The 13 List: Checking it Twice
1. Who let the air out of Christmas? Driving to Christiansburg on Monday I passed a yard full of plastic blow-up Christmas ornaments deflated and spread out on the law. It looked like a Christmas massacre.
2. I was on my way to visit my dear friend Alwyn for a Christmas tea. Alwyn is an 83 year old Jewish-born Quaker who prefers to keep Christmas simple. When I arrived and told her I had a gift for her, she said, “No chachka this year.” I learned that chachka is a Jewish word for “collected stuff.”
3. I gave her one of THESE and she was thrilled with it. I also brought a belated birthday gift for her November birthday, a homemade apple crisp, which we proceeded to eat. We both agreed that both gifts did not fall in the chachka category.
4. First there was the shoe bomber and now the shoe thrower. Apparently President Bush is as good ducking flying shoes, to the tune of a size 10, as he is at ducking questions. If you haven’t seen the clip that looks like a bit from a Three Stooges movie yet, see it HERE.
5. So I guess I and half-a-million others who marched on Washington before the Iraq invasion to try and stop it might have gotten more attention if we had taken off our shoes and thrown them at the White House.
6. Last year my poem about wanting President Bush to have a dream like the one that Ebenezer Scrooge was aired on The Monitor, a Pacifica radio affiliate in Houston. You can hear it HERE (after the music lead-in). The story of how it was written and how I came to read it on Pacifica is HERE.
7. While driving, I listened to NPR and caught some of Diane Rehm’s interview with Les Standiford, author of The Man Who Invented Christmas, which is about Charles Dickens, author of A Christmas Carol, the story of redemption and the true spirit of Christmas, which awakened the humanitarian in me as a child when I saw it on TV.
8. I knew that A Christmas Carol popularized the celebration of Christmas with trees, lights, a turkey on Christmas Day, and generosity to those less fortunate, but I didn’t know that Dickens was a Unitarian (a religion that has been described as “”the religion of Jesus, not a religion about Jesus” and one with a strong social justice component). I also learned that A Christmas Carol was self-published, that the Dickens’ parents spent time in a debtor’s prison (for spending beyond their means), and that Dickens had a sickly brother like Tiny Tim whose name was Fred.
9. Another formative story in my childhood that was written around the same time period and was also about the power of giving was Hans Brinker (aka The Silver Skates). Hans Brinker is the story of a poor young Dutch boy who gives up his chance to win a pair of silver skates in an ice skating race on the frozen canal in December for the benefit of others. The heroic story of Peter and the Dike is also part of the Hans Brinker story.
10. Ice skating was a big part of my growing up years in Massachusetts, so it’s no surprise that my favorite Christmas song – which was especially poignant during the seven years I lived near Houston, Texas – is THIS.
11. When I was in Holland in 1996 I saw the canals that wound through the landscape dotted with windmill homes, but was told that the because of Global Warming the last time it got cold enough for the canals to freeze was sometime in the 60’s.
12. Speaking of Christmas blow-up yard ornaments (#1), Doug has a funny story posted about his wife chasing down some run away penguins and then tying her captives to the family gazebo HERE.
13. My new answering machine message: Leave your Kris Kringle after the Jingle.
Thursday headquarters is here. My other 13’s are here. View more 13 Thursday’s here.
December 17th, 2008 6:19 pm
I don’t know how you can keep coming up with 13 things week after week, Colleen. My hat’s off to you!
December 17th, 2008 6:42 pm
The shoe thrower is now a national hero in Iraq!
Are you sure about A Christmas Carol being self published? My edition says that it was first serialized in weekly installments and then published in book form by Chapman & Hall, who were Dickens’s regular publishers. Whatever, it’s a brilliant story.
December 17th, 2008 6:52 pm
Seems to me the trick to giving Christmas gifts to older people is to make sure it is something likely to be used up by next year. 😉
December 17th, 2008 7:33 pm
Here’s a Washington Post Review in which the self-publishing of the book is described in the 5th paragraph. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/11/28/ST2008112801604.html
December 17th, 2008 7:45 pm
That’s one of my favorite songs, too. Makes me cry, tho. Sigh…
And I think those are perfect gifts! I’m doing a lot of baking this year, too; banana chocolate chip break, molasses cookies, rum balls.
