Commercializing Christmas

 

With businesses decorating for the holidays, I decided to print a short children’s story that I wrote almost twenty years ago.

Enjoy.

Susan’s Christmas

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” Susan muttered under her breath as she entered her father’s store. She was playing Mary in the Sunday School program, and she wanted to get her lines right.

“Watch out!” Her father’s voice brought her back to the present. Looking up, she stopped inches from a plastic snowman.

“That wasn’t there last year,” Susan said.

Her father sighed. “No, it wasn’t. I changed the holiday display this year.”

Susan’s eyes grew wide as she looked around. Snowflakes hung from the ceiling, and there were plastic figures everywhere. Plastic snowmen. Plastic reindeer. Even plastic candy canes. Everything except . . .

“Where’s the manger scene? And why does that banner say ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’?”

“I don’t want to offend my customers,” her father said. “This is when I make most of the money we live on for the rest of the year.”

“But Dad, last year you said Christmas was the best time to tell other people about Jesus. Don’t you want to do that anymore?”

Her father stared at his feet. Then he took a deep breath, looked straight at Susan, and smiled.

“You’re right. Who cares what other people think. God is the only one who matters, and He wants us to tell everyone about Him.”

“Good.” Susan smiled, too.

“Let’s get the manger scene and the ‘Merry Christmas’ banner out of the back.” Her father paused. “First, though, let me change the music coming over the loudspeakers. How does ‘Away in a Manger’ sound to you?”

“Perfect.”

And it was.

Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving Stories

 

This year, I felt like reading some classic stories about good old-fashioned Thanksgiving celebrations. Here is my “reading” list, with the first one to watch rather than read.

·       A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. This is not as well known as A Charlie Brown Christmas or It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, but it does highlight the real purpose of the holiday. It is available on DVD or for streaming from one or more services.

·       Over the River and Through the Wood is a poem by Lydia Maria Child about the trip by sleigh to Grandmother’s house for Thanksgiving. It has been published in picture-book form numerous times using different illustrators.

·       “An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving” is a short story by Louisa May Alcott. When the parents leave to visit a dying Grandma, can the children handle Thanksgiving on their own? You’ll have to read the story to find the answer.

·       “Aunt Suzanna’s Thanksgiving Dinner” is a short story by Lucy Maud Montgomery. The main characters are already young women, but children will also enjoy this story of how they save Aunt Suzanna’s Thanksgiving dinner.

·       “Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen” is a short story by O. Henry. Although there is nothing in the story that is inappropriate for children, it is typical O. Henry and works better for adults.

Happy reading.

__________

The illustration is “Homestead Winter” by Currier and Ives, circa 1868. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Colorful Morocco

 

Every country we visited on this trip was colorful, but Morocco came out ahead.

Before I get to that, however, I’ll give you a little-known fact about Morocco’s history as it relates to the U.S. In 1777, Morocco became the first country to recognize the United States as an independent nation, and it has maintained its diplomatic relationship with the U.S. ever since.

Our entry into Morocco was by ferry into Tangier, and that city wasn’t anything special. After leaving Tangier, however, we took a very interesting excursion to Chefchaouen, which is known as the blue city. Many of the buildings are blue because indigo and other light blues repel mosquitos. The photo at the top of this page is from Chefchaouen, and the next two photos show the city from above and a typical building entrance.

From there we went to Fes, where our Moroccan guide ran us ragged walking through the maze of the medina (walled city). Unfortunately, we were walking so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to stop and take any great photos. If I had fallen behind, I would still be trying to find my way out.

Before we went to the medina, however, we stopped at the Royal Palace at Fes. (There seems to be a royal palace in every large city.) It was just a photo stop since we weren’t allowed inside, but the next two photos show the front of the palace and one of its doors, which demonstrate more of the colorful nature of the country.

From Fes, we traveled to Casablanca, stopping at the capital city of Rabat on the way. Although Casablanca means “white house,” it is Rabat that is known as the white city. You can see why from the next photo, which was taken at the Kasbah (meaning citadel or fortress). The one following it shows that even the royal guards wear white. As you can tell from their uniforms, the royal guard and the other four men at the main entrance to the royal palace are from different services.

The main sight at Casablanca is the Hassan II Mosque, which is one of the largest in the world. It had a lot of colorful detail, but I can’t do it justice without making this blog post way too long. Instead, you’ll just have to make do with an exterior shot that gives you some idea of its size and the pretty green that adorns it.

