Winter's Garden: A Spooky Night, Followed by Snow, Ice, Thunder and a High Probability of Weird

In the middle of the Dominican Republic a large lake is expanding its borders, swamping once valuable farm and pasture land. The government is building a new town  some distance away to replace one that will soon be rendered uninhabitable by the lake's rising waters.

            Compared to that -- to losing your home to rapid environmental change -- coping with changeable days in a northern hemisphere winter is surely no super biggie. Still, you know something happening, even if you don't know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?

            Lately some days we have piles of snow, and then we don't any. Then we have really cold weather. Then a thaw. Then really cold weather again.

            Really cold by our standards at least. Below zero is no stranger to many parts of the United States, the upper-north central states and even northern New England. But here it is, knocking on the drafty door in balmy Quincy-by-the -moderating-influence-of-the-ocean -- for the first time in our nearly ten years here.

            There is something spooky about seeing the temperature drop below zero. A world that is deeply familiar -- the view from the front door, from various windows front back and side, the continual spying on the bird feeder from the kitchen window: the almost obsessively familiar points of view, as if place itself were part of the family; your piece of the world -- is no longer what it was. No longer yours.

            Around midnight on a sub-zero night that familiar world-view was no longer friendly. Some alien power has taken over. The house lost its accustomed warmth. One imagined the alien fingers of the super-cold slipping through the weak spots, the places where even on ordinary days the life-preserving "heat" leaks away. Window frames, window glass, the uninsulated basement, the tiny unseeable holes in the the building sheath of walls and roof that allow in tiny creatures, or their eggs, that give an old house its own subtle biosystem. (How do these things get in the house? But they do.)

            Somehow that night, it seemed, you could feel the heat draining from the house. You hear the furnace running. The radiators stay hot.

            The moon moves slowly into view from the proscribed kitchen window, where you go to peek anyway. (No opening the door tonight to stand on the porch and stare at the sky.) But the moon's face is turned away, its comfort gone, its inimical silence a frozen blanched color possessed by alien powers determined to freeze you out.

            Where is your power now, O, Sun?

            Where are your smiles, and gentle songs? Don't even bring up gentle breezes. The prospect of super-chilled wind curdles my blood.

            It's not just a cold night, it strikes me, it's a primal night. Earth and darkness are re-exploring their beginnings. We hope they will agree, in reasonably short order, to let life start over once again. A little light, a little cheer. A little warmth.

            I don't know how the birds, and the squirrels (who are part of the gang though we've had our differences) survive this kind of cold. The trees and other plants. Yes, during the deep-cold spells they look different, the leaves of the rhododendron curling under to preserve what moisture they still have. But a day or later they're over it.

            We go from nothing in a day and a half to forty. Then to fifty. Then more snow arrives. Then the world changes again, some weather god snaps his fingers and a foot of snow disappears in a single solar blink of a twenty-four hour period.

            Yesterday Anne and I went for a walk in a misty, fifty-ish afternoon and got caught in a thunderstorm. Lightning on the second Saturday of January. Does this mean spring is on the way? I don't think so.

Fantasy Garden: It Comes With a Dragon ('The Desolation of Smaug')

            Let's just forget the whole quaint notion that the "Hobbit" trilogy director Peter Jackson, the film's producers and all other contributing factors, human and financial, came up with this time has much of anything to do with a work of sophisticated children's fiction by JRR Tolkien called "The Hobbit."

            What they came up with was an idea for a second trilogy of movies that would exploit the factors that made a success of the threesome they began a decade ago based on Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" -- in particular the fantastically beautiful setting, a few of the earlier films' characters (a surprisingly doughty mini-man called a Hobbit; an endearingly know-it-all wizard who's a sort of a headmaster with clout in high places), the cinematic wizardry devised to make the LOTR and, crucially, the wide public fan base.

            Tolkien's "Hobbit" has nothing trilogistic or apocalyptic about it. Though the book does climax with a violent conflict between good and evil, its theme is the charm of littleness. The Hobbit we meet at the start, Bilbo Baggins, is a homage to the little things of life. He's "the ordinary sensual man" -- a 19th literary term invented by Flaubert and exploited by Joyce in his everyman hero Leopold Bloom -- writ small.

