Recently in Christmas Category

Brian Kaller has shut down my Christmas Eve blogging. Why? Because from rural County Kildare he has written a magnificent Christmas reflection on finding hope in this troubled time, and I'm afraid if I put anything else on top of it on this blog, you might be tempted to overlook it. You shouldn't. This very fine piece of writing is what I hope this blog is about in its best moments. Please take the time to read it. How lucky his daughter is to be in the care of such a father. Here's an excerpt:

I want to spare my daughter this. I want to instill, to whatever extent a father can, the high and driving Spirit, the sanguine craving to restore. Of course it is too late to change everything, and always has been. Everything is too big. But each of us can do something where we are, and there are millions of us.

We could look at the world's troubles and sink into grief, as we could when a fire sweeps through a forest or a flood wipes away a city. But forests and populations generally come back, sometimes better. We can mourn for the already extinct species, lakes and forests as we mourn our dead, but as long as we remain alive we are greater than grief. Nature will return, and with our help can return in time for our species to appreciate.

And for most of the world, it is not too late. Just a few years ago peak oil and climate change were obscure ideas, and they rapidly spread until they broke into the mainstream. We are trying to return to a simpler life, and so are millions of others - the largest movement ever, happening in every part of the world. I want her to know that we are not trying to turn the tide, for tides are natural. What is happening to the world was done by men, and will be undone. I want her to know, as Tasman McKee did not, that she is not alone.

So I try to teach her, in small and playful ways, how the outside world works, and the basic skills she might need someday. The lullabies I sing to her are old folk songs, because unlike pop songs today, they are meant to be sung by ordinary people together, and we might need such things again. When we pick weeds for soup I tell her what little I know of the plants that can be eaten and plants to avoid. I am proud that, when she was only two and was stung by a nettle, she immediately found the nearest dock-leaf in the grass and rubbed it on the sting - she had absorbed that one heals the other.

She loves animals as much as any child, and we talk in detail about where they live, what makes them mammals or birds or bugs, what they eat and what they do for us and each other. For now, it is just a game, but over time, perhaps, she will make connections.

She knows, in recited pieces of theory at least, how to cook, how to make yogurt and sourdough starter, how to compost. In time, I want her to learn how to ride and bridle, speak different languages, hunt, be sceptical, think logically and organize people. I can't completely predict what she will face, nor can I plan her life, but I can show her a beginning.

But right now she is four, and is waiting for Santa. She patiently takes a single treat out of her Advent calendar each day, she helps make supper and she will fall asleep listening for reindeer hooves on the roof. Christmas is at this time of year for a reason, and not because we know when Jesus was born. It is just after the weakest day and the longest night, when the world prepares to be born again, when we take our first steps away from the darkness and ready ourselves for the arduous season ahead.

Read the whole thing. And, if you're so inclined, you might wish to revisit an old piece I wrote for Touchstone magazine about a Christmas moment in New York City after 9/11. It's written in a similar spirit.

And now, the copy is edited here at the News, the pages are proofed, so I head off to Christmas Eve. I'll check in with y'all tomorrow. A blessed evening to you all, and thanks for reading and commenting and sticking around this past year. The Crunchy Con blog had an astonishingly good year, crossing the half-million mark in page views several months, all because of your faithfulness. I owe you. Come by the house, I'll mix you a Manhattan.

Amy Sullivan notes how odd it is that most American Christians don't go to church on Christmas Day:

But however they spend Christmas Day -- "the feast of Christmas" on the Christian liturgical calendar -- one way most Americans don't celebrate it is by going to church. While demand for Christmas Eve celebrations is so high that some churches hold as many as five or six different services on the 24th of December, most Protestant churches are closed on the actual religious holiday. For most Christians, Christmas is a day for family, not faith.

If that sounds like the triumph of culture over religion, it is. By the middle of the 20th century, Americans had embraced a civil religion that among other things elevated the ideal of family to a sacrosanct level. The Norman Rockwell image of family gathered around the tree became a Christmas icon that rivaled the baby Jesus. And Christmas Eve services -- with their pageantry and familiar traditions -- became just one part of the celebration, after the family dinner and before the opening of presents.

