Sleighbells Sing While We Jingle ...

It's Christmas Day! I took my Christmas walk all bedecked in crazy Christmas hat and scarf, and said Merry Christmas to any one I passed. Again, it is Russians and African Americans who seem to best know how to respond to a Merry Christmas with a warm and jovial "And A Merry Christmas to YOU too!" I forgive the yuppies, in the spirit of the day, for their bland "uh-huh's" and "you too's". A very aged and tiny and frail Chinese woman being pushed in a wheelchair fairly lit up at the greeting, though she was too weak to reply. That was very sweet.

We had our Christmas party last Saturday night. I have pictures on Facebook of the good folks who graced us with their warmth and good cheer. We caroled too, though that lacked a certain something because our old friend Solin was absent due to illness; her crystal soprano lights up the room. Thanks to Steve, our resident baritone, whose booming honey tones lead the merriment. His is half the audible voice, and given that the rest of us would make ice crack in full winter with our tones, it is a good thing that Steve drowns us out.

We had food galore. The company polished off three turkeys (thanks to Ian and Dave), a ham (thanks to June and Dolores), and three loves of bread (thanks to Roy and Jim), not to mention innumerable deserts and savory dishes. Such a joy to watch friends eat!

Christmas is nostalgia. A large part of the annual party is nostalgia for all the lost friends, especially Kurt who invented the party with whom Tom and I first joined in being hosts in 1989. The photos above and below are of the tree in the AIDS Memorial Grove. I'll put up some pix of my own tree later, but for today, let us ruminate on that tree and think of those gone, those we loved and love. I think of my nephew Kris who died at 26 last summer; my sister's family is alone together this season in the shadow of his loss. Christmas is hard that way. It is both the sublimely beautiful and the sublimely unforgettable.

Ahhh ... but Christmas is not just for nostalgia. It is also the pure joy of pure joy. It is remembering that from the deepest, darkest depths of winter we rebound to spring and summer again. It is making light out of the dark. It is hearing songs out of silence.

It is also about Santa Claus ... for me at bottom it is the festival of Santa Claus. He knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. He brings presents for all, but he has a stick in his back pocket to chasten those who have been unwisely bad. Whether giving or chastening, he smiles and chuckles. A lonely man whose solitude resounds in the waves of joy reflected back upon him. He is an elf and trickster in a world that has banished elves in favor of angry paternal gods who maim and torment. He is satisfied to give of himself on bu tone day and leave the rest of the year for us to be ourselves and make of what we have what we can. O Santa, thank you for being so good to me!

Well, I have to choo-choo off to the second and third of my three Christmas parties ... to see Kerry with whom I have celebrated the sesaon since 1989, and to see Solin and Winfield with whom we have had Christmas dinner for over a decade now.

My favorite day, too soon over.

With that, let me wish a very Merry Christmas to all!

So I haven't been blogging, and now I am going to start again. That's all I plan to say at least for the time being about this accidental incidental hiatus. For those who know me, everything is fine, nothing is the matter. Onward and upward.

All photos by Arod, taken today in the AIDS Memorial Grove.

On Christmas Day

On Christmas Day, the rain stopped and the sun took over long enough for my annual long walk in Christmas Hat through Golden Gate Park, and especially to remember my friends at the AIDS Memorial Grove. The Christmas tree above is from the east circle below the main entrance to the Grove. Every year, some group of gnomes puts this tree up, and I added a few ornaments today. As I did, a woman of roughly my age entered the circle, and quietly kissed a specific name among those engraved. We each sat silently and thought our thoughts ... and I wished her Merry Christmas as I left her alone.

My friend Kurt reintroduced me to Christmas in 1988 when he invited me along with Tom to cosponsor "A Victorian Christmas Party" in his home. That event is the genesis of the annual party I have co-hosted with various people ever since ... though I did miss two years for reasons that seemed important then but not now. Embracing Christmas is a little like sports to me ... you choose it or not, and when you choose it, you dive right in, you make it your own. I do not believe that there is only one way to do Christmas, and I try to enjoy everyone's different take.

