Tomorrow, I start the sixth year of my ten-year reading plan. A few days later, Nancy and I leave for Arezzo, Italy, where I will teach for a semester. Before I know it, I’ll be reading the Aeneid in Tuscany, close to the site of Virgil’s Italian battles. I know it sounds weird, but I love my reading schedule. Every New Year, I look at the list and get excited about what’s coming up. There’s always a good dose of my favorite authors: Plato, Aristotle, Dickens, Trollope, Shakespeare, Aquinas, Plutarch, Durant, Augustine, Lewis, Chesterton, Boswell, James, and O’Brian. Year 6 also has me eager to read Byron, Sun Tzu, Chrysostom, Dionysius, Jonathan Edwards, and Alvin Plantinga, all of whom are basically new to me (except for a couple of poems by Byron and one sermon by Chrysostom), as well as a biography of Rutherford B. Hayes and a history of Black regiments in the Civil War. I get to read more in Boccaccio, Euclid, and Orlando Furioso, and I get to reread a novel by Charles Williams and Goldsmith’s hilarious Vicar of Wakefield. Yes, I love my reading plan.
Five or six years ago at this magical season between semesters, when time is suspended and the air is hushed, I had a dream. In my dream, I stood on a footbridge over a river, facing west-by-northwest. The sky was dark, but the details of the scene were made visible by the glow of scores of tiny blue lights floating in the air above the river and all around me. And from these lights issued the indistinct whispers of human voices. I saw no human figure other than myself, but on the western bank stood a large, imposing building complex made of dull stone. It looked a bit like a castle with several stern keeps behind a high, windowless wall that zigzagged irregularly around the inner towers like a strip of perforated postcards laid on its side. I don’t know what I thought the castle was or what lay behind me, but I remember I was headed toward the west and didn’t want to move any farther toward the castle, so I just lingered on the bridge. As much as I opposed the idea of moving forward, though, I didn’t feel fear or disgust or any negative emotion about the castle; I simply noted its undesirability cognitively. All I felt at the moment was the most joyful peace I ever remember, a peace that seemed sustained by soft, wordless voices emanating from the blue lights.
I puzzled over this dream for a long time and asked several friends for their help in understanding it. I recognized some of the features of the tableau: the bridge probably came from my memories of the footbridge leading to the music building at the University of Iowa, and the floating lights vaguely reminded me of the icicle lights that hang across the front window in our house each December, and hang there now casting their numinous glow on the room. But the peace surpassed all adult memory; it seemed to me it could only come from childhood or directly from Heaven. Ironically, this dream of utter peace agitated me for weeks as I sought an explanation. What was I headed toward? What fearsome future awaited me? What were the lights, and whose were the voices? The memory of the peace remained sweet to me, but it seemed I could feel it only indirectly as long as these answers eluded me.
A huge part of the unmediated enjoyment returned when I remembered that the windowless wall had no doors, either, and that the path from the bridge turned right on the shore and led past the castle. Whatever the buildings represented, they now seemed both more severe, since they would not allow me entrance, and less ominous, since I had discovered that the worst the castle could do to me was to cast its shadow on my way for a while.
With that discovery, a lot of things clicked. The path represented the journey of my life; I had no thought of turning around and heading east because I could no more reverse the direction of my walk than I can reverse the course of time. The lights floating around the bridge reminded me of Christmas lights because the bridge stood for the days before and after Christmas. What imposing institution lay in wait for me, ready to darken my path after the Christmas break but unwilling to fully accept me into its community? Too easy.
But how did the voices in the lights fit into this scenario? They clearly meant something more than a Christmas decoration; Christmas lights don’t talk. These lights had personalities, they had comforting messages. Surely they include my family and my best friends. But because there were so many and because their words were indistinct, I believe they also include the authors on my reading list. Maybe their words are indistinct because they were the Spirits of Reading Yet to Come.
Yes, it sounds strange even to me, but I love my reading plan. Thanks for sharing part of the journey with me. At this point, some of the lights represent you and your encouragement. What are your lights? May they lead you across your bridge and through the shadows on your path.
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Imagining Christmas Morning
In year 3 of this reading plan, Calvin gave me new perspective by explaining that Christ’s entire earthly life was a redemptive act. From humbling Himself at the Conception, through birth in a feeding trough and life as a carpenter, all the way to his crucifixion – every aspect of his incarnate life was an act of human obedience that set, proved, and satisfied the standard for our race. His death, Calvin explains, was the central act of redemption, not the only act.