            Tolkien's plot premise is to shake the Hobbit out of his materialistic satisfaction with everyday pleasures by tricking him into taking part in an adventure: he remains little on the outside but grows on the inside. He is forced to explore talents he doesn't know he has and reach his full potential as -- what? The common man forced into heroism? He's the English shopkeeper, you might say, standing up to Hitler.

            In Tolkien's book the Hobbit is carried along on the dwarfs' quest as a 'thief' by the wizard Gandalf because he's smaller than anyone else and somebody has to steal the jewel from the dragon. Unlike LOTR, the quest is as farcical and quirky as heroic. Bilbo has a riddle contest with a twisted creature who lives underground and turns out to be the now legendary cinematic creation Gollum. The dwarfs are not necessarily great warriors and they're not as amusing at the LOTR's Gimli. In Tolkien's "Hobbit" when muscle is needed to win a big battle, the author summons it (spoiler alert) from the sky.

            Jackson's tripartite "Hobbit" is something else again.To spin it out over three movies -- because that's how you justify the investment needed to make a big, technically clever, no-holds-bar fantasy epic -- you have to pad what you have with elements taken from Tolkien's other works, recycle some of the flashier bits from the LOTR films, and invent new stuff from whole cloth. The audience's initial encounter with this approach led to widespread dissatisfaction with the empty calories in last year's first installment.

            The good news is the second installment, "The Desolation of Smaug" is a much better movie, especially if you let go of the notion that it's a representation of Tolkien's Hobbit. (Perhaps it's 'The Bobbit by PJ Holkien.')

            I knew I would like this movie once I got past the spiders. In LOTR Jackson gave us a dark, completely chilling episode of a single giant spider tracking down a terrified Frodo. The episode was entirely in the spirit of Tolkien's book, but if you're as much of an arachnophobe as I am, you can manage to read some things you simply cannot bear to watch.

            In "Smaug," the mechanistic spiders who attack our heroes are colorful, rather bouncy toys who whisper weirdly to each other in a manner slightly reminiscent of Gollum, and the film's doughty dwarfs plus Bilbo can fight them off as equals. The episode is not overly long and simply paves the way for the next danger, the next fight. This installment's fights don't seem to go on as long as they did in the first film, when the effortless gymnastic dispatching of hordes of supposedly fearsome orcs threatens to turn the movie into a parody of itself. These cartoonish conflict are still a problem, as they were also for me in LOTR, but a smaller one since they occupy less space in the film.

            The film has a faster pace and new characters arrive, including a perfectly miserable reincarnation of Legolas, whose sulky adolescent pouting is not much enlivened by his relentless dispatching of orcs. He misses his buds from the earlier show. The elves themselves, kidnapped from LOTR and bossed around by a pompous short-sighted king figure from central casting, look like pale gestapo angels. This group needs a coup d'etat or a surprise inspection visit by the elf queen. However, the elves' presence offers us a charming female warrior whose romance-poetry aptitude clicks with a youthful, studly dwarf. Was this guy even in the first film?

            And escaping from the elves leads to a fun sequence when the dwarfs are forced to escape in barrels down a whitewater stream. The human lake-town they come is also another great cinematic setting. Then, at last, we come to the dragon.

            If every garden has to have a snake, then every treasure-house cave needs its dragon. In the beautifully illustrated edition of "The Hobbit" I acquired in the early days of parenting, a rather pretty dragon sits coiled on a reasonably comfortable pile of gold with a few baubles. In "Smaug," as everybody knows, the skyscraper dragon sleeps beneath a whole country of gold. The size of the pile suggests the over-topping of the film's lengthy final scene. It might even work, but I'd have to see it a few more times to figure out exactly what's going on.

            That's some kind of recommendation at least. I'm not desolated. It's a film I wouldn't mind seeing again.

The Garden of Holidays Greetings: Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, Season's Greetings, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Solstice, Welcome Yule!

            I'm a little late with my 'holiday season' letter. Did I say that right? Should that be 'New Year's letter'? 'Christmas letter'?

            And I can't get past the holiday season greetings "issue" that popped up absurdly this year. Provoked by political manipulators, some people started worrying about whether one holiday greeting was more appropriate than another.

