Merry & Bright; But Not That Bright!

If you are a child of the 50s/60s, maybe you remember suffering a malady of temporary blindness every Christmas morning. Sixty some years later, it doesn’t seem there are any lasting ill-effects. It was all well-intentioned, an attempt by fathers everywhere to capture the childlike wonder on that special day.

Every dad, theoretically, wants Christmas morning to be special for his family. This spirit of well-meaningness is personified in the affable Clark Griswold as chronicled in the movie “Christmas Vacation”. We laugh and relate to Clark’s story because in some ways it’s our story too.

If, from Clark, we can learn what NOT to do, could it be that there’s an outline, a plan for the guy who wants to get it right, leaving the family with happy memories of Christmas 2016?

If we go back a couple of centuries we find this advice:

1. Deck the hall with boughs of holly,
2. ’Tis the season to be jolly,
3. Don we now our gay apparel,
4. Troll the ancient Christmas carol,

5. See the blazing yule before us,
6. Strike the harp and join the chorus.
7. Follow me in merry measure,
8. While I tell of Christmas treasure,

9. Fast away the old year passes,
10. Hail the new, ye lads and lasses!
11. Sing we joyous all together,
12. Heedless of the wind and weather,

Fa La La La La La La La La

Let’s interpret this line by line and see if it works in the 21st Century.

1. Decorate the house.
2. The season is fraught with the potential for stress and frustration. Don’t worry, be jolly.
3. Feel free to wear whatever crazy sweater you want.
4. Crank up a Christmas playlist and sing along at the top of your lungs.

5. Build a good fire, if you have a fireplace.
6. Maybe you don’t have a harp to strike, but a ukulele or kazoo will do.
7. Encourage others to join in the merriment.
8. Definitely tell the Christmas story.

9. Savor every moment. They pass quickly.
10. View tomorrow with a youthful optimism.
11. More singing.
12. Turn off the TV and the hyper-reporting of Oklahoma’s TV weather prognosticators.

Fa La La La La La La La La

And by all means make memories, take pictures and video. Today we can do that without blinding our children and grandchildren as our dads did to us with that bank of flood lights they would turn on with their 8mm movie cameras just as we awoke on Christmas morning to see what Santa had left under the tree. Usually by 11:15a or so our eyesight would recover so we could join in the merriment.

If you’re not familiar with those lights dads used for their film to work in indoor settings, you can still see them today keeping the french fries warm at McDonald’s.

Fa La La La La La La La La

The Thing is

“It’s Your Thing—do what you wanna do.”

That’s the title and first line of a 1969 Isley Brother’s song. It has a sort of live and let live vibe to it, doesn’t it? The zeitgeist. More on that in a minute.

The other day I was sitting in a “waiting” room at the AM/PM; waiting. That’s what you do. I overheard this conversation between a lady and her brother-in-law who had driven her to the clinic:

HER: What are you doing on that phone; Facebook?
HIM: Candy Crush.
HER: You really like that, huh?
HIM: It’s sort of my Thing.

Your THING?! What kind of guy makes Candy Crush his Thing? Maybe I’m judging too quickly. I don’t actually know what Candy Crush is. Maybe if I tried it, it would be my Thing too. Probably not.

Then I had this moment where I imagined asking the guy, in a condescending manner, “What do you mean, Candy Crush is your Thing? How can that be? Is it your only Thing? Or is it just your Thing when your sitting in waiting rooms with your sister-in-law?”

Then I imagined him saying, “What’s it to you, wise-ass?” I imagined him to be the kind of guy who would use a word like that, while giving you a look like maybe Candy is the only thing he would like to Crush.

Then I imagined him saying, “So, what’s your Thing?” And I panicked, because I couldn’t think of a Thing right then. I mean I had already scrolled through Instagram for new photos of the Grand-Girls, and now I was pretty much just checking out the people in the waiting room trying to guess their ailments and wondering about my chances of getting out of there without catching whatever it was they were spreading. But that’s not a good, manly Thing really, is it?