For me it is about Santa Claus, and the deep northern traditions that this composite and evolving character embodies. Of course, there is plenty in Santa Claus that can be laid at the doorsteps of less northern climes ... but what attracts me is the notion of a wizard distributing presents and punishing the wicked all at once. These days, we remember the gifts, of course, but pay less attention to the willow branches and canes with which earlier eras were well acquainted.

The most fun of my annual walk is using the excuse of my silly hat, pictured to the left, to wish any one I pass a jovial Merry Christmas. The more run-o-the-mill middle class the folks are, the less likely they will return the gesture. There are quite a few "You too's" which is not quite the way one is supposed to do it. The appropriate response is "And a Merry Christmas to you also." I find older black men and folks with Russian accents are the most likely to respond in kind ... just an anecdotal survey from about a decades experience. Homeless people often response with a Merry Christmas, though I admit that I tend not to engage the more insane looking of these poor souls. Today I had a Ward and June Cleaver type family that chimed back in unison a cheery Merry Christmas; I thought maybe I had stumbled through a wormhole and I was temporarily in Indiana.

This evening, I will have dinner with my best friends at Solin and Winfield's ... we've done that most every year for over a decade ... excepting the several years when they wre recovering from a nasty fire that was the fault of their neighbor. Sad tale ... but suffice to say that they recovered and their magical home is intact and more beautiful than ever. It is one of those places where Christmas feels native and natural, and the spirit of the season shines.

And we eat and drink and make merry. On Christmas Day.

When we were children, we used to put on a Christmas play every year that we spent with our maternal cousins. It took a lot of doing, and coming and going ... I wish I still had the scripts. There are no photos or videos that I know of, but it was all-consuming, a magical interlude. Sooner or later there would be a little criing and all that, but the day the summit of the year.

Still is for me ... I try to capture the magic in my mind to review it from time to time during the long grind until next year.

So I will leave it at that, and say only this ... Merry Christmas to all!


Photos by Arod ... except the one of me, and I do not remember who took it. The other two are from the AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park.

The Christmas Party

Wow! This year's event just blew my mind. Not entirely sure why, but we had double the folks we had last year ... RL, roommate and co-host, figure around 90 people. And the food ... it was a tsunami of food that literally blew us out of the kitchen. It is so hard to predict how much food will arrive ... but lots of good food is clearly the preferred approach. We have already made some commitments on adjustments to handle the food better next year ... a helper, some additional table space, and we will finally get it together on the garage and recycling bin front.

But all that, no matter how fabulous, pales beside the deeper joy that I find in this event. Those six hours are a sublime transport for me from everyday life. We labor greatly to make our home into the Christmas fantasy, and all our wonderful friends bring that fantasy to life through their camaraderie and joy. Christmas for me is about the thoughts and fears about renewal that the solstice inspires, and it is about gathering against the gloom of the seasonal darkness into the light which human beings create together. Christmas is artifice in the best human sense ... making light and merry no matter the cold and dark which nature provides.

So now a few more days until the day itself when we gather to eat and celebrate and love each other. And then 10 more days of living in the Christmas house before we return to the long year and all our struggles and endeavors, refreshed and invigorated by sharing something essentially human ... gathering and hoping and rejoicing together.

Photo by Arod of last year's Christmas tree. I will have photos of this year's decorations a little later. I have a Flickr site of photos of attendees; if you know me, drop me a note and I will send you a guest pass.

A Christmas Carol

This is the other time of the year when my OD kicks into gear ... OD being obsessive disorder in the sense that I may be obsessive, but gawd dammit I am not compulsive ... the one time to produce the course catalog at MRU (that major research university for which I toil for wages) and this time to produce the annual Christmas Party that my roommate and I offer up in celebration of the "season" or by way of marking the solstice or for the love of Santa Claus. This is the 19th time in 21 years that I have been the host of this party, in various combinations with various people over the years. The roommate aforementioned is working from home today, but he just made a brief appearance to prepare a cup of hot peppermint chocolate in order to ward off the truly cold cold that has enveloped us here. So I will take advantage of this big mug of chocolate to blog a wee, not having posted for over two weeks.

