet down a city street or country lane: instant penile tumescence. The sound of a viciously-attacked electric guitar settling deeply into an open A-chord coming through a cranked-up old Fender or Marshall Plexi amp, razoring through your skull as the amp’s tubes simply scream for mercy and the bass and drums thump you in the chest actually disrupting your heart rhythm, and pink-haired nose-pierced vixens and tattooed greasy-haired half-thugs bump into you on the way to the front row: nothin’ more fun than that. The halfwit roar of a house party reaching its peak, with shouted conversations and loud music and shattering glass forming a near-symphonic crescendo: nothing like it but more of it; bring it on. These are a few of my favorite things. After all these years of hard living, I seem to have turned into a lumpen sort of Mr Rogers Antichrist, the direct opposite of the calm demeanor and dulcet soothing pablum presented by ol’ Fred. Eardrum damage, permanent hearing loss, and general angst, with a thrumming undertone of perpetually-imminent knucklehead violence, seem to go with the territory in the seedy environs of Mr Hendrix’s Neighborhood. Even the cockroaches make an unusually loud crunch when you crush ’em.

But Christmas is different. When I was in New York, I thought Christmas was just the greatest. At Christmas I just feel, I dunno, lighter somehow.

And now I’m back again in the most citified part of a generally-countrified region, and I can drive past farms all lit up at night with decorations and candles and such, or I can cruise around my neighborhood with the heat turned up and the radio turned down and poke gentle fun at the gaudiness and tackiness of the electric Santas and neon reindeer perched on the roofs or mock-grazing in the yards. And I love every bit of it. I do, so help me.

Breathes there a man with soul so dead that he doesn’t feel at least a little thrill when George Bailey stands on that snow-swept bridge with his mouth bleeding and his hair and clothing all askew and yells “Whaddya know about that! Merry Christmas!”? Or can keep himself from choking up just a little when Harry walks in smiling and toasts “To my brother George: the richest man in town”? Come on, guys, we’re all men here (even the women, in a sense); you can admit it – there’s no shame in it as far as I’m concerned.

And then there’s Christmas Day itself. On Christmas Day I will be running around between my dear departed dad’s side of the family, my mom’s, and my girlfriend’s. Thank heaven her parents never divorced, I’ll say that. I’ll get to see relatives I don’t see all that much of anymore, some of whom I loathe but most of whom I love very much indeed. I’ll eat way too much and receive unanticipated gifts I scarcely deserve, some from people who don’t even know me all that well anymore but thought to get me something anyway. Oh, the greed. Oh, the stinking and uniquely American avarice. Bah, humbug. And at some point, usually during the drive from my dad’s people to my mom’s (which is a route that takes me through some countryside that is always beautiful no matter how badly the developers try to screw it up, and they’ve labored mightily to in the past several years, believe me), I’ll hear Perry Como or Nat King Cole or Bing Crosby or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing one of those tired old chestnuts that we all pretend to be so sick of on the car radio, and the frost on the fields and pasture-land out the window will fairly gleam in the sunlight, and the cows’ and horses’ breath will steam out from their big dumb nostrils, and this certain farmhouse on a hill that my mom always just loved will have its giant Christmas tree lit up in the huge picture window that fronts the road. And then that enveloping quietness will settle deep in my chest where what passes for my soul lives, and I’ll be completely at peace for a moment. For that I’m most profoundly grateful to all things Christmas, because without the entire sum total of the harried millions in New York rushing about like mad worker bees, and the tacky holiday displays in my neighborhood, and the endless TV commercials exhorting us to buy buy buy, and the piped-in music, and the old movies we’ve all seen a million times, and the ever-controversial Baby Jesus manger displays financed probably unconstitutionally with city-government money—without all that, this blessed spiritual convergence of peace and quiet would never happen for us.

And now, looking back over that passage in light of recent events, I don’t believe we can do without it, nor afford to ever lose it.

It’s a wonderful…

WAR MOVIE?!?

I have watched “It’s a Wonderful Life” every Christmas I can remember, but the holiday classic film took on a whole new meaning for me this year.

I knew that the film had been released in 1946, just after both actor Jimmy Stewart and director Frank Capra had returned from war, but I only learned recently the impact that the war had on the finished product.

The movie was Capra’s idea, and he knew from the start that he wanted Stewart to play the iconic role of George Bailey. But Stewart, an Army Air Corps squadron commander who was grounded by PTSD after 20 combat missions over Europe in a B-24, wanted to do a comedy.

Stewart told reporters when he returned to Hollywood that the world had seen enough death and misery, and when Capra approached him with the story of a family man nearly driven to suicide, he balked and left the meeting.

