Angels and Others

I’m a Christmas person.  So I surprised myself a little a few days ago when my partner Jeffrey asked, “What about Christmas do you like so much?” and I couldn’t really come up with an answer.  This isn’t an unusual question when you consider that I don’t particularly believe that the series of events the holiday is meant to commemorate actually took place, or if they did, it was not in the way I was taught in a Sunday school classroom at Fox Hill Central United Methodist Church.  It was while I was trying to find an answer to this question that I had something of an epiphany, a secular epiphany but an epiphany nonetheless: my love of all things Christmas has very little to do with the New Testament and a great deal to do with A Christmas Carol .  It’s not the Gospel writers (whoever they may be) and the story they tell that fills me with joy this time of year, but Charles Dickens and the story he tells— a story of ghostly figures, overworked clerks, lame c...

I’m all for progress. With the exception of cultural landmarks, I’m all in favor of clearing away the old to make way for the new. At least I thought I was until last Monday night. As a Christmas person (yep, one of those) I live for the annual broadcast of those tried and true holiday specials that we grew up with: The Grinch, Frosty, The Little Drummer Boy, Nestor The Christmas Donkey. I love them all. There are, however, two of these juvenile epics I cannot miss: A Charlie Brown Christmas and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer . So imagine my shock as I sat down in front of Hulu to watch the gentle tale of the round headed boy, the little tree and idiosyncratic dancing when instead I got something called I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown. A sequel. They made a freaking sequel? Now as sequels go this one wasn’t bad. ..It sucked out loud. Snoopy’s out-of-town brothers Andy, Marbles, Olaf and Spike? Spike? Linus’s little brother Rerun? Rerun? In ...

Well the holiday food onslaught has begun.Right now in my office there are no less than five kinds of festive snack treats. No one seem s to know exactly where they come from, they just appear in the break room in the morning waiting to be eaten. While I’m not much given conspiracy theories I have entertained the thought that the snacks are delivered overnight by malicious imps fired by Santa and now in the employ of an underworld cabal made up of the owners of gyms and weight management systems. Does anybody even know what Jenny Craig looks like? A more plausible (but far less interesting) theory is that my co-workers have brought these sugary treasures to the office motivated less by the holiday sprit (although I’m sure that plays some part) and more by the desire to have them out of the house. Now I’m sure that the covert purveyors of these things both sweet and savory believe that they are spreading holiday cheer and no doubt they are. To those of us who can’t help but answer th...