Christmas and what it is all about.
It’s shortly after midnight. Christmas morning.
Visions of sugar plums and all that, right? Yes, there are plenty of children around the world and a few adults all dreaming of what lies in store for them later today. Gifts opened, admired; comfortable breakfast table scenes playing out as planned. Later, perhaps the Christmas dinner.
Sure, the whole thing goes back to the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, a cornerstone moment in the Christian religious movement. Scholars debate whether the actual birth took place in winter or if it was in a summer month. Others point to the Roman feasting time of Saturnalia, as a “period of feasting and general merrymaking” as Google puts it. Yes, it is possible that elders in the early church co-opted the holidays to make Christmas appeal to a wider audience. Still others look back and claim the Yuletide as being a celebration surrounding the Winter Solstice.
Any way you want to slice the proverbial fruit cake, it’s a good excuse to party. Get together with family and friends. Look back upon the year, appreciate life as it came to be and then invite a new year into the picture.
Round the world, folks take this time of year to gather their clans and share good fortune with one another. Feuds may be forgotten for a short while as the prodigals are welcomed to the table to break bread, be reminded of who they are and just how they got to be there. All in all, not a bad idea when you think on it. Families and friends all around the table.
But when we look back on the whole birth of Christ, we should give pause and think on some simple facts about the story.
It is the story of travelers – a man and a pregnant wife – who had no one to go to and they found no room at an inn. Instead, their baby was delivered in a stable and placed in a manger. It was nothing special or elegant, just the simple start of one life here on this planet we call Earth.
In today’s world, even with prosperity and technology, there are still too many men, women and children living in similar or worse situations to that stable of long ago. These 21st Century people have no permanent dwellings to call home, no decent water or food, little clothing, no education and no health care of any kind. Yes, in 2000 plus years, the world has come a long way, but we still have a long way to go. When we find ourselves at the point where no one lives marginalized in any way, when who they are matters less than how they live, basic decency and comfort all the rights of each person, respected for simply being.
Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” first published in 1843, with its tale of redemption continues to ring true with readers and audiences today. Dickens offered a warning that we still need to pay attention to. For even in this enlightened age, much of what he mentions in this short passage is still true:
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was grey.
“Are spirits’ lives so short?” asked Scrooge.
“My life upon this globe, is very brief,” replied the Ghost. “It ends to-night.”
“To-night!” cried Scrooge.
“To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near.”
The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment.
“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?”
“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.”
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
“Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.
“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”
I don’t have answers to give to all of this. But I do agree that if we all took what makes this day special to us and spread it more throughout our year, we may leave this world better than we found it.
In the end, what more can be said of any us?
A happy Christmas to one and all.
May your cup include enough kindness for everyone, every where.
Looking back; Looking forward.
60 years…
Yes, that’s a while. I can honestly say that along the way through those years that I have some great memories of wonderful times with fantastic people. Being honest, I can also admit to some times that plain sucked, along with some people who… well, they sucked too. As in sucked the fun out of the situation or just plain couldn’t enjoy the moment for what it was. Amusingly, those folks are some of the ones who I can look back and laugh the most about.
I don’t carry a load of self pity. Nor do I look on missed moments and lament the opportunities not taken. In all kinds of ways, I am who I am because of the choices I made and the directions that I went in. The places I have been and the experiences that I have had all came with their own prices. Paid in full, life lived as it was and is.
Being enamored of the multiverse as I am, I like to think that those planes of existence all carry me off on other adventures. Careers, families, places and people – each with that tangent that I considered once upon a time.
We all have a thing or two we wish we had done differently at some point in our lives. Looking back, we see those choices in a light colored by one thing or another. Nostalgia plays its part, but had we done those things, we wouldn’t be who we are now, in this moment. Again, had we turned left instead of right, what might that road not taken for us led to? Guess as we may, we will never really know.
The photo at the top of this little scribble is of a time and place I didn’t see but feel I know. Indeed a simpler life lurks there but at what cost could I reach it? Unless someone manages to tweak the space time continum, I doubt strongly that I will find out. Technologically, things may have seen simpler there and then. But it was advanced beyond what had been in place some 60 years before. In 1870, when Palisade, Nevada had just been a spot along the Humboldt River. A place that emigrants heading for California didn’t follow the river through it’s canyon; choosing an easier trail that took them up and over hills to the north. Even then, the technology brought by the coming of the Transcontinental Railroad was bringing change to the region as it brought people to it. Faster and more efficient communication; easier supply and commerce as the goods came and went, east and west, along the Central Pacific. With people in search of gold and silver, and new lives with the hope for better than the ones they left behind.
Yes, I get introspective now and then. A good thing for the folks like me who write on occasion. Giving us something to ponder, put characters on the page for you, our loyal readers.
Funny how it works out this way…
More To The Story
I must admit. There are plenty of good stories out there. Lots of them that I enjoy revisiting often. But haven’t you given thought on occasion to “what if”…
Take for example, the universe that George Lucas created with his Star Wars film. Depending on who you believe, it may have always been intended to be the grand saga it has become with 9 episodes and two spin-offs. Or, it could have just been a one-off story that could have been a nice little movie that made a few bucks and quietly faded away.
That has somewhat been the attraction to “what if” stories for me. It’s that road not taken or the turn the other way; the tale not told. If you think about it, every moment in our lives has that kind of point to it. What chance of fate led to what happened? It boils down to some very basics physics. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
The Star Wars Universe is a fun place for a story teller. Sure, we all know the stories we have seen on the big screen at the local multiplex. What some folks like to call the “canon” of the tale. But what about everywhere else in that spread? Surely there must be other stories to tell. What about the folks who were unlucky enough to just be living their lives in the wrong place at the right moment? Like what about the average guy or gal working away on the Death Star when Luke Skywalker made that one in a million shot to exploit the designed weakness and blew it up? Why don’t we get their story?
