The mystery object is complete. It is made in Wool-ease Chunky, fisherman color, on size 7 needles.

So I met my self-imposed December 10th Christmas knitting deadline.

I also made most of one of these little aliens, but mine turned out marsupial and stuffed with foam, which pretty well spoils it for its purpose. More on that later.

One reason that I was able to finish this yesterday was that it was such chunky yarn — 3 stitches to the inch on #7 needles. I don’t usually use bulky yarn (like, never), so I was impressed with the speed. Another reason is that I knitted during the gory parts of  “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.” It was an excellent movie, but the level of gore on the big screen was such that I was better off being slightly distracted in some sections.

I would highly recommend it, though I wouldn’t take small children to it myself.

The third reason was that my menfolks spent the evening disporting in low dives (well, actually #1 son was bowling and #2 son was at Pinky’s for the traveling sleepover, and only my husband was out at the pool hall) and I was sitting up in the expectation of having to go pick someone up. So I was up way past my bedtime, knitting the little alien creature blearily from memory.

This is why the little alien looks so different from the pattern. Quite early on — having forgotten how the pocket worked — I decided that I would just pick up stitches around the base instead of casting on and sewing up. That left the pocket hanging around uselessly when it was time to do the finishing, so I made it a front pocket instead and stuffed the critter. The pocket will hold a penny, or perhaps a love note, so it is not entirely worthless.

We had our work party yesterday. It was a talking-and-eating party, which is often the best kind. We all squeezed into the break room with our potluck offerings, leaving one poor soul at a time out on the floor with the customers. I was not scheduled to work, and there were so many of us that I ended up not even taking a turn on the floor.

Following the party, I came home and made some Honey Nougat. Honey Nougat is less suspenseful than fudge, but do not think it is lacking in fun moments because of that. The point at which you pour boiling hot sugar syrup into egg whites while beating them is particularly exciting. I did my sugar syrup in a heavy cast iron Dutch oven and used a hand-held mixer, just to keep the thrills in the process. At one point, I enlisted #1 son’s help, but we still managed to get rather a lot of quickly-hardening sugar syrup all over the kitchen. Sort of like King Midas, but with candy.

Then I dipped some of the nougat into chocolate. I may do more of that today. One of my low-priority goals is to learn to make chocolates like Mrs. See’s. I do not aspire to Godiva. Making candy is generally a matter of chemistry and physics, but hand-dipping is an actual skill. Having been reminded of Turkish Delight by the movie, I am considering making some of that as well. Naturally, I packed up all the candy and put it in the freezer. It was the ladies at Russell Stover who told me that they always do this. You think that you can’t freeze chocolate because of the bloom, but they told me that the secret is simply not to open the package till it reaches room temperature. In this way, you can make your Christmas candies with some degree of leisure, enjoying the chemistry-experiment aspect of it instead of hurrying on with your most familiar recipes. But I am not attempting fudge till #2 daughter gets home.

This morning we do our big music at church. It seems awfully early to me, but I am still looking forward to it. It should be a lot of fun. Many of the choristers have expressed particular fondness for one song or another. One of my favorites to sing is “Where the Stable Light Shines.” This is not that great a piece — you can find the  sheet music here or scroll down here to download a choir singing it, and see what I mean — but it is a tango. How fun is that? There should be maracas and trombones and major choreography, possibly with saffron-colored draperies. There won’t be any of that, of course, but it would be fun.

As for the book I am reading — well, it suffers from being non-fiction. This woman decides to travel around the world, having a single date with each of 80 men, trusting that love at first sight will reveal her Soul Mate to her in the course of the experiment. I put it on my Booksfree list when it was announced in the Advance because I figured it would be fiction, and entertaining. But so far (I am up to date #5) it is a record of one blind date after another. Have you ever been on a blind date? Or, for that matter, met a complete stranger with limited facility in your native language? Not really that interesting, was it? I mean, it was probably fun, and I often, in my work, meet people whom I enjoy talking with even if I never see them again, but it’s not much of a plot. Maybe a magazine article, but hardly a book. I figure I’ll give it to date 10 before I quit reading, just in case she has some twist coming up.

Must go practice now. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

The eighth bawk is completed. I have now spent three months knitting these things (well, admittedly, I have knitted other stuff — a jacket, hats, Fuzzy Feet, and whatnot — in the interstices, but still). It is good that this is completed, because today is the HGP deadline for “adults only” crafts.