I am on vacation for three weeks ... the present week to prepare for the big party and then the following two weeks because MRU is closed for the winter break. Of course, I will read email every day, and I have a series of very compressed one-pagers that I volunteered to create ready for day one of that truly New Year, 2009. There is no rest from work in modern work world ... but whatever pissiness I might have had about that in the past pales before the indubitable fact that having a job is something for which one must give thanks as the dubya era slithers into raw and uncompromising memory.

My good friend Roy and I attended for the 13th consecutive year the American Conservatory Theater's production of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. What a romp. This is the new version, that meaning that this is only the third season for the present version. There is not much to say other than that the performance, and Roy's and my outing to it, always marks the beginning of Christmas, and it is such a sheer unadulterated joy. So rather than review, I will reproduce below a little piece that I wrote a number of years ago on Scrooge.

But first, a few notes ...

I mentioned in my last post that I did not know the issues behind the Thai disturbances. It turns out ... and I thank my good friend Frobisher for pointing this out ... that the reason that very few, including folks like me who have a long background in Southeast Asia, know the background is because of a deep state-run plot to hide it from the world. It is all about the monarchy and its role in covering for the elite who benefit from the rigid caste-like character of modern Thai society. The lèse-majesté laws in Thailand are ludicrously out-of-line with its projection as a democratic country, and foreign journalists who run afoul will find themselves unceremoniously booted out. It is only The Economist which, albeit without a byline, had the guts to publish the facts ... here and here. And now, after years of disturbances reminiscent of the Republican riots in Florida in 2000, the elite classes finally have their guy in power. Perhaps the peasants have had enough, and they in turn will march off to the airport. If they do, believe that the government will not be so chary of force as it was when the housewives of privilege were the opposition.

And then, in a whoddathunkit moment, tossed shoes are the thing of the day. In his interviews afterward, dubya looked like the broken lump of trash in the dustbin of history that he is. Street art at its finest. My friend Bob Ostertag, who blogs at the Huffington Post, has a Throw My Shoes Too project. Check it out.

So on to Scrooge ... and my thoughts thereof from 1997 (give or take a year or two).


Bah, Humbug!
The illustration is by Ronald Searle, from A Christmas Carol, 1960.

It is no surprise that Christmas brings out the inner curmudgeon as surely as it brings out the inner child. Most of the year, I cultivate a certain, shall we say, gay curmudgeon in myself. But I stow it away come Christmastime. Others find Christmas to be the ideal season during which to display their humbuggery, taking ample opportunity to guffaw and harrumph.

The greatest of the humbuggers is, of course, Scrooge. And in Scrooge we find a proof of my thesis here because his story is the central myth of the Victorian Christmas as we know, remember, and practice it. (Both this year and last, my friend Roy took me to the American Conservatory Theater's exquisite performance of "A Christmas Carol." If you live in San Francisco, by all means make plans to see it!) In other words, is it not curious that this great Christmas story addresses humbuggery, even if humbuggery meets its match.

Humbuggery, then, is as much Christmas as sleigh bells and wassail. But, the humbugger is not even so much our alter ego as our familiar. He participates with us as we play our Christmas games. He searches Christmas out so as to have a venue to humbugger. The twinkle of lights inspires him as it does us. And, most importantly, he understands and believes that behind Christmas is something greater than what stands before us.

Modern humbuggers often ramble on about the commercialization of Christmas. Of course, they would equally rail against the commercialization of life itself in a larger sense, but that would undermine the special holiday pleasure of taking Santa Claus's name in vain. Modern humbuggers often snicker at all the lights and sweetmeats and specificities of Christmas, averring that it is all hollow or meaningless. But they too line up, demanding, "We all want our figgie pudding" just as do dedicated Christmas sprites.