            I have a proposal. Let's put the 'happy' -- or the 'merry' or any 'good' word-- back into holiday greetings. Once we've got that element taken care of -- a 'good' this, a 'happy' that; Greetings! Welcome!-- we've accomplished our purpose. The rest of the phrasing really doesn't matter to anybody. (Or shouldn't.)

            Everybody celebrates something this time of year, even if it's nothing more than a week or two off from school, or a day or two off from work. Holidays are a break we all need. Our traditional late December holiday season falls close to the winter solstice, a natural point for all societies to take a break from their routines. The 'festival,' or 'feast,' or way you celebrate that break is the way societies have marked that break from the routine time to 'festal time' when everyone is invited, in fact expected, to put aside their work or ordinary activities.

            For millennia civilizations have acknowledged the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year,as a special time. If you live in a temperate, season-driven, sun-dependent climate, it's a natural time to remind yourself of this dependence and appeal to whatever spiritual power your community recognizes to make sure the sun remembers that it's time to start coming back up in the sky, lengthening the days, and returning to us (in its appointed time) the growing season that human life depends on.

            That makes the solstice a good time to perform the sacrifice, sing the right songs, and utter the prayers that we believe those special power likes to hear from us. And so, since we have to gather all together to do these things right, we might as well figure out some ways to have some fun as well.

            Solstice festivals in pagan Europe were known as Yule time, from which the expression "yule log" still endures. The Yule log -- and in view of its purpose it had better be a goodly hunk of wood -- was supposed to be dragged in from your own land or received as a gift (apartment dwellers got this clause inserted in the festival rulebook) and placed in the hearth, where it was subject to greenery decorations and doused with ale or cider (on the theory that the consuming spirits had the same taste in beverages that you did), then set ablaze by a piece of last year's log and expected to last not only through the night but to to smolder for 12 days more days before being put out. That could be a chilly period unless the Yule log was permitted some companion logs to share the fireplace.

            Like the Yule log, the Christmas tree derives from the same North European notion of a "world tree," known to a Teutonic peoples as "Yggdrasil," an ash tree associated with the sun and the bringing of light. Another custom calls for finding a Yule branch with a flat side to use as candle holder for three candles.  

            Many Yule customs influence holiday traditions today -- the Christmas tree, decorative holly or other greens, burning candles.

            In the Mediterranean, the Romans had their Saturnalia a few days before the solstice, introducing a period of gift-giving, continual partying, and gambling, and the overturning of ordinary social rank. Here we find the root of the traditional office Christmas party.

            Our notion of when to begin, and celebrate, a new year probably also derives from the winter solstice. It's a new ear because the sun is in fact observably "returning" to the northern hemisphere, the days are lengthening, and it looks like the whole party is going to last for another year.

            Almost anybody looking forward to another year of existence on earth -- and that's a pretty wide tent -- would likely be receptive to a celebratory salutation of "Happy New Year" and "Seasons Greetings."

            While the salutation of "Merry Christmas" is unlikely to be used much by people who are not Christians, everyone can appreciate that it's the thought that counts. We all want to be told to be "merry" or happy about something.

             I am greeted by "Good Shabbos" at the end of services at my wife's temple, and though I do not use this salutation myself, it is hardly anything to get uptight about.

            Similarly, my father-in-law was charmed to receive a "Merry Christmas" from an almost certainly Muslim waiter in a Moroccan restaurant on Christmas Day in London, when all the English-owned businesses were closed but third-world establishments were kind enough to feed some hungry American tourists. ("God bless us everyone!")

            Nor do I have any hesitation in saying "Happy Hanukkah" to others at the appropriate times, though often I have no idea when that is. It's a holiday that derives from a national event (similar in kind to Independence Day) and is not directly related to the winter solstice, though the lovely phrase used to describe this holiday,"Festival of Lights," offers a strong similarity to the Yule/Christmas line of holiday customs and symbols.

           And for those who haven't yet discovered this application at home, leftover Hanukkah candles work wonderfully when inserted into the widely enjoyed Christmas decoration called "Angel Chimes."

            You can try that one at home -- while wishing your friends, family, neighbors, office mates, and other acquaintances some version of Season's-happy-good-Hanukkah-New Year's-Christmas-welcome-merry Solstice!