This doesn’t mean that we should put away our knitted willy warmers (you know I am not making that up), but that we should stop the projects that we are making by ourselves. If a homemade gift is not finished by now, we should put it away for next year and buy something instead. This leaves time for us to do family crafts and baking and candy-making and so on, without any stress.

I used to disagree with this (and I will admit that I am not as strict about the deadline as I might be — I usually extend it by a day or so to finish up anything I have near completion). At the very least, I figured that it wouldn’t apply to me because I knit all the time, not just when I am making holiday gifts.

But over the years that I have been doing the HGP, I have come to agree. You know what happens when you don’t have a deadline. You think it is still two weeks till Christmas, plenty of time to make something, so you go ahead and begin another project (or six — there are knitting bloggers out there who still have that ambitious a list left). Then you begin to skip stuff that you might otherwise enjoy doing, in order to get that pair of mittens completed. You begin to overlook errors and wonky stitches because you are running out of time. The kids have to do their crafts alone. And Christmas Eve is spent in feverish last-minute knitting in hopes of not having to wrap up an unfinished scarf with a note.

That’s not the way to celebrate the holidays. But you can see that I still have a mysterious something on the needles. It is in bulky yarn – a departure for me – and so it may be finished today, sliding under the wire of the deadline. However, today I intend to do the grocery shopping, go to the movies with #2 son, attend the annual store potluck luncheon, ring the Salvation Army bell for an hour and a half, and finish decorating. I also have to practice my music for tomorrow, get to the bank and the post office, and perhaps get the fact-checking done. So it might well be that this will carry over to tomorrow.

A peaceful song for a busy day, “See, Amid the Winter’s Snow” is properly a Christmas carol rather than an Advent one, but I am sure you will like it. The tune, by Sir John Goss, is a Victorian tune that many people who dislike Victorian tunes single out as the exception to their rule. You can hear it in a bell-like midi without lyrics on this page.

The lyrics are, according to The Penguin Book of Carols, controversial. In fact, they are rarely printed as their author, Edward Caswell, wrote them. For one thing, his song began with a verse containing the line “see the tender lamb appears,” which makes Britons think of Sunday lunch rather than Christmas. Jesus is also presented in the original words as “meek and mild” and a good example of humility for us to follow. I think humility is a virtue worth striving for, but I also know that such an attitude is not only not shared, but positively disapproved of by most of my countrymen and women here in Hamburger-a-go-go-land. And of course there are those spoilsports who dismiss the whole genre of Victorian snow carols on the pedantic grounds that there would not have been any snow in Bethlehem when Christ was born.

Do not let these issues keep you from singing this song. Polish up your trumpet if you’ve got one. If not, at the very least sing out the “Hail” parts in your most trumpetesque voice. There are some really beautiful traditional harmonies for this piece, too. And, while it is a wonderful choral piece and has often been recorded in that way, it is a good solo one, too. Maddy Prior has recorded this with Steeleye Span and with the Carnival Band, and there is a snippet of it on this page. Debbie Zepick has also recorded it in Celtic style, and you can hear the first verse of it here.

The tune has also apparently been used for a protest song about Canadian fisheries. If you fall in love with the tune (as you should) and don’t observe Christmas, you might prefer that version.

Here’s our snow. CheriM probably wouldn’t even call this snow, but it’s snow to us. In fact, this morning we had a record low of 4 degrees.

I did not drive bravely to work yesterday.

I walked. Can I claim to have walked bravely to work?

(I also did a stability ball core workout before I left. Note how I can fling the jargon around.)

I admired the footprints of various animals along the way.

Naturally, I had plenty of woolies on. I was able to discover an advantage of the dropped-stitch scarf.

Mine was made of some handspun wool I bought at the KC Renaissance Faire last year. The pattern is basically just garter stitch, but you do a couple of yarnovers on every stitch on row 1, then drop them all on row 2. Continue plain for rows 3 and 4 and start over. Easy as pie.

The result is a fabric open enough that you can pull it up over your mouth and nose for wooly warmth, yet still breathe freely.

It was a lovely walk, and my husband came and picked me up in the evening so I didn’t have to stumble home through the snow in the dark.

At work, as I was unpacking French dolls, a little girl passed me with that sneaky look some children get when thery are expecting to get in trouble.