The Book of Common Prayer’s Litany, which I pray about once a month, confirms this idea in a section that read this way:
This morning, I am imagining myself in a dirty cave. The strong but not-so-offensive smell of barnyard waste hits my nose. The animals keep up a sporadic drone of scraping hooves, swishing tails, and calm bleating and lowing. My mouth feels the dryness of the morning, and I drink some metallic tasting water from a skin pouch. I see a little family with a newborn, wrapped tightly in a worn cloth marked with a couple of dull purple stripes. I don’t see halos. I remember seeing some shepherds come in a couple of hours ago, telling of strange visions. I run outside to look at the indigo sky but see no signs of angels or heavenly armies. As I come back in, I hear the sucking sound of a baby drinking. The father has both satisfaction and sleepiness on his face; the young mother’s face shows exhaustion and a quizzical amazement. After the meal I reach out a finger and touch the baby’s palm. He closes his fingers around my finger and holds it. I feel the hard stones pressing on my bended knees and the beginnings of tears forming in my eyes.
The Book of Common Prayer’s Litany, which I pray about once a month, confirms this idea in a section that read this way:
By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity and Circumcision; by thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation,This idea came up yet another time in year 3 when I also read – and put into practice – Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. In one section, Loyola leads the reader through a series of meditations on events in the life of Jesus: the discussion with the teachers when He was twelve, his baptism, his temptation, his arrest, and so on. In each case, Loyola calls the reader to engage the imagination of all five senses: What do I see? What do I hear? What do I feel? What do I smell? What do I taste?
Good Lord, deliver us.
By thine Agony and Bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion;
by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy glorious Resurrection
and Ascension; and by the Coming of the Holy Ghost,
Good Lord, deliver us.
This morning, I am imagining myself in a dirty cave. The strong but not-so-offensive smell of barnyard waste hits my nose. The animals keep up a sporadic drone of scraping hooves, swishing tails, and calm bleating and lowing. My mouth feels the dryness of the morning, and I drink some metallic tasting water from a skin pouch. I see a little family with a newborn, wrapped tightly in a worn cloth marked with a couple of dull purple stripes. I don’t see halos. I remember seeing some shepherds come in a couple of hours ago, telling of strange visions. I run outside to look at the indigo sky but see no signs of angels or heavenly armies. As I come back in, I hear the sucking sound of a baby drinking. The father has both satisfaction and sleepiness on his face; the young mother’s face shows exhaustion and a quizzical amazement. After the meal I reach out a finger and touch the baby’s palm. He closes his fingers around my finger and holds it. I feel the hard stones pressing on my bended knees and the beginnings of tears forming in my eyes.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Troll the Ancient Yuletide Carol – 2011
Just about a year ago, I blogged about two of my favorite Christmas carols: “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and “It Came Upon The Midnight Clear.” This Advent season, I’ve been reading and pondering carols again, and two more have sprung to fore of my attention: “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Silent Night.”
I’m thinking about grammar today, so I have to start with a lesson of a grammatical point, as best I understand it. In English, each noun must perform one of a short list of possible roles: it acts as either a subject, an object, the object of a preposition, a subject or object complement, an appositive, an adjective (unfortunately, the English grammar that allows “water glass” results in dissertations with ugly phrases such as “music understanding index survey instrument”), an exclamation (“Heavens!”), or a vocative. The vocative is a direct address, a calling upon or naming of the person spoken to, like “Our Father” in the Lord’s Prayer. Latin has a special form for the vocative: a Roman addressing Quintus would call him “Quinte.” That function in English used to be signaled by the single-letter word “O.” These days, most people, even some hymnal editors, don’t know the difference between “O” and Oh” and sometimes assume that the shorter form is just the old-fashioned spelling of the more familiar word. But used correctly, as in “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” it indicates that the noun or noun phrase names the person (or thing!) spoken to. In this case, it shows that when we sing the first verse of this song, we sing to the town. What a pretty device! Bethlehem, did you know what monumental event was taking place in your dark streets that night?