Holiday Hits: Usual Suspects and Unusual Additions

            My mother used to play the piano for the annual Christmas Day carol sing. She did it for decades before passing a couple of years ago. Now my son Saul plays guitar, along with his Uncle Dave, and we pretty much sing the same repertoire as we did in Mom's days.

            With a few additions.

            We do "The Twelve Days of Christmas," with a different singer for almost every numerical gift. We do "Good King Wenceslas" (over some protests), "Angels We Have Heard on High," "Silent Night" -- and all the standards copied by my brother from a musical score book, probably one my mother used to play from (often while complaining it was the wrong book). I find myself saying similar things these days.

            But we added a few decidedly un-holiday touches this year. Notably: A sort-of group sing of "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and -- I may have mentioned this before -- "The House of the Rising Sun."

            So what is it about these songs that we (by which I really mean "I") like so much?

            "Good King Wenceslas," to take an easy one, tells a story of a "just" king who gives alms to a peasant on the Feast of Stephen (Dec. 26). During the journey, his page -- the poor guy carrying the "alms"; food, etc. -- is about to expire in the cold, deep snow, but is told by the king to keep going by following in his footsteps. What a guy!

            According to my internet source, this legend is based on a 10th century "just king," the Duke of Bohemia (that's the Czech Republic today). For this legend to catch on in medieval England tells you something about the quality of English kingship.

            St. Stephen, who the poor peasant was feasting by walking around in the snow "seeking winter fuel" (which tells you something about being a peasant), was the first Christian martyr. He was stoned to death for teaching an unpopular gospel in Jerusalem. See how good songs are at teaching history?  

            We didn't sing -- lacking the score -- the marvelous tune "Baby it's cold outside," though there was a request for it. I have to quote my source, the Wikipedia, on this one: "Although popular during the Christmas season, it is strictly a romantic winter song such as Winter Wonderland or Marshmallow World." 

            Strictly? Like, who decides? A "romantic winter song": is that a recognized category?

            "Marshmallow World"?

            "Baby" was written by Frank  Loesser as a duet to perform with wife at a party and intended to show the guests it was time to go home. However, his wife, Lynn Garland, "considered it 'their song' and was furious " when Loesser sold it to the movies. I'm sure the wife had a valid point of view, spouses always do, but how could you not want to go public with a song this cleverly put together?

            "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" is a song we could attempt to sing only because, one, Uncle Dave has played it for years, and, two, the invention of the Iphone enabled several carolers to discover the lyrics to all the verses (I've lost count). So aided, a few of us kept on belting out the words to this haunting, entirely un-Christmaslike ballad.

            The song was written by Gordon Lightfoot, based on a maritime disaster on Lake Ontario, and reached number two on the hit parade after its release in the 70s.

            First question: Was the doomed Great Lakes freighter really named after the Irish Revolutionary who was the most famous martyr of the Irish rebellion of 1798?

            No, sorry to say, that was Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and no connection exists between the ship, the song, and this most romantic of doomed Irish revolutionaries. (I was hoping they just got the name wrong.) An Irish peer, Edward Fitzgerald was a follower of the ideas of Rousseau, whose rejections of rules, restrictions, and regimentation in the education of children has been summed up in the phrase "noble savage." Let each child find his own "nature." Don't be filling him up with your rules.

            From personal liberation it was a short step to national liberation. Fitzgerald was inspired by the French Revolution, but the Rising of '98 was a disaster for the Irish independence movement, and Fitzgerald was mortally wounded during his arrest following the betrayal of the rebellion's leaders.

            The pedestrian truth of the matter is that Edmund Fitzgerald was named after the then-current president of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Edmund Fitzgerald.

            So does the song have anything to do with Irish revolutionaries? Surprisingly, yes. Sources say that Lightfoot borrowed the melody for his keening, heart-stirring tale of bad fate and Indian legend from a song ("Back Home in Derry") written by 20th century Irish Republican Bobby Sands. Imprisoned by the British in Northern Ireland, Sands died in 1981 after a hunger strike of 66 days.

            See, popular songs are full of history. Even though the history is often not pretty and some of the songs we sing at Christmas are not necessarily full of comfort and joy.

            But I think Christmas is big enough to handle a little reality.