“Are you looking for your Daddy, sugar?” I sang out in a clear voice. I find that this sometimes alerts the parents to a potential stray child, without sounding at all unfriendly.
“I don’t want my Daddy to stare at me,” she said.

Quickly translating from 3-year-old, I offered, “Is that because you were going to do something you shouldn’t and then your daddy would be mad at you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, how about you just don’t do it, and then you won’t have to worry.”
“Okay,” she said, handing over the package of stickers she had been planning to tear open. She went happily back over to her daddy.

Sometimes it’s that simple.

You know what, it’s cold and you probably would like to stay home even if you can’t. Why not gather aroudn the fire, and sing this sweet and simple song: “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” Of course, if you have a guitar, banjo, madolin, and fiddle to hand, you should get folks to play them. Multi-part harmony is good, too. But it is a fine song to sing by yourself while knitting, too.

Along about 3:00 yesterday, #2 son began calling me to say that there would be no school today, so could he spend the night at a friend’s house. I said no, no sleepovers on school nights.

There were several more calls, with weather report updates and good news about his grades and — this was my favorite — rising percentages of certainty about school’s being canceled.

By the time I got home and was zooming around getting ready for choir, my admiration of his technique had reached its zenith. There it intersected with that frazzled “ask your dad, I can’t think right now” feeling, and I gave in.

#1 son saw his chance, and suggested that he should stay over with a friend who lived really close to the school. He is not allowed to drive in the snow until his dad can give him some lessons on the subject, and his vehicle is unreliable in cold weather, so I agreed to that, too, as I raced off.

We had a low of 8 degrees, which is weather fit for neither man nor beast, but we only have a very little bit of snow, and I doubt that schools will be closed. I intend to drive bravely off to work. I also intend to skip the gym and work out at home. For one thing, I will have the house to myself once my husband leaves at 6:30. This is such a rare event that it makes sense to savor it. I intend to enjoy the quiet.

Coming back to say I was wrong — the schools are indeed closed.

We had the last rehearsal before our Big Music last night. I was so thankful that the snow held off, and I expect that the director was, too. “Jesus Christ is Coming” is one of the pieces we’re doing. It is a traditional tune from the Haya people of Tanzania. We’re doing several African pieces this Christmas. This is a very sprightly little song, and you could learn it real quick from the recording and just go around humming it all day today.

I am not going to skip my workout today — I am going to do a dance workout DVD. I went to the gym yesterday and did my stepped-up cardio routine. I did not eat properly.

I am now going to trot out my excuses, in the spirit of awareness and accountability, so feel free to go read something more exciting.

My menfolks wanted bacon and eggs for breakfast. I skipped the bacon, but had eggs and toast with them. Though we have plenty of frozen, canned, and dried fruits, there was no fresh fruit sitting around and I felt too rushed to prepare anything. Dropped off my kid at school, went to the gym, ran home and changed, and went to work. Book Club took up my lunch hour, so I had a bagel at the coffee shop where we meet. Probably not whole grain, let’s face it, even if it was vaguely brown, and not a balanced meal. A late customer meant I left the store late. My husband had made dinner by the time I got home – baked chicken and baked potato, no other vegetable. I gratefully ate it and rushed off to choir, where they gave us bacon to take home. I got home hungry and had sorbet, because — well, it was there, wasn’t it?

Now, it might be worthwhile to subsist on meatitude and sweetitude if it were delicious holiday goodies. But in fact I was rushing around all day, eating whatever was near me at mealtimes. Clearly, taking a little time in the morning would make all the difference. I could have had fruit and yogurt with my egg, made a whole grain and veg sandwich to eat on the walk over to Book Club, and left lentil soup in the crockpot and salad in the fridge to round out my husband’s chicken. Today, I will do just that with the time I save on driving.

Bad behavior has begun at the store. Oh, most of our shoppers are still happy and fun. They are playing games together and admiring each other’s children and enjoying their choice of gifts.

But there are exceptions. The first of the Stage 2 shoppers are in, right on schedule.

I am not going to tell you how to behave when shopping, but I do have a few respectful suggestions. First, don’t tell me that you spend a lot of money at my store. For one thing, if it were true, I would know it and you would know that I knew it and wouldn’t bother. For another, I don’t treat our serious shoppers any differently from our occasional shoppers, and it is an insult to suggest that I would.

Second, don’t swear at me if we are out of something. You may think that I have your coveted item in the back and am lying when I say we are out, but even if that were true, I wouldn’t give in and get it for you because you lost your temper and pitched a fit.