But Stewart, who at the time was sharing an apartment with fellow veteran Henry Fonda, wasn’t getting any other offers. He eventually agreed to take the role.

Army veteran Alex Plitsas told the Daily Caller that it was only after returning from Iraq that he truly understood Stewart’s performance in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“I was able to understand the movie and [Stewart’s] performance in particular much better after coming home from Iraq. It’s as much of a war film as ‘Die Hard’ is a Christmas movie,” Plitsas said, adding, “Jimmy Stewart’s performance in ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ during the throes of Post Traumatic Stress (PTS) is recognizable to many veterans. PTS was referred to as “shell shock” back then and wasn’t really spoken about nor was there good treatment available. Stewart appeared to use acting as therapy to get through it, and it’s visible in his performance.”

Intriguing stuff for sure. I thought I knew just about all there was to know about IAWL, but I didn’t know this.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

Update! Don’t believe I’ve ever embedded anything from another of my all-time Christmas faves here, so this seems like a fine time to do it.



BE ADVISED: Only the 1947 original version, in black and white, is acceptable. Do NOT allow yourself to be taken in by any sorry-assed remakes or washed-out “colorized” atrocities. Edmund Gwenn. Maureen O’Hara. John Payne. Natalie Wood. Black. And. White. The genuine item. Nothing else will do.

You have been warned.

Christmas ruined

No, dammit. Just…just…NO.

The latest tactic to indoctrinate children into transgenderism — convincing them that maybe they too are supposed to “change” their sex through a series of risky medical treatments — is particularly monstrous. Santa Claus is now “Transanta,” and she delivers chest binders and boxer shorts to 13-year-old girls behind their parents’ backs. 

“We are transing Santa — join us! Transness is so beautiful and we are celebrating our magic,” said actor Indya Moore, who founded “Transanta.”

Transanta is a Christmas social media campaign where children who believe themselves to be transgender or nonbinary can write letters to a transgender Santa Claus and receive gifts, many of which affirm their choice to transition. Over 900 children and young adults have posted letters to Transanta on the organization’s Instagram page. Each child and young adult creates a Target or Amazon wish list where people can send them gifts like clothes meant for the opposite sex and Visa gift cards for chest binders.

CNN, CBS News, and NBC News, all reported on the campaign positively, the last celebrating Moore for “spreading holiday cheer” and helping the most vulnerable.

Because of course they did.

No idea what the holdup could be, but I have no doubt Great Flood v2.0 will be along any minute now.

Santa came early this year

And left a lovely new header in the CF stocking for us. Featuring a classic Yuletide photo of legendary pinup Queen Betty Page, painstakingly customized by yours truly, it’s a gift that’s guar-o-nteed to enliven Christmas morn for one and all. If you ask me, Betty’s so delish she could set even the most stubborn old Grinch’s cold heart aflame, nekkid or fully clothed. But hey, YMMV, although it really shouldn’t, and I can’t condone it.

Should some drooling, artless clodhopper out there find our delectable Betty Claus not to their taste, incomprehensibe as that is, please don’t tell me about it. I just couldn’t bear knowing that there are any such philistines among us. However, If you dislike both Betty AND Scrooge Picard DO let me know so’s I can take steps to permanently bar you from these environs posthaste. You’re almost certainly some kind of gummint agent provocateur, and I need them skulking around here like I need a great big boil on my butt.

A Cold War carol

Yep, it’s time for another sheer-genius musical extravaganza from Steyn.

Back in 1952, Gloria Shayne had been the pianist in the dining room of a New York hotel when a young man walked in, took one look at the gal at the keyboard, and went up and introduced himself. He was a Frenchman who spoke very little English, she was an American who spoke even less French. She liked pop music, he had come to America to be a classical musician. Yet within a month they were married. Flash forward ten years: Noël Regney’s English has improved, and, although he still hasn’t made his name in serious music, he’s learned to appreciate American pop music since his wife hit the jackpot with “Goodbye, Cruel World”. They even write songs together – usually with Noël writing the music, and Gloria the lyrics.

But not this time. Noël Regney had had a lively war. Born in Strasbourg, he’d been conscripted, after the German invasion, into the army of the Reich. And, although he soon deserted and joined the Resistance, he stayed in German uniform long enough to lead his platoon intentionally into the path of a group of French partisans, who wound up shooting him. After the liberation of his country, he went east to be the musical director of the Indochinese service of Radio France, and found himself in the middle of a new conflict. He thought the Second World War was so terrible that it must surely be the end of all war. But here it was – October 1962 – and as he saw it Washington and Moscow were playing a dangerous game of nuclear brinksmanship over Soviet missiles in Cuba. On the streets of Manhattan, he saw two infants in strollers being wheeled by their mothers along the sidewalk, and decided he wanted to write something for them. Not music, but words: A poem.

