Keillor writes: "It is hard to believe that the Creator of our universe with
its billions of galaxies could have sent Himself to this little blue blip
not so long ago in the form of an infant born to a virgin, to be first
worshiped by illiterate shepherds where He lay in a feed trough, livestock
peering down at Him, Eastern potentates following a star to the site. But
here we are again, singing those songs, so we shall see."
The lighting ceremony for the 2016 National Christmas Tree. (photo: Alex
Brandon/AP)
Christmas Lives On
By Garrison Keillor, The Washington Post
24 December 16
It is hard to believe that the Creator of our universe with its billions of
galaxies could have sent Himself to this little blue blip not so long ago in
the form of an infant born to a virgin, to be first worshiped by illiterate
shepherds where He lay in a feed trough, livestock peering down at Him,
Eastern potentates following a star to the site. But here we are again,
singing those songs, so we shall see.
My mother loved Christmas with her whole heart. With six children and no
credit cards and my father ever watchful for unnecessary expense, Christmas
was a mountain for Grace to climb, requiring endurance, planning, stealth
and skill, but she brought it off to perfection every year, until she was in
her 90s and then she coasted on her memories.
Her mother died when my mother was 7, and Mother had no memory of her, which
troubled her deeply. She looked at photos of her mother, tall, haggard, from
the early 1920s, and tried to dredge up some recollection, anything at all,
the sound of her voice, what she cooked, what her hand felt like. Grace was
third from the end of 11 children, the 12th having died with the mother, of
scarlet fever, and Grace was raised by her older sisters, Marian and Ruby
and Margaret. Complaint was not encouraged in that family, and mental health
was not a topic for discussion, but clearly Christmas was a shining moment
of gaiety in a family of modest means and strict decorum.
When I was 19, my older brother asked me to look after his house over
Christmas so he and his young family could drive out to New York for a week.
His house was in the woods, and I, intoxicated by Thoreau at the time, was
more dramatic than necessary and announced that I would spend Christmas
alone out there "to figure things out." A poem of mine got in the college
literary magazine, with the lines:
The ice is thin and deep is the dark
Below, green lights in the trees and red,
Winding my way into the winter mist.
Coat open and the silver blades are sharp
And that long long bend ahead
Will take me out and away from you and all of this.
Which was about skating, but a girl I knew thought it was suicidal and she
came out to the woods to visit me and bring me dinner from her mother -
turkey, candied yams, cranberry, in tinfoil. We lit candles and sat and
meditated on the mystery of life, and it was pleasant to have someone be so
concerned about my well-being. At the time, I thought of suicide as poetic,
an artistic choice stemming from great emotional depths. Two months later,
her boyfriend Leeds was killed when a drunk driver pulled out of a parking
lot and into his mother's car coming back home from a play at the Guthrie
Theater. Twenty-some years later, sunk in depression, my friend filled her
pockets with rocks and paddled a canoe out to the middle of a lake and
capsized it and drowned.
Life is good. On a winter night, looking into a fire, our dead are around
us, testifying to that. The books on the shelves, the young people around
the table, the carols on the radio in the kitchen, the shining snow on the
hill that looks out at the Mississippi River.
As you get old, you gain a stripped-down life, minus the clutter and
hullabaloo, the excess food and alcohol, the meaningless gifts, and it is
quite satisfying to sit with your true love in candlelight, a plate of
cookies on the table, and let memories come and go. My mother is there. It's
6 a.m., still dark out, and I've come down the stairs in my pajamas to the
darkened tree, a note from Santa, the crumbs of the gingersnap I left for
him, and I hear the padding of bare feet on the stair, and suddenly the tree
bursts into light, and my mother is standing there in a raggedy robe. She
missed her dead mother and found her every year in making Christmas for us.
Even after she moved to Florida, she flew back for a proper Minnesota
Christmas with frost on the windows and wind in the chimney. What you do for
children is never wasted: This Christmas will live on and nourish them long
after you have faded away.