Because humbuggers merely celebrate the season of warmth and giving in a different fashion ... and we must give them the same courtesy and acceptance as we give all the various Christmastime celebrations. Let them grumble by the raging fire, and pass them another mug of wassail.

Now, some will say that they truly hate Christmas, perhaps because of some childhood trauma, or because they despise what they see as its phoniness, or because the season as we presently enjoy it devotes insufficient time to religion or ideology.

There are two arguments we can make here. The first is that this is a season whose very message transcends the specific religion or ideology or practice to become a greater reflection upon the qualities which draw us together, which make us better people. That this celebration is associated with a specific tradition or culture is no surprise, nor should it be. Surely it is a great social good that we carve out a season of the year to remind ourselves directly that there are greater goods and larger purposes, that goodwill is a facet of human being to be cultivated. The humdrum of our everyday lives does not provide the same collective venue as a designated season for higher reflection. So we use the opportunity of an ancient, syncretic tradition to remind ourselves of the currents of warmth and kindness that course through even the Scroogiest of us all.

The second argument, not unconnected to the first, is that all is not what it seems. We might say that the phoniness of Christmas masks its inevitable ability to inspire. We might say that the bright lights enable the Scrooge to contemplate human kindness while attention is focused elsewhere. We might say that the "phony" displacement of attention from the intractable problems of this terrible species to which we belong enables reflection otherwise unattainable. We might just say simply that a pause for joy is good for you, so take your medicine whether you like it or not.

Which, I think brings us back to poor Scrooge. He was cured of his humbuggery by ghosts who scared him into jolliness. We often think of poor Tiny Tim, or the efficacy of ghosts, or even the terrible effects of the promise of inevitable death. But I say, think back on Scrooge. Were not the ghosts creations of his own mind? Did he not reflect upon his own life, his own choices and the effects of those choices on those around him? Did he not find Christmas within?

So Scrooge is just like our putative humbugger ... a man of goodwill and joy unwilling for whatever reasons to express those qualities in the very season which epitomizes them. So the next time your mean Uncle Al or your surly Aunt Bess grouses at all the trouble, hand them a glass of Christmas ale with a smile and a pat on the back.

And say this: Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Heath and Moors

Heath Ledger's numbing death reminds me of Pip, of Dickens' Great Expectations.

Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.

"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"

A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.

The fearful man was Abel Magwitch, a convict, who repays the kindnesses of young Pip with a fortune later in life. The fortune was earned in Australia whither Abel Magwitch had been condemned before returning to see the smile on the face of the young man whom he had helped. No smile though, for Pip was most aghast at the revelation that his benefactor was one so low.

In the face of death out of the blue, we are each one of us Pip .. afraid, suppliant, willing, retiring. What recourse is there against cruel untimely death.

Ledger could have played Magwitch, or he could have played Pip. He was that plastic. In either event, he is descended as are most Australians not from the Pips but from the Magwitches. Perhaps the allure of the Australian is that Magwitchian temperament. But in this sad moment, not to think of such fancies.

My memory of the young Heath is this. It was Christmas 2005. The careful reader will know that I imbibe much from Christmas, and use the season to skate on emotion, and freeze that emotion lest I forget in the intervening madness of the long year of making a living. For several such seasons, I had noticed the rise of an allergic reaction to something in Christmas ... I have since deduced that it is the cedar I bring into the house ... and I sought refuge from my sinuses one rainy day between Christmas and New Year's in a long drive. I went to my old haunts at Cal in Berkeley, abandoned of its normal denizens for reasons again of the season. I wandered about on the campus of the nourishing mother in the rain, and then headed north in the East Bay, picking my way across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge which soars past the depths of San Quentin, and then I zig-zagged down through Marin County to Mill Valley. And, lo, Brokeback Mountain was showing at the famous local theater. So, on a whim, I bought a ticket and settled in. You must realize, here, that I never go to the movies, that I loathe the crowds, and that I prefer my own company to a bunch of yappy popcorn-eaters. I also avoid the movies because I prefer to suffer the emotion that great art induces in solitude, and in control of the pause function, so that I am the more immune to the wash of sorrow and fear.

