Christopher Rush

This issue has sprinkled the occasional Christmas topic throughout, including a few gift ideas for people you love: Genesis albums, quality video games, and books you should get and enjoy (and one you shouldn’t).  We’ve looked at Shakespeare’s Christmas play and even explored other aspects of the Incarnation.  As we conclude this issue, we’d like to examine some of the delightful aspects that make this holiday season so enjoyable.  True, we all have far too many reasons to be sorrowful this time of the year, too many heartaches, and too many painful memories that will never go away — I, too, have had more than my share.  But Christmas is about Life: the gift of abundant life God gave freely to us, whom He loves, incarnate in a Bethlehem manger so long ago.  And we want to celebrate that life and the gift of living this holiday season.  Though it may not seem like the things below have much to do with this gift, believe me — they do.  On behalf of the Scholarly Journal staff, I wish you all a joy-filled Christmas season.

Christmas Tunes

We can all agree on the importance of singing at Christmas time: certainly the birth of baby Jesus was heralded with songs (Mary’s song, the angels’ song, and many more).  Singing the songs we sing only this time of year is an obvious tradition and a key aspect to the season and holiday feel, but are we enjoying the best of what’s available?  I hope so.

Christmas time does not officially begin until you hear Mannheim Steamroller’s “Deck the Halls.”  The entire Mannheim Steamroller Christmas is must-listening several times each season.  Their second Christmas-related release, A Fresh Aire Christmas, is also quite good; their successive albums are good though none of them reach the superlative brilliance of the first album.  Their live album, Mannheim Steamroller Christmas Live, is good, especially for the unsurpassable ending: the one-two combination of “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” and “Stille Nacht” is the best pairing of Christmas song versions of all time, and the finale of “Going to Another Place” is a great emotional experience, especially if enjoyed in the right setting.

Further essential listening is The Time-Life Treasury of Christmas (especially volume one; volume two is good, though not as good).  It has a great sampling of diverse artists and versions from days gone by.  The best are there: Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” (of course), Dolly Parton’s “Medley: Winter Wonderland/Sleigh Ride” (a personal favorite), “Home for the Holidays” by Perry Como, “Feliz Navidad,” and Burl Ives’ quintessential “A Holly Jolly Christmas.”  The collection also has a fine selection of Roger Whittaker numbers, another “those were the days” voice of Christmases long ago when times were easier and life was simpler.  There isn’t much Julie Andrews, though her “Joy to the World” is on the second volume.  Admittedly, “Joy to the World” is not about Christ’s first advent and has nothing to do with Christmas, but neither does “The Hallelujah Chorus” or “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music, though many radio stations think it does (which makes the allusion of the title of this piece ironic, yes).  It might be interesting also to know that “Jingle Bells” is about Thanksgiving time, despite common usage and perception today.

Other important Christmas listening includes the Beach Boys tunes, especially “The Man with All the Toys” (Beach Boys’ harmony at its finest), “Merry Christmas, Baby,” and “Little Saint Nick” (all of which and more are available on their Ultimate Christmas release).  John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together is good family fun, as with everything Muppet, pretty much (seriously, Muppet Babies — time to come out on dvd).  The Trans-Siberian Orchestra releases are fine, though not as mandatory as Mannheim Steamroller.  They have some fine songs, though their lyrical numbers are sometimes pretentious — their instrumental numbers are better, though you have to be ready for lots of electric guitar.  Christmas with the Chipmunks, volumes one and two are more family favorites (and another show that needs to be released on dvd) — definitely get the classic Chipmunks, not the recent releases, at least at first.

Boston Pops Christmas albums are important, the Arthur Fiedler and John Williams releases, like “Sleigh Ride.”  The Robert Shaw Chorale is standard listening, though perhaps in smaller increments than the Boston Pops.  The standards of Bing Crosby (beyond “White Christmas”), Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Sinatra, Mel Tormé, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, and the gang are certainly worth your time — especially if you want to add nostalgia and sentimentality to your holiday.  I’m probably alone on this one, but I think Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is the saddest Christmas song of all time.  There’s just something about her voice in it that does not make me believe we will all be together again next year and that we will be doing more muddling than merrying for a long time.

