merry merry merry

If I say "merry" and ask you what immediately comes to mind, I'd bet good money that "Christmas" would be your reply. Right? I can't think of many other constructions in English that are so consistently paired. (Paired. There's a term used ad nauseam.) Yeah, "happy" followed by "birthday." No others come to mind. Help me out. Is it the same with "joyeux noel" in French?

Why "merry"? It could have gone myriad other ways: happy, joyous, pleasing, blessed, fine, cheerful, glad, sweet, exciting, holy. Okay, not quite myriad. But you get the point.

"Merry" itself has a fascinating history and evolution. The wonderful ("wonderful" instead of "merry"; there's another one) Online Etymology Dictionary traces merry to "short duration," as in "time passes quickly; enjoy it now while it lasts." I like that Zen element thrown in there. Impermanence. Transitory. Have you ever heard a Christmas sermon focus on that angle? Neither have I. It'd be a rewarding hybrid of notions and traditions. (No, not me. I'll spare you my attempt at such a homily.)

Not surprisingly, "merry" also has seedier (see below for the innuendo) senses. The Online Etymology Dictionary cites "merry-bout -- an incident of sexual intercourse." Fun! Following the same line of carnal logic, or passion, "merry-begot" was a way of describing "illegitimate" or "bastard."

Merry, merry, merry Christmas, or anything else.

The First Last Christmas

The nurse practitioner had recently assured me: this would be Mom's last Christmas, not merely because she is 102. Her heart is failing, she's not eating or drinking much, the end is near. It is the fullness of time, her time. People say, "I'm so sorry," but I choose to look on the unsorrowfulness of her having lived a full life (her past participle hovering now between present and past), her current comfort, the relief, the letting go. But I understand they don't know what else to say. So, I knew it would be the last Christmas. This did not make me dour or gloomy. Instead, it magnified my visit and vision, and slowed me down. I looked at the sidewalk and the building entrance more acutely, marking it for gratitude now and for memory later. To my surprise, I learned she had already eaten lunch at Oasis, the dining hall. I was a tad disappointed not to lunch with her, as we did on Thanksgiving, but oh well. As I walked the several hallways to her area, I saw a woman slumped over, sitting in a wheelchair in front of the nurses' station. Could that be her? Kind of unusual for her to be sitting there, not lying down in her room. It looked like her. It was. She was nodding off. I tapped her right arm. "Mom, it's me." As suggested by her aide Nicole the day before, I brought her a comfortable pillow, one with a soft and plush texture, like the blanket one daughter had given her and the other daughter had given her as a sweater. "Who's this for?" "It's for you, Mom. How do you like it? It feels nice, right?" She felt it and enthused about its softness. "Who made it?" "I got it at the store. It's for you. I got it at Marshall's." "Thank you." "You're welcome. Merry Christmas." I drew up a chair next to her and sat in it. Then I popped up and got a tissue and tried to clean some eye gunk in her left eye, though it's the right one that gets closed from gunk because she sleeps on that side. The dry tissue didn't work. I talked to two nurses or aides in the hall; they said I should talk to the nurse in the office behind the desk. She used baby lotion or something with a moist cloth or paper towel; each eye; it worked. I felt she could've been more gentle, but then maybe it wouldn't have worked if she had been. I sat a little while and then popped up again to get her cold apple juice with a straw. She loved that. I gave her the straw three or four times for sips. "What are you doing after this?" "I'm going to go for dinner at Ethan's. We're going to have turkey. There'll be six of us." "When are you going there?" "At 5:30. Maybe I'll take a nap first." (Maybe?) "How are the roads?" "They're fine." "You're going to Ethan's. That's nice. What time?" "5:30." "You're having turkey?" "Yeah. Remember, I made it many years when Beth had to work. It's not so hard. People make a big deal over it. The gravy's the thing, the hard part. You had the best gravy of anyone, Mom. The best." Her eyes brightened. "Yes, oh yeah." "One time, was it in Stamford, we didn't have any Gravy Master and you were looking all over for it. All you need is a few drops." "That Gravy Master is the secret ingredient." 

A family down the hall had a golden retriever with them. I importuned upon them to stop by. I knew she'd love petting that dog. she did.

"Well, I'm going to go, Mom. Do you want me to take you to your room to lie down or do you want to stay out here?" "I'll stay here." I kissed her on the cheek and then again on the forehead. "I love you, Mom. Merry Christmas." "Merry Christmas. Thanks for coming, for always coming." "You're welcome. Why wouldn't I? Glad to do it." Our eyes locked. I walked down the hall, but not before waving to her and she to me, as if we were in the departure lounge at a bus station or airport. 