I shushed a couple of yappy ex-sorority gals, and settled into Heath and Jake. The performances left me without air, drained. Heath dancing with the clothing of his deceased lover ... I live in a house filled with the memorabilia of the army of friends I have lost to the plague ... it was love and longing and the impossibility of living without dread and anguish. From my groin, it was Jake I loved; from my heart and gut, it was Heath.

The next evening, my oldest friend Frobisher dragged me out of my isolation to a movie at the Sony Metreon. But, alas, Frobisher had misread the newspaper, mistaking a.m. for p.m., and whatevver froth we had envisioned was not available. The only movie left was Casanova, starring, ta da, the young sexy Heath Ledger. What a romp! Farce and the comeuppance of the self-righteous and a bunch of sexy repartee. What does not please here!

So, I ended up going to the movies two days in a row after not having ventured into a theater for over a year ... and both starred Heath Ledger.

Now, without a hint of a warning, he is gone. It reminds me of the emotion of when River Phoenix died. Both were keepers, men who would have grown into depth and vigor unike the frothy nothings who populate People magazine. I have never recovered from River Phoneix' death, and I think I will never recover from the passing of Heath.

Death and the gonads ... it is not that one harbors some realistic hope of a trist with a Heath. Rather, it is that he represents some ideal of the glory of the male erotic. Not strident, but nuanced. Not a stomp but a song and a dance. Not rage, but a dance of irony and joy and play and strength.

When we mourn our cinema heroes, we mourn our hopes, our faint dreams. I want to be Casanova. I wanted to be Heath. No longer.

When I was a boy, I wanted to know Pip, I wanted to wander with him on the moors. I wanted to suffer with him, exult with him, settle with him. Heath was Pip, and I wanted to know him as the sad man left alone in Montana, and as the prancing dandy in Venice ... but now he is Magwitch, a cadaver, gone, dead. Gone dead. Too sad.


Further short reflection on Heath here, and my friend Jim Gaither's correspondence with Roger Ebert on Brokeback Mountain and the Oscar's here

The Christmas Hat

One should not cheat at Christmas, but I did ... I backdated this post to December 25 at 11:11 p.m. to disguise the fact that I was so utterly exhausted by my part in consuming the groaning board of seasonal delights at the Coleman's that I in fact went to bed with a post in my mind but not on the net. But I did think about this post last night, and so I employ the tiny vanity of prolonging Christmas by a few hours so I can post within its confines.

So in that spirit, I refer you to Maureen Dowd's compelling Boxing Day post on her Christmas love of Trigger the hobby horse. Dowd is by turns enthralling and annoying ... and in that she has succeeded in something to which other lesser lights, myself included, aspire. She concludes with this:

In a piece reprinted in the Kennedy anthology, Henry van Dyke writes: “Are you willing ... to own, that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness ... to make a grave for your ugly thoughts and a garden for your kindly feelings ...? Then you can keep Christmas.”

I remember Christmas as a time of plenty in our family. My Dad's business through much of my childhood always did very well in December, and I long suspected that my parents took advantage of the windfall to buy us clothing and sundries that would last a year. Christmas morning was an avalanche of stuff in a life where we were taught not to ask for things for ourselves. I remember the year I got a bike ... I was 10, and the rule was that you got your first bike at 10. I remember the year that I asked for a fort for my imaginary kingdom, Animelia, and its china King Elfie. That wooden fort, minus its draw bridge, is sitting on a chest a few feet from me as I write this, now a part of my annual ludicrously over-the-top Christmas decorating madness.