I love the sinuous melody of this lovely carol, with its unusually high number of leaps and unusually frequent changes of direction. (Try it! Sing “Jingle Bells” or “Yankee Doodle,” and note how often the melody switches directions. Then compare your results with “O Little Town.”) And I love the turn to minor in the third line and the disappearance of harmony for three beats (“ev-er-last”). These stark features seem especially suitable to the “dark streets” and “fears” of verse 1 and to the “world of sin” in verse 3, and they contrast wonderfully with the sweet, tender outer portions of the score. The combination makes the hymn both uplifting and stern, both beautiful and sublime, and fits perfectly one of the best lyrics in any carol: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
Several years ago, I was trying to explain to one church’s worship band the problem of lyrics that just list Biblical sounding things without saying anything about them. One popular praise song, for instance, mentions “the greatness of his mercy and love,” but it doesn’t say anything about that greatness. It’s a noun phrase that serves no grammatical function. It isn’t a subject or object. It isn’t a vocative. It isn't part of a sentence. It’s just a phrase that sounds suitable. The band didn’t understand my concern, and my frustration only grew. Ever since that time, I’ve been looking out for nouns in search of a sentence.
I blame a poor educational strategy and sloppy postmodern thinking for the lazy acceptance of these faulty lyrics, but the problem might trace partly to what is perhaps the most beloved of all Christmas carols: “Silent Night.” It certainly starts with two disconnected noun phrases: Silent night, holy night.” I take these to be exclamations or perhaps even vocatives. But it’s all sentences from there on, despite the punctuational choices of hymnal editors. In fact, after checking the punctuation in hymnals and other songbooks, I’m convinced that I’m the only person in America that understands the grammar of this song.
I know. That took a lot of nerve to say and might not sound like it’s said in the Christmas spirit. But anything good and beautiful must share in the spirit of the Child born in the manger. Good grammar has done me good through the years, and I say God Bless It! Check the closest hymnal. Does it place a comma between “virgin” and “mother”? If so, that comma makes “mother and child” a disconnected phrase. "Virgin" and "mother" go together in one phrase: Mary is the virgin mother, and all is bright around her and her child. Does it have a period after mild? If so, it leaves the Holy Infant dangling. “Holy Infant so tender and mild" is the vocative introduction to the sentence. At this point we sing a lullaby to baby Jesus and encourage Him to sleep in heavenly peace. Now honestly, until a few years ago I didn’t know that last line was an imperative addressed to the Christ Child. I just sang it as a suggestion vaguely offered to the world at large. But that reading left “Holy Infant so tender and mild” out of any sentence.
The second verse causes even more problems. The source I’m looking at now puts a semicolon after “light,” leaving “Son of God” and “love’s pure light” homeless. With that semicolon, all we have is a list, not a sentence: a silent night, the Son of God, and the light of love. The third line might as well read “These are a few of my favorite things.” But this verse of the song is not just a list of Christmas things; it’s a sentence. The biggest problem, I believe, comes down to the word “beams.” For most of my life, I thought that word was a noun, just one more thing in this list of happily floating Christmas objects. But after I became aware of the problem of dangling nouns, I became convinced that this classic song wouldn’t make the postmodern mistake. So where is the verb? “Beams” is the only candidate! So here’s my parsing: “Son of God” is a vocative: we address Jesus directly with this sentence. “Love’s pure light” is the subject. “Radiant” causes another small problem. I used to think it described the beams, but my current theory says that “beams” is a verb, so “radiant” must modify some other noun. I think it refers retroactively to the light with a little poetic inversion of word order. So it’s “love’s pure, radiant light” said out of order. Now we get the verb: the light beams – or shines, or radiates – from Jesus’ holy face to signal the dawn of redeeming grace. I’m still pondering the last line, "Jesus, Lord at Thy birth." Is it still part of the sentence? Can one sentence have more than one vocative? The modified version shown here doesn’t fit the rhythm of the melody, but it represents what goes through my mind when I sing the verse:
I’m thinking about grammar today, so I have to start with a lesson of a grammatical point, as best I understand it. In English, each noun must perform one of a short list of possible roles: it acts as either a subject, an object, the object of a preposition, a subject or object complement, an appositive, an adjective (unfortunately, the English grammar that allows “water glass” results in dissertations with ugly phrases such as “music understanding index survey instrument”), an exclamation (“Heavens!”), or a vocative. The vocative is a direct address, a calling upon or naming of the person spoken to, like “Our Father” in the Lord’s Prayer. Latin has a special form for the vocative: a Roman addressing Quintus would call him “Quinte.” That function in English used to be signaled by the single-letter word “O.” These days, most people, even some hymnal editors, don’t know the difference between “O” and Oh” and sometimes assume that the shorter form is just the old-fashioned spelling of the more familiar word. But used correctly, as in “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” it indicates that the noun or noun phrase names the person (or thing!) spoken to. In this case, it shows that when we sing the first verse of this song, we sing to the town. What a pretty device! Bethlehem, did you know what monumental event was taking place in your dark streets that night?
