20 Christmas Questions Answered

Bah Humbug Fools!  Christmas is right around the corner and instead this year of talking about how much I dislike Christmas I've decided to gentle my condition by asking 20 Christmas Questions of my own design and answering them with hopefully some brevity, though the fact that this second sentence of the blog post has already reached an astonishing 56 words shows that brevity, like modesty, is in short supply.  Still, I will do my best.

#1.  Which is better in Egg Nog:  rum or bourbon?

A tough one right off the bat.  I definitely prefer bourbon, as I find that the sweetness of rum doesn't compliment the sweetness of the eggnog very well.  Bourbon, on the other end, provides a delightful counterpoint.

#2.  Favorite Christmas Carol?

I like the oldies the best.  I'd have to say that my favorite is probably the Coventry Carol, not because I can remember the words (I can't). but merely because I enjoy the tune.  It isn't a carol per se, but I think my favorite Christmas music is the Vince Guilardi's take on "Oh Christmas Tree" as featured in the Charlie Brown Christmas special.

#3.  Speaking of which -- Favorite Christmas TV Special?

Gotta go with the Charlie Brown Christmas.  That poor little damn tree.  Additionally, as noted in question #2, it has great music.  And there is no Santa Claus or elves or anything like that, which I appreciate.  Seinfeld's Festivus Day episode gets a huge honorable mention.

#4.  Why do Elves always seem to be organized in some sort of odd military structure?

I know, right?  As if a militaristic ethos is the only way to get anything done.  I don't like the fact that Elves these days are using high tech spy gear or always on some mission to save Santa or Christmas or what have you.  I blame Tim Allen and the first Santa Clause movie, in which there was some kind of band of delta force elves that went to save Christmas when  Tim Allen was detained by the Police.  Ever since, elves have been wearing jackboots and been organized loosely into fire teams.  I don't like it.

Elves from the film Arthur Christmas

#5.  Mannheim Steamroller or Trans Siberian Orchestra?

I don't like either, but I'll take Mannheim Steamroller.  They have a cooler name, and Trans Siberian Orchestras music is just....just too dramatic.   It's the kind of Christmas music that you'd listen to while you paint yer face blue and go to fite the Engalesh.  Or maybe you listen to it to get pumped up before you go out to play American Standard University in the Diamond Fruitcake Fantastic Bowl (brought to you by Anderson's Prophylactics.  Anderson's: Good Enough When it Really Counts).  It's just not conducive to cuddling around the yule log on Channel 10 and texting all your friends about the happy holiday.

#6.  Best Christmas Book?

With all due to Glenn Beck and the epic Christmas Sweater Trilogy the one and only Christmas book is "The Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens.

#7.  Oh yeah.  You know, the Christmas Carol has been filmed like 200 times.  Which version is your favorite?

The film geeks gathering at the local vape lounge all maintain that some version made in the 1930s is the best.  I say to you that they are full of shit.  The best version of Christmas Carol, hands down, is the Muppet Christmas Carol, filmed in 1992.  How can you go wrong?  You have the darkness of Victorian London, the zaniness of the Muppets, and Michael Caine as a Scrooge.  Michael Caine!  Is he a knight yet?  He should be.  He's been in like 1,000 films.

No, but really, it's a good one.  A few schmaltzy songs, but well designed ghosts and remains fairly faithful to the story, I think.

#8.  Who does the best Michael Caine impression?

I'll let you decide:

#9.  You don't like to many other Christmas films.  What's up with that?

I think it really started with the already mentioned "The Santa Clause" with Tim Allen.  It came out in 1994, so I would have been 12, and this is the miserable time in everyone's life when they start to rebel against their parents and establish their own identities.  I rebelled quietly, finding small ways to assert my independence without actually breaking too many rules. For example, I would often tell my parents I was going to the library after school, and they could pick me up there.  This was true.  I did go to the library, after I hiked into downtown Blacksburg to buy music at the Record Exchange that I didn't think my parents would approve of (the irony of it all is they probably would have actually been okay with it.  It was only Green Day. At least I got some good exercise).

Christmas movies became a sort of intellectual battle ground in this small low intensity rebellion.  My mom loved them, and so I naturally felt the need to sort of regard them with a Parisian coolness, cigarette drooping out of the corner of my mouth and smoke pooling around my beret in a little black cloud of existential angst.

The Santa Clause was one of those movies were I was like "part of me is really enjoying this, and the rest of me is thinking that I am getting too old for this shit."  Even today, I still feel conflicted about the movie.  I enjoy watching Tim Allen's character try to adjust to being Santa Claus.  I love fish out of water stories, I love seeing how people adjust to new roles.  But the kid, Charlie....just too cute.  Too cute for a 12 year old, much less a 32 year old.  Being a father doesn't change this.

Most Christmas movies are like this.  I find them too sweet to the taste.