On Christmas morning, we would wake the parents vastly earlier than they would have preferred, and finally Father would descend the steps to turn on the Christmas tree. Every year he would call up, "You might as well go back to bed, the old bugger didn't come this year." The old bugger was Santa Claus, of course, and he had come, no doubt. We descended into this glittering excitement in reverse order of age, so I, as the oldest, was always last. No matter. There in front of the tree were Santa's gifts. It was the one day in the year on which we could safely think of ourselves first.

I had a "tradition" of not eating any meal on Christmas except Christmas dinner. This was a successful ploy to skip the porridge which was our every morning lot. I ate candy instead, and focused on playing with my new toys.

The toys are fewer now, and the gifts are mostly books. I buy my own toys, which is what adulthood is about. I suppose I am an old grump, but I feel sorry for children who buy their own and get what they want whenever they want. It must make the magic of Christmas so pedestrian for them. Christmas was then only one day as it still is, but it was the peak of the year, the highest joy, the reward for a year of obeying and striving and doing your part. It was a day apart from others, and that gave life some contours which still abide in me today.

Yesterday ... ooops, I suppose I should say this morning, given my conceit that I am writing this on Christmas Day ... I went on a two-hour walk with Loki, my dog. Christmas back then always had Laddie, our dog, who was invited into the living room only on that one day. Otherwise, dogs stayed in the hallway. I am sure we have a photo of him somewhere in the living room. I remember that he was very sheepish about it, but obviously aware too that this was a day unlike other days.

So the walk with Loki ... I wore my Christmas hat. (The photo above is of me and my Christmas hat in 2005 ... I look about the same now except without the long locks.) I inherited the Christmas hat from my friend Kurt who reintroduced me to the joy and uniqueness of Christmas. Kurt died in 1992, and he left me all his Christmas things. The party every year is for Kurt. And when I walk about in his hat ... my hat now ... I try to beam Christmas for him and for me. One gets a lot of looks, and I turn each of those looks into a jolly Merry Christmas. Perhaps one in three folks have the good manners to beam back "Merry Christmas", and I feel sorry for the rest who have lost that public sense of joy, not able to "make a grave for your ugly thoughts and a garden for your kindly feelings". Perhaps I am being self-righteous ... perhaps the quiet ones think I am a madman trying to interpelate myself into their private lives. No matter. Nothing for me is so joyous as the Christmas Day walk in the Christmas hat wishing the passing celebrants a Merry Christmas.

Two Merry Christmas's I remember in particular. A few years back, walking home at night through the Haight from Kerry's Christmas Eve party, I saw a young thuggish looking guy sitting on the steps of a church at Page and Masonic ... glowering, tough ... I briefly feared he might steal my hat. As I passed, I said Merry Christmas, and his face transformed, beamed, as he cried back to me, Merry Christmas to you. Yesterday, I passed a homeless man with an angry look and disheveled dress, and he too beamed with delight and returned my Merry Christmas in a sonorous southern accent.

And so to anyone reading this at any time of the year ... Merry Christmas to you and to those you love.

Light in the Darkness

Barely keeping my eyes open, but filled with the spirit of Christmas. I am listening to some St. Olaf's Choir in Norway singing in a catheral. I just dozed through Renee Fleming's angelic voice. Earlier this evening, enjoying Andrew's gourmet take on sundry Chrstmas delights, we listened to Sufyan Stevens' Christmas carols.

The myth of the boy king and his mother and the sheep and the Zarathustran visitors is lovely and everything ... but it does not touch on what touches me about Christmas. I am ineluctably northern, and Christmas is the festival of the deepest moment of the northern soul when light and warmth are at their least. And so the festival of that moment is filled with celebration of light and warmth ... the lights, the candles, the hearth, the roasted food, the libations. When life is at its ebb, we fill it with gifts and song and fellowship.