We also made a very quick stop to take pictures of the exterior of Rick’s Café. The one in the movie was purely fictional, and the current one opened later on the strength of the movie’s popularity. Still, you can’t go to Casablanca without at least taking a photo. That’s the next one.

After Casablanca, we drove to Marrakech, which is known as the red city because of the clay used for the buildings. It was the third city nicknamed for a color on our travels through Morocco. The next two photos show streets in the red city that live up to its name.

Marrakech was our last stop in Morocco. For good measure, I’ll throw in a photo from the night we arrived. Roland had a bad cold and missed out on this optional excursion, but you can tell what I was doing that night.

It was a good trip, and I’m very glad we went. But it’s over, and next week I’ll move on to something else.

Historic Spain

 

When we visited Spain last month, what stood out most was its history. Spain’s history predates the Romans, but the tour only took us back as far as the Moors.

The Moors were Muslims from Africa, and they conquered Spain in the 8^th century. They divided the country into states and ruled for 500 years until the Christians started making serious inroads. As part of their conquest, the Christians destroyed most of the mosques and the Islamic sites. There were two major exceptions, however, which were spared when the rulers of those areas decided to surrender rather than to fight to the end. One was the mosque in the city of Córdoba, which subsequently became a Catholic cathedral. Now called the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba, it retains many of the architectural features of the original mosque. These photos show the exterior and the interior of the Mosque-Cathedral.

The other exception was The Alhambra, which was built and originally occupied as a Muslim royal complex that was a fully-contained city separate from the city of Grenada. The photo at the top of this post is an exterior shot of The Alhambra, and the one below shows some interior detail.

After The Alhambra was taken over by the Christians in the late 1400s, it housed the royal court of Ferdinand and Isabella and was the place where Christopher Columbus received the royal endorsement for his expedition.

The next photos are from Seville and show the cathedral where Christopher Columbus is buried, his tomb (which is actually in the coffin in the monument rather than in the floor beneath it), and another monument to Christopher Columbus with the three ships represented halfway up.

Spain was Christopher Columbus’ first burial place, but then his son took his bones to Santo Domingo, and from there they traveled to Cuba before returning to Seville. The tomb at Seville was opened on the 500^th anniversary of his voyage and it was discovered that only some of his bones were there, but those bones were validated as his through a DNA comparison with his son’s bones, which are buried in the same cathedral.

As mentioned, Ferdinand and Isabella lived in The Alhambra, but the royal palace at Madrid is actually more imposing from the outside. The royal family does not live there these days, but the next photo shows its majesty.

Moving forward in history, Seville held a world exhibition in 1929. Unfortunately, it coincided with the Wall Street crash. Even so, many countries built elaborate and structurally solid exhibit buildings that are still in use today, many as university buildings. Spain’s own exhibition building houses offices so the interior isn’t open for tourists, but the courtyard is, and it’s impressive. The last two photos show the building that surrounds the courtyard and one of the many beautiful bridges leading to the center of the courtyard.

Next week I’ll take you to the final country on our trip—colorful Morocco.

Creative Portugal

 

Roland and I just returned from a trip to Portugal, Spain, and Morocco. The three countries have a lot of similarities, but they are also different. In these next three blog posts, I am going to highlight one of the major characteristics of each.

We began our trip with several days in Porto, Portugal on our own, with a break for a full-day cruise up the Douro River, before joining our tour group in Lisbon.

Portugal was crammed with reminders of how creative its population was (and is). To start with their artistic achievements, notice the photo at the top of this page, which shows a doorway inside the Porto cathedral. The cathedral is filled with blue tile art, and the next photo is one of many examples from the interior walls.

It isn’t just interiors that show the country’s artistic bent, however. The cathedral also has blue tiles on an exterior porch. Unfortunately, that side is undergoing reconstruction and doesn’t appear in the next photo. The Carno Church also has an exterior wall filled with blue tile art, however, and that’s the following picture.

These are examples of art created centuries ago, but not all of Portugal’s public art comes from the distant past. For example, the sidewalks of Lisbon are decorated at intervals with different black mosaic pictures. This next photo shows a tribute to the men who imbed those pictures into the sidewalks, and it consists of a sidewalk picture as well as the figures of two men doing the work.

