Goodbye again, Totally Normal Town!!

 

Sorry for the lack of "spoiler alert", but -- as you might guess! -- in the next episode of Totally Normal Town, the town gets demolished again!!!

(You'll have to watch "A Totally Normal Christmas Carol" to find out how and by whom.)

But, before destroying the town, as usual, I took some pictures so that I could tell the tales of the various builds in the city.

In its most recent incarnation, Totally Normal Town has been a Christmas village for about a year. Last year we re-built all of our Christmas sets and then made last year's Christmas special: "A Very Special Totally Normal Christmas... Special"

(We're not planning any more Christmas specials after this year's -- since Totally Normal Town isn't a Christmas village anymore...)

But why did we build it as a Christmas village in the first place?

 

There's a simple reason for this choice: Lego's "Creator: Winter Village" set is the best set of the year every year.

You're probably aware that Lego makes various series marketed to adults that aren't compatible with their iconic mini-figures and cities: huge, elaborate models of various things done in Legos. Those series don't interest me in the slightest.

When I make things out of Legos, I want to build a city with lots of interesting buildings -- using their various little pieces in creative ways to build all of the miniature details. That's why all of my favorite sets are from the "Creator" series.

(Note: this is not a paid ad for Lego, I'm just a fan.)

The "Winter Village" sub-series is the best "Creator" category because it's clearly designed for my exact demographic: families where the parents and (older) kids build cities together.

The intention is clearly that the set either appeals to the parent, so they buy it for the kids for Christmas, or the kids (probably with the help of the other parent) buy the set as a fun Christmas gift for their Lego-loving parent(s).

The latter is essentially the situation at my house. Naturally, I'm hesitant about so much plastic being created, but I do love these little cities as a guilty pleasure!

The designers pull out all the stops to make a clever set full of interesting design ideas for this special yearly gift.

So this Christmas village is an incarnation of Totally Normal Town in which everything is a purchased set, and (almost) nothing is an original build. Contrast this with Totally Normal Town of 2022 which was almost entirely original builds. That's what I'm planning for the next one.

And now that this one is destroyed, I'll tell you a bit about all of the various buildings.

The one pictured here is the 2022 "Holiday Main Street." This one has some great details -- I love the irregular patterns of the collected snow on the roofs.

(Note that my kids added a bunch of characters and items that are not part of the original set.)

As you can see from the little trolley in front, this is one of the few Lego sets that includes urban public transit. As a passionate urbanist, I was thrilled when my kids got me this one.

In the next incarnation of Totally Normal Town, I'm planning to narrow the streets and have them be exclusively bike, pedestrian, and public transit (plus some emergency and delivery vehicles) because I want my little city-under-the-stairs to be a wonderful place to live.

This little blue house is my newest set. It's the 2021 "Santa's Visit" set. My kids got it for me for my birthday this year because they saw it in the store, and we didn't have it yet.

This set is a fun one because it's got some really nice interior details like the open-plan house with a long dining table set with a red tablecloth for Christmas dinner.

Since it's "Santa's Visit" the chimney is designed to be wide enough for the Santa mini-fig to slide down.

This one is the "Winter Village Fire Station" from 2018. It has some very nice design elements such as the irregular grey brick on the lower level as well as the decorative windows and trim.

This one is the absolutely adorable "Gingerbread House" from 2019.

I love how they took simple pieces and put them together to look like gingerbread decorated with candy and frosting!

Even the interior is candy -- you can see that the bed appears to be a bar of white chocolate!

Next we have "Santa's Workshop" (2014) and the "Elf Clubhouse" (2020). I love how both of these use ordinary Lego pieces to create the illusion of strings of Christmas lights (they don't light up, of course).

Also pictured we have the "Christmas Tree" -- which is not a "Creator" set, but it fits. The funny thing is that I told my son that we need a big Christmas tree as a centerpiece of our Christmas village, and there just happened to be one at the Lego store that was the perfect size!

The other builds here are a set of the book "A Christmas Carol" -- which is such a specialty set that I can't even find it on the Lego website to link to -- and "the gates of heaven" with Jesus. The latter is an original build by my kids because Jesus was a character in our Christmas special.

"Santa's Workshop" has some really fun interior details like a workbench, a toy-manufacturing machine with a conveyor belt, and a 80's/90's computer.

Please note that all three of these are constructed from generic pieces. I sometimes hear people complain that Lego used to be for imaginative building, but now they just make complete molded-plastic toys like Playmobile.

I would argue that Lego has simply expanded its collection in both directions: The "snap-together toys" exist (witness the reindeer in the foreground of this photo), but the range of possibilities for making anything you can imagine out of generic tiny pieces has also expanded dramatically. If the latter is what you're looking for, then stick to the "Creator" sets.

It's a similar story for the interior of the "Elf Clubhouse". This one features some clever mechanical builds like the cute mechanism that drops waffles into a pan and a clock that (when turned) makes the elves drop out of their bunk beds and get to work!

(I guess the fact that the elves are slaves and/or in a cult is part of the clubhouse fun...)