Third, if you feel you must wallop your child, do it somewhere else. I agree that he was behaving badly, and I realize that some parents believe in spanking, but it is very unpleasant for the other customers — and frightening for the other children — to witness this. And, you know, if your method of discipline actually worked well, he wouldn’t have behaved quite that badly, would he? Just a thought.

In awareness and accountability news, I stepped up my program at the gym in  order to keep it challenging. I then went to check with Evan, the trainer, and make sure that I was doing it right. The young man was very nice, but said that maybe I would like to discuss it with one of the trainers. Ah, yes, it was not Evan. It was some other dark-haired guy my daughter’s age.

It has happened. I have reached the age at which all young people look basically alike. You remember, in college art classes, hearing or reading artists saying that they preferred older models because all the young ones looked alike, right? And you, being a young person, couldn’t imagine what they meant. In fact, you might have thought that old people all looked alike. But the Empress knew exactly what I meant when I told her the story, because it had happened to her, too. Another landmark of advancing age. Sigh.

Um, and I did not meet the 24/7 goal (2 fruits, 4 vegetables, 7 whole grains), but rather had a rushed meatitude and sweetitude type of day.

What’s more, it is supposed to snow today. I am trying not to make that into a crisis.

All in all, things are just the least little bit less than perfect chez fibermom. We need a really stunning song today, so here is “All My Heart This Night Rejoices,” another of the 17th century German carols. These carols are often described as being in “the Lutheran tradition,” as Luther was encouraging carol-singing while the dour Scots, the Puritan English, and even the French were suppressing them. The Germans were rewarded with some gorgeous tunes, including this one. A violin would be good with this, or a cello, and six-part harmony if you’ve got it.

This song will make all those little stressors and imperfections seem less important. Speaking of which, #1 daughter sent me a picture of her Thanksgiving turkey. Isn’t it handsome? It is a perfect example of how something that seems very difficult and worrying can turn out quite successfully in spite of us. She also sent a picture of herself and Son-in-law, whom we have not seen in almost a year, so I was excited about that. They look exactly the same as they did last time we saw them, so they can’t be expected to understand how thrilling it is for me to get a picture. It is not quite as good as seeing them in person would be, but it is something.

It strikes me that some people — possibly our first Stage 2 shoppers, for example — may not want to be cheered by lovely music and Pollyanna-like references. Some people may prefer to wallow in holiday stress and depression. Or perhaps enjoy a little black humor (which I enjoy, irritatingly cheerful person though I may be). For such people, “All My Heart This Night Rejoices” may not strike the right chord. They may prefer “It’s beginning to look a lot like Fish-men”. And why not? This is Liberty Hall.

The new Knitty is up, with lots of good last-minute present-type things, including these little alien creatures filled with rice and herbs, which you can microwave in order to keep your hands warm. Pop them in the microwave for a couple of minutes, tuck them in your pockets, and you will be warm at the bus stop.

I have made microwavable knits with rice and herbs like these, and can attest that they work. A heated wrap for the shoulders is great luxury, so why not warm hands? I am making “Warm Thoughts” baskets for some people who do not read this blog, and these will fit right in. I am putting in homemade hot stuff — Chow Chow, Spiced Apples, cookies from my oven, the “Fire” bath ensemble from Marie Browning’s Melt and Pour Soapmaking,  a hot water bottle with its own cozy — and little alien handwarmers.

At the left you see the eighth bawk, ready for its decreases. I am ready to work on something different.

There is also in the Winter Knitty  this article on wrapping your knitted gifts.

The Anti-Craft doesn’t have a solstice issue up yet, I’m sad to say. Spun magazine still has its summer issue up. Mag-Knits is all bags this month, which is fine if that’s all you want to make.

There are other magazines out there, though. I read magazines in the physical world, and not just knitting magazines. A fitness magazine at the gym recommended using our blogs to give us accountability and awareness for our health habits over the holidays. How would this work? I would contemplate eating pie for breakfast, think of how disappointed Pokey would be with me, and go for the seven-grain cereal instead?

