Category Archives: Holidays

Maundy Thursday ’14

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Back to posting again around May 4. A pleasant Easter to all.

It’s my spring break time, now that it’s actually more-or-less spring. Not that I won’t be working during the next two weeks. It isn’t that kind of spring break. No one older than about 22 gets that kind of spring break.

Today Lilly and I were out before noon and she wanted to take some pictures of the flowers that bloom in the spring (tra la). So I took a picture of her taking a picture. I think she sent some of her images immediately to friends, as youth does.

Lilly 4.17.2014They bloomed on a small island in the large parking lot at St. Matthew Parish, a Catholic church on Schaumburg Rd. in Schaumburg, Illinois. We didn’t go there to see flowers, though that was nice. Instead, I wanted to take a look at the Stations of the Cross on the grounds. Seemed like a good thing to do on Maundy Thursday, especially when it was almost warm again.

The stations form a semi-circle around a catchment, and are backed by the woods of the Spring Valley Nature Preserve.

St Matthew, Schaumburg 4.17.14 - 1Plaques fixed to a short agglomeration of stones illustrate each station. This is the first one, with Jesus and Pilate.

St. Matthew Schaumburg 4.17.14 - 2There isn’t much information about this particular Stations of the Cross on the St. Matthew wed site, so I don’t know if they were custom made for the parish, or you can get them ready made. Along the way, there’s also a grotto.

St Matthew Grotto, April 17, 2014Like I’ve said before, if you find a grotto, no matter how humble, take a picture. And then pause for a moment.

Noel ’13

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Christmas1934Merry Christmas to all, with a good Boxing Day thrown in for good measure. One of these days, probably long after I’m gone, Americans will have the day after Christmas off, too.

Posting will resume again around January 5, 2014.

To the right is a paper ornament that hung on my grandparents’ Christmas tree in the mid-1930s, now mounted against a red-paper background and usually hanging in my office. For a short while, it’ll be on our Christmas tree here in the mid-2010s.

Santa Has No Mouth, and He Must Say Ho Ho Ho

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I spent a little while looking at this blob, trying to see a conventional Santa in it. It was hard to see. The scan seems to make it a little more representational. Made it’s the lighting.

SortofSantaNo matter. Its purpose wasn’t to be admired visually, but to taste good on the way down.

That got me to thinking — it doesn’t take much to start a tangent — that the next big thing in custom chocolate could be treats based on famed abstract art. That’s the sort of thing that the Sharper Image or SkyMall might sell: Henry Moore milk chocolate shapes or Isamu Noguchi foil-wrapped dark choco Easter bunnies or a Dada Whitman Sampler.

Pizza & Doughnut Run ’84

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Nothing says holiday cheer like pizza and doughnuts. At least, we’re looking pretty cheerful in this picture, preparing to feast on those victuals on a cool December day in San Antonio in 1984. They weren’t just for us, of course. I think.

PizzaDonutDec84High school friends (five years out of high school) Nancy, Tom, and me. My brother Jay might have taken the picture, but I’m not sure.

A Dispatch from the War on Christmas

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“War on Christmas,” huh? Seems like a fairly robust holiday to me. You hear a lot about the holiday this time of year, after all. I can’t think of any jurisdiction in Western world that has suggested banning it, or suppressing the Christmas tree trade, or sending street-corner Santas to re-education camps. Not even the Russians do that any more.

But what about a real War on Christmas? And by real, I mean with artillery.

Ellesmere Is.—The forces of Christmas suffered a serious setback on Thursday when anti-Christmas forces overran a major redoubt near Ft. Kringle on Ellesmere Is., putting the fort in a perilous position. Should Ft. Kringle fall to the hands of anti-Christmasites, the path would be open for an assault on the North Pole, which has been pounded in recent weeks by aerial bombardment.

An estimated 2,000 elves were killed or captured when the redoubt was taken. Dasher, a spokesdeer for the Claus government at the Pole, said that the little ones died heroically in defense of Christmas, and vowed that the redoubt would be retaken during an upcoming counteroffensive, though he declined to give details. Units of elves are rumored to be massing in northwestern Greenland for a flanking counterattack, but that could not be independently verified…

Cold Tuesday, Clutch, Dog ‘n’ Tree

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This from today’s Chicago Tribune: “The temperature [this morning] dipped below zero overnight at O’Hare International Airport, the earliest that has happened here since 1995… The temperature fell to one degree below zero around 12:55 a.m., according to the National Weather Service. That’s the earliest subzero readings here since a low of minus 4 on Dec. 9, 1995.”

Those are two-fisted Fahrenheit readings, not any namby-pamby Celsius, either. Remember last winter, when it didn’t seem to get cold at all, with little snow? Not this time. So far. More snow is supposed to fall in the wee hours tomorrow.