So for the rest of the time in the waiting room I occupied my mind in a kind of transcendental survey of noble Things I could adopt as my own. That kind of stuff has always been important to me—well for at least as long as I can remember. I believed I wanted to pursue noble things, worthwhile things, at least as I understood them to be.

I worry sometimes about becoming irrelevant—not having a Thing, one of those old guys who has been bypassed by the pace of technology and popular culture and the vitality of life. I used to know stuff. There was a time when I could have told you for instance, which artists were up for the top Grammy awards. Now I recognize few of them. I don’t stay up late enough to see them on Jimmy Fallon, so I’m out of touch. And frankly, I’m becoming so geezerish that I’m of the sincere opinion that most of them are not truly Grammy worthy musicians anyway.

I used to have a utilitarian understanding of the kids’ slang and could use some of it in sentences in a way that seemed natural and credible. You might say I had my on fleek moments.

Maybe being able to converse with the kids isn’t a worthwhile Thing for me anymore. Maybe I’ll keep trying though, and that will make me one of those corny old, cardigan guys. I’ll say stuff and the Grand-Girls will roll their eyes and say, “Oh, Pops, you’re silly.” And maybe I’ll say, “That’s sort of my Thing.”

There was a time, not so long ago, I would have said my Thing was being a “creative catalyst”. It all started when I attended a meeting in New York City with a group called the International Arts Movement. I became a part of the movement and even served on their board of directors. It gave me a language, a vision, and a plan to encourage young creatives, and to look for ways to bring them together in a catalytic way to collaborate and to work as only artists can. It was my Thing for several years and I loved it. I cherish the friendships and memories of that experience.

I am convinced, more than ever, that our world needs the beauty, goodness and truth that art and the creative processes alone can bring. We need creatives to do their Thing and we need it more desperately every day.

There’s another line in that Isley Brother’s song that says:

"I'm not trying to run your life, I know you wanna do what's right."

That brings me back to the start of this post—the 60s zietgiest; or my version of it. The live-and-let-live kool-aid was sweetened for me as a journalism major at the University of Tulsa. We were taught that news reporting, REAL news reporting was objective. “Don’t make value judgements,” we were taught, a guiding principle I tended to think applied to life beyond the reporting of news as well. This synced with my desire to not have my values judged, and my Judeo-Christian upbringing to “Judge not, lest you be judged.”

Maybe that’s the part of the current zeitgeist (as I perceive it) that is so disconcerting for me. It seems that “lines” are being drawn so hard, so furiously, so emotionally. Maybe a better song for the day is Tina Turner’s mid-80s hit, “What’s love got to do with it?” and her cynical lyric, “what’s love but a second hand emotion?”

Don’t get me wrong I am still hopeful and a bit idealistic. I do believe that there is something within us that will prevail. After all, we are created in the image of a Creator, who created us with a capacity to understand that it all comes down to love, ultimately and eternally.

So, my apologies to waiting-room guy, if you’re listening, “I’m sorry for judging. If Candy Crush is your Thing, crush it my brother, crush it!”

A Gift For Every Man

Still shopping? If that hard to shop for person on your list is a guy, a dad or granddad, maybe I can help. Please do not say at any point during the reading of this post, "but, he doesn't read; and there's no way he would write in a journal."

Buy him a good book and a journal. Because...

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

I firmly believe every man will read something, or at least look at the pictures. Here's one that will be a sure-fire winner. It's a wonderful story about a father, a son and a baseball bat. It's only 70 pages long. It's called "A Drive Into The Gap". Click here to check it out, watch a short video about the book and even order it.

While you're at the Fieldnotes site, peruse their selection of journals and order your guy a pack.

If your home library doesn't already have a copy of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird, get them before they're banned in our new version of America. Don't worry that he might think these are books for kids. Because...

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”   ― C.S. Lewis

Next, bundle up your gift of book and journal and put them under the tree. If when he opens his gift this Christmastime, he looks at it like he hasn't seen a book since seventh grade. Tell him that you read a blog where some wise-old man said that reading will enhance mental capacity, youthfulness, and virility.