#10.  Surely there must be one film you enjoy aside from the Muppet Christmas Carol?

The Christmas Story (the one with that kid Ralphie who wants the BB Gun) is pretty good, though watching it one time per year is good enough for me.  Watching it over and over again on Christmas day is a bit much.

#11.  Let's get serious for a moment.  The Reason for the Season?

Christmas is probably my favorite time in the Church year, I think.  I like the music, I like the fellowship.  Mostly, though, Christmas I find gives the best expression of my faith as it currently stands.

Doubt has driven my faith back to the most basic of basics, and is probably best summed up by the Vicovic creed, formulated by imminent surgeon Leopold Leopoldovich who, in the midst of dreary Russian winters eased by alcohol and a collection of clandestine Turkish erotica, managed to formulate the most basic creed of the doubtful faith:

There is a god, maybe, I think.

A god hopelessly beyond my understanding.

Yet somehow I think that God will redeem us,

Kinda sorta maybe.

Amen?  Sure, whatever.  Amen.

Even though Easter theologically is the expression of God's salvation through Jesus Christ, Christmas to me is a more powerful metaphor for the hope in God's redemption, the light in the darkness, because there is this great joyful event in the middle of winter, full of light and song.

#12.  Very nice.  But what if you lived in the Southern Hemisphere, where Christmas would be at the start of summer?

Well then my fine fellow that metaphor would lose its power and I'd be well fucked.  Maybe, realizing this, I already am.

#13. Sorry to have your carefully wrought statement of faith come crashing down on you, setting of new waves of existential angst upon your fragile soul.  So tell me...what are your Favorite Christmas cookies?

My mom makes Pecan Tassies.  Imagine, if you will, little bite sized pecan pies.  They have yet to be beaten by any Christmas cookie on this earth, and I maintain (of course) that my Mom's are the best.

#14. What is the best gift you have ever received?

My parents inform me that I was rather enamored with a box of Cheerios received for Christmas when I was one year old, so it would probably be that.

Second to that would be the map of the Appalachian Trial that my parents gave me in 2005, 15 days after finishing the hike.  My dad had kept a record of where I was on this huge map about 4 feet long that he got from the US Forest Service.  When I called every few days and let him know where I was or had been recently he would mark it on the map with the date.  My parents framed this map with a picture of me taken from the trail, and it hangs up now in my home, one of my most prized possessions.

#15. Thanksgiving just ended.  Are you bothered by the fact that people go shopping on Thanksgiving Day?

I am not bothered by the fact that people go shopping on Thanksgiving Day, per se.  We had guests over to the house on Thanksgiving Day, my wife made a wonderful Thanksgiving feast, but after everyone left and our bellies were full we were just kind of sitting around looking at each other, and I said I started to understand why people went shopping on Turkey Day -- nothing can be more dull than an evening stretching before you with a stomach full of turkey and wine.

I am bothered by the fact, though, that people in retail have to cut their holiday short (or not have one at all) so that the rest of us can fend off the post turkey bacchanal boredom.

Because you can't have one without the other, I suppose I must come out against it.

The situation would be different, I supposed, if we actually got to the point were we could invent life-like human droids to staff our retail stores.  That would mean that no human person's thanksgiving would be cut short.

#16.  So that means that there are now three benefits to going down the dangerous path of humanoid creation?

Yes.  The first beneift is that we can create vast armies of androids to fight our wars for us. The second benefit of the android is, naturally, the sex-bot, though I will take mine without the machine gun jumblies thank you very much.  Benefit the third would be that we all could, everyone could, enjoy a peaceful Thanksgiving meal at home.

#17.  So is that worth the possibility of having the machines rise up and take control?

Not yet.  We need to find a fourth benefit.  Once we have done that I think it may be worth the risk.

#18.  Let me indulge your inner scrooge here for a moment.  What is your least favoirte Christmas music?

A lot of it doesn't pass the board.  I was in Starbucks on Friday buying some whole bean coffee for home and they were playing Christmas music and it just wasn't good.  Some kind of techno/emo cross hatching of Jingle Bells.

I think the problem with Christmas music is that every artist feels the need to put their own little twist on it to make it different, to make it better, to make it theirs.  The results are usually not so good.

#19.  Favorite Christmas story from History?

The 1914 Christmas truce along the western front in World War I is the only great one that comes to mind.  History shows us, usually, how awful we can be to each other.  World War I in particular is a symbol of this with the horrors of trench warfare and such, but even in 1914 before the trenches really took hold the war was cataclysmic in terms of the number of men involved and the casualties sustained.  War had never been waged on a scale as large before.  And in the midst of this, you have this Christmas truce where men who are enemies of each other stop fighting and actually meet each other between the lines.  It is an enduring symbol of humanity in the midst of violence.