Probably the best compilations of the recent artists doing Christmas tunes of old and new (still no AC/DC Christmas album? still?) are the Very Special Christmas albums created to benefit Special Olympics.  The first album has a lot of good songs, including U2’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” and Run DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis,” but Christmas 3 has some of the best of the recent Christmas releases: “Christmastime” from The Smashing Pumpkins, Natalie Merchant’s bluesy “Children, Go Where I Send Thee,” Dave Matthews’s sweet “Christmas Song,” Tracy Chapman’s soulful “O Holy Night,” and probably the best new Christmas tune of the last century (yes, even better than “White Christmas”), Blues Traveler’s “Christmas.”  If you haven’t heard that, you need to go get it right now.  Finally, if you can also get ahold of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” from Band Aid, do it.

Christmas Films and Episodes

I’ll just come out and say it: A Christmas Story is a stupid movie.  It’s not funny, it’s not clever, it’s not witty, it’s not insightful, it’s not charming.  Moving on.

Of course we have the standards: Miracle on 34^th Street, The Bishop’s Wife, White Christmas, and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (MST3K edition).  I’m not a huge fan of It’s a Wonderful Life, but I’m willing to watch it every other year or so.  My personal favorite used to be Die Hard, but now that I’ve matured it’s definitely The Lion in Winter, with Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn.  I haven’t seen Holiday Inn yet, but maybe someday.  Mixed Nuts is a forgotten gem.  Love Actually is fairly good, though it has a generous dose of sauciness that certainly earns its R-rating.  The Liam Neeson and Colin Firth storylines are great; the Alan Rickman storyline is the most upset I’ve gotten at a movie probably ever.  Laurel and Hardy’s Babes in Toyland is probably the scariest Christmas movie ever.  Lethal Weapon is also technically a Christmas movie, using the same standards as the rest of these movies, none of which have anything to do with celebrating the birth of Jesus, which probably occurred in the springtime anyway.  The ’80s were big on goofy Christmas movies: Scrooged and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, for examples.

I’m not as big a fan of The Muppet Christmas Carol as others, mainly because I prefer the Muppet movies in which the Muppets are themselves not literary characters.  Similarly, The Nightmare Before Christmas is not for everyone.  What truly is for everyone is A Charlie Brown Christmas, probably the only Christmas special that bothers to identify what Christmas is really about.  Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol is a good version of Dickens’s story.  The Christmas Toy can be very upsetting to young children, seeing their favorite toys “die,” but the resolution is a great relief.  The classic Rankin/Bass specials are hard to argue against: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, The Little Drummer Boy, and The Year Without Santa Claus.  How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is fine, too.  What the world really needs is the return to popularity of Will Vinton’s classic A Claymation Christmas Celebration.  Rex and Herb’s quest to find out the true meaning of wassail, with special appearances by the California Raisins, should never have gone out of style.

Most of our favorite television shows have Christmas specials that sort of make sense if viewed at Christmas time of out chronological sequence.  The best are, of course, the M*A*S*H episodes “Dear Dad” (season one), “Dear Sis” (season seven), and “Death Takes a Holiday” (season nine).  The Newsradio, Monk and Psych episodes are good, along with the X-Files’ “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas” in (season six).  The ’70s had a lot of Christmas episodes: from Mary Tyler Moore, The Bob Newhart Show, and Barney Miller, for examples.  These short episodes are nice ways to spend Christmas Eve, if you aren’t up for a long movie and need something to do before pretending to fall asleep (especially if your brother is playing Final Fantasy VI on the only video game system in the house).

Christmas Traditions

You don’t need me to tell you about your family Christmas traditions.  Growing up in a part of the country that has four seasons, an annual tradition back home was shoveling snow on a regular basis.  One slightly more enjoyable thing we started doing somewhere along the line was to start going to a movie (in the theater) on Christmas Eve.  When young, you don’t appreciate watching Perry Como or Andy Williams’s Christmas specials on TV as much as you should, so we started going to movies.  Usually the movies we saw had nothing to do with Christmas, and the theater was never too crowded.  When the snow got bad one Christmas, we stopped doing it — and, like all traditions that come to a sudden halt, it never really returned, until that one time in 2002, many years later when everything had changed and was to change some more.  After the movie we would come home and get to open one Christmas present — it took us too long to realize that the Christmas presents we opened on Christmas Eve were always ornaments for the tree.

Like most trees, ours bore an eclectic collection of Avon Nutcracker ornaments, miscellaneous Disney cartoon movie fuzzy ornaments (Oliver and Co., Cinderella, and Little Mermaid, mostly), as well as a few American Tail, Star Trek, and other Hallmark™-related decorations here and there.  Of course there were the hand-made public school ornaments, the photos-of-church-nativity-play ornaments, the nice and classy glass bulbs and figurines, and tinsel.  We weren’t big on lights, but my wife enjoys putting strings of lights on our tree now.  We used to have real trees, back in the day, and my wife and I had a real tree our first Christmas together, but when we moved to Virginia, it became simpler to have a plastic tree: fir trees have nothing really inherent to do with Christmas anyway, people — it’s just one of those things, no sense in fighting over it.  Our tree now is dominated by snowmen, miniature wooden sleds, lighthouse figurines, and the typical family-oriented ornaments.  Most of the ornaments near the bottom now are soft and unbreakable.