I love the sinuous melody of this lovely carol, with its unusually high number of leaps and unusually frequent changes of direction. (Try it! Sing “Jingle Bells” or “Yankee Doodle,” and note how often the melody switches directions. Then compare your results with “O Little Town.”) And I love the turn to minor in the third line and the disappearance of harmony for three beats (“ev-er-last”). These stark features seem especially suitable to the “dark streets” and “fears” of verse 1 and to the “world of sin” in verse 3, and they contrast wonderfully with the sweet, tender outer portions of the score. The combination makes the hymn both uplifting and stern, both beautiful and sublime, and fits perfectly one of the best lyrics in any carol: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
Several years ago, I was trying to explain to one church’s worship band the problem of lyrics that just list Biblical sounding things without saying anything about them. One popular praise song, for instance, mentions “the greatness of his mercy and love,” but it doesn’t say anything about that greatness. It’s a noun phrase that serves no grammatical function. It isn’t a subject or object. It isn’t a vocative. It isn't part of a sentence. It’s just a phrase that sounds suitable. The band didn’t understand my concern, and my frustration only grew. Ever since that time, I’ve been looking out for nouns in search of a sentence.
I blame a poor educational strategy and sloppy postmodern thinking for the lazy acceptance of these faulty lyrics, but the problem might trace partly to what is perhaps the most beloved of all Christmas carols: “Silent Night.” It certainly starts with two disconnected noun phrases: Silent night, holy night.” I take these to be exclamations or perhaps even vocatives. But it’s all sentences from there on, despite the punctuational choices of hymnal editors. In fact, after checking the punctuation in hymnals and other songbooks, I’m convinced that I’m the only person in America that understands the grammar of this song.
I know. That took a lot of nerve to say and might not sound like it’s said in the Christmas spirit. But anything good and beautiful must share in the spirit of the Child born in the manger. Good grammar has done me good through the years, and I say God Bless It! Check the closest hymnal. Does it place a comma between “virgin” and “mother”? If so, that comma makes “mother and child” a disconnected phrase. "Virgin" and "mother" go together in one phrase: Mary is the virgin mother, and all is bright around her and her child. Does it have a period after mild? If so, it leaves the Holy Infant dangling. “Holy Infant so tender and mild" is the vocative introduction to the sentence. At this point we sing a lullaby to baby Jesus and encourage Him to sleep in heavenly peace. Now honestly, until a few years ago I didn’t know that last line was an imperative addressed to the Christ Child. I just sang it as a suggestion vaguely offered to the world at large. But that reading left “Holy Infant so tender and mild” out of any sentence.
The second verse causes even more problems. The source I’m looking at now puts a semicolon after “light,” leaving “Son of God” and “love’s pure light” homeless. With that semicolon, all we have is a list, not a sentence: a silent night, the Son of God, and the light of love. The third line might as well read “These are a few of my favorite things.” But this verse of the song is not just a list of Christmas things; it’s a sentence. The biggest problem, I believe, comes down to the word “beams.” For most of my life, I thought that word was a noun, just one more thing in this list of happily floating Christmas objects. But after I became aware of the problem of dangling nouns, I became convinced that this classic song wouldn’t make the postmodern mistake. So where is the verb? “Beams” is the only candidate! So here’s my parsing: “Son of God” is a vocative: we address Jesus directly with this sentence. “Love’s pure light” is the subject. “Radiant” causes another small problem. I used to think it described the beams, but my current theory says that “beams” is a verb, so “radiant” must modify some other noun. I think it refers retroactively to the light with a little poetic inversion of word order. So it’s “love’s pure, radiant light” said out of order. Now we get the verb: the light beams – or shines, or radiates – from Jesus’ holy face to signal the dawn of redeeming grace. I’m still pondering the last line, "Jesus, Lord at Thy birth." Is it still part of the sentence? Can one sentence have more than one vocative? The modified version shown here doesn’t fit the rhythm of the melody, but it represents what goes through my mind when I sing the verse:
Such a silent night! Such a holy night!The kind of close analysis I’m doing probably won’t make any sense to most twenty-first century Americans, and some might think I’m really missing the point of this simple, peaceful song. But I’ll attempt a short defense of my tactics by saying that only since looking at the carol in this way have I meditated also on the dawn of grace and on the mystery of Jesus being Lord at his birth. Looking at the lyrics with such scrutiny helps me see both the hopes and fears of all the years. May they meet in us all tonight!