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The lighting ceremony for the 2016 National Christmas Tree. (photo: Alex
Brandon/AP)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/christmas-lives-on/2016/12/20/2c57cd
ae-c6d8-11e6-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html?utm_term=.b6a90a6a3643https://www.
washingtonpost.com/opinions/christmas-lives-on/2016/12/20/2c57cdae-c6d8-11e6
-bf4b-2c064d32a4bf_story.html?utm_term=.b6a90a6a3643
Christmas Lives On
By Garrison Keillor, The Washington Post
24 December 16
t is hard to believe that the Creator of our universe with its billions of
galaxies could have sent Himself to this little blue blip not so long ago in
the form of an infant born to a virgin, to be first worshiped by illiterate
shepherds where He lay in a feed trough, livestock peering down at Him,
Eastern potentates following a star to the site. But here we are again,
singing those songs, so we shall see.
My mother loved Christmas with her whole heart. With six children and no
credit cards and my father ever watchful for unnecessary expense, Christmas
was a mountain for Grace to climb, requiring endurance, planning, stealth
and skill, but she brought it off to perfection every year, until she was in
her 90s and then she coasted on her memories.
Her mother died when my mother was 7, and Mother had no memory of her, which
troubled her deeply. She looked at photos of her mother, tall, haggard, from
the early 1920s, and tried to dredge up some recollection, anything at all,
the sound of her voice, what she cooked, what her hand felt like. Grace was
third from the end of 11 children, the 12th having died with the mother, of
scarlet fever, and Grace was raised by her older sisters, Marian and Ruby
and Margaret. Complaint was not encouraged in that family, and mental health
was not a topic for discussion, but clearly Christmas was a shining moment
of gaiety in a family of modest means and strict decorum.
When I was 19, my older brother asked me to look after his house over
Christmas so he and his young family could drive out to New York for a week.
His house was in the woods, and I, intoxicated by Thoreau at the time, was
more dramatic than necessary and announced that I would spend Christmas
alone out there "to figure things out." A poem of mine got in the college
literary magazine, with the lines:
The ice is thin and deep is the dark
Below, green lights in the trees and red,
Winding my way into the winter mist.
Coat open and the silver blades are sharp
And that long long bend ahead
Will take me out and away from you and all of this.
Which was about skating, but a girl I knew thought it was suicidal and she
came out to the woods to visit me and bring me dinner from her mother -
turkey, candied yams, cranberry, in tinfoil. We lit candles and sat and
meditated on the mystery of life, and it was pleasant to have someone be so
concerned about my well-being. At the time, I thought of suicide as poetic,
an artistic choice stemming from great emotional depths. Two months later,
her boyfriend Leeds was killed when a drunk driver pulled out of a parking
lot and into his mother's car coming back home from a play at the Guthrie
Theater. Twenty-some years later, sunk in depression, my friend filled her
pockets with rocks and paddled a canoe out to the middle of a lake and
capsized it and drowned.
Life is good. On a winter night, looking into a fire, our dead are around
us, testifying to that. The books on the shelves, the young people around
the table, the carols on the radio in the kitchen, the shining snow on the
hill that looks out at the Mississippi River.
As you get old, you gain a stripped-down life, minus the clutter and
hullabaloo, the excess food and alcohol, the meaningless gifts, and it is
quite satisfying to sit with your true love in candlelight, a plate of
cookies on the table, and let memories come and go. My mother is there. It's
6 a.m., still dark out, and I've come down the stairs in my pajamas to the
darkened tree, a note from Santa, the crumbs of the gingersnap I left for
him, and I hear the padding of bare feet on the stair, and suddenly the tree
bursts into light, and my mother is standing there in a raggedy robe. She
missed her dead mother and found her every year in making Christmas for us.
Even after she moved to Florida, she flew back for a proper Minnesota
Christmas with frost on the windows and wind in the chimney. What you do for
children is never wasted: This Christmas will live on and nourish them long
after you have faded away.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
