A Different Kind of Christmas Song

For 23 years, this song has been as much a part of my Christmas as any of the classic carols.

Christmas Eve at my church probably shares much in common with the service at other UU churches: It is, first of all, an amalgam that blends the Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, and the Christmas Story itself into one grand festival of light. Yet even with that characteristically Unitarian Universalist syncretism, it is one time (not the only one necessarily) when we happily read familiar tales from the Bible and without apology invoke the names of God and Jesus.

Most years, our minister takes the pulpit in the guise of one who was there on that Bethlehem night of legend 2,000 years ago. He's been a shepherd, one of the Magi, Jesus's cousin John, an angel, and, I think, even the innkeeper. Some roles he's played more than once. In 1990, as American troops gathered in Kuwait to launch the invasion that would become the First Gulf War, he spoke as a Roman centurion. And in whatever persona he adopts to retell the story, I find myself moved beyond measure, my eyes welling with tears of comfort.

Tonight, he was Joseph. (In case you were wondering, he firmly pointed out that he was Jesus's real father -- despite the stories that later made it into the Bible.) He told of how much he learned to be a parent from his son, and how hearing not only the local shepherds, but even visiting astrologers from afar, speak of the promise that the infant represented made him see his own child differently -- an attitude that he recommended to parents everywhere.

When the message is over, and after we sing "Silent Night" with the traditional words, then comes another musical tradition. For reasons that I don't really know, we always close the service with a song that doesn't mention Christmas anywhere in its lyrics, a song sung by a little green frog with a banjo and a nasal voice.

It was an odd touch, I thought, the first time I experienced it more than two decades ago -- odd, and yet somehow perfect in its reflection of the hope and mystery and promise of Christmas. Now I have trouble imagining the night before Christmas without it.

When the older DairyStateKid was less than 6 months old, I began singing it to him every night as a lullaby. And the tradition continued when his younger brother came along five years later.

Tonight, we all went to church: The two DairyStateKids, their stepmother DairyStateMom, the older DSK's Buddhist girlfriend, and me. We heard the stories, basked in the warmth of the candlelight, sang the old familiar carols, and then joined together in this song.

Later, as he lay in bed in the darkness of his room waiting for the sleep that will bring Christmas Morning, the younger DairyStateKid, who will be 15 in one month, asked me to sing the first verse one more time. Of course I did.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Deck Us All...

I remember when this first ran. Consider it my Christmas Card to everyone.

h/t Roger Ebert.

I love this

h/t, Kay at Sunshine and Starlight

Tweeting the Declaration

Slate had a contest. I read about it here. My favorite:

@Boston1775: "We seek independence based on noble and universal ideas combined with petty and one-sided grievances."

Happy St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day has never been very high on my list of holidays. Nothing against it, just it was never particularly special.

A couple of random recollections.

I was in China for 3 weeks some 8 years ago, part of a team of mostly teachers (plus a couple of ringers, including me) from Wisconsin and Northern Illinois who were teaching in a summer school program to offer English language and American cultural immersion. Each of us prepared a lesson on a particular state or major city of the U.S. Having gone to graduate school at The World's Greatest Journalism School, it was natural for me to pick New York City. When it came time to pick a holiday associated with the city, I chose St. Patrick's Day, and on one of my presentations I talked a dear friend and fellow teacher into serenading the class with "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling."

Red hair, of course, is associated with the Irish. DairyStateKid#1 once won a red-headed-kid contest at Irish Fest in Milwaukee. But years before that, he had the greatest comeback ever to a nosy question about his hair. Neither his mother nor I have red hair (I don't have much hair at all, to be sure), and in a restaurant with his mother for lunch one day when he was about 3, he was approached by a well-meaning older woman. "Where did you get that lovely red hair?" she asked.

"It started growing on my head when I was a baby," was his reply.

Finally, here's a lovely little essay on today through an Interfaith lens.

Top o' th' mornin' to you all.

Music for the New Year

DairyStateMom and I are watching the tail end of the New Year's Day concert from Vienna. Of course, they always play this during the encores. Different visuals, though...

Happy New Year!

Season's Greetings...

Yes, it is Christmas. And at my church this evening, we will also make (belated) note of the Summer Winter Solstice (3 days late) and of Hanukkah, which ended a week ago.

But it's another special day as well: the 102nd birthday of the late I.F. Stone.

From his Wikipedia entry:

In the 1930s and 40s Stone had been a mainstream journalist, appearing on Meet the Press (then a radio show); in 1950 he found himself blacklisted and unable to get work. In 1953, inspired by the example of the muckraking journalist George Seldes and his political weekly, In Fact, Stone decided to start his own independent newsletter, I. F. Stone's Weekly. Over the next few years, Stone's newsletter campaigned against McCarthyism and racial discrimination in the United States.

In 1964, using evidence drawn from a close reading and analysis of published accounts, Stone was the only American journalist to challenge President Johnson's account of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. During the 1960s, Stone continued to criticize the Vietnam War. At its peak in the 1960s, the Weekly had a circulation of about 70,000, yet it was regarded as very influential.

Hundreds of articles originally published in the Weekly were later republished in The I.F. Stone's Weekly Reader (1973), and in three volumes of a six-volume compendium of Stone's writings called A Noncomformist History of Our Times (1989).

Happy Birthday, Mr. Stone...

Drawing a circle to take him in

My post yesterday was going to be the last thing I wrote on the Keillor matter, and then I saw this article by Fred Small.