He wrote a tune to go with it, too, but he decided it wasn’t right, and turned to his wife. “When he finished,” said Gloria, “Noël gave it to me and asked me to write the music. He said he wanted me to do it because he didn’t want the song to be too classical. I read over the lyrics, then went shopping. I was going to Bloomingdale’s when I thought of the first music line.”

I was gonna withhold the name of the song so as to keep y’all in suspense as to which Christmas classic he’s referring to, but then realized there’s no way I could resist embedding it here, and that I had no desire to anyway.



Amazing, isn’t it, how so very many of those Great American Songbook tunes have such fascinating backstories?

Howlers

This just tickled me all to hell when I first heard it, for all sorts of reasons.



A Klezmer Christmas to one and all! When I sent that link to Brack earlier, he returned fired with another real sidesplitter, albeit not Christmas-related.



Promise: kept

Told y’all I’d be re-running this heavenly beauty once again this year. Maybe more than just this once, if I remember my stated promise/threat correctly. What, you thought I was just kidding around or sump’in?




As many times as I’ve seen that one, it never fails to choke me up even yet. While we’re Christmasing around, here’s another good ‘un.



Yeh, yeh, I know: it’s Frosty the Limey, a Brit-pale knockoff of the real all-American magilla. But still. A lovely little tune—simple, elegant, moving. And while I’m reposting a few of my personal holiday favorites, no such list could ever be complete without departed genius John Fahey on there.



More to come, as and when? Oh, you betcher, bub. In fact, the local classical station, WDAV, played a piano adaption of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite the other morning, one I’d never heard before, that blew me away completely. Gonna have to see about digging that one up for sure.

The most wonderful time of the year!

Yes, folks, it is indeed the time of year when some of the most wonderful music yet written comes back around to enchant us all. Yes, I will most certainly be posting the wonderful Cantu/Chanticleer barside team-up on Biebl’s wonderful Ave Maria again this year—count on it. Probably more than once, actually. I swear, no matter how many times I watch that one—about eleventy million so far, I think, but who’s counting—I still get so badly choked up over it that singing along myself, much as I’d surely like to, is simply out of the question.

Anyways, thanks to MisHum and his wonderful ONT, to kick this wonderful season off in a most wonderful way we have something I didn’t see coming.



I always really liked Johnny Winter’s pickin’ but somehow missed this uncharasterically delicate little confection completely over lo, these many years. Talk about UNEXPECTED!™, eh?

“Avoiding death is not living”

Julie Kelly says give ’em the bird.

There’s only one response to anyone suggesting families shouldn’t celebrate Thanksgiving together this year because of COVID-19: Go to hell.

Actually, there IS one other response available for Real Americans who still retain the gumption to countenance using it: SEND the bastards there.

“Encourage guests to avoid singing or shouting, especially indoors. Keep music levels down so people don’t have to shout or speak loudly to be heard.”

That is not a passage from some dystopian novel or a command by a Marxist dictator or a parody in The Onion. It’s guidance posted on the Centers for Disease Control website courtesy of the United States government. Think about that: Some federal bureaucrat, probably a highly credentialed “expert” with a messianic complex, is telling 330 million Americans that they should not sing. In their own homes. So they don’t spread a mostly harmless virus to other people.

It’s beyond laughable, but this isn’t a joke. These people are serious. And they should receive a collective middle finger from the American people.

If there’s any upside to this God-awful year, it’s the revelation that the people in charge are inhumane sociopaths consumed with their own egos and lust for power. The nation—and the world—is being subjected to a destructive pseudoscientific experiment that has failed spectacularly in its stated mission to “stop” COVID-19 while inflicting an economic, educational, and personal toll that never will be fully calculated.

Everyone has suffered but no one has been punished for unleashing this slow-moving catastrophe. To the contrary, the cabal of culpable government leaders are digging in their boot heels to crush the collective spirit of the country. At a time when people need to be with their friends and families the most, a time when the soul-soothing routine of the holidays has never been more necessary, the government’s soulless apparatchiks seek to strip away our last vestiges of joy.

These people are not healthy. They don’t care about you or your child or your elderly parent. They care only about power and control. They should be mocked then ignored. Sadly, however, millions of brainwashed Americans will dutifully comply. Cherished moments will be forsaken without any guarantee they’ll return next holiday season.

With ya one hundred and ten percent there, Jules. Alas, thanks to the panic-ninnies’ hysterical overreaction to the Red Death—and the audacity with which our new overlords so eagerly exploited it for nefarious purposes—all too many Americans proved all too willing to give up essential liberty to purchase a wholly-false security. In perfect accordance with Benjamin Franklin’s unheeded warning, they have now lost both, and deserve neither.

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