P.S. A Column On Things

Start of Dec. 23 Column. More or Less Continuous News Service since 1998

Calendar Quirks

Because of the crummy calendar we operate under (13 months of 28 days, please, someday) Christmas falls on a different day every year. Since it is on Wednesday, today’s double year-end issue will be a change of pace. It will contain my Christmas and New Year’s messages and a bit of humor. Then lights out until Jan. 6.

As my mentor Edwin Diamond used to say, “Anyone who is working the week between Christmas and New Year’s is obviously not very important."  I am very important, so see you in the New Year.

Christmas Message

In the fine old tradition of journalists who recycle their holiday messages year after year, here's the 20th rerun of my Christmas message since Dec. 21, 1998 (with a few slight modifications and a few years off).

Season's greetings to one and all. Apologies to those of you who feel oppressed by the season. I know Christians, atheists and Jews who feel the seasonal oppression in equal parts. Oppression and depression. I'm sorry. This message isn't going to cheer you up, much.

This is a time of year that has inspired some of the most brilliant writing in the English language. It ranges from Dickens' A Christmas Carol (which single-handedly revived the celebration of Christmas as a major holiday in the English-speaking world), to the sturdy newspaper editorial entitled Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus. In more modern times, we have, among other things, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and the unforgettable Bill Murray as Scrooge in the Dickens adaptation, Scrooged. (Not to mention Olive, The Other Reindeer. Never seen it. Love the pun).

This item ends with some lines of Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas In Wales which Fr. Harrison West and I recited several times at Benson High School assemblies (long before he was Fr. West).

What is Christmas about? It can be about the birth of Jesus, but for most of us it isn't. It's about many things.

Christmas is about singing (or listening to) Christmas carols. My favorite annual Christmas party, bar none, was the Christmas Caroling party once held annually by our best friends. They're Jewish, and so are many of the party goers. Joyful voices raised together. Doesn't matter if they're not in tune. Doesn't matter if some of the lyrics are Christian claptrap. Jingle Bells, White Christmas and Here Comes Santa Claus, along with the rest of the secular Christmas liturgy are just plain fun. I loved doing "Five Golden Rings" every year (new partners, as my friends Norm and Kent passed away) when we sing The 12 Days Of Christmas.

Christmas is about family and friends. It is about egg nog (or fat-free "Holiday Nog") and all the rest of the seasonal food. It is about the children.

It's about traveling, at the worst travel time of year, to get away with your family.

Christmas is about family traditions when you're a kid, and the blending of family traditions when you marry. In childhood, my family stayed at home on Christmas, my wife was always a Christmas runaway. My lights went up the Saturday after Thanksgiving each year and came down the Saturday after New Year’s. Vicki's went up on Christmas Eve and came down on Boxing Day. There aren't as many lights as when the girls were little. That's OK.

We've had artificial trees for years. M asked for a big real tree her freshman year at college, so we put a 14-footer in the library in 1999; then R asked for one and got it in 2003. This year -- just a little tabletop tree with Chinese decorations.

Christmas is about giving thanks. Thanksgiving is the official holiday to give thanks for our good fortune, but nothing says you can't do that at Christmas as well. Every Christmas morning when I wake up with my health, my wife and my children as part of this world, I count my blessings. Mine are beyond counting. I hope yours are too. I have adult-onset diabetes, but there are lots of worse diseases in the world. Mine, at least, is under control. I almost died in a car crash in January 2007, but I'm still alive. My wacky ticker made me faint, and now I have a defibrillator/pacemaker. Beats the alternative.

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six..

--Dylan Thomas

Read my very first Christmas column, from MIT’s ERGO student newspaper in December, 1970, along with a plug for Jon Carroll’s Untied Way.

New Year’s Baby

Scene: nowhere and everywhere. Mother Nature is pregnant. She is discussing her pregnancy with her partner, Father Time.

“Here we go again, a New Year’s baby.”

“Maybe we should stop trying. Our child goes viral on the day he is born, but never makes it to his first birthday. Talk about infant mortality.”

A Little Humor

Here are some humor items to bring a smile to your face at year’s end. Just read them, then make like a bakery truck and get your buns out of here.

Paul On The Top5

In its heyday (and mine) my submissions frequently made the Top5 list. I don’t have all my winners by far, but there’s a good sample here, of the times when I came out on top.

For those too lazy to follow a link, here’s a true story about one of my items.

Al Gore, Thief of Bad Gags
(5/15/2000)

Al Gore has been using jokes from the Top5 list, the Internet humor cooperative I contribute to, without credit. In particular, he used a joke of mine that was a runner-up (it didn’t even make the list!) of Jewish Country and Western Songs:

"My Foot's On The Glass, Where Are You?"

For a guy whose whole knowledge of Jewish wedding customs comes from attending a half-dozen friends' weddings, I thought the joke wasn't bad. I told a reporter for the Chicago Tribune I'd write jokes directly for Al if he asked me. So far, no one's called.

Instructions for Life

I received a great list of Instructions for Life that I like to share periodically. There are 19: here is a sample

• 1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
• 2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
• 19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.

No Column Next Week

End of December 23 Column (No. 961)

Start of Dec. 16 Column. More or Less Continuous News Service since 1998

Grateful For What I Had

This is the first Christmas season in 31 years that I will not announcing a a band concert; 7 years for what is now the Contra Costa Wind Symphony, 24 for the Danville Community Band. But I have chosen to be grateful for what I had, not sad about what I don’t have anymore.

I know I wrote last April about my public speaking career here and here. I neglected to note that I didn’t start public speaking in high school; I was the PA announcer for 8^th grade track and field day in 1965, a consolation prize for the fact that I lacked sufficient skill to compete in any of the events.

From there to MC at a number of assemblies in high school, as well as radio work. Two years doing radio at MIT. Hundreds of one-minute stints on PBS, dozens of proto-podcasts, five television game shows, and a season of announcing girl’s basketball at Miramonte High.

In all those 60 years of public speaking, I’ve never once had butterflies before walking out, never doubted my ability to communicate with the audience. Announced without a public address system once in Benson High’s 1,000 seat auditorium, and a couple of other times in smaller venues.

My motto has always been “No one sleeps when I’m on.”

Do I miss getting to announce a Christmas concert? Do I miss my 32^nd chance to joke that the (non-existent) Uniform Brass Band Act of 1948 requires us to finish the program with Sleigh Ride?

A little. Am I happy for what I had, for the joy I brought other people and myself? I am. That should be enough.