Next we have Hogwarts! This set is the "Hogwarts Clock Tower" from a number of years ago. It's not a "Creator" set, but it includes a mechanism for the Yule Ball, so -- with some additional Christmas decorations -- it fits into our Christmas village.

Hogwarts has been an important component of the story of Totally Normal Town from the beginning -- it's where the kids go to school, and it was Professor Trelawney who saw "the Grim" and thus predicted the first destruction of the town.

So, while Hogwarts is grandfathered-in as a permanent fixture of Totally Normal Town, it's with my apologies to the trans community. I'm absolutely disgusted that the author of the series has chosen to use her gigantic platform to act as the world's spokesperson for anti-trans hate.

This little Hogwarts annex includes the only original architectural build in the Christmas village.

The lower floor is the "Hogwarts Polyjuice Potion Mistake" set, which is a very simple rectangular room that looks like it's designed to be modular -- that is, you could combine a bunch of similar rooms by stacking them or connecting them alongside one another. I guess it's an expander set for some other Hogwarts sets.

Since the little polyjuice bathroom is in the same style as our other Hogwarts set, I wanted to include it as part of the Hogwarts castle. But it looked weird without a roof, so I threw together a little under-roof room in a similar style to serve as as a topper.

Next we have Elsa's castle. This was another present to me from my kids from a few years ago. This set is more for little kids than the others -- yet it still contains interesting mechanics like the way to open the big doors. It's a fun set, and it naturally fits the winter theme of the town.

I think it may be our only set that includes the "mini-dolls" from the Lego "Friends" series in place of the standard mini-figures. (We have a few others from the Lego Movie 2 sets.)

Then we're back to some more "Creator: Winter Village" sets: The "Winter Village Station" from 2017 and the "Winter Holiday Train" from 2016.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I didn't actually buy the "Winter Holiday Train" -- I just happened to have all of the pieces from other train sets, and I built it from the instructions that I found online.

The acronym you see on our train system is "Société municipale des chemins de plastique de Totally Normal Town."

And that's it for our adorable little Christmas village-under-the-stairs! Be sure to tune in for our Christmas special in which it gets demolished and stay tuned for the next incarnation of Totally Normal Town!!

A Very Special Totally Normal Christmas... Special!!!

 My kids and I finished up our latest Totally Normal Town episode -- our Christmas Special -- just in time for Christmas Eve!!

I'm keeping some Christmas traditions this year!

When I was in eighth grade, I wrote an essay for my English class about how Christmas is my favorite holiday -- not because of the presents, but because of all of the creative opportunities in the traditions!  There are so many possibilities in the gingerbread houses, cookies, carols, advent calendars, ornaments, other decorations, etc.

Even as a young adult newly out of the nest, I would repeat these familiar traditions -- as well as researching other traditions, to incorporate them -- and throw elaborate Christmas parties.  Later, with kids and a job, I switched by necessity to a more minimalist model, eg. a small Christmas tree, some carols on the stereo, and maybe a batch of cookies.  And (like many parents) I've felt a crazy mix of guilt and disappointment at not doing more of all that stuff I used to love as a kid.

Not too much guilt, mind you -- the whole point is for it to be fun!

The cool thing is that -- now that my kids are 10 and 12 -- it has become that much easier and more fun to add more traditions and activities to our holiday season!  For example, I made an advent calendar this year, for the first time in years:

"Made" is perhaps a strong word here -- I just decorated the tops of the star-shaped boxes and then filled them.

These sets of 24 blank star-shaped boxes are a popular craft-shop item here in Switzerland, and probably all over the world.

The fun part is that the kids are old enough to get into the traditions as well.  They want to have advent calendars, so they have one of their own:

We didn't exactly make the Lego advent calendar, but if I'm feeling ambitious, next year I might design one using our existing pieces.  Léo was also very excited to set up those two little Christmas trees, and requested a big one this year for our living room:

I think most of my favorite Christmas-tradition memories are largely from my tween-to-teen years, so now our little family is hitting our golden age of Christmas!  And the best part is that now I have an excuse to watch all of my favorite Christmas specials!!

• Rudolph
• Santa Claus is Coming to Town
• The Grinch, and especially
• The Year without a Santa Claus!

For that last one, my brother recently sent me a link to the text of the original book, and it's essentially as I concluded in my analysis: the verse parts of the special are quotes from the book, and the prose parts (including the entire adventure with Heat Miser and Snow Miser making it snow in Southtown) were all made up for the special since the story in the book wasn't long or interesting enough.  

I didn't guess correctly that there were a number of stanzas from the book that didn't make it to the special, but they're basically along the same lines as the ones that were included -- no additional themes or plot.  The biggest surprise was that the character "Ignatius Thistlewhite" is actually in the original book (though his role is quite different).

My brother also sent me a set of action figures a few years ago, which I like to include in my seasonal display:

The kids are, of course, begging me to let them take the play set down and play with it -- and I do let them play with it a bit every year -- but I insist that they do it carefully and put all of the pieces back when they're done, because they would not be easy to replace.