O Son of God, love’s pure, radiant light
Shines from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace,
O Jesus, Lord at Thy birth,
O Jesus, Lord at Thy birth.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Troll the Ancient Yuletide Carol
Obviously, I read things that aren't on The List: academic books and articles, student papers, detective fiction, children's books, things friends recommend. Lately, like millions of others, I have been reading Christmas carols. Or am I like millions of others? I suppose many people sing them every year without much thinking about the words except as markers of happy memories and pious feelings, and I have no agenda to denigrate this function of language. But I actually sometimes just read the texts, without singing or hearing the melody, and ruminate on their lessons. (Such a pre-postmodern thing to do!)
I think "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" might really be the greatest song in existence. With lyrics by Charles Wesley and music by Felix Mendelssohn, the song is bound to be beautiful. But in this instance, each artist produced something especially good, and their separate contributions fit together like key and lock.
Wesley's original hymn begins, "Hark! How all the welkin rings!" This effective figure of speech (a metonymy, I believe) raises the singular image of an entire sky filled with the sounds of celebration. But "welkin" has become unfamiliar, and some helpful person has taught us instead to refer directly to the angels and their function as messengers. After this change in the opening line, what we sing annually is almost pure Wesley, and the great hymn writer packs into the tableau the theology of redemption and the entire history of Christ's relationship to mankind: after a long war between God and sinful humans, the Desire of Nations has come, the Reconciler, the Prince of Peace, born of a virgin and completely righteous, the fullness of Deity born in human flesh after humbly emptying Himself of glory in order that we may have a second birth and avoid the Second Death. If the nations truly understood this news, they would surely rise to join the welkin's triumph.
Mendelssohn's music combines the classic stateliness appropriate to a congregational hymn with the loveliness of the Romantic musical language. In giving us a second key, its proper modulation in the phrase leading up to the midpoint presents a picture of two warring worlds (just in time for us to hear that these two worlds have been reconciled!), and its accented embellishments ("angels SI - ing," for instance, and "glory TOOO the newborn King") raise in us a longing to partake of this reconciliation.
But Mendelssohn's extraordinary contribution comes just after that midpoint, with the repeated unison D's ("JOY - FUL ALL"). I remember playing this song soon after I learned to play a keyboard instrument (with a method that emphasized chords) and puzzling over the lack of harmony on these notes. I tried a G major chord; it didn't sound right. I tried a D major chord; it didn't sound right, either. And of course nothing more exotic would fit at all. These notes taught me something new under my dim sun: a melodic figure that truly had no harmony, either explicit or implied. I'm accustomed now to all the pop-flavored recorded versions, with their tepid tonic harmony at this place. But Mendelssohn's bold genius offered something infinitely better. These insistently repeated, unison D's sound a clarion call that seizes our full attention and focuses it on the King. Eminently suitable to the joy and triumph of verse 1, the regal fanfare befits even better the commands of verse 2: "Veiled in flesh the Godhead see! Hail th'Incarnate Deity!"
Meditating on the same scene and urging us to listen to the same angels, "It Came upon the Midnight Clear" nevertheless portrays and evokes a completely different emotional spectrum. Like many of Dickens's Christmas stories (see a post from earlier this month), this sweet song portrays a world of "solemn stillness." Far from filling the welkin with noisy triumph, the angels in this carol sing so quietly, we must block out all the inner noise and listen hard in order to hear them. (Check the little-known third verse here.) And instead of proclaiming joy, the tender lyrics recall the pain of our lives and provide some much-needed talk therapy; it seems that every year I need to hear again its sympathetic urgings: "O ye beneath life's crushing load, . . . rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing."
They are bending near the earth still. One is there, just at your shoulder. Step off the weary road for a moment, and listen to the song.
I think "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" might really be the greatest song in existence. With lyrics by Charles Wesley and music by Felix Mendelssohn, the song is bound to be beautiful. But in this instance, each artist produced something especially good, and their separate contributions fit together like key and lock.
