The 2018 Christmas Story is now here.
“Christmas Eve in the ’50s” had found its way to you.
‘Tis the season for fun and fun is here for you to read and enjoy.
If not on the front page just look under “Flashier Fiction” or try the link below.
https://www.unclejoestories.com/christmas-eve-in-the-50s/
This is our chance again to smile together.
And perhaps shed a tear.
For years past.
And those we all miss.
Merry Christmas to you and yours,
Grandpa Jim
“‘Tis the season to be jolly.”
That is perhaps the single short verse that musicallly defines the Christmas season. The song that started it all did not originally have any words. The tune is Welsh and dates back to at least the 1700s. The melody may be much older. At the time the notes was first strummed, carols were danced and not sung. In Wales, the sign on the dancehall door read in bold black letters: “No Singing Here.” It was only later that neon was invented. Before that happened, the audience simply couldn’t wait. The tune was just so good. People started humming along and then they added a word or two and a line and eventually, well, one Christmas season, they took the sign down and everyone started singing.
Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
‘Tis the season to be jolly,
Don we now our gay apparel,
Troll the ancient Christmas carol.
See the blazing yule before us,
Strike the harp and join the chorus.
Follow me in merry measure,
While I tell of Christmas treasure.
Fast away the old year passes,
Hail the new, ye lads and lasses!
Sing we joyous all together,
Heedless of the wind and weather.
That’s it. That’s “Deck the Halls.” “Yule” or “Y
Those weeks before Christmas are referred to as “Advent.” The word “advent” is Latin for “to come.” This is the time of year we wait for Christmas to come. In the West, Advent traditionally starts on the fourth Sunday before Christmas and ends on Christmas Eve, December 24th. The start date varies from year-to-year and place-to-place, but not on my Advent Calendar. On my Advent Calendar, Advent always starts on December 1st.
Advent Calendars started somewhere else, probably in Germany, and sometime earlier, possibly about 200 years ago, around the year 18-00-something. No one knows these things with precision. I suspect the first Advent Calendar was invented by a candy store owner as a way to dispense chocolates, because my first Advent Calendar years ago when I was a small child had tiny chocolates hidden behind each door. That’s right, each day of the month of December is a door that opens to reveal a surprise behind it. The surprise can be a toy or a chocolate or a Star Wars Lego figure or speeder or flier.
My 2018 Advent Calendar is a shallow box decorated with an alien, intergalactic landscape and twenty-four small doors on one side that each open to reveal a small Star Wars Lego construction. The Lego pieces are so tiny they hurt my fingers to assemble. Instructions are, I feel, minimal and more suited for the nimble fingers and minds of the young. Nonetheless, I have prevailed and built to this day’s surprise.
My Advent Calendar is gratifying and unusual and something of a conversation piece. “You’re doing what?” my guests question. “And what are those weird little creatures and things?” they point. “It’s Advent,” I respond, “It’s how I’m keeping track of the days to Christmas.” “Oh,” they answer and move quickly to the kitchen with concerned looks on their faces and muffled questions for my wife.
Not everyone understands. I love Christmas, the season, the preparations and the Advent Calendar. I love that this calendar is not the same as the one I had when I was a kid — although I do miss the chocolates. It’s the anticipation. Every day, there’s another door on the way to Christmas day. It’s a little like the melody of a song without the words, where the melody is so good and so much fun that you know when the words arrive they’ll be better yet, better each year and really worth the wait of opening all those little doors.
“Tis the season to be jolly.”
There were swimmers in the Sahara Desert. Not now. Long ago. In a cave, an ancient artist painted lithe figures — swimming, diving and floating weightlessly, where now there is only rock, sand and unremitting heat. The desert breaks the spirit of the traveler and pulls down those who challenge its domain.
Geographic explorers discover the swimmers near the start of World War II. Two of those explorers fall in love. The movie follows those two, Count Lazlo de Almasy and Catherine, into the war, to Italy and back to that desert cave.
“The English Patient” won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1996
This is a sad searching story of two star-fated lovers, Romeo and Juliet in North Africa, trapped by the warring families of the second world war.
Unlike Shakespeare, this tale can’t stay in the present. It flashes back and forth across the years, beginning where it ends and ending where it began. Our lovers are the swimmers. They exist and move above time and space in a place of their own, as lovers often do. Unfortunately, we, the viewers, are fixed. We would share and understand their world but the sands shift too often and too far, and we lose our way as they lost theirs.
A worthy undertaking, the beauty of the cinematography and poignancy of the acting render a breathtaking and heartwrenching visual and emotional experience. Alas, the challenge of the story-line is too great for us, the watchers, as it is was for Almasy and Catherine, the actors. In the end, we part unsatisfied and uncertain.
Were it not so and Shakespeare and iambic pentameter could solve the problem, but the film falters and does not reach the poet’s pinnacle. As one critic reviewed, this picture may be better watched twice. The moves forward and flashes back are too mixed and muddled to be seen clearly in a single showing.
Here is what our ethnofamilymovieography viewers had to comment about “The English Patient”:
Set in the deserts of North Africa and hillsides of Italy leading into and during World War II, “The English Patient” was recognized for the beauty of the cinematography, the captivating accompaniment of the music and the pathos of the tragic love story presented; unfortunately, the presentation of that story failed the ethnofamilymovieography audience — they found the back-flashing to unravel the events tediously long, poorly presented, excruciatingly slow, overly complex, difficult to follow, overly dramatic and uninteresting; and the viewers did not like the graphic nudity, the glorification of adultery and the mercy killing at the end; a monumental undertaking, the picture did not reach its viewers and managed only an average rating of 6.00 out of 10.00, placing the show tied for #59 of the first 69 Best Pictures, very near the bottom of the Oscar-winning movies viewed to date.
The film is mature and not for children, perhaps unnecessarily so — a theme that seems to have been advancing in filmmaking since the ’60s. The story itself is fascinating, captivating — but perhaps more than can be managed in a cinematic presentation.
Another factor that may be
One of the
Do you feel the message of this film is still relevant today? Circle one: YES NO Maybe
For this film, there were more no’s and maybe’s than yes’s. This is a difficult parameter to interpret, but it seems to happen with the less substantive shows. Think about
Enough for this show. There will be no Best Picture showings until after Christmas and New Year’s, when we return with the movie “Titanic.” I will continue to blog, but the ethnofamilymovieographers will take a break.
Back soon with something new,
Grandpa Jim