This afternoon, we'll be rolling, cutting, and baking Christmas cookies!  Merry Christmas!!

Happy Christmas to all!!

I think I may finally have to end my series on Christmas specials. :(

In the canon of Christmas specials that I used to watch every year as a kid, there was one left that I was planning to write about this year ("Frosty the Snowman"), but after racking my brain for a few weeks, I couldn't think of anything I wanted to say about it. The others were all thought-provoking in different ways (click on my Christmas label to see them), but I guess now I'm left scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Anyway, this has been an incredibly busy holiday season for me. We just moved to a new apartment on the 14th, and then the following weekend (a couple of days before Christmas), I hosted the Christmas dinner party of the ex-Mormons of Switzerland: 17 people and three dogs!!

Fortunately, everybody brought food. In fact, each household individually brought enough food for the whole group, so we had some fantastic leftovers! :D Holly's pumpkin-curry soup played a key role.

And, in case unpacking and getting moved-in and decorating (and shopping) for Christmas weren't enough to do, at my real job we released our new product just before everyone started the Christmas holiday Friday night -- a very cool new educational software package to help kids who have difficulty in mathematics. (The English and French versions are also done, and they'll be officially released in January.)

All of this is my excuse for why I didn't have time to follow up on figuring out this strange Germanic tradition of having the baby Jesus bring kids Christmas presents, and how that can work exactly...

I'll try to have more insights on it by next year! :D

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!!!

The Baby Jesus brings your Christmas presents...?

It's funny how the Christmas legends vary slightly from one culture to the next. In the US, the story of Saint Nicholas (who traditionally gave small presents on December 6) morphed into "Santa Claus" (via the Dutch "Sinterklaas") -- and moved some of his legendary gift-giving antics to Christmas Eve. Meanwhile, some cultures also have a legendary "Father Christmas" (a.k.a Père Noël or Babbo Natale) who has his own traditions, but sometimes simply merges with the American Santa Claus. But in some German-speaking regions, there's another legend that I find amazingly strange: the Christmas gifts are brought by the Baby Jesus (Christkind).

The Christkind doesn't have quite as elaborate a mythology as Santa Claus, but he is supposed to magically bring the Christmas tree and the gifts during the night on Christmas Eve. I've always been kind of curious about how this works, and I had the opportunity to ask some Austrian friends about it the other day. These friends have kids who are a little younger than ours, and still believe that the Baby Jesus brings their presents.

I explained to them the reason the tradition stuck me as so odd. In the US, there's a whole angst-ridden rite-of-passage when the kid eventually figures out that Santa Claus is just made-up, and then there's a big question (especially in religious households) of whether the kid will extrapolate and start wondering about Jesus. But in Austria, Switzerland, and southern Germany, when the kid figures out that the whole "Christkind" thing was just a story, put-on by their own parents... Well, you kind of skip that intermediate step of having to notice the parallel...

"It's European efficiency," laughed my Austrian friend.

But, seriously, if any believing Christians practice this custom, that has got to be one surreal discussion when the kids figure it out.

"That part about angels announcing Jesus's birth in a manger, that's totally real. The part about the Baby Jesus bringing you presents on Christmas? OK, we admit we were making that up and faking it. But the stuff about Jesus walking on water and rising from the dead? That part is totally real..."

We're all misfits! Rudolph, Hermy, and the Misfit Toys!

The Grinch and The Year without a Santa Claus may be my favorite Christmas specials, but Rudolph is the one that started it all, and launched the Rankin/Bass Christmas special series.

With its charming characters and catchy tunes (Holly Jolly Christmas!) this one has always been one of my favorites. Its theme -- that it's OK (even great!) to be a misfit -- was something I certainly appreciated as a kid. I imagine it was the same for other kids too.

It's also fun to analyze how this story shows the changes in our cultural attitudes towards bullying. The lyrics to the song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" were written in 1939. As the song goes, Rudolph was ostracised and bullied for being different. The song doesn't seem to indicate that there's anything a priori wrong about bullying people for being different -- it only became wrong after Rudolph's defect proved itself to be a strength.

We can see how this works in detail in the (1964) special. When the other young reindeer started laughing and calling Rudolph names, their adult supervisor not only failed to stop the kids from bullying:

He actually compounded the problem and kicked Rudolph out of the class for being different. And Santa himself wasn't much better.

However, in the special, Santa realizes he was wrong for mistreating Rudolph before Rudolph's nose saves the day, so maybe attitudes towards childhood bullying had already changed a bit between 1939 and 1964. And (as I discussed here) we can see further cultural evolution in children's media such as the album Free to Be You and Me.

And now my kids are asking me to put on a Christmas special, so I guess it's time to enjoy it again! Or perhaps one of my other favorites:

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" (and the invented origins of the Santa Claus legend)
"The Polar Express" takes belief for belief's sake in whole new directions!
"Nestor the Long-eared Donkey" saves the Christmas™ brand
Mr. White Christmas: The fabulous world of Heat Miser and Snow Miser!!!
The Grinch and the True Meaning of Christmas

Merry Christmas!!