After the nap, I headed, solo, to Ethan's house, at 5:20. I felt but tried to ignore a low-grade hum of loneliness, sadness, and dreaded what-if-ness, not about Mom but about me and my journey thus far and today in particular. I feared a low-grade hum turning into a full-blast bass note. Approaching my son's house, I felt the evening darkness descend, the cold air blanket downward. This could be the last Christmas for any of us. Who are we to say? Who could be so cavalier or breezy to say otherwise? Sure, I'll be the oldest there, but we know what can happen in the blink of an eye, rudely disrespectful of age or station. And if a year later, we were absent, any one of us, or more, we would give the world to have this back again, pay any price, sell our souls and honor, anything, just this one time.

The shimmering snow crystals in the frozen, star-specked moonlight on the lawns to the left of the sidewalk. The town's bright holiday lights twinkling up ahead to the right. The patter of my footsteps. The strands of ice on the steps leading to the door. My hand on the railing. The barking dogs. The glass panes in the front door clouded over, frosty, from the condensation and warmth inside. 

frenzy

You see it. A palpable tension. An agitated hum. More voltage, higher speeds, greater impatience, fear in the eyes. Pressure! It's the holidays!

Yoikes.

I've surrendered most of that, though I understand it.

The fear of failing at the height of transactional trauma.

Sigh.

Maybe instead of saying "Merry Christmas," we should invoke a salute to stillness or silence.

Somehow.

Some way.

 

Christmastide

You know what annoys me? I get consumerism, commercialism, mercantile madness. All that. I understand these -isms have a manic magnetism, even if I keep a safe distance from them myself, mostly. But the thing is this: the stores and radio stations and TV networks can't wait to get on the Christmas bandwagon. They start, what, in October? The trouble is, many of them jump off it after Christmas Day! The Christmastide season is just beginning. It starts Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, depending on your tradtion, and goes 12 days, to January 5 or January 6, depending on how you celebrate it. You know, as in TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS or that play by William Shakespeare, "TWELFTH NIGHT." They all jump on Christmas, then drop it like a radioactive ornament. Even for crass commercial reasons, one can keep it going. Maybe that is better and no need to be annoyed. It allows us to celebrate the feast unencumbered by our acquired baggage.

presence

I saw a sign.

I saw a sign in front of St. Ann Church, just outside the City of Syracuse -- "in the world but not of it," you might say, if you are not suburban-minded (as I am not).

The sign read:

LESS PRESENTS

MORE PRESENCE

I liked it. I like it.

Did the pastor give a Christmas homily on that?

It's a facile declaration.

Simple.

But what would it mean?

Fewer physical gifts and more staring into eyes, more hugs and holding hands?

I talk a good game.

This would be harder than I first thought.

 

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas...

I blogged.

Happy 12th day of Christmas, 2010.

And tonight is Twelfth Night, of Shakespearean renown.

Enjoy.

The snow is back in Syracuse.

Which almost sounds something like 'The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."

Incidentally, our deposed and de-ornamentalized Christmas reclines snow-adorned near the curb.

Happy Ninth Day of Christmas

Back to work tomorrow.

Monday.

First of the new year.

Quotidian quandaries.

Laundry.

Dishes. And dishing.

Up and at 'em.

The month of two-faced Janus.

Sleeves rolled up.

Even though it is not yet Epiphany, we have broken tradition and tossed our tree out unceremoniously to the curb. It was always a bit too lopsided and crooked, even for our lopsided and crooked tastes.

Happy Ninth Day of Christmas, worldwide readers.

Happy Sixth Day of Christmas

It's true.

Start with December 25 as the FIRST day of Christmas, not the last day of Christmas.

Six more days of Christmas left!

Christmastide haiku

Saint Stephen's feast day
proto-martyr sacrifice
a great Dead song too

post-Advent haiku

bows undone, gifts freed

the presents of here and now

a no-thing-ness reigns

holiday malaise, take 1

so the protagonist of the story or movie doesn't do any consumer stuff at all doesn't shop doesn't make macaroni art doesn't participate just drops out and on the morning of December 25 with all the others partaking of the unwrapping binge he or she just sits there in a bathrobe and takes it all in even lets them hurl the epithet solipsist! but does open presents given to him or her but there's no give in the give-and-take or is that take-and-not-give? well anyway just awkward silences or what what else happens how else to complete the story or what do they call it now text how to continue with the text?

listening

...to John Fahey's "The New Possibility..." CD. 12-string guitar.