Seriously, though, it is hard to keep up with proper eating and exercise at Christmastime. We skip the gym to go Christmas shopping or get ready for guests. I am seeing some rather fraught ladies at work already. They say that — for women who do not do the HGP, but make all their holiday preparations between Thanksgiving and Christmas — it is the equivalent of an additional full-time job. I have done the HGP and am feeling calm and on top of things and enjoying the season, myself, and getting to the gym on a regular basis. I have increased the incline and the speed on the treadmill this week, and intend to increase the weight on my strength training too. But as I look ahead to the parties and concerts and work-related rush and last-minute stuff I will turn out to have forgotten, I know that I will be tempted to put off gym visits, thinking that we’ll walk around and admire the lights instead, or that shopping is kind of aerobic..

And, for those of us who try not to eat saturated fats and simple carbohydrates, it is like a month-long passage between Scylla and Charybdis. Our own baking (one of the magazines at the gym says that holiday baking is a modern “test of womanhood”) and everyone else’s means that there are fresh cookies all over the place. The grocery stores have chocolates and pies right next to the green beans and oranges. Pate and garlic sausage call out to us that it is only once a year. Then rushing home from work with just a few minutes till time to leave for rehearsal means that vegetables get short shrift — and lunch was a sandwich grabbed between errands. Can’t mince pie count as a serving of fruit?

So I’ll give it a try. So far, I am doing what I should at the gym, but I have not been eating properly at all. We’ll see whether, with blog-induced awareness and acountability, I will do better today.

We still need a Christmas song. Here’s another new-to-me one from Sighkey: “When a Child is Born.” A really nice tune, very singable, and sweet lyrics. It has been recorded by Charlotte Church and Kenny Rogers, among others. No particular instrumentation or choreography present themselves to me for this — why not just hum it in the car while you run errands?

In church yesterday, our fearless leader played “Birthday of a King.” on his sax. I have never liked this song, frankly. I think I have heard sappy renditions of it on the radio. But when our director stood in front of the gold and white Chrismon tree in his white robes playing it on the saxophone, with our very good organist playing the piano very well, I changed my mind.

I was surprised to find that it was written in 1890 by William Neidlinger, and not in 1964 by Pat Boone or something. Apparently, Judy Garland has recorded it, and I bet that would be worth hearing. So if you are going to sing it, you ought to avoid 1970s scooping and 1980s sappiness and sing it honestly. With a saxophone if at all possible.

After church, I gathered up my sons and went to the gym, where we did not see the other kids we were supposed to meet up with. We went through my routine, with #1 son being scornful and refusing to do half the stuff. It was “girlie,” he said. He is sixteen. It is impossible for me to know exactly what about the trip made him cross, but he was bad-tempered for the rest of the day.

He came in to talk to me after I had gone to bed to read, and that was nice, but I didn’t press him about the moodiness. I think it just comes with the territory.

After the gym, I made some ornaments for the tree. Last year we got a larger tree, and I used ribbons and silk flowers to fill it in. I thought it looked nice, but the family were not satisfied, so we need some more ornaments.

Usually, we make one new ornament every year as a family. We like to try new media, and usually make some for our extended family as well. But this year I needed something quick to make in multiples, so I went with wax angels.

The mold came from this place. There are lots of molds around, though. You cut a bit of cord for a hanger and lay it in the mold, melt some beeswax (I used candle stubs last night, though, for a frugal option), scent and color it, and pour it into the molds. In minutes you have cool ornaments for the tree.

Another of my favorite handmade ornaments is a little pillow made with  an antique prayer card. An artist friend gave me the cards, and the local quilt shop copied them onto fabric for me. I just sewed them into little pillows with a hanging cord. I’ve done some family photos that way, too.

This is a really effective way to get graphics and words that are meaningful to you onto your tree. The special paper for the purpose is sold in craft shops, but I have not tried to do it at home. Books on the subject tell you that your local copy shop will do it for you, but all of the copy shops in my town refused. Just a heads-up there.

This one may be harder to see. In the lower left-hand corner is a paper ornament made from the Marth Stewart website. There are antique Christmas card images to print out. I printed some on photo paper, and sewed them together back to back in pairs with gold trim. On the right in this picture is a sort of woodsprite or fairy doll made by a former colleague. She is cheesecloth and muslin with seedpod wings. The face is hand-drawn, and altogether she is quite a wonderful little creature.

This is a simple patchwork star from sewing scraps. Five identical diamond shapes go together to make a five-pointed star. It is just stuffed and hung on the tree. I may make more of these. It’s a nice way to chronicle the year’s sewing projects or the kids’ outgrown clothes, or just to use up scraps.

You can also see another wax angel in this picture.