That schedule of Christmas events is now the default tradition for most Americans. Some pastors understand the cultural emphasis but consider it an obstacle to focusing on the spiritual messages of Christmas. "We've seen churches embrace the Americana idea of Christmas," says Michael Hidalgo, lead pastor at the multi-denominational Denver Community Church. "Their heart is in the right place, but in some ways they end up looking like Target celebrating Christmas." Others, though, have accepted the idea that Christmas Day is a time for family instead of religious reflection. "I think it is our job to get Christmas off on the right foot -- and then get out of the way," wrote one pastor at CreativeWorshipTour.com, in a discussion about Christmas services. "Let families celebrate by themselves."

Get Christmas off on the right foot -- and then get out of the way. Er, wow.

Tonight is present-wrapping time, and I'm thinking that after vespers, it's time to have a little Christmas cheer. What are you planning to drink for Christmas? I'm probably going to go find a decent but inexpensive bottle of sparkling wine, which always seems right for the holiday. But I've also got some wintry beer stashed away in the fridge. I'm all about the New Belgium Brewery this year. I'm quite fond of their hoppy 1554 black ale, and their fruity-dry 2 Below winter ale. I've also got a couple of bottles of the monstrously hoppy Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, which will put hair on your chest. Good times, good times.

James Poulos, the Dale DeGroff of the pomocons, has a list of his Top 11 Holiday Libations, which you really must consult, if only to grasp the madness of his Ho-ho-hito. The Great One asked me to e-mail suggestions for the list, but I plumb forgot. My holiday dranks are far less gonzo than his. I say you cannot go wrong with either the Manhattan or his Hibernian cousin, the Rob Roy. It's easy to do: two parts whiskey (Bourbon for the Manhattan, or Scotch for the Rob Roy), to one part vermouth. Dash of bitters. Maraschino cherry. Bliss.

I tend to favor sweet vermouth, because it's Christmas, but you can use dry vermouth, or a mixture of the two.

Another holiday fave is the Bourbon-based Old Fashioned, which omits the vermouth, adds simple syrup, and includes a fresh orange slice for muddling. I would like to publicly apologize to Mr. Drew Bradford for telling him to make an Old Fashioned with vermouth. I was likely drunk at the time. It won't happen again. Anyway, this is a great way to get your Don Draper on this Christmas.

Though I normally favor vodka, you really need the hearty Uncle Charlie-ness of whisky at Christmastime. Vodka and gin are simply too astringent for proper merrymaking, though I am sorely tempted to slosh around an elegant, slightly bitter, ruby-red Negroni.

Holiday libations discussion and advice welcomed!

I'm working on a Christmas Day editorial for the Dallas Morning News, and have been looking over what my newspaper had to say to its readers on Christmas from 1929 through 1940 -- during the years of the Great Depression. It's intensely sobering to read the 1929 Christmas Day editorials (no link available, alas), knowing what is to come.

On Dec. 25, 1929, the first Noel since the October stock market crash, the News editorial page led with a Christmas editorial that was as candied and shopworn as a regifted fruitcake. The most interesting editorial that day was one praising President Herbert Hoover's stimulus and public works package. Excerpts:

It begins to look as though Herbert Hoover has discovered a steam roller with which to flatten out panics. Strictly speaking, it wasn't a panic. It didn't get that far. Also, strictly speaking, Mr. Hoover didn't discover the roller; he merely fired up the engine and pulled the throttle.

The point is that already we can begin to see where the roller has been making tracks. And things don't look so rocky as we though they were going to. The automotive trade, we are told, can't see any panic at all. Christmas shopping has undoubtedly been lively and generous -- in this section of the country, at least. New enterprises are being announced and money is available to anybody who has something besides handwriting as collateral.

All this means that confidence is doing business at the old stand. Mr. Hoover has proceeded like a man who knew what to do.