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines
what you will be when you can’t help it.”   ― Oscar Wilde

If he needs some help with what to do with his new journal, send him to this post at The Art of Manliness. He won't be able to resist visiting a site called "the art of manliness".

THE END

My Thanksgiving Table Pledge

I would be lying if I said I didn’t suffer an occasional case of schadenfreude. Maybe it’s just human nature. Maybe that isn’t a good excuse. Maybe I need to grow up. Maybe at 60-something, that’s unlikely. I’ve probably done all the growing up I’m going to do. Maybe, in fact, my state of maturity could be in regression.

Still, every time the wind catches that crazy comb-over, so beloved by our P-elect-OTUS, I can’t help but enjoy it. Now there’s a discussion topic for the Thanksgiving Table: Bad Hairdos of Famous People. Speaking of orange, let’s include HFC@OSU Mike Gundy. Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy for the success of his Cowboys, but seriously does he not have a friend anywhere who can explain that mullets fall deeply in the category along with comb-overs as Most Riculous Hair Styles Ever? I know, I know, I’m BALD. But at least I can blame my do on genetics.

Back to the subject of appropriate table conversation—I was at a department store the other day buying a new shirt that might not show the gravy and cranberry stains that will undoubtedly be on it post-meal. I overheard a couple of salespersons:

SP1: I’m hosting our family for Thanksgiving. I plan to meet everyone at the door with a big glass of wine for each person.

SP2: Why?

SP1: We’ve got Trump Lovers and Trump Haters and I’m going to try to mellow them all out before the topic turns to politics.

SP2: I hear ya.

Hear Ye. Hear Ye. I have a proclamation to make. I do hereby, proclaim and promise that I will not talk politics at the Thanksgiving table.

You go first Louisa and get thine turkey started.

I realize how problematic that is given that the Day itself is fraught with political stuff. So, I’ll adjust my pledge to not talk about politics after 1863, the year President Abraham Lincoln, at the height of the Civil War, established the Day in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.”

Now that’s a proclamation I can get behind.

Also, off the table, so to speak, for me at the holiday table, is the topic of ailments, afflictions, infirmities, syndromesand other medical maladies.

Let me quickly add a clause to my official proclamation: my pledge doesn’t have to be your pledge. Of courseeveryone is free to talk about whatever they choose. Just don’t count on me to enter in to a discussion of American politics after 1863 or what hurts, leaks or needs to be replaced, and if the government (taxpayers) are going to pay for it. If the talk turns to those topics however, I won’t be offended, and certainly will not walk away from the table. I am fully on board with the cause to Make America Stuffed Again.

In preparation for the event(s), and in the event I’m called on to liven the discussion, I’ve been considering topics that might make for good conversation. Some ideas so far:

What does “Mary Had A Little Lamb” have to do with Thanksgiving? Did Mary still love her little lamb once it grew to be a cranky adult with patchy, yellowy fleece?

What is schadenfreude? Harmless fun or a manifestation of deep bitterness, and if so, can giving thanks cure it?

Best Christmas movie (not counting Hallmark movies) and why. Who would win the award for best actor in a holiday movie? Best actress? Best quote from a holiday movie.

Food Fun. Tryptophan: friend or foe? Myth or fact? Jello: why did anyone ever decide to put carrot shavings in orange Jello. Did someone say, “Hey, they’re both orange. Let’s combine them.” I am trying so hard to not make a joke about our first orange POTUS.

Black Friday vs. Football: Where do you stand? Is this Thanksgiving the way the Pilgrims imagined it? Could it be that they are mutually beneficial to family harmony? She says: “Fine sit around all weekend and watch football. I’m going shopping! He says: “Fine, bail on the family and go shopping. I’ll sit around all weekend and watch football.” Everybody wins.

Like I said, this is a work in progress. Feel free to make suggestions.

Perhaps I’ll just sit quietly, look around the table at the people I love and that say they love me, be deeply thankful and wonder if maybe I’ve become “That Uncle”.