Open questions: Is Clutch Cargo enjoying some kind of vogue among hipsters? Otherwise why is the Music Box Theatre, a fine revival and arts house on the North Side of Chicago, screening five episodes of the show on Friday?

Yesterday, girls decorating the Christmas tree. Today, a snap of dog and tree.

Payton+Tree

She hasn’t shown much interest in the tree, unlike certain other trees during her walks. I figure dogs have their own holidays, which somehow have something to do with epic events in the history of smell.

Tannenbaum ’13

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I’ve turned most of the tree decorating over to the next generation. I did put the tree in the stand and string on the lights, though. Lilly and Ann didn’t quite get all of the ornaments on the first or second day, but they’re mostly done.

Christmas Tree 2013Icicles will go on tonight, and a star on top. I put on the star.

This is the first time the tree’s been in the lower level of the house, for various reasons. One is to complement the new walls and floor. The dog showed some interest in the smell of the thing, for a while, but the novelty wore off, and she hasn’t destroyed any of the ornaments yet.

Calendar Oddities

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Snow today, beginning in the morning, finally enough to obscure the grass. At about noon, Lilly asked her device – which has a male-voice version of Siri – Is it going to snow a lot today? Male-Siri said, “It appears to be snowing.” Guess it knows how to look out the window.

On Saturday a cheap 2014 calendar arrived from a company we do scant business with. I like it for its completely eccentric choice of special dates.

It’s got some presidential birthdays, of course. In order: McKinley, FDR, Lincoln, Washington, Jackson, Madison, Jefferson, Grant, Kennedy, J.Q. Adams, Hoover, Benjamin Harrison, Eisenhower, TR, and Wilson. Not a bad selection, but Benjamin Harrison? Well, he did ink the bills for six new states. And… even I have to look up the details of his administration. Maybe the calendar maker is a fan of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act.

Other calendar oddities include mentioning the first national election (Jan. 7, 1789), Alexander Hamilton’s birthday (Jan. 11, 1757), “Edison’s Incandescent Lamp Patent” (Jan. 27, 1880), Henry Longfellow’s birthday (Feb. 27, 1807), “Peary Discovered the North Pole” (April 6, 1909), “Dewey’s Victory at Manila Bay” (May 1, 1898), Col. Lindbergh’s NY to Paris Flight” (May 21, 1927), “Hawaii Annexed” (July 7, 1898), “Panama Canal Opened” (Aug. 15, 1914), “Monroe Doctrine Announced” (Dec. 2, 1823), “South Pole Discovered” (Dec. 14, 1911), and “Wilbur Wright’s 1st Aeroplane Flight (Dec. 17, 1903).” That’s right, aeroplane. It’s good to be up on to-day’s latest technical marvels.

Standard federal holidays, as well as an assortment of popular days (Ground Hog Day, Valentine’s Day, etc.) and Jewish holidays are noted. V-J Day is noted on Sept. 2, but V-E Day isn’t mentioned. (I learned elsewhere that “Victory Day” on Sept. 2 is actually a state holiday in Rhode Island; see “A Few Interesting Facts…” ) The Wright Bros. (one, anyway) and Lindbergh made the cut, but no space flight of any kind did, manned or unmanned, Soviet or American. You’d think they’d be space for the first Moon landing at least. Hawaii annexed but why not the purchase of Alaska? Longfellow but not, say, Walt Whitman?

Ah, well. We each live according to an eccentric calendar.

Christmas Light Failures

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Cold, as predicted. Well below freezing, but no snow or ice.

Seasonal decorations came out of storage today. Eleven-twelfths of the year, they’re packed away. We plan to buy a tree tomorrow. I tested our light strings, both indoor and out, and found that most of them to be non- or partly functional. But at least the eight-function string still works.

Just another thing to buy. Are light stings of the present shoddy compared to those made when I was young, or am I romanticizing the light strings of old?

Old but not too old. After all, I remember one goes out, all go out. That kind of string was considered old-fashioned when I decorated Christmas trees as a lad, but they were still around. Some of the strings I tested today showed a different kind of failure: half or a third of the string was dark, but the rest glowed. Go figure.

Turn 16, Eat Fish

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Back again around December 1. There are things to do and things to eat between now and then. This year we might not bother with a separate Thanksgiving dessert, because a fair amount of Lilly’s birthday cake is still around. I can’t resist a half sheet when the time comes, so it always takes a while to get through it all.

As for the main ingredients of the feast — or really, just a large meal, since it won’t be boisterous enough to rise to the level of a feast — it’ll be some variety of large bird. It will not be expertly prepared raw fish. We had that for Lilly’s birthday meal.

I’m pretty sure that isn’t what I ate when I turned 16. But those were slightly different times.