Not many better Christmas albums.

holiday malaise?

Is it creeping in, my annual malaise, which may be more a healthy and spiritual sanctuary than a depression? It may be. Is it not sensible to retreat from that which is senseless? Or am I merely escaping responsibility? If Wordsworth said, "The world is too much with us, late and soon;/ Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers," what would he say of rampant consumerism masquerading as religiosity?

O, Christmas Tree

We always go to a Christmas tree farm and cut our tree. "Always" being for all or nearly all the years of this marriage (1995), best I can recall. And it has definitely been an annual ritual since our daughter was born in 1997. Upstate New York has an abundance of these places, not far to drive.

About five years ago, I was having a hard time, huffing and puffing, with my daughter beside me, trying to saw down a tree. My wife, a nurse, was at work. I was lying on my side, almost on my back, in the snow. The blade almost got caught in the trunk. This was becoming strenuous, frustrating, and nerve-wracking. A guy walked by with a little electric saw. "Hey, um, can you help me out?" "No, my family's waiting for me." As if that were a reason. Gee, thanks! Merry Christmas to you, too. I persisted. The tree came down. Eventually. A few minutes later, when the guy with the electric saw came by again with two daughters and a felled tree, I saw he was accompanied by a woman from work. Gulp! Merry Christmas to you, too! No, I don't work there any more. The woman eventually married The Man With the Electric Saw. (Um, how's that working out? There's a case where you don't want to invoke the overused "cutting-edge" phrase.)

I once heard my former wife tell a Christmas tree story that may've been apocryphal, but it makes for a funny tale. Some friends of hers decided they wanted a Christmas tree from the woods, presumably from a tree farm. They didn't have a saw, but they had a shotgun. They allegedly managed to shoot down their Christmas tree that year. Yup, they bagged one.

This year there was no snow on the ground. None. Can't recall many, if any, years like that. We liked the first tree we spotted as we got off the tractor-pulled wagon. "You can't just cut down the first tree you see," my wife rightly said. Then we said how 'bout this one or that? too scrawny, too tall, too fat, too many gaps. I'd put my Tipperary Hill hat on a tree as a place-holder. Finally, we picked a Canaan. Had never heard of that before. Sweet smell, very soft needles. $25. totally fresh. Romagnoli's Christmas Tree Farm at Oneida Valley Acres [nice pix!].

Can't beat that.

It's up. I took a nap and let the girls do it.

It's a tad short but really perfect*. Full and splendid.

Sparkling.

* Of course, it's not perfect perfect. That's the beauty of nature.

An Early Merry Christmas to You, Too

In my office, not the Holy Office (HAHAHAHAHA, inside joke for Roman Catholics or, um, especially Inquisitive folks), in back of my HP printer, and near the window, is a manger inhabited, so to speak, with little statues of Joseph, Mary, Baby Jesus, the Three Magi, a shepherd boy with a lamb around his neck, and a donkey. Straw on top of the roof; an angel with "Gloria" on a cloth at the entrance above the manger. On top of the roof rests a metal garland holding Advent candles, unlit, three purple and one pink.

This arrangement has not made its way to the attic, yet, from last Christmas. That's my only explanation. [The photo is not accurate in two respects: 1) no cameras were available back in those days -- REALLY?? 2) for illustrative purposes only; not an image from my office.]

What can I say?

If we get scorching temperatures (so far, we have not had a very warm late spring, thank you; fine with me), maybe a glance at a Christmas manger scene will cool things down mentally and spiritually.

Or perhaps, with the Three Wise Men huddling nearby, if I need an epiphany, sudden or otherwise, it's there if I am open to it.

Merry Christmas, I Say

I wish you a Merry Christmas, and notice that I did not append the word "belated" to the greeting. Why not? It's not late. Despite the mercantile manifestations to the contrary, it is still the Christmas season, liturgically and actually. What do you think those Twelve Days of Christmas are all about? In my palace, the tree (always live) is not permitted to go out to the curb for recycling until Epiphany, traditional Epiphany, January 6. So there.

Trim, the Mystery

English is a funny language, with much grist for the humor mill (or humour mill, across the pond). George Carlin, who died this year, surely made much hay of our funny linguistic harvestings. Am I mixing enough metaphors here?