How terrible a world it is that this elemental return is hijacked by religion and commerce and their associated venalities. But Christmas is nevertheless a stepping aside from the venalities and an association again with what brung us. The song, the lights, the fellowship are of one piece with the huddled warmth of a burning log in a Celtic hut, with warming one's hands round an Anglo-Saxon fire, with peasants eating the one goose that they have laid aside.

Christmas is deep and old and the possession of all and of no one. Eternal and ephemeral. One day of sublime thought, hankered after, touched, remembered, gone.

And to all a good night.

The Christmas Party

We had a joyful gathering of 60 or so on Sunday night at our annual Christmas Party. The house was brimming with Christmas, more Santa's scattered about than I could possibly count. A dozen or so folks from work came, and that was a special joy. But no more of a joy than the old friends, some of whom we see only once a year at this party.

The 19th anniversary Christmas Party ... it started out as "A Victorian Christmas Party in 1989" when Kurt and Tom and I decided to throw a bash for everyone we knew in Kurt's home on Page Street. It was a wild night, probably 200 people over the course of eight hours. We did it again in 1990 and 1991, and even in that last year, Kurt was still vital and in charge. But AIDS took him only six months later. So this party has always been about memory as well as a joy. Tom lasted another year. So many of the men in my life from those days are gone. But the party lives on.

Gawd, I did not intend to be maudlin. But Kurt is always at the party. When we sang Silent Night, I asked everyone to think of those no longer with us ... and when I said Kurt's name, June and Dave and Kerry and I, the last of the originals as it were, all nodded and smiled.

We drank and ate ... two turkeys and a ham ... we talked, and said Merry Christmas as often as we could find an excuse. Christmas is about joy and friendship and taking stock at the darkest time of the year. It is about fellowship and giving. And it is about remembering.

More than anything, though, it is about Santa Claus. Let's leave it at that.

What Christmas Means to Me

I have been laboring away this week on the big Christmas Party ... the 19th anniversary of the first one that Kurt and Tom and I first held in another time. I have not had the time or energy to blog, so here is an essay on Santa Claus that I wrote in 1999.

What Christmas Means to Me

Christmas for me is Santa Claus! Equal parts fantasy, joy, giving, magic, and mystery, Santa Claus entranced me when I was a boy. It certainly had a lot to do with the fact of all the presents. But Santa's presents were always sheer whimsy ... no socks or pants, but instead a toy fortress for my imaginary kingdom, a bicycle of my own, and always piles of books about long ago times and faraway places.

But now that I am an adult, Santa teaches me more about fantasy and mystery. Here is a most eccentric man who has created a magical kingdom far from the humdrum lives of all the other folks. He lives in a strange, limitless house where he labors with his elvish helpers day and night, all year round, to create whimsy by the bushelful for the children whom he teaches to believe in whimsy. His life is the polar opposite of any that has ever been lived elsewhere. Yet it is still a life which he created for himself by means of his own imagination.

Santa Claus is the greatest wizard that ever existed. His magic brings only joy and good. His being shines light into the darkest recesses of our souls.

But no magical being is single-sided. Santa carries a stick also. This side of the Santa myth doesn't sit well with thoroughly-modern-parenting, so we hear little about it. But Santa knows that some boys need a warm posterior more than they need a new truck ... and he knows that the warm posterior is itself part of the mystery, an irreducible moment of the magic. Because the naughty among us need to learn that the joy and the good demand a commitment not only to receiving, but to giving as well.

Christmas is the age-old season of the winter solstice where northern folks shiver in the cold and long for the relaxation of warmth and sun that summer will bring. The twinkling lights, the songs and good cheer, and the mountain of gifts invoke both the memory of what will come and the remembrance of who we are and what our life means. Christmas is the time of year to pause to reflect about what blessings we have received, and what good we can do for others to make the world which we share a warmer place irrespective of the dark and blustery world outside our hearth.