Art isn’t the only source of creativity, however. Science can be creative, too. Just think of inventors such as Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. Then there were the 15th-century accomplishments of Portugal’s Prince Henry, better known these days as Prince Henry the Navigator. Contrary to that designation, he wasn’t an explorer and never navigated the seas, but his sponsorship was responsible for making the explorers’ lives easier. He hired cartographers to map the oceans and men of various callings to develop the caravel, a sailing ship that could use square sails as well as triangular ones, making it easier to maneuver and less dependent on currents and trade winds. Magellan, Columbus, and subsequent explorers all benefited from the work done under his sponsorship.

The next photo is a maritime monument in Lisbon. You can see Prince Henry in front leading the way, with the other explorers following him.

I’ll end this post with some general images of the Portugal we experienced. The first are pictures of streets in Porto and Lisbon, respectively; the third was taken during our cruise on the Douro River; the fourth is a picture of Porto and the river from the top of the distinctive Don Luis I bridge; and the final one shows the bridge and the monastery at one end of it all lit up at night.

Portugal was my favorite country on the trip, but there was more to come. Stay tuned next week to read about historic Spain.

 

The Case of the Foolish Protagonist

 

Since my past few blogs have talked about being selective in what I read, I thought this might be a good time to reprint a post from February 22, 2016 that talks about why I read some cozy mysteries (loosely defined) and not others.

The Case of the Foolish Protagonist

Why do so many female cozy mystery writers insist on demeaning their own sex by creating a protagonist who does rash things that put her in danger? That’s the fastest way to make me abandon the story. Yes, some females are foolish, and so are some males. But don’t glorify that foolishness by making it the preeminent characteristic of a protagonist I’m supposed to admire.

As a teenager, I was an avid mystery fan. I read detective stories like Ellery Queen and Nero Wolfe and police procedurals like the 87^th Precinct books by Ed McBain. And at a time when money was tight in my family, I even had a subscription to the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. But my all-time favorite mystery writer was—and is—Agatha Christie.

I like puzzles, not chases. Whodunits, not thrillers. P.D. James, not John Grisham. And for me, the best mysteries include the characters’ psychology as part of the puzzle.

That’s one of the reasons I like Agatha Christie so much. The solution arises inevitably out of the murderer’s inner character, and sometimes out of the victim’s character as well. Even if I know who did it from the beginning (as I do now that I have read each book several times), I always enjoy that exploration.

But none of the books I enjoy have a protagonist who does stupid things.

Ellery Queen and Nero Wolfe and Hercule Poirot all fall into their mysteries naturally. Because they are professional detectives/private eyes, people bring cases to them. And because they are professionals, they rarely take unnecessary risks. The Miss Marple books start differently. Her involvement in so many murders is an epic coincidence. But once you get beyond that, the rest of the story follows naturally from the situation and the characters.

More importantly for my point, like the detectives mentioned above, Miss Marple doesn’t take unnecessary risks. She listens and silently analyzes the case, comparing the characters involved in the murder to other people she has known, but then she tells her conclusions to the police and lets them take it the rest of the way. She seems such a sweet—although cynical—old lady, that the murderer never realizes she is a danger to him.

Cozies with foolish protagonists may be popular in the short run, but they will never last the way Agatha Christie’s works have.

And I’m glad about that.

Permission to Stop Reading

No, I’m not giving you permission to stop reading altogether. Rather, I’m giving you permission to put an individual book down before you finish it and to never pick it up again.

Growing up, I knew it was okay to be selective about which books I read, but I thought it was a crime to start one and not finish it. I even made it through Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence in a college class on English novels. (Well, maybe putting that one down would have been a crime since it was part of the grade, but I hated every word.)

Then I got to graduate school, where new students in the psychology program were required to take an introductory seminar. The only thing I remember about the seminar is that we were assigned Portney’s Complaint by Philip Roth. Hard as I tried, I could not get through it. Fortunately, the seminar was ungraded, but that was the first time I gave myself permission to leave a novel unfinished.

Even after that, I felt guilty whenever I didn’t complete a book. It got easier after that, however. Now I believe it’s a crime to waste my time on a book that I don’t enjoy unless it’s research or there is some other educational reason for reading it. For example, reading a highly-rated book that I find totally boring may give me insight into how readers think. Or it may not. If it isn’t doing even that, I won’t keep reading.

That’s one of the lessons I’ve learned in life. If a book isn’t worth reading, don’t waste your time on it.

You have my permission to stop.