(dreaming of a) a white-on-white Christmas!

I was planning to deconstruct "Frosty" this year (since my "popular posts" widget tells me that my posts on Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Nestor the Long-Eared Donkey, The Grinch, The Year Without a Santa Claus, and The Polar Express are among my most popular posts), but...



I was too busy trying to wrestle this dry-powder snow into the snow-mom-and-baby you see here. And, sadly, this is the only picture my Nico managed to take before the other kiddies knocked 'em down. :-^(

Please bear with me as I celebrate a minimalist Christmas this year. As some famous guy once said, "I'll be back again someday!" :D

More existential musings!

So far we've successfully avoided the topic of whether God exists, but Nico has made a point to explain to his grandparents that Santa Claus does not exist. (My parents know about this blog, BTW, so I assume that they're aware of the situation as well.)

As you may recall from the past three years that Nico believed Santa was real right up until last year. This year's round of Christmas specials, however, kind of finished it off. It wasn't the fact that Rankin-Bass produced two different (contradictory) Santa-origin stories. It was that he liked Santa Claus Is Coming to Town so well that he decided that he, Nico, would grow up to be Santa Claus! He's been intent on this idea for weeks, and -- scientifically-minded as he is -- it has entailed lots of elaborate discussions of the precise logistics of how the whole Santa thing works. This led him to conclude that Santa Claus is not real, but it would be fun to be him. Santa Nico, as it were, named (indirectly) after Saint Nicholas himself.

As for the question of Jesus, we're kind of zeroing in on it. Last night we all went to see a production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Now, before you go jumping to the conclusion that my family is pushing the religious Christmas on us, I'll tell you that my mom presented this as one of the optional family events, and, in fact, my brothers did not attend (mostly because they didn't have any kids of the appropriate ages for the story). I opted in (for myself, my husband, and kids) because it was our Christmas tradition when I was a kid to read that book aloud as a family.

It actually ended up being a good intro to the religious side of Christmas. There's a whole comic scene where the main characters have to explain "The Christmas Story" to the bad kids because the bad kids (shockingly!) have never heard it! My kids also had never heard it, so they got a basic intro in real time.

The only tricky part was trying to keep Nico quiet because he is constantly full of questions! I had to sit next to him and let him whisper questions to me so that he would stop trying to ask questions aloud in full voice. For example, at the end when they were finally performing the pageant within the play:
Nico: So this story is in the Bible?
me: yes.
Nico: The Holy Bible?
me: yes.
Nico: Who are Mary and Joseph?
me: They're characters in the Bible.
Nico: Are they... gods?
me: no.

Then on the way home, we had a brief discussion of why people say Christmas is Jesus's birthday (even though it's not). The conclusion was that they didn't write the date down anywhere, so that's the day that people have chosen to use as a celebration/remembrance date. And I managed to refrain from going into an elaborate discussion of pre-Christian Solstice festivals (though you know how much I love that stuff!) and I also avoided mentioning that there's no evidence that anything at all was written about Jesus during His lifetime, and that the legend of the trek to Bethlehem was likely invented by Jesus' followers and probably never happened even if we assume the Jesus character of the Bible is based on a real person, etc....

Conclusion: So far so good! :D

Santa's invented origins, courtesy of Rankin-Bass!

In the olden days, people didn't have electric lights. So the change in the number of daylight hours was a really big deal for people who lived far from the equator. Additionally, what you could eat depended on the season. Harvest coffers were full in the late Fall, and the best time to slaughter animals for fresh meat was early Winter.

Obviously, when the days finally started getting longer again, it was time for a celebration and a feast! It was time to deck the halls with what lights and colors you could find, in honor of the warmth and light to come. It was also time to enjoy some of the best food and ale you'd have all year -- and share it liberally with the neighbors -- before saving the rest saving the rest away to keep you through the Winter months.

There was no mass communication or rapid transit, so the legends and precise dates and customs of Yuletide varied from town to town, just as languages and dialects varied across the countryside and from one land to the next. But there were a number of elements that were standard fare:
* Feasting and drinking,
* expectation of charity -- the "haves" of a community were expected to share the feast and ale with the have-nots, upon request or for a symbolic price such as a song,
* lights and colorful decorations,
* a late-night vigil or party,
* masks and role-play (choosing a king of the feast),
* other normally-frowned-on behavior, such as gambling,
* stories and legends.

Despite how far removed we are from those days, vestiges of all of these customs have been preserved -- spread across the entire holiday season in Halloween, Hanukkah, Christmas, Boxing Day, New Year's, Epiphany, and others.

Now, here's my question: Am I nuts to think that the real story of these customs is more interesting than some random, just-so stories?



Obviously, I'm thinking of the Rankin-Bass special Santa Claus Is Coming to Town -- one of the canon of TV specials that were so central to the Christmas traditions of my childhood. I have no memory of ever being disappointed by the idea that Santa Claus isn't real. Yet I remember being a bit disappointed when I realized that the children's questions -- posed in this special -- are legitimate questions with interesting answers, but the real answers have nothing whatsoever to do with the answers given in this special.