#20.  Last Question:  Do you BELIEVE???

I dunno man.  All I can say is that on Christmas morning the sandwich and beer we left for Santa would be gone, and sometimes there would be a nice thank you note talking about how refreshing it is to see not another plate of stale sugar cookies and warm milk but rather a protein packed ham and cheese sandwich with a cold bottle of bohemian suds.  If that doesn't prove that the fat man exists, then I don't know what does.

Note:  The whole Leopold Leopoldovich thing is a straight up rip-off from the series A Young Doctor's Notebook and Other Stories, which is fabulously funny but extremely dark and sometimes gory.  Watch at your own risk.  First series available on Netflix (money, please).    

In which Bill Cosby Gets Added to the List

Another part of my childhood goes *poof* as mounting allegations of sexual assault hound comedian Bill Cosby to the very gates of hell.  If the allegations are true -- and I find myself believing that they likely are true -- then I find myself asking if I should simply be chucking his work in the bin.

It's a shame, for Bill Cosby is an extremely funny guy.  I had the good fortunate to see him in Roanoke; my whole family went to see him on my dad's 50th birthday.  He went through a lot of new material which was okay (but even okay Bill Cosby is pretty good), but at the end he did the famous "dentist" sketch, and I laughed so hard I had to remind myself to breathe.  The next day  all my abdominal muscles were sore, I had pulled every single one in a fit of laughter the likes of which I had never experienced, never have since, and probably never will.  

It would be stupid of me to rage that Cosby had cost me that memory.  For one, it's incredibly narcissistic to mourn the loss of your own memories due to alleged crimes with real victims.  For another, it isn't quite true - recounting the memory is still something of a joy, it is still a pleasant memory on the face of it.  It's only when I allow myself to reflect on the fact that Cosby may be a serial rapist that get a little nauseous.

The question for me becomes to what extent can one really seperate the artist from the work they do?  I suppose it isn't that difficult -- you can appreciate a Van Gogh without knowing much about him, for example.  There are hundreds of painters and authors and musicians whose work I enjoy and whom I know very little if nothing about.

But knowing more about the artist often imbues a work with layers that can make it richer while experiencing it.  Returning to Van Gogh, if you really understand his life and know that his work utterly consumed him, that somehow in the midst of a miserable life where all those things closest to him were ruined he made these incredible works of art...it makes his work more amazing.  Dazzling points of light in the darkness.  When you see the textures and violence of the paintings, the wavy cypress trees and the starry nights, you can get a taste for the passion and madness stirring in Van Gogh's breast.  It's breathtaking.

The differences between Van Gogh and Cosby are great.  Van Gogh destroyed himself while Cosby has allegedly victimized others.  The madness of Van Gogh is something that compliments his work and becomes a key to understanding it, while Cosby's alleged crimes go roughly against the grain of a body of work that is mostly grounded in the dynamics of middle class family life.

Is it going to be possible to look at Cliff Huxtable, family man, without thinking about how the man portraying him may be a serial rapist?  For me, no.

Is there redemption for Mr. Cosby?  If it is all true, I would say it isn't likely.  It's true we've seen other great men knocked off their pedestals.  Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich are famous examples of men who have behaved badly but have managed to have a second act (and in Clinton's case maybe even a third).  But the difference between them and Cosby is that Clinton and Gingrich never committed a crime.  They were indiscreet, they were dumb, they were unfaithful, and yes Clinton lied and yes he has had harassment accusations hang around him like a bad cologne, but those crimes pale in comparison to rape.

Rape is an unpardonable sin.  It is a crime of conquest, it is something that the villians of history (and sometimes even its heroes) have done after sacking a city.  It is one step below tossing babies onto the tines of pitchforks.  It is something that no matter how hard you scrub at it it never fully leaves your person, victim and perpetrator alike.

So no, I doubt I will ever be able to really watch a Bill Cosby show or skit again.  I am sad of it.  It is perhaps wrong to have already him condemned in my mind as a guilty man, but how often have we seen accusations to this extent turn out to be false?

No question, the man made me laugh harder than anyone else ever will.  I don't think he will ever make me laugh again.

Notes:

On Van Gogh destroying himself:  In the recent biography Van Gogh:  The Life the authors speculate that Van Gogh did not actually kill himself.  I think they have an essay on the same subject in this month's Vanity Fair.  I have not read the essay, but I know in the book they think he may have been shot by some teenage boys living in his neighborhood.  Whether or not Van Gogh committed suicide, I still think its not wrong to say that Van Gogh destroyed himself -- if he had not died of that gunshot wound, I think he would have died of his many excesses in due time, which included alcohol, absinthe, coffee, tobacco, and prostitutes.  

On bad cologne:  There are many to choose from, but for me I choose Sex Panther.  Sex Panther:  it's made with bits of real Panther, so you know it's good.