Merry Merry

It's certainly been a year now hasn't it? Given enough time, anything could happen.

That's a little joke between my dad and me. But it serves as appropriate adage for the year. While 2007 proved a good year in some respects (I got a new and improved job), 2007 has dealt it's blows and I am going to be really glad when 2008 come to bump it off it's throne. But we'll all talk about that next week.

This day is special because it reminds us that perhaps we have spent too much time bitching to see the best and realest things. Stopping to think about it, drinking a little nog and emptying a stocking puts the bitching on pause and give us a little time to think about that which no man or child can see. So take my jokes for what they're worth. It's been a best /worst of time type year, enjoy and cheers to the best-ofs!

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Wha...where did all this Christmas decor come from

I know I have been MIA for a while. Sorry.

I just posted this on Marimello, but for those of you who don't read both blogs, here you go.

Somehow I was enjoying a cruise to Mexico and now it's the 20th. But all that sun and sand has been muted by the news that while I was gone, an amazing woman, and mother of my best friend died suddenly. Being that she was such an influential and creative lady, I've been thinking and chatting about how creativity is passed on through the people we know.

Certainly my friend's mother was an influence on me directly. She welcomed me into her home after I only just met my friend in college and I slurped up her sense of interior decorating. On the same trip, she took me to her stylist after a series of seriously bad hair cuts and taught me to trust the powers of a good hair cut again. She knit me a scarf after a fun, but cold trip to London and encouraged me to return to knitting. Which of course led to this here blog.

But more so I knew her through people she loved and who loved her. My friend talked me out of my men's undershirts and into a fetish for shoes. She weaned me off my baggy earth-tone wardrobe and taught me that good clothes open all doors. After we hadn't seen each other for a year, we showed up on the quad with the same shade of hot pink hair. She got me into blogging and inspired my writing both on and off line. Somewhere behind all of this, her mom was shopping for stylish vintage, borrowing the pink hair dye, and reading the blogs. Knowing a woman with a pink fish tail allowed me to trust my own flashy instincts and to wear them on the outside. I couldn't be more grateful to have known Judy. And I couldn't be more pleased with the thought of her keeping the eclectic fire alive in her family and friends.