I honestly look forward to the end of the Skywalker saga. It was an experiment. One gone horribly wrong in the end. Sure, it would be easy to place the blame on Jar Jar Binks, but the real culprit? Qui-Gon Jinn. Had he not taken the boy Anakin Skywalker away from slavery on Tatooine, Anakin would never have had the chance to train as a Jedi padawan. Never been exposed to the dark side of the Force. Never become the pawn of Darth Sidious. Never become Darth Vader.
Sure, the tale of a rebellion that overcomes oppressors and creates new freedom for all is appealing. It’s the story of the United States, with our break from the British empire. And then our own war between the states. Still a rebellion alive in the minds of some. States rights versus the strong federal (Imperial) government.
Yet in the universe that is Star Wars, there is so much more waiting to be discovered. That’s why Rogue One was so popular. It took us somewhere we hadn’t been before, showed us other people and how they fit into the big picture. Not everything has to be clean and neat, but we need to feel we see a bit more of the universe.
I don’t understand why some folks want to step back and see the same characters repeat themselves over and over. Characters need to grow; they need a story arc that starts at one point and takes them somewhere else, somewhere different. For that is what life is. A journey from one point to another. And what happens along the way? Those are the moments that make the story worth the telling.
See you out there along the arc to come…
90 Years and counting for a Mouse.
So, if you missed it, yesterday was the 90th birthday for a mouse.
Now, that is pretty good by mouse standards. The average mouse lives about a year. But, then this is not your average mouse.
Depending on what corporate spin is telling the tale, this mouse got his start at the desk of one Walt Disney. At least, the tale is shared that Walt used to see a mouse when he was at work at his drawing table in his Kansas City days. So in March of 1928 after a trip to New York, where he learned that he had lost the character of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Walt and Lillian were riding the train back to Los Angeles. The legend goes that Walt came up with the idea for a spunky mouse as a new character, naming him Mortimer. Lillian intervened and christened the new mouse as Mickey, instead.
The Walt Disney Family Museum has on display what may be the first drawing of both Mickey and Minnie Mouse, believed to be from the pencil of Ub Iwerks. And so it was that the first cartoon to feature both of those mice was a silent short called “Plane Crazy”, capitalizing on the trans-Atlantic flight of Charles Lindbergh, with a test screen debut on May 15, 1928. But it wasn’t until Mickey and Minnie found their voices, with the first synchronized sound cartoon, “Steamboat Willie” was first shown in New York City at Universal’s Colony Theater on November 18, 1928. That is the recognized birthday for the duo.
It’s interesting to note that Walt put Oswald well behind him. So much so that when Bob Iger made the deal to bring Oswald back to Disney, he proudly announced it to Walt’s daughter Diane during Disneyland’s 50th anniversary. Her reaction was, “Who was Oswald?” All the years with Walt, he had never mentioned Oswald to her. It was as if he never existed because Walt had so completely left that behind and gone forward with Mickey instead.
Mickey became an every man character over the years, maturing from his rough and tumble early beginnings. He made the jump from short subjects to feature film in 1940’s “Fantasia” in the role of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. And he was good for the bottom line of the company, too. With early licensing deals as well as getting the Mickey Mouse Club started as a Saturday morning gimmick to fill theaters with young fans, the Mouse was off and running.
When television beckoned in the 1950’s, that Mickey Mouse Club became part of the new medium and was more popular than ever. Not to mention, when Disneyland opened it’s doors in 1955, here was a place where guests could finally meet Mickey in person. While the first appearances were courtesy of costumes from the Ice Capades, the more traditional suited mouse became as favorite of millions of guests as Mickey was the reason for photographs.
The view above is one of my favorites because it shows Mickey meeting a random guest at a special moment. No prearranged or specially chosen person, just someone who happened to be in the right spot at the right time. To the minute, it was the 50th anniversary of Walt giving his dedication speech for Disneyland. Mickey was there in Walt’s stead to carry on, as it were.
Mickey has been at the right place and time for others over the years. Always with his trademark smile. Let me share a few more special moments for myself and friends:
Jeff and Anita Pidgeon during lunch in Club 33’s Main Dining Room.
Mickey joined by Pluto during a wedding brunch for Noe and Michelle Valldolid, in Club 33’s Trophy Room.
And finally, Mickey with the Colton’s during a June birthday visit to the Park.
Yes, that’s one busy Mouse. Here’s to many more birthdays! Why it’s only 10 more till the big 100…
Time change again?
It’s a real throwback this morning. I am up and at work during that Sunday morning as clocks get set back an hour at 2 am, for the change from Daylight Savings Time, back to Standard Time.
Having worked my fair share of overnights through the years of my professional career, the spring forward and fall back is something I have been through many times. This fall morning, i get to work an extra hour as everyone is asleep. It’s a nice bit of change added onto the paycheck. Change the time on clock here and there, too.
Daylight Savings Time in the US goes back to 1918 and the end of World War I. It saw a brief extension during the Arab Oil Embargo of the 1970’s. I remember a high school protest over that, short-lived as it was. Rationale has been that the shifting of clocks allows folks to be up and out while the sun shines. I don’t know if it works on not, but it is one of the goofy things we put ourselves through, losing an hour of sleep in the spring and gaining it back in the fall.
My two cats don’t see it that way. We get a few weeks of adjustments as food dishes still need to be filled, no matter what clock you follow.
Speaking of time, I hope that you all get time to vote in the upcoming election. Too many men and women gave their lives to waste the opportunity for us to participate in our government. Based on the early voting numbers, it seems that more folks are doing so and that is indeed a good thing, no matter who or what you vote for.
Pardon me while I get some coffee going…