The editorial concludes:

In another thirty days we shall know, beyond question, whether the Hoover program of stimulated public construction in such times of business hesitancy is adequate. ... At the moment, it looks as if Coolidge prosperity has tapered off into Hoover prosperity, with a loss, indeed, but somewhat the sounder for it.

Ah, optimism.

UPDATE: A couple of readers have asked what the News editorials said on Christmas of 1930, 1931 and 1932, the worst years of the Depression. See the jump...

Reading that Gopnik essay made me realize that I hadn't read Boswell's "Life of Johnson," and how suddenly I really wanted to do so. (Did you know it's available for free download from Project Gutenberg? I've just downloaded it.) And this in turn made me wonder: which five books would I like to receive this Christmas? And which three books would I like to give this Christmas?

What do you think? I'll put only this condition on our lists: no holy books (which includes, for me, "A Confederacy of Dunces"). You also have to explain, briefly, what sort of person you'd give this book too, and why. My list:

BOOKS TO GIVE 2008:

1. "The Conservative Intellectual Movement in American Since 1945" by George H. Nash. This is the book every conservative, no matter what kind of conservative you are, should read, or re-read, as we try to figure out how to reinvigorate the Right. Nash's masterful history follows the intricacies of the competing schools of postwar conservatism, and offers a wealth of insights for how conservatism might renew itself. This really is a key volume for anyone seeking to understand where American conservatism came from, and where it might go.

2. "How To Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman. I have a shelf groaning under the weight of many cookbooks, but none of our cookbooks even comes close in terms of how often we use it than Bittman's everything-but-the-kitchen-sink volume. Our poor copy, a 10-year-old first edition, is so battered and sauce-stained that it looks a scandal, but that's only testimony to how useful we have found it over the years. The recipes are clear, simple and really, really work. Bittman also teaches you how food works, enabling you to do variations on your own. Not long ago, he came out with a companion volume, "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian," which we got in time for Great Lent this past year. It too is a terrific book. Two nights ago, I was helping Julie make stir-fried rice according to Bittman's recipe, and spilled soy sauce on the page. It was the book's baptism. You really can't go wrong with Bittman, and I would make this book a gift to any amateur cook, or to someone who would like to do more home cooking, but who finds the prospect intimidating. If you have only one cookbook on your shelf, make it "How to Cook Everything".

3. "The Mountain of Silence" by Kyriacos C. Markides. Markides' nonfiction volume is an absorbing, compulsively readable introduction to Orthodox spirituality (the mountain of the title is Mount Athos). This is not professional theology, or any kind of formal theology. Rather, it's basically a book-length interview with an Athonite master who explains the Orthodox Church's approach to spirituality and prayer. It is to my way of thinking the best introduction to Orthodoxy around, though any serious inquirer would want and need to find a more systematic presentation of the faith. I would give this book to anyone interested in Christian mysticism and monasticism who is curious about distinctly Eastern Christian practices.

4. Anything by Wendell Berry (link here to Amazon.com's Wendell Berry store). Berry's catalogue is so rich one hardly knows where to begin. I know people who are huge fans of his fiction (I sent my parents not long ago copies of his fiction and his non-fiction, and they became enthusiastic readers of his novels), but I'm not much of a fiction reader, so I'd be more inclined to give one of his essay collections. "Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community" is a good place to start, but it's hard to go wrong.

5. "The Deptford Trilogy" by Robertson Davies. Again, it's hard for me to get into fiction, but I absolutely adore Davies' Deptford and Cornish trilogies, though I'd give the edge to Deptford. Mysticism, the church, Jungian psychology, family drama, wealth, class, vengeance, magic, friendship, the force of destiny -- it's all there in Davies' sprawling Dickensian tale of the effect a single thoughtlessly thrown snowball had on the lives of a family. This is the kind of book -- three novels in one, actually -- that you curl up next to the fire with, and lose yourself. Davies is a superlative storyteller.

Read on for the books I would like to receive...