Another tradition, one that many of you probably already enjoy, is driving around town looking at lights on peoples’ homes and in their yards — it is a little cheaper than going to botanical gardens and arboreta that charge entrance fees, and it also gives you strong feelings of relief that at least you don’t live there and have to put all that stuff up and take it all down (and pay that electricity bill).  We haven’t  put many lights around our house lately, but there’s always a chance we will again.

One of the great ironies of the Christian life in contemporary America is that while we don’t often mind too much “going to church,” when Christmas day falls on a Sunday it is one of the most unbearable burdens this world affords (like having to do laundry or going to school on your birthday).  Thus, most likely, the birth of the “Christmas Eve service,” often advertised as a “candle light” service — which means that you pick up a cheap candle when you go in, wait through thirty-eight minutes of extra-special music and preaching, then the ushers come light the candles and you sing “Silent Night,” blow out your candle after eighty-five seconds, and then go home.  Strange the patterns we fall into.

Following this Christmas Eve service, for our family in recent years as well as some of yours, apparently, comes the other tradition of going out for Chinese food, since that is one of the few kinds of places open on Christmas Eve.  In recent years this tradition morphed into picking up Chinese food and bringing it home, still as a family, to then relax with hot cocoa, Chinese food, and a Christmas movie or series of Christmas episodes.  Accompanying this tradition in my new family is the annual “opening of the See’s_® boxes,” the west-coast chocolatier that has recently worked its way to mall kiosks out east.  Not being a west-coast guy, I prefer chocolates (mostly milk chocolate-covered caramels) from Dubuque’s own Betty Jane Candies (Home of the Gremlins).  If you have never had any chocolate from Betty Jane Candies, you are missing out on some of the fine confectionary treats that help make life worth living during these troubled times.  Accompanying Betty Jane Candies in our house back in the day was the never-ending magical jar of M&M’s^® that  never ran out, no matter how many times you would walk by and take out a handful or three of M&M’s^®.  I miss that jar.

As intimated above, we always open our presents on Christmas morning (except for the ornament the night before).  I don’t have anything to say to or about the families that open their presents on Christmas Eve.  Nothing can be said to or for them, really.  True, my wife does enjoy opening Christmas cards from family and friends as they arrive — that is acceptable; if they have gift cards or other pecuniary treasurelets within, well, so be it.  Such is the price of filial devotion.  Back in the day, we opened our stockings first (my brother and I, that is — mainly to keep us occupied long enough for our parents to wake up and come down for presents; I never understood why they didn’t wake up as quickly and eagerly as we did, though I do now).  Our stockings were stuffed with various things and usually had one “major” present as well, which was nice.  My wife’s family always opened their stockings last, though they were usually filled with small, miscellaneous goodies like candies, toothbrushes, maybe a gift card, or other mostly consumable delights.  Now, we compromise.  We open our stockings last, but they also have at least one major present in or next to them, a win-win situation all around.  My family used to open all our presents simultaneously, finishing in a very short amount of time.  My wife’s family went around in a circle, one at a time, after reading the Christmas story and drinking cocoa and eating delicious bacon and caramel rolls.  We now do the same as they used to, as my wife has continued the tradition of Christmas breakfast.

How to Enjoy Christmas

The Scholarly Journal provides a variety of didactic and pragmatic articles for your edification.  As such, were you to copy your Christmas habits along the practices and events described above, you will undoubtedly enjoy a delightful, joy-filled Christmas.  Other ways to enjoy Christmas break include staying in your jim-jams as many days in a row as possible, never leaving the house; playing various high-quality video games for at least twelve hours a day (preferably in the Final Fantasy or ChronoTrigger families or other RPGs — no offense, Tanner); watching episode after episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000; listening to Mannheim Steamroller; emptying boxes upon boxes of Wheat Thins with Hickory Farms cheese balls; imbibing dozens of hot cocoa packets; popping endless bags of microwave popcorn with generous portions of parmesan cheese on top; and generally doing genuine leisure rightly with those you love.  There are the keys to enjoying Christmas.  From the Scholarly Journal to you, we wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.