The impact of Clement Clarke Moore's poem ('Twas the Night Before Christmas) in shaping the "Santa Claus" legend is interesting. Ditto for the contributions of Thomas Nast, and even advertising campaigns by Coca-Cola and Montgomery Ward.


That beef aside, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town is a fun little program. Burgermeister Meisterburger steals the show with his song-and-dance about how he hates toys and is outlawing them. He's not quite Heat Miser and Snow Miser, but he has a lot of good lines. (Actually, he looks a lot like Heat Miser, now that I think of it...)


Jessica, a.k.a. Mrs. Claus, isn't nearly as interesting as I remember her -- along with her early-70's ballad about her grand epiphany that her place is beside her man. Maybe I'm just getting picky in my old age.

Of course, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town isn't the only Rankin-Bass special about a made-up Santa origin story. Fifteen years later they came up with The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. (I discovered this just last year, through a comment on my blog.) Naturally, this second Santa-Genesis story is totally incompatible with the first.



The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus has a far more Paganesque feel to it than the earlier story. I give it points for the explanation of how Santa speaks so many languages, plus its attempt at illustrating the cruel injustices of the world. Like all of the Rankin-Bass specials, this one is kind of weird and trippy.

On some level, though, I feel like it's not quite as charming as the light, insouciant Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Is it just a question of childhood memories and nostalgia coloring my opinion?

Do the rest of you have any opinions on which Santa origin story is best? And why?

It's that time of year!

Time to break out those crazy Christmas specials that I watched a million times as a kid -- and subject my own kids to them!!!


It's also time to pick one and look at it in a new way! Last year's pick was Nestor the Long-Eared Donkey -- a Christian answer to the more popular "Rudolph" legend.

The year before that, it was The Grinch and the true meaning of Christmas!

Back in 2006, I talked about how The Year without a Santa Claus proves that colorful characters and memorable scenes are far more important than trivialities such as internal consistency or a plot that makes sense.

Then -- since I was young and ambitious that year -- I compared that one to The Polar Express (and to that cartoon with the mice) in terms of the treatment of skeptics in Christmas-land!!

From those clues, you should be able to triangulate which special(s) I'll pick this year!! I'm holding off on posting about it until after Thanksgiving, though (out of consideration for the seasonally-sensitive among you).

In the meantime, you can warm up by listening to some festive carols for a Merry (secular) Christmas and other Happy Holidays!!!

The magic of imagination

There may well be some good reasons to tell your kids that Santa Claus is real. However, today I'd like to talk about one common argument for Santa-ism that I find unconvincing: the idea that belief in Santa encourages imagination.

I think that telling kids the Santa story -- with all its strange and amazing trappings -- definitely encourages imagination. But (imagination-wise) I don't see any added benefit in telling them that it's real.

For full disclosure, I'll admit that I'm sort of half-heartedly playing along with the Santa charade for Léo this year, mostly because I've found that hinting that Mom and Dad bought the presents causes a huge tantrum to have the presents now. At the age of five, "You can't have your train set now because Santa's not bringing it until Christmas" is a lot easier to understand than "You can't have your train set now because opening all the presents on Christmas morning is a fun tradition that we love." (I think his seven-year-old brother Nico is wavering, though, and is leaning towards figuring out that it's all a game.)

In order to analyze this question, I've been noting down some of my kids' fantasy play lately. Here are some examples:

* As I mentioned here, Nico's study of the Solar System has inspired Léo to invent a new Solar System (called the "The Invented Solar System"), which includes multiple giant Earths and -- most importantly -- it's the home of the planet "where live the pitcher poo-poots" (Léo's planet). Pitcher poo-poots, by the way, are a carnivorous plant which (I think) Léo invented when Nico was studying carnivorous plants. You can hear him mention them from offstage during Nico's nature documentary. Another interesting fact he told me about the planet where live the pitcher poo-poots is that the numbers there are finite. Where live the pitcher poo-poots you count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, "dek", "el", "doe", 100 -- then you're done. (Bonus points to anyone who can guess where "dek", "el", and "doe" come from!)

* During a recent snow storm, Nico became enamored with the idea that Snow Miser sent it, and he started drawing all sorts of diagrams of how Heat Miser and Snow Miser control the weather. I asked him "Now you know that Heat Miser and Snow Miser don't really exist, right?" (People get annoyed at me for pointing out that Santa and God aren't real, but I can't get in trouble for telling kids that Heat Miser and Snow Miser aren't real, can I?) Nico said that Of course he knows that, and explained that it's just pretend, and then went right back to his drawings of which one controls which region during which part of the year. Léo agreed, and went on to add a third Miser brother -- "Train Miser" -- who sends trains all over the world!

* Léo has invented an alternate Santa Claus, called "Pirate Santa Claus." Pirate Santa Claus is different from regular Santa Claus in that he has two bags of toys, but all the toys are scary toys (as in The Nightmare before Christmas). Pirate Santa Claus also has a sister who has a long white beard. However, Pirate Santa Clause does not have an eye patch. (I learned these facts when I was helping Léo draw Pirate Santa Claus.)