This picture  has another wax angel in it, and a polymer clay wreath. It was made from directions in Mary Engelbriet Christmas Ideas, with a leaf-shaped canape cutter. There is also in this picture a paper drum made by the director of a play #2 son was in, a Polish doll sent me by my globetrotting grandfather when I was a little girl, a traditional Hmong bauble given to me by a student, a stuffed sheep from the agri department of the university where I used to teach, and a favorite store-bought ornament — the Mouse King from the Nutcracker.

Obviously, we have one of those trees that is covered with memories. I used to be a little snide about theme trees, but then a friend pointed out that we also have a theme tree — it’s just that our theme takes longer to achieve.

Can we see a picture of your tree?

Let me remind you here of my Technology Shopping Plan. It has unaccountably not been put into widespread use since I proposed it last year, so I sallied forth with trepidation to do this year’s electronic shopping.

Oh, I am so much better this year than last year. I knew not merely the approximate generic terms for the items I intended to buy, but the precise brand names as well. I was able to recognize the correct division of the store, identify the item, and carry it confidently back to the check-out line within about three minutes.

Flushed with triumph, I went home instead of going to do the fact-checking I should have done. Oh, well. The trouble is, when you have a long list of things to do, and one of them is “knit, while reading, in the comfort of your own home,” that one tends to be more appealing than the others. So I made good progress on bawk the eighth — this is “rain” Wool of the Andes from Knit Picks.

The Da Vinci Code has turned out to be an enjoyable read. It is a thriller, and the puzzles are fun to work out. I am mostly getting them before the protagonists, which I think is a dramatic device. That way, we have some pages of urging them, “Come on! You must see that it’s — ” I won’t give anything away, though. I understand that there is an illustrated version available. If you were going to buy a copy, it is probably worth getting that one. Even if you are fairly familiar with the art of the period, it is hard to visualize with the level of detail you will want. #2 son, who is leaning toward becoming an itinerant art historian rather than a wandering folklorist, helped me out, but pictures would have been good.

I received a package from my sister in New Zealand, as well as one from the nice people at Sunnyland. The box from New Zealand inspired me to complete the Christmas decorating and put the gifts under the tree. The box from Sunnyland, being filled with fresh nuts and glace apricots, inspired me to bake Danish Almond Crisps and Cranberry Pecan Swirls. They have joined all the other cookies in the freezer, awaiting their opportunity to come out and bring joy to someone at Christmas. Well, probably not. They are inanimate, after all. But it is nice to see all those containers in the freezer, and know that putting the annual cookie boxes together will be simple and fun.

The box from New Zealand had been packed with newspaper, so I had the opportunity to read the foreign ads. I mean, foreign news is easy to come by nowadays, but I can hardly ever see ads asking if I want to make more money from my sheep right next to the holiday shopping stuff.

Sighkey, also a New Zealander, told me that this amazing song, “Snoopy’s Christmas,” is among the most popular Christmas songs there. It took a while to begin the music on my computer, but it is worth the wait. There are dog pictures and flashing lights to amuse you while it loads. It is by The Royal Guardsmen, who I figured must be Brits, but no, they were a garage band from Florida. It is our American Snoopy from Peanuts that they are talking about. Here are the guitar chords.

I had never heard of this song, but it was the US #2 record in January of 1967 (I was alive at the time — I don’t know how I missed it), and #8 in the UK. The band split up after just a couple of years, but the song has apparently continued its popularity while I have been oblivious to it.

Today, after church, I will be going to the gym with a crowd of teenage boys. That should be a new and fun experience. And then I will tackle the remains of my to-do list. Of course, “knit Christmas presents” is still on the list.

Kali Mama points out the liberal use of pagan imagery in Christmas carols. Of course, she is right. Here is a site pointing out the many pagan connections (it is, by the way, an anti-Christmas as well as an anti-pagan  site). The singing of Christmas carols has been forbidden by the church (which often also meant the government) in England, France, Scotland, and the United States at various times in the past. Confessed witches have included the singing of Christmas carols among the “crimes” they listed.

But my favorite pagan caroling story is about one of the rarer Christmas carols. “Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning” is an Epiphany hymn. It is a fine Victorian tune, really beautiful when sung well, but a pleasure to sing around the piano no matter what it sounds like.