Wesley's original hymn begins, "Hark! How all the welkin rings!" This effective figure of speech (a metonymy, I believe) raises the singular image of an entire sky filled with the sounds of celebration. But "welkin" has become unfamiliar, and some helpful person has taught us instead to refer directly to the angels and their function as messengers. After this change in the opening line, what we sing annually is almost pure Wesley, and the great hymn writer packs into the tableau the theology of redemption and the entire history of Christ's relationship to mankind: after a long war between God and sinful humans, the Desire of Nations has come, the Reconciler, the Prince of Peace, born of a virgin and completely righteous, the fullness of Deity born in human flesh after humbly emptying Himself of glory in order that we may have a second birth and avoid the Second Death. If the nations truly understood this news, they would surely rise to join the welkin's triumph.
Mendelssohn's music combines the classic stateliness appropriate to a congregational hymn with the loveliness of the Romantic musical language. In giving us a second key, its proper modulation in the phrase leading up to the midpoint presents a picture of two warring worlds (just in time for us to hear that these two worlds have been reconciled!), and its accented embellishments ("angels SI - ing," for instance, and "glory TOOO the newborn King") raise in us a longing to partake of this reconciliation.
But Mendelssohn's extraordinary contribution comes just after that midpoint, with the repeated unison D's ("JOY - FUL ALL"). I remember playing this song soon after I learned to play a keyboard instrument (with a method that emphasized chords) and puzzling over the lack of harmony on these notes. I tried a G major chord; it didn't sound right. I tried a D major chord; it didn't sound right, either. And of course nothing more exotic would fit at all. These notes taught me something new under my dim sun: a melodic figure that truly had no harmony, either explicit or implied. I'm accustomed now to all the pop-flavored recorded versions, with their tepid tonic harmony at this place. But Mendelssohn's bold genius offered something infinitely better. These insistently repeated, unison D's sound a clarion call that seizes our full attention and focuses it on the King. Eminently suitable to the joy and triumph of verse 1, the regal fanfare befits even better the commands of verse 2: "Veiled in flesh the Godhead see! Hail th'Incarnate Deity!"
Meditating on the same scene and urging us to listen to the same angels, "It Came upon the Midnight Clear" nevertheless portrays and evokes a completely different emotional spectrum. Like many of Dickens's Christmas stories (see a post from earlier this month), this sweet song portrays a world of "solemn stillness." Far from filling the welkin with noisy triumph, the angels in this carol sing so quietly, we must block out all the inner noise and listen hard in order to hear them. (Check the little-known third verse here.) And instead of proclaiming joy, the tender lyrics recall the pain of our lives and provide some much-needed talk therapy; it seems that every year I need to hear again its sympathetic urgings: "O ye beneath life's crushing load, . . . rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing."
They are bending near the earth still. One is there, just at your shoulder. Step off the weary road for a moment, and listen to the song.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Dickens's Christmas Encounters
It would be a gross understatement to say that Christmas is my favorite day. "One man regards one day above the rest. Another regards every day alike. Let each man be fully convinced in his own mind." I am fully convinced that I am One Man and not Another. Christmas celebrates the birth of God on Earth, his appearance in flesh, his encounter with all humanity. And in that celebration -- with the church services, the greenery, the lights, the candles, the decorations, the four weeks of anticipation, the food, the beautiful music, the cheesy music, the presents, and the prayers -- I most sense God's encounter with me.
It seems Dickens thought the same way, and his pious giddiness for Christmas transformed our world. He wrote a special book or story for Christmas almost every year; his most famous story is only the pudding in a copious feast of Christmas dishes (although the "Christmas Carol's" bright rum-drenched blaze rightly remains the focal point of the meal). In any one of those years, many an English family eagerly paid two shillings for the Christmas number of Dickens's current periodical, closed the doors and shutters against Winter's icy onslaught, sat around a glowing fire, and read aloud the latest story, which often featured a family taking refuge from Winter's icy onslaught and sitting around the fire glowing with familial love and Christmas cheer. As natural as it seems to us now, Dickens practically invented this association of warmth, family, and cheer with Christmas and through his beautiful tales spread it around the English-speaking world; his description of the Ghost of Christmas Present shedding Christmas joy from a cornucopia was autobiographical. When Dickens started his career, the Christmas card was virtually unknown; by the end of his career, the exchange of Christmas cards was as standard as it is today.
I'm in the middle of two of the Christmas stories right now: "The Haunted House" and "Tom Tiddler's Ground." Neither has anything obvious to do with Yuletide; the first recounts the adventures of a couple who can't keep servants in the house because they keep hearing noises in the night, and the second tells of a man who has dropped out of society and everything that comes with it, including windows and bathing. Why on earth did Dickens publish these stories in December, and how on earth did they contribute to the cultural pervasiveness of Christmas and the popularity of Christmas cards? I believe at least part of the answer lies in the sounds of nighttime and solitude.
