SubscribeStar Saturday: Christmas Traditions

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Ah, yes, Christmas.  Time to gather round the yule log with a glass of thick eggnog and sing some Christmas carols.  It’s a time of cozy good cheer—and presents!

Every family has their own Christmas traditions, some of which date back generations to their grandparents or great-grandparents.  Others are new traditions.  That’s a bit of a paradox—a “new tradition”—but all traditions started as some newfangled innovation at some point.

I’ve not lived very long—just nearly thirty-nine years now—but I have been around long enough to see the gradual (and sometimes sudden) morphing of Christmas traditions to accommodate new realities.  When I was a child, Christmas Day followed a predictable pattern:

  • Presents with my brothers and parents in the morning
  • A late, hearty breakfast at my maternal grandparents’ house, followed by more presents
  • Dinner at my paternal grandparents’ house, and again with more presents

It made for a very fun Christmas—and not just because of the presents!  My paternal grandparents had five children, each of whom had two or three kids (with the exception of one uncle, who remained a bachelor until later in life).  Some of those kids—my cousins—went on to have lots more (one of my cousins has given birth to at least ten children; we’ve lost count at this point).  But before all those great-grandchildren were born, we still had a lot of cousins running around at my paternal grandparents’ relatively small house.  It was fun.

Inevitably, we’ve grown up and started families of our own (or, like yours portly, I’ve remained a bachelor, my only “child” being an overweight purebred dog; I’ve really embraced modernity in that regard).  I’m extremely blessed to have my maternal grandparents still, but both of my paternal grandparents have passed (Papa in 2005, Mama in 2012).  Those changes have meant changes in Christmas traditions.  My plethora of cousins and their God-given fecundity have necessarily meant that the focus has shifted to their families.  My aunts and uncles are now grandparents, and they have their own Christmases.

So, what of Portly’s immediate family?  What of our yuletide celebrations?

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Phone it in Friday XLVI: Christmas Break Begins!

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At long last, Christmas Break has arrived!

I take it for granted that most people don’t get two weeks off at Christmas.  Frankly, that should be the norm; in some ways, it seems to be, at least in “white-collar” work.  When I was working my one major job outside of education, I don’t think my office phone rang for two days.  E-mails came in at a trickle.  If I had the work ethic then that I have now, I would have knocked out a lot of little tasks; instead, I read Wikipedia entries and took it easy in the mostly-empty office.

We may not appreciate the True Meaning of Christmas anymore, but there’s still a very strong, vestigial reverence for this season.  Everything shuts down for a week or two; everyone is cheery; and everybody is enjoying parties and family time.  There’s a general sense that this time is not meant for working, but for indulging in fatty foods with loved ones.  Late nights by the fire, reminiscing about departed family, remember old glories and ancient stories—that’s Christmastime.

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TBT^2: “Silent Night” Turns 200

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On Tuesday’s edition of Open Mic Adventures I shared my impromptu rendition of “Silent Night“; as such, I figured I’d throwback to this classic post about the timeless Christmas classic for this installment of TBT.

I’ve always loved the sweet, peaceful simplicity of this carol.  It also lends itself to multiple interpretations.  My Middle School Music Ensemble students have done it in 4/4 in a punk rock style.  One year, my High School Music Ensemble played it as a bluesy, Christmas-Eve-at-a-roadside-honkey-tonk jam in 6/8 (but, as I recall, only in practice—that might have been too bold for the sensibilities of my administration).

But the song is best presented as it was 205 years ago:  sung by a small choir on a cold Christmas night.

With that, here is 12 December 2019’s “TBT: ‘Silent Night’ Turns 200“:

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Open Mic Adventures LX: “Silent Night”

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We’re getting into the cozy part of the Christmas season, with plenty of cold nights spent bundled up by the light of the Christmas tree, sipping hot chocolate and wearing sweaters.  It’s the hygge, and yours portly couldn’t be happier.

Naturally, all this cozy Christmas cheer gets me thinking about Christmas carols, and few carols capture the quiet peace of Christmas quite like “Silent Night.”

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Memorable Monday Morning Movie Review: A Very Portly Christmas: It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

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With Christmas Break looms large, I’m taking it a bit easier with the old blog.  I’ve seen some great—and not-so-great—movies lately, but they can wait a few weeks for 2024.

Instead, I thought I’d take a look back at a timeless Christmas classic of yesteryear, a film I reviewed along with Audre Myers and Ponty during the 2022 Christmas season.

That film, of course, is 1946’s It’s a Wonderful Life.  It’s a film that is somehow more than a mere movie.  It’s a flick that can be judged and appreciated as a movie, of course, but it’s also one that transcends the medium, and is part of the whole Zeitgeist of Christmas.  It’s hard to separate it from the very notion of “Christmas.”

With that, here’s my review from last year:

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Lazy Sunday CXXXI: Chapel Lessons, Part II

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It’s another Lazy Sunday, and another look back at some of my short chapel devotionals:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Christmas Concert 2023 Review

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Eight days ago (Friday, 8 December 2023), my students had their annual Christmas Concert.  The Christmas Concert is one of the two marquee concert events of the school year, the other being the more amorphous Spring Concert, which can fall pretty much anywhere between March and April (and even early May).  Of the two, the Christmas Concert is my favorite, and while it’s also one of the most stressful days of the year, it’s also one of my favorites.

Our Christmas Concert follows a predictable format, consisting of performances from our choir, our World Language classes, and finally from my Middle School and High School Music Ensembles.  Historically, dance classes have performed pieces prior to the musical portion of the concert, but this year marked the first that dances were not included, as the dance class performed before the Christmas Musical, which was on Friday, 1 December 2023.

Honestly, excluding dances was a major improvement.  I have nothing (well, not much) against dance as an art form, but it was never a comfortable fit in an already-overstuffed Christmas concert format.  It also adds some minor additional headaches for yours portly, who in the past has had to move pianos in the middle of the concert to accommodate the dancers.  At the risk of editorializing (but isn’t that the whole point of a blog?), I find most of these “dance” routines to be rather distasteful and a tad lurid, although I am to report that this year’s dance performance was really exceptional, tasteful, and beautiful.

But I digress.  What of the music itself?  Let’s dig in, like a Wisconsin dad shoveling snow.

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Phone it in Friday XLV: My Tacky Christmas Tree

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I finally groped my way up to the attic (my ankle is healed enough to allow it now) and pulled down the Christmas tree I purchased a few years ago.  It was well past time.  I still have a couple of Halloween decorations hanging up—yeesh!

Being one to never let a good thing go to waste, I decided to take some pictures of my tree, as well as make a video showcasing the little guy in all his multicolored glory.

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TBT: Joy to the World

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Somehow, I have not reblogged my 2019 post about “Joy to the World,” one of my favorite Christmas carols, in four years!

I’ve always loved the bouncy, joyful nature of this piece, and I almost always program it for our annual Christmas Concert.  Indeed, this year my Middle School Music Ensemble students performed it.  While we’re working on the piece, I always give my students a little speech to try to get them into the spirit of the piece.  Essentially, I tell them to imagine what it would have been like to be a shepherd on that starlit night, and for a heavenly host of infinite singing angels to burst suddenly into the sky, belting out “For Unto Us a Child Is Born!”

Our goal, I tell my students, is to capture some fraction of the overawing joy and majesty of that moment when we perform “Joy to the World.”

With that, here is 10 December 2019’s “Joy to the World“:

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