Some people found that the expression “sons of the morning” reminded them of Lucifer, so they changed it to “stars of the morning.” This did not solve the problem. The Penguin Book of Carols assures us that “several hymnal editors have refused to include the hymn on the grounds that it incites star worship.” Am I the only one who finds this hilarious?

Not only is the idea of inciting people to worship oxymoronic — take it to its conclusion. Imagine yourself in church on the Feast of the Epiphany, the grand conclusion of the entire exciting Christmas season, celebrating the Trinity in song. You find yourself singing the phrase “Star of the East, the horizon adorning,” and an odd feeling steals over you.

You had intended to go home after church and clean up after the Twelfth Night party, but instead you … um, I’m a little at a  loss here… set up an altar to Gacrux? Hie yourself over to the nearest Temple of Star Worship with a covered dish?

A little unlikely, perhaps. If I were an evangelistic pagan bent on inciting people to star worship, I wouldn’t count on the presence of the word “star” in a hymn to do the trick.

You may be too orthodox to sing an Epiphany carol during Advent. If so, why not enjoy “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” while you deck your halls with pagan symbols? Here’s the guitar tab, and here a songsheet with chords in case you can’t read tab.

This song was written by Johnny Marks, composer of many of the best-known modern Christmas songs, including “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” It was first and most famously recorded by Brenda Lee, although Amy Grant, Rockapella, Aretha Franklin and Sha Na Na are among the many others who have recorded it. It was on radios a lot last year, sung by some girl who seemed to be having digestive troubles, but I do not know who that was. Suffice it to say that you will have no trouble finding an album if you want the whole electric accompaniment and can’t provide it for yourself.

Christmas shopping is in full swing. It is interesting to see the different styles.

G. comes in with an idea of what he wants, asks a few questions, looks at some alternatives I show him, chooses easily, and asks, “What else do I need?” In twenty minutes, he has done all the shopping for his kids, and leaves looking like Santa Claus, with That Man and me following him like bearers, carrying parcels and easels.

T. comes in at the same time, and leaves just after G., but her approach is different. She has to be shown every single item in the category she has in mind. We look at them, debate them, return to ones we’ve seen earlier, discuss several outside-the-box options, compare them with what she has bought in the past, and consider possible future consequences of all the choices. At last, she leaves with one item.

“I work best under pressure,” she says, “but sometimes I run out of time.”
“You like the suspense, though, right?” say I. On consideration, she admits that this is so.

I know from past experience that, if she doesn’t finish her shopping before Christmas, she will do it for Three Kings Day instead.

There are other shoppers. I have to leave G. and T. to make suggestions for a Science Corner for a five year old, to measure paper, to admire handmade things being laminated.

It’s fun.

A girl in choir works at Wal-mart. She is working 12-hour shifts. She works for seven hours before she gets her first break. She makes significantly less money than I do; no overtime, either, though she is an hourly worker. When I point out that there are laws preventing this sort of thing, she calmly explains that her supervisor falsifies her time card to hide it. I ask her why she doesn’t quit.

“They heard I was thinking about quitting,” she says, “so they’re doing everything they can to keep me.”
“12-hour shifts wouldn’t do it for me,” I say.
“I make a dollar more an hour than I could make anywhere else right now,” she says.

She also has to listen to the Chipmunks and the Beach Boys on a pretty regular basis.

An Episcopalian customer was in yesterday and complained about hearing Christmas carols everywhere so early. The Princess had put the radio on, so we were in fact listening to the Muppets butchering “The Twelve days of Christmas,” and I hardly knew where to look. 

I have a good Advent carol for you, though. Written by Scottish reporter James Montgomery, the words promise that Christ will give comfort and strength to the oppressed, that He will come down like showers on the fruitful earth, and that righteousness will flow like fountains from the hills down to the valleys (scholars will have noticed that it is a restatement of Psalm 72). Would singing this song sustain us if we had to work at Wal-mart?

Hail to the Lord’s Anointed is another of the grand and stately German hymns, but not difficult. Everyone can belt this out while strolling around, and in fact it is a good hiking tune, right up there with “My Knapsack on My Back.” You can print out the score here for free, and here is mandolin tab. It has enormously cheerful words, too. The best plan would be for everyone to memorize it, and then gather for the hike, with thermoses of hot soup for when you reach the pinnacle or whatever you plan to reach. Sing the song lustily so everyone can keep in step. The mandolin is optional, I suppose, but I hope that any party of hikers which is taking along a mandolin will invite me.