You can take this evidence both ways. After all, Léo is the more fervent Santa-ist, and he's the one who came up with all the off-the-wall fantasy stories on this list, starting largely from real-life facts he learned from his science-minded older brother Nico. Nico joins in on playing in Léo's imaginary universe, but (left to his own devices) he's more inclined to draw things that are real. On the other hand, in Léo's imaginary world, it doesn't seem to matter much whether the initial stories he uses as raw material are true or not.

Also note that believing a story is true can potentially constrain creativity. I recall that my own (devoutly religious) mom didn't care for Nestor the Donkey or "The Little Drummer Boy" simply because if the birth of Jesus story is true, then you can't just embellish it with lots of made-up characters and episodes as though it were a legend. Yet I remember (as a child) doing elaborate drawings of Santa's workshop -- knowing full well that it wasn't real -- with Mom's approval. That was the beauty of it: if you know it's a legend, you're at liberty to embellish it however you like.

So I'm still not entirely convinced that saying I believe in Santa Claus -- and meaning it -- is more magical than allowing Santa to live in a world of pure imagination. :D

Christmas™ brand

Nestor was a donkey who had ears that dragged the ground...

I think we all know this story, right?

Once upon a time a singing cowboy named Gene Autry sang Johnny Marks's song Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and it became a huge hit! Autry -- perhaps feeling bad about his role in making secular Christmas celebrations so Holly Jolly -- later helped write a song that told a Christian version of the same story:

"Nestor the Long-Eared Donkey" saves Christmas by carrying the baby Jesus (inside Mary) -- instead of Santa -- through a sand storm. He alone is able to navigate the storm because of his strange deformity (long ears instead of a glowing red nose), which the other animals had mocked him for, not letting him join in any donkey games and all that.

There are differences in the two stories, of course. This story doesn't have a misfit elf dentist or an abominable snow monster. Instead it has the most annoying cliché in the grand book of standard formulas: the mom sacrifices herself (and dies) as a plot device to set up her son's grand adventure (see also Ice Age).

Christians have written a number of incredibly beautiful and moving Christmas hymns over the centuries. And I imagine that a Christian worship service is probably the emotional center of the Christmas celebration for many people. But this holiday wasn't invented by or for Christianity. It's more than just a celebration of Jesus' birth, and that's okay, or it should be.

Given that the mid-winter festival of lights (in all of its names and incarnations) tends to be a bit of a party holiday, I'd say that taking every aspect of the holiday that people like and trying to re-brand it as Christian™ is a tad ill-advised. Take this Nestor story, for example. It sure gives the impression that the Jesus story is just a pale imitation of the real Christmas story (the one about Santa...).

Now, I know that Christians in general can't be blamed for this one production by Rankin/Bass. Rankin/Bass produced a few gems and did a whole lot of recycling in between. (Note: the third film that's on the DVD with Nestor and The Year without a Santa Claus is their New Year's special about the baby New Year who also gets mocked for having freakishly big ears.) But this isn't the only example of ill-advised Christian Christmas re-branding. You can probably guess what I'm talking about: Bill O'Reilly's "War on Christmas."

The "War on Christmas" has taken a truly surreal turn this year as the forces of CHRISTmas have decided that the over-the-top consumer spending orgy must be credited to "Christmas" alone. They're distributing a list of naughty and nice stores -- naughty meaning only that the merchants failed to stamp their advertisements with the Merry Christmas™ brand.

The thing that jumps out at me about this list is the second-to-last entry in the "nice" column: Wal-Mart. Apparently creating a buying frenzy so rabid that one of your employees is trampled to death is not enough to get your "nice" status revoked. Wal-Mart wasn't even moved to some sort of provisional list or something. So Jesus is more than okay with this orgy of consumerism -- He wants to be sure He gets the credit for it...?

I just hope these "War on Chrismas" folks from the "Liberty Counsel" don't really represent most Christians. They clearly don't represent anyone sane.

Now I'd like to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!! And a Happy Monkey too!!!

And remember, Christmas isn't just about presents and it isn't just about Jesus. As the Grinch learned, it's a little bit more. :D

How'd I forget this one?

This morning's snowstorm had my kids singing "I'm Mr. White Christmas!"

It's my favorite Christmas special, and it's the one that teaches us that catchy tunes, colorful characters, and memorable scenes are far more important than trivialities such as internal consistency or a plot that makes sense. Actually, in my elaborate analysis of the fabulous world of Heat Miser and Snow Miser, I found that the crazy non-sequiturs are a part of the fun! :D



Maybe they don't like reindeer in these parts. I know what -- we'll make her a disguise!



Take your socks off!



Instant Rover!

Wait a minute -- weren't his socks striped?

Actually, once I slowed this down enough to take the screenshots, I saw that the socks were, in fact, two-sided. So, sadly, one of the random inconsistencies is resolved. *sigh*

Oh, well, there are still lots of others. ;^)

The "War on Christmas" and the war on being considerate to others...