I haven't finished the first one, so I don't know if any actual ghosts show up; so far all the noises arise from interactions of wind and gutter. The wind can blow in any of the twenty-four hours, of course, but the servants only hear the sounds at night. These sounds, in conjunction with rumors about the house, raise in the servants' minds thoughts and even visions of spirits. The second tale (a novella) contains a chapter about a girl left completely alone at her boarding school one day. Kitty finds that she hears every tick of the clock, every click of her sewing needle. Her loneliness leads briefly to false doubts about the affection of her friends and of her father, but Kitty then makes inspection of her soul and discovers different thoughts both happy and true. Each story reminds us that certain hushed circumstances heighten both our sense of hearing and our awareness of the spiritual: ghosts in the one and love in the other.
Darkness, winter air, and a blanket of snow provide another such set of circumstances. The silence amplifies every rustling bird wing, every snap of a frozen twig, every drip from a pendulous icicle. But the experience, especially to a lone observer, is spiritually awakening as well. Every crunching step through the crystal crust seems a violation of the sacred. Of course, December 25 is a cultural convention, and of course cold air and abundant darkness on that date come from an accident of geography and cosmic mechanics. Christmas is warm and sunny in Sydney. But we work with what we have, and Dickens confronts his readers again and again with these scenes of solitude, silence, and snow to remind us that numinous encounters can and should happen at Christmas.
To address a spiritual crisis I experienced one winter a few years ago, I listened for months to the same piece over and over in the car: Morten Lauridsen's "O Magnum Mysterium." The CD offered this translation of the text:
It seems Dickens thought the same way, and his pious giddiness for Christmas transformed our world. He wrote a special book or story for Christmas almost every year; his most famous story is only the pudding in a copious feast of Christmas dishes (although the "Christmas Carol's" bright rum-drenched blaze rightly remains the focal point of the meal). In any one of those years, many an English family eagerly paid two shillings for the Christmas number of Dickens's current periodical, closed the doors and shutters against Winter's icy onslaught, sat around a glowing fire, and read aloud the latest story, which often featured a family taking refuge from Winter's icy onslaught and sitting around the fire glowing with familial love and Christmas cheer. As natural as it seems to us now, Dickens practically invented this association of warmth, family, and cheer with Christmas and through his beautiful tales spread it around the English-speaking world; his description of the Ghost of Christmas Present shedding Christmas joy from a cornucopia was autobiographical. When Dickens started his career, the Christmas card was virtually unknown; by the end of his career, the exchange of Christmas cards was as standard as it is today.
I'm in the middle of two of the Christmas stories right now: "The Haunted House" and "Tom Tiddler's Ground." Neither has anything obvious to do with Yuletide; the first recounts the adventures of a couple who can't keep servants in the house because they keep hearing noises in the night, and the second tells of a man who has dropped out of society and everything that comes with it, including windows and bathing. Why on earth did Dickens publish these stories in December, and how on earth did they contribute to the cultural pervasiveness of Christmas and the popularity of Christmas cards? I believe at least part of the answer lies in the sounds of nighttime and solitude.
I haven't finished the first one, so I don't know if any actual ghosts show up; so far all the noises arise from interactions of wind and gutter. The wind can blow in any of the twenty-four hours, of course, but the servants only hear the sounds at night. These sounds, in conjunction with rumors about the house, raise in the servants' minds thoughts and even visions of spirits. The second tale (a novella) contains a chapter about a girl left completely alone at her boarding school one day. Kitty finds that she hears every tick of the clock, every click of her sewing needle. Her loneliness leads briefly to false doubts about the affection of her friends and of her father, but Kitty then makes inspection of her soul and discovers different thoughts both happy and true. Each story reminds us that certain hushed circumstances heighten both our sense of hearing and our awareness of the spiritual: ghosts in the one and love in the other.
Darkness, winter air, and a blanket of snow provide another such set of circumstances. The silence amplifies every rustling bird wing, every snap of a frozen twig, every drip from a pendulous icicle. But the experience, especially to a lone observer, is spiritually awakening as well. Every crunching step through the crystal crust seems a violation of the sacred. Of course, December 25 is a cultural convention, and of course cold air and abundant darkness on that date come from an accident of geography and cosmic mechanics. Christmas is warm and sunny in Sydney. But we work with what we have, and Dickens confronts his readers again and again with these scenes of solitude, silence, and snow to remind us that numinous encounters can and should happen at Christmas.