I've been an even bigger fan of Fred Small than of Garrison Keillor for 25 years. For those who don't know, Fred is a singer/songwriter in the folk/social commentary tradition. His music is filled with subtle and catchy melodies and his lyrics touch my heart, make me laugh, make me weep. He was -- is -- in my not-so-humble opinion a worthy heir to the tradition of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton. I was thrilled 14 years ago to interview him for a newspaper story. And then I learned of his career change: attending Harvard Divinity School to become a UU minister, and while I was sorry to see him leave the music circuit was very happy for our religious movement to have such a gifted person join our clergy.

But not until this moment did I realize that he was now the minister of the same church where reading a slightly altered "Silent Night" in the hymnal set off Keillor's ill-tempered screed last week. I am so pleased that he has now spoken up and given a firm, gentle, even-tempered and generous -- more generous than I could be right now -- reply to that same screed.

Fred, I hope Mr. Keillor takes you up on his offer. And Merry Christmas to you both.

Retitled and updated: A personal epiphany

This was originally called "An American in China reflects on Keillor's 'buzz off.' It's grown and changed direction some.

Like a rubbernecker turning around on the highway to go back and stare at the car wreck, I've been monitoring Internet reaction to that GK column, in the blog-UU-sphere but also beyond. I won't post everything I see, but this at MinnPost.com resonates especially with me, perhaps because of the 3 weeks I spent in China 7 years ago.

And now, the update:

Some more stuff up today; here is one. And here or two more very strong responses, one responding to Keillor and the other inspired both by Keillor and by a Slate commentator who made a passing diss at UUs.

Which brings me to my 'aha' moment: As one who has for years laughed jokes at the expense of Unitarian Universalism, my spiritual community, I am becoming increasingly embarrassed by my own tolerance of same. Reading this as well as this (the relevant passage begins 8 paragraphs from the end) from Rev. Thom really brought that home for me. And in an indirect way, so did reading this.

It's just hitting me: I still think they can both be very funny men, but on the subject of faith, Bill Maher and Garrison Keillor are two sides of a tarnished coin. I have never liked Bill Maher's cheap shots at Christianity and at religion in general--even at religious beliefs that I find impossible to accept.

The least I can do is to show as much respect toward my own.

Confidential to Chalicechick: At least when it comes to Keillor's jokes about us, you were right all along.

I like this

UU Church offers alternative to Black Friday.

Teach your children well

It was this morning at church, our annual service of Christmas choir music and stories. The minister was about to launch into the children's story, and began by relating various Christmas carol typographical errors that had appeared over the years in church bulletins. He would read the line as written and ask what the line was really supposed to be. The first was "Joy to the Earth, the Savior Resigns..." Of course, these kids were too young to see "reigns" in the "resigns." The adults chuckled.

Then came the next one: "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Me."

"So, what do you think that line was supposed to be?" he asked.

The kids didn't miss a beat--at either service.

"Good will to all!" one piped up.

Do you believe?

The last thing I'm going to write on that GK column...

...at least until I write something else.

In the end, I do find the whole Keillor episode a little baffling.

A Talking Points Memo commenter insists it is just satire. Certainly, in the face of things like this, satire would seem all too easy -- and tempting.

But if satire was the intent, it's no Modest Proposal. Instead, a lot of people have missed the point. Including me.

I really did -- and until this evening was still inclined to -- believe that the infamous gay marriage column was satirical. (More on that in a moment.) And yes, I've read Dan Savage's response to Keillor's subsequent apology on that one. I frankly just see saw it differently. But the Christmas column, not so much.

And clearly not so much with other commenters around the Internet.

If Keillor's Christmas column was intended as satire, it fails -- and the gay-marriage-column episode should have been a lesson to him on the perils of the form for his audience.

It fails because, in the end, too many people miss the point. Not just us touchy Unitarians, but Jews as well.

Worse yet, if it was satire, a number of people who have responded in the comments section at Salon, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun to roundly endorse his screed never got the memo, either.

And then DairyStateMom and I got to talking this evening, and she offered the opinion that she wasn't so sure the aforementioned gay marriage column was satirical, either. Since I take what she says seriously, I'm having to rethink that, too.

Up to now I've enjoyed his jokes on UUs. He makes fun of Lutherans and Catholics, too, after all. So the jokes about us simply made me feel part of the club. Until this current controversy I had been ignorant of the amount of distaste for him in some UU circles.

Now I'm starting to wonder if I'm just some sort of self-hating UU for laughing.


~DSD, who has long admired that famous Swiftian satire and was beside himself some years ago teaching a night-school college class of students who thought Swift was serious.

Another country heard from

Is it just a coincidence? In the wake of the Keillor flap (and especially his seemingly anti-Semitic throwaway line) this New York Times commentary from the singer Michael Feinstein couldn't have been more timely.

(Thanks to DSM for bringing it to my attention.)

I'm a huge fan of Garrison Keillor...(updated)

...and I even love it when he pokes fun at us UUs. DSM and I were in the audience the first Saturday in October when they did the skit about the UU-Baptist football game and I laughed as loud as anyone.

But he gets it wrong sometimes. And that's why I'm also all for this plan.

Update:
Chalicechick has a lively debate going on the same subject and is much tougher on Keillor than I am. DespiteBecause of our different points of view on his other stuff (especially the infamous gay marriage column from a year or so ago), what she has to say is worth reading.

And for a particularly wry response, don't miss Jess, either.

Further update:

A lot more responses have surfaced in the blog-UU-sphere. Thanks especially to Paul Oakley for his convenient feed shortcut that allows one-stop shopping on the topic!