So apparently the forces of Christmas have won the battle in Boston to call their public holiday tree display a "Christmas tree."

Here's my first reaction:

Considering that there's an actual war going on -- one where real people have given their lives -- how is it possible that it's not considered poor taste for the religious right to be calling this a war? And, really, could they even think of a stupider issue to use to distract the public from real issues like the president threatening to start yet another real war?

I don't even want to touch the whole first amendment establishment clause issue because it's been thoroughly and repeatedly covered by others. What I can't figure out is why anyone would even want to wage a war against the imaginary forces of anti-Christmas.

Apparently -- throughout the public sphere -- theocrats would like to see "Merry Christmas" replace "Happy Holidays." This is because "Happy Holidays" threatens Christmas's position as the one and only holiday people might possibly be celebrating during the holiday season. And poor Christmas feels degraded when it gets lumped together with less-important holidays like New Year's and Boxing Day and whatnot.

I guess I can almost sort of see the logic to that when it concerns people who celebrate Christmas. I love Christmas, and I'm happy to wish a very Merry Christmas to all my friends and family members who celebrate Christmas. The problem is that the crusaders for Christmas seem to want to insist that a Merry Christmas -- and only a Merry Christmas -- be wished to everyone, regardless of belief, by stores, by municipal holiday displays, at office parties, etc. In that case, what does "Merry Christmas!" even mean?

Here's what it means:

"I hope you have a warm and wonderful Christmas celebration! However, I don't hope that you have a happy Hanukkah. I don't hope you and your family have a happy (Pagan) Yule or Solstice celebration or a good Ramadan. And if you and your family celebrated Diwali this year, I don't care if it was a merry one or not."

What kind of person would want to say such a thing? Have they got something against being considerate to others? Call me crazy, but to me well-wishing should have some sort of (theoretical?) connection with actually wishing the person well. And especially during the holiday season, what's wrong with a little goodwill to all? Even to those people who are **shudder** a little different from yourself.

When it comes right down to it, the so-called "War on Christmas" isn't about the Christians vs. their favorite whipping-boy the atheists, as much as they'd like to paint it that way. Atheists sometimes join in the fray just on the principle of separation of church and state, but really, the apathetic-to-non-believing set aren't the ones being excluded. Atheism has no competing holidays, so non-believers tend to just stick with familiar traditions. That means that American atheists actually celebrate Christmas more often than not. Really, the "War on Christmas" is about Christian supremacists picking on other traditions and on other "people of faith."

Festive Carols for a Merry (secular) Christmas and other Happy Holidays!!!

Do you love the family Christmas scene? The Christmas tree is lit with the little electric train running around it, and the parents signing Christmas cards or decorating cookies with the kids? All you need are some familiar Christmas carols to complete the effect. Don't let lack of belief stand in your way!!! Our culture has a such a long and varied tradition of Christmas music that the religious pieces are the exception rather than the rule.

To help get you started, here are some of the tunes you'll hear at my house:

Winter Songs:

There are many "Christmas carols" which aren't about Christmas at all -- they're just winter songs that have gotten sucked into the vortex of Christmas. Examples include Jingle Bells, Jingle Bell Rock, Sleigh Ride, and Winter Wonderland. There's also a whole sub-genre in this category just for songs about Winter cuddling: Let it Snow!, Baby, it's Cold Outside, I've Got my Love to Keep me Warm, Winter Weather, and Warm December.

Christmas Traditions with Family and Friends:

Then there are songs that are about celebrating Christmas. What better way to celebrate Christmas than to sing about celebrating Christmas? There's The Christmas Song (Chestnuts roasting), It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, The Christmas Waltz, Christmas Is..., Christmastime in New Orleans, and It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Some of the oldest ones were originally party game songs (where the game is to make up words), but have since settled down to some standard festive Christmas-celebration lyrics: Deck the Halls and The Twelve days of Christmas.

This category also includes a number of songs about wanting to spend the holidays with loved ones: I'll Be Home for Christmas, There's no place like Home for the Holidays, Merry Christmas, Darling, I'll have a Blue Christmas, There is no Christmas like a Home Christmas, White Christmas, and one of my personal favorites: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

Wishing You a Merry Christmas:

There are a number of songs to sing about wishing someone else a merry Christmas. This includes traditional "luck-visit" songs: We wish you a Merry Christmas, Here We Come a-Wassailing, and God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. Some of the luck-visit songs contain Christian references, but they're interesting because they're reminders of the old caroling/wassailing traditions where the poor received Christmas treats in exchange for a song. (Bring Us in Good Ale falls into that category as well, although they skip the part about wishing the host a Merry Christmas...)

Some more modern songs center around wishing others a merry Christmas such as the fabulous Have a Holly Jolly Christmas, Welcome Christmas (from the Grinch), and Happy Holidays, as well as bi-cultural favorites like Mele Kalikimaka and Feliz Navidad.