To address a spiritual crisis I experienced one winter a few years ago, I listened for months to the same piece over and over in the car: Morten Lauridsen's "O Magnum Mysterium." The CD offered this translation of the text:
- O great mystery,
- and wonderful sacrament,
- that animals should see the new-born Lord,
- lying in a manger!
- Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
- was worthy to bear
- Christ the Lord.
- Alleluia! Lord, I heard your call and was afraid.
- I considered your works, and I trembled between two animals.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Christmas in August
After off-roading for a day with Henry James, I returned to the list to read some essays by Chesterton from the Illustrated London News. I always find Chesterton's clarity and conviction refreshing and cheering, and this year's selection proved no exception. I don't always agree with him (for instance, he claimed to believe in democracy to the point of respecting the will of the fist-slinging mob, and he opposed censorship to the point of scolding booksellers for not advertising books they found offensive). But when the first essay from 1913 declares that a society that no longer believes in Christmas cannot truly understand Dickens, he has me completely hooked. The Baby in the manger is the scene that makes sense of all the rest of life for me. I know I should be theologically more correct if I said the empty tomb provided this grounding, but my heart tells me differently.
Bob Cratchit is one of Dickens's great Christian characters. On his way home from Scrooge's counting house on Christmas Eve, Bob slides down an icy hill with some boys. Let's say I go sledding on Christmas Eve. Matching Bob's mere exercise doesn't make me Dickensian any more than eating or counting pennies on that day does. But now if I were to do it, as Bob does, in honor of the Day, I would be Dickensian. This kind of insight, which tells us about Dickens, Christ, and society all at once, is a classic Chestertonian distillation of ideas.
Later in the year Chesterton scolds an academic writer for declaring that Europe made no social or political advances during the Middle Ages. Chesterton reminds this overreaching author that by 1200, medieval Europe had seen the rise of roads, long-distance commerce, cities, trade guilds, parliaments, and universities -- all from virtually nothing. (I might add that the same period saw the gradual decline of trial by ordeal and the gradual rise of a centralized court system basing decisions on a written code.)
Chesterton always treats several topics in these essays so topical that I don't always understand their significance, but when he criticizes laws making divorce easier to acquire as tools of the rich to keep the poor in their place, the ground feels very familiar. And when, in 1914, he begins to speak weekly about the outbreak of war, his current news is familiar enough to me as history to keep the observations comprehensible.
If you want to read some Chesterton, the weekly essays may not be the place to start. I'd recommend Orthodoxy instead. But if you want to read the essays. the complete collections from Ignatius Press still may not provide the right beginning. You might check the libraries and used book dealers for the old selective collections such as Tremendous Trifles and Alarums and Excursions.
Bob Cratchit is one of Dickens's great Christian characters. On his way home from Scrooge's counting house on Christmas Eve, Bob slides down an icy hill with some boys. Let's say I go sledding on Christmas Eve. Matching Bob's mere exercise doesn't make me Dickensian any more than eating or counting pennies on that day does. But now if I were to do it, as Bob does, in honor of the Day, I would be Dickensian. This kind of insight, which tells us about Dickens, Christ, and society all at once, is a classic Chestertonian distillation of ideas.
Later in the year Chesterton scolds an academic writer for declaring that Europe made no social or political advances during the Middle Ages. Chesterton reminds this overreaching author that by 1200, medieval Europe had seen the rise of roads, long-distance commerce, cities, trade guilds, parliaments, and universities -- all from virtually nothing. (I might add that the same period saw the gradual decline of trial by ordeal and the gradual rise of a centralized court system basing decisions on a written code.)
Chesterton always treats several topics in these essays so topical that I don't always understand their significance, but when he criticizes laws making divorce easier to acquire as tools of the rich to keep the poor in their place, the ground feels very familiar. And when, in 1914, he begins to speak weekly about the outbreak of war, his current news is familiar enough to me as history to keep the observations comprehensible.
If you want to read some Chesterton, the weekly essays may not be the place to start. I'd recommend Orthodoxy instead. But if you want to read the essays. the complete collections from Ignatius Press still may not provide the right beginning. You might check the libraries and used book dealers for the old selective collections such as Tremendous Trifles and Alarums and Excursions.
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