In this sense, again, Santa shows us a way out of the darkness of daily existence into the light of joy and good cheer. How fat and happy is Santa Claus, because his entire year has been spent in preparing for this one day in which he will spread love and joy to innocents everywhere. His prosperity and happiness derive from his giving, and so might ours if we construct for ourselves a life based both upon our labors and upon our hopes, our joy, and our own special magic and mystery.

For at Christmastime, the fantasy is reality.

And so, from me to you,
in the spirit of Santa Claus ...

Merry Christmas to all,
and to all a good night!

Tacky Sappy Corny

So we are listening to Mario Lanza belt out a martial "O Holy Night"and I just plain love it. Corny, but Christmas is nothing if it is not corny. RL thinks it is tacky, but the line between tacky and corny is gossamer thin. I don't think that this one will make the cut for our December 16 party medley ... but it is stirring and sappy, all at the same time.

I just plain love Christmas.

RL and I just chatted a little about the peculiarities of the corny-sappy-tacky that one prefers. If you like some corny-tacky-sappy thing, there is no explaining it, and if you don;e like it, you have nothing but scorn for its defenders. No explaining taste, but in particular there is no explaining the little excursions into bad taste in which one indulges.

Christmas is carte blanche to explore one's indefensible taste for the sappy-tacky-corny.

I managed to get the hallway garlands up, and then once done, one stretch of twinkle lights went out. Ouch. This will be a job for the sainted-ex, RB or Iao, as he prefers to be known. He is a lighting guy and electrician. When we broke up, I told him he could leave me, but he still had to do my electricity. Once you have lived with an electrician for a decade, there is no going back. I also managed to get a bunch of other garlands up ... RB comes by and "foofs" them so that they look spectacular. I sometimes wonder if I'm really gay because I just plain can't "foof"anything to save my life. I can nail a garland to the relevant arch, but I rely on my sainted ex to make it look like it belongs in the faggiest house in the Castro.

Okay, walking with the dog ... that'll be walking with Loki ... what is it about the scattered but ubiquitous clumps of people performing Tai Chi in the park that they have not learned that one can purchase for less than 50 dollars a sound system better than anything available at any price 20 years ago? What is it about Tai Chi that makes people broadcast tacky Chinese music at top volume on sound systems with more static than music?

Again with the "tacky" ... one's man's tacky is a nother man's screech. I like tacky Chinese music, but get real ... let's purchase an appropriate iPod-related sound system.

Whoops ... dinner is almost ready ... a long weekend of putting up Christmas grinds to a halt. I face work tomorrow that portends kudos on having been praised for my efforts as far as the Provost. I am happy. But all I can think about is the Christmas Party and the magic of those six hours on December 16.

Rambling

Not sure why these pauses in blogging occur. During the day, I think about what it is that I am thinking bout that I ought to blog about ... and then in the evening I manage to find some other thing to do, and finally postpone blogging to tomorrow. Gotta find a way out of that because I want to blog nightly ... certainly I am opinioned enough!

So a few things on life's way. I keep aquariums ... aquaria is the spelling I prefer. A year ago, I had a failed experience with keeping some Oscars in a 60-gallon tank, and I have just let the tank run empty every since hoping that the ammonia problem would eventually self-correct. Well it did, but I waited a while to make sure. Last week I put 10 tetras of some strip in there, and they are thriving. I am happy. I think it will be a while before I return to the Oscar attempt. But at least I have life in that aquarium.

That is the more satisfyaing becuae we are approaching Christmas ... say what ... because we are approaching the 17th annual (actually 19 years minus two missed years) gala Christmas party. In July, I wrote about how my life is tent-poled around two great events, the second of which is the Christmas party. I had hoped to hold it this year on the 23rd, but it turns out that faithfulness to a number of friends demands that we hold it on the 16th.

So this is going to be a little placeholder post that announces that I am going to blog Christmas ... setting it up as I have done for 17 of that last 19 years ... the first three of which were at my friend Kurt's house, but I will explain all that.

I'll put a Christmassy photo up on this post tomorrow since we get off work at noon.