December 17th, 2008 8:42 pm
Kewl list. I still have to do the bulk of my shopping. Not looking forward to it. Happy Holidays!
December 17th, 2008 9:08 pm
I like your new answering machine jingle. And I like a Christmas Carol (duh). I’m a little confused about the rest of all that, but it sounded really great!
Merry Christmas from She Lives!
December 17th, 2008 9:27 pm
No. 1 cracked me up. I can just picture it. Maybe they got the electric bill?
December 17th, 2008 10:04 pm
The Christmas Massacre – sounds like a bad horror flick, lol.
Happy TT!
December 18th, 2008 1:51 am
I have a movie about the writing of A Christmas Carol and it is so Interesting
December 18th, 2008 6:46 am
good idea for #13. I luv it!
TT#14: Christmas Trivia
December 18th, 2008 6:50 am
Hans Brinker! I haven’t thought of that story in a long time. It was a childhood favorite. My grandmother had it in a special series of “classic” books that she had. I was the only person to ever read those books, I think. But I loved the Silver Skates and I reread it several times. Thanks for the memory!
December 18th, 2008 7:31 am
A great Thursday Thirteen, as always, Colleen. And I think that a book of poems and a homemade apple crisp make wonderful gifts!
December 18th, 2008 8:07 am
Yeah. Like we needed to know that throwing shoes “is a sign of scorn”. Duh!
I wonder if he got his shoes back or if someone will bronze them? Perhaps they’ll end up in the Smithsonian.
Kat
December 18th, 2008 9:46 am
I really admired George B (for once) he must be extremely well trained to avoid shoes, I suspect that Laura exercises every day with him !
December 18th, 2008 11:10 am
Nice list – Learned some things about Dickens and got a laugh out of the Christmas blow-up massacre.
December 18th, 2008 12:00 pm
Great list.
Did you know that some countries are as big on there being Global Cooling as we are on Global warming? How can that be?
December 18th, 2008 12:34 pm
Dickens was a Unitarian along with John Quincy Adams, John Adams, Charles Darwin, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott & me! (among many, many others) My family has been Unitarian Universalist for at least 4 generations. (that I know of ) I admit I don’t go to church often, but when I go that is where I go.
December 18th, 2008 11:20 pm
I’m laughing about the deflated Christmas display. we drove by a neighbor’s mass of deflated vinyl the other day and all I could think was “Their Christmas! It’s BROKEN!”
Ya, funnier in my head 😉
Here from Net Chick’s!
December 18th, 2008 11:22 pm
Here from net Chick’s, have tried to comment 3 times, and it won’t let me. 4th time’s the charm? =sigh=
December 19th, 2008 12:00 am
NetChick sent me to say hello!
December 19th, 2008 7:52 am
I love #1 and laughed so much last night after having a hard day at work and it was too late to comment, so I am doing it bright and early this AM.
December 19th, 2008 12:22 pm
I’ve noticed yards full of the limp plastic piles in the daylight. I don’t think I would like those things. In the dark sure, but in the day your yard is a mess.
December 19th, 2008 4:52 pm
Your poem on the radio. Fab!
deflated. that must be what happened to our neighbours’ one. Can’t imagine why else they would have a huge snowman and Santa up since November to have them go now? Although, personally I think they still may have been slashed or abducted, or scared off by the inflatable snow dog.
December 19th, 2008 10:05 pm
Is it bad that when I saw #4 on the news my first thought was impressed at how adept he was at dodging shoes? I think that is the first time I have been impressed with anything he has done! #5 made me chuckle – great image – he can’t have possible dodged them all. #10 means that you have to come visit our T13…
December 20th, 2008 10:41 am
Just yesterday someone explained to me the mystery of these flattened inflatable yard ornaments. I too wondered at what was happening. 🙂
December 23rd, 2008 5:26 am
our growing up years similar- looks like a fun time Spoken word. To you and yours the wonder, miracle and true Carolish spirit of Christmas ..Sandy