Trim got me thinking. We talk about "trimming the tree" at Christmastime, but in doing so we are adorning and adding ornaments. how is that trimming? Maybe the sense comes from trimming, or paring, the tree to its ornamentable size (as we did Saturday, when we hunted one down at a farm and hauled it home). I gladly participated in the ritual sawing and hoisting and erecting in the stand, then I took a nap and let the ladies have at it, ornamentwise (actually, I hate that overuse of -wise as a suffix; the estimable reference book Words Into Type cites a New Yorker cartoon in which one owl says to another something like, "So, wisewise, how are things?" HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHA. [H]owls of laughter). This year after bringing the box of ornaments down from the attic, I studiously avoided all manner of familial tension regarding the stringing of lights or placement of baubles. My nap on Sunday was luxuriously guilt-free (yes, the day after we fetched the tree from the proxy-quasi-semi-Bavarian forest).

But we trim our hair, which is taking away.

If you drill down far enough in the etymology of trim, you find that "trim a tree" is redundant, because trim is a tree, or was long ago, in the knotty-so-distant-past we sometimes pine for, oakay?

Advent-agious

My annual holiday malaise is creeping in, ready to swamp me, swarm me with melancholy and angst.

Maybe this video can be an antidote (or, for some a Christmas anecdote to tell tellingly). Dote upon this message from the Advent Conspiracy, if you will:

Silent Day

I guess I have survived the orgy of getting and spending we call Christmas (though, not parenthetically, it is hoped, ignoring its Presence found at the intersection of Silence and Mystery, amid the most abject Pain and Need, in the Ground of Being), left with a residue of weariness and emptiness, a vacancy filled by the Unnameable Name.

High-sounding words.

Silence is better.

I stayed in my pajamas all day. And now night.

Literally. Really.

Is that depression? Or sanity?

Late last night, the church provided sanctuary and solace, reverie and focus. The Story never changes, except infinitely so, in each of us. The trumpet declared brightness and awakening, even at midnight. There were tears in eyes.

Would that we all were there.

Or here.

Alas, we were / are, yes?

Readers: To you, Blessed Christmas, a season that lasts at the very least until Epiphany.

Ergo, keep your candles glowing.

Saint Ersatz

Unseemly (and unsightly, some would say) as it seems, Pawlie Kokonuts (a.k.a. The Laughorist) played the part of Saint Nicholas yesterday. (This is either a new low, or a new high, depending on one's honesty or perspective.) The appearance marked the Feast of Saint Nicholas, December 6, at a local church event.

It involved Yours Truly donning a long, white robelike article of clothing, cardboard bishop's miter, wooden staff, and red velvety cape that weighs about 127 pounds. I did not wear a beard (except for my real goatee, trimmed very tightly today incidentally) or in any way try to disguise my so-called normal visage and appearance. And no ho-ho-ho's.

If you children don't behave, I will either spank you, or show you pictures of this episode.

In all seriousness, I tried to -- in a quiet way -- make a sort-of anti-Santa Claus statement.

The youngsters gathered around in a circle before me, and I crouched down to chat with them. Here are some of the things I told them, or tried to convey (whether based on facts or legends, I didn't get into; it doesn't matter):

• The real Saint Nicholas, from present-day southeastern Turkey but under control of Greece in the 4th century, loved the poor.
• And he showed it. When his wealthy parents died, he gave his whole inheritance toward helping the poor and lonely and troubled and suffering.
• The whole bit about putting little gifts in stockings or shoes was based on the legend of his anonymous gifts to poor girls.
• He loved children.
  
• He loved them whether they were naughty or nice. He loved them. Period.

I don't deny I am flawed and filled with many contradictions. (After all, last month I managed to read these two books, though not exactly simultaneously: The Pornographer, a novel by the late Irish author John McGahern, and Praying Like Jesus: The Lord's Prayer in a Culture of Prosperity by James Mulholland. The former was ultimately dismal and only occasionally erotic, sort of like the movie "Alfie"; the latter was a challenging indictment about the misuses of Christianity in the world's richest nation.)

My point is: somehow I juggle these disparate tangents of self, these self-delusions.

But yesterday's event, and my little research leading up to it, underscored how Western society, and most especially the United States, has perverted everything Saint Nicholas stood for. We call it Christmas and Santa Claus, but ain't it really Capitalism and $anta Claw$? (And I'm not naive: an immediate cessation of this nonsense would cause economic hardship to many; the tamped-down economic activity would shed thousands and thousands, if not millions, of real jobs.)

Well, it explains, just a little, why I'm such a holiday curmudgeon.

Laugh. Or....

Else.