Symbols of Christmas:

Let's sing about Christmas Bells: Silver Bells, The Carol of the Bells, and Ring those Christmas Bells! Or let's sing about the Christmas tree: O Tannenbaum, Trim up the Tree (from the Grinch), and Rocking Around the Christmas Tree. Or cut the B.S. and go straight to the point: the presents! Merry Christmas, Baby, All I Want for Christmas (is my two front teeth), I'm Getting Nothing for Christmas, Christmas Kisses, I'd Like You for Christmas, and Jolly Old St. Nicholas.

Christmas Characters:

Speaking of His Jolliness, there's no shortage of songs about Santa Claus: Here Comes Santa Claus, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Little Saint Nick, Up on the Housetop, Petit Papa Noel, Santa Claus's Party, and Santa Claus is Back in Town. And there are a couple where Santa sure makes good use of his list of naughty girls, see: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus and TMBG's Santa's Beard.

Then there's a whole list of other favorite Christmas characters: Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch. You can also throw in The Little Drummer Boy and various songs about the baby Jesus here if you're so inclined.

Other Winter Holidays:

While you're at it, why not throw in a few secular songs about some other holidays you may or may not be celebrating? Try What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?, Adam Sandler's Hanukkah Song, and TMBG's Feast of Lights. There's also Good King Wenceslas for the "Feast of Stephen." That one's not exactly secular, but it's cool: for once the miraculous reward for charity isn't further riches, it's magically-warmed footprints.

Miscellaneous:

Some are harder to categorize. One of my all-time favorite Christmas songs is Fairy Tale of New York which is kind of sentimental and unsentimental in a way that's hard to describe. Then there's John Lennon's So this is Christmas... (Merry X-mas, war is over), which is hard to describe in a completely different way, even though its message -- Merry Christmas and peace to all -- couldn't be more standard Christmas fare. I guess it just seems controversial because when he talks about "peace on Earth," he means for real...

Then there are some complete Christmas musical productions: The Nutcracker Suite and Babes in Toyland.

And don't forget to throw in a few funny ones. My favorite is Monty Python's Christmas in Heaven. The South Park gang also have a few amusing selections.

Religious Carols:

Okay, I admit it -- I include some religious carols on my Christmas music playlist. I mostly just include the liveliest and most familiar of the bunch, and even then I usually go with instrumental versions. I like Greensleeves, so I include a few versions of that one, but rarely with the religious lyrics ("What Child Is This?").

There are a few exceptions, though, where I like the words as well as the music. There's The Holly and the Ivy and The Cherry Tree Carol. Both of these are fun because they seem very pagan, hence highlight the pagan roots of the Jesus story. I also like Rudi Cazeaux's Angels Are Singing. Then there's Veni Emmanuel. That one is cool because it's one of the oldest Christmas carols that is still popular today, written in the middle ages. That's not why I like it though. I like it because it reminds me of my husband. Many people get to listen to somewhat more romantic songs with their S.O.'s first name, but when you fall for someone whose parents were religious, you take what you can get. I also like to listen to It's Christmas Time and Time for a Carol for essentially the same reason: Christmas time is time for me!! :D

On that note:

It's time for a carol, don't you think? :^)

The Grinch and the True Meaning of Christmas

What happened then?
Well, in Whoville they say
that the grinch's small heart
grew three sizes that day.
And then the true meaning of Christmas came through,
and the grinch found the strength of ten grinches,
plus two.

The 1966 cartoon version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas is my all-time favorite Christmas special. I know last year I gave Heat Miser and Snow Miser the prize for "most entertaining," but this cute little cartoon about the Grinch is a masterpiece.



How much do I love this cartoon? Let me count the ways: (1) the fun poetry of it, read to perfection by Boris Karloff, (2) the humor and nonsense, beautifully captured in fanciful drawings, (3) the fabulous You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch as well as other delightful songs.



Plus this special has a very merry Christmas message for me and all of my not-quite-Christian friends who like to celebrate Christmas:

And he puzzled and puzzed till his puzzler was sore,
then the grinch thought of something he hadn't before.
Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store;
maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more...

See? Christmas isn't just an orgy of consumerism -- it means more than that.

But what?

The cartoon makes it very clear. Christmas is all about joy of celebrating and sharing traditions from one generation to the next.



It's easy to get disgusted with Christmas. It's this ever-escalating festival of gorging oneself, and then -- like some sort of penance for all the gorging -- getting reminded that you're supposed to be thinking about Jesus. But if Jesus were really the true meaning of Christmas, the clergy wouldn't have to keep reminding people of it. And if you believe in the standard model -- either Christmas is consumerism or it's Jesus -- then you've missed the warm and simple reason why the mid-winter festival of lights has been such a beloved and enduring tradion across so many different centuries and cultures.

So -- to my theist and atheist friends who celebrate Christmas as I do -- Merry Christmas!!!

And for all the other holidays you're celebrating this holiday season: Happy Holidays!!!

Be sure to share and pass along whichever holiday traditions you loved as a kid: decorating, singing, preparing holiday treats, etc. And feel free to join me in one of my favorite holiday traditions: watching The Grinch.