The Poster Queen sent me this excellent cartoon of "White Christmas." It's The Drifters' version, which is my favorite. I do not want a white Christmas or anything approaching it, but I like the song. Really, we ought to have a Yuletide carol, so here is Jibjab's jolly video of Bush singing "Deck the Halls," a fine old Welsh carol, with the assistance of the boys and girls on the hill. Here you can find a nice Mp3 of the "Gloucester Wassail." Here you will find "The Holly and the Ivy," another excellent yuletide carol.

We are having a bit of a party at work today. We used to have a potluck on the Saturday before Christmas, and those of us who weren't working would come in and take a turn at the register so that everyone could partake. I usually made cioppino or tortellini soup, and people's families would drop by and join in, and it was quite festive. We skipped it last year, and this year we are carrying out pizza and celebrating with fewer people and on a smaller scale. I believe I will take a plate of cookies.

I had intended, since I will be at the store again today, to be at the grocery store when the sun rose so we would have something in the house besides cookies, but the sun is rising just now and I am not even dressed yet.

Zoom!

One of the routine tasks I do for my salaried job is to look and see where people are coming from when they visit the websites I'm in charge of (there are four), and what they were looking for at the time. You could do that with your xanga, if you wanted to. You can look at your footprints and see who is linking to you, and you can see when people have come from a search engine. If you click on those search engine things, you can see where you are in the rankings for the search term. On one of the sites I look after, I can see where I am for versions of Google all over the world (they're close, but not identical, if you were wondering). I will soon know how to write "search the web" in hundreds of languages.

This is my personal journal, not one of the four I'm paid to care for, so I don't actually do that here. However, I just went and looked at my footprints for an example, and I can tell you that I am currently #1 for "sarah mclaughlin in the bleak midwinter tabs." Now, the person who came here for that was disappointed. Others have come here for "scorpion nose" and "knitting sluts" and they also have been disappointed. But if I were in the business of selling guitars and had tabs here and found myself at #1 for a bunch of them, I would be all excited. I would think, "Oh, good! People are finding my guitar tabs!" I would check to see whether they clicked through to my catalog of guitars, and I would work out my strategies accordingly. The information might cause me to increase the number of guitar tabs I offered, or to put the names of modern performers into my posts, or something.

The number of things for which my websites are #1, or at least on the first page, has increased dramatically since I started doing this. When I am at the store, I tell my coworkers, "We're #1 for X!" in a merry voice. "We're #2 for Y, just below the official website! We're above the official website for Z! We're #1 for Q in Finland! We're right below Amazon for F!" They tolerate this.

The theory is that this will lead, in time, to increased prosperity. Right now, we have more visitors to our catalog in one minute than we had in one day when I started doing this last March. We have ascended to "average presence" in the link popularity measures. We have way more online orders than we used to. (I can't give you a percentage of increase on that, because we used to have none most months.) But the profit on online orders doesn't yet pay my salary.

I am in the position of the college student who goes to classes and hunts spare change for gas money because someone who ought to know has told him that this will eventually lead to a well-paid job, even though at the moment there is no sign of one. He is supposed to exult in his good grades, which contribute nothing to his upkeep and mean nothing in the outside world, and take it on faith that his studying will lead to something beneficial.

But, hey, you wouldn't believe the number of things my sites are now #1 for!

After a jolly day plying the Dark Art, Son-in-Law came over and we had Gingered Cider and cookies. There were enough left that I was able to put aside a few for Christmas Eve and cookie boxes, but not many.

Here you see Cranberry Pinwheels with walnuts, chopped fresh cranberries, and orange peel, and they are certainly delicious. There are also Chocolate Spritz cookies. I couldn't believe how easy those were with my new cookie press. I am going to try some fancier ones if I don't run out of time.

In the evening, most of the household went out, but I stayed in and worked on #2 son's sweater. I got about six inches done. It still probably won't be finished for him to wear to his grandparents' house on Christmas Day, but I am doing my best.

Today's song is "Quelle est cette odeur agreable," or "Whence is that goodly fragrance flowing," another French carol. I think that I post this song every year, simply because it is so beautiful. Here you can find a little clip of Chanticleer singing it.

The words tell about the shepherds, who are hanging out on the hillside with their flocks when suddenly the scent of angels overwhelms them, ravishing their senses. I bet it would, too. Before I heard this carol, I had simply never thought about the angels having a smell. Chanthaboune has written about her students' arguing with her about the shepherds' reaction to the angels. The Bible says that they "were sore afraid," but the kids begged to differ. They thought the shepherds would just be surprised. I think it might be a bit overwhelming.

I will be at the store today and tomorrow, which is fine, since my house is full of people and therefore a relatively difficult place in which to ply The Dark Art. They do, however, act all impressed when I say that we are #1 for things.

I have come back to say that I visited last year's post for this day and was reminded that it is the Solstice, and yet this year I did not link you to any special carol for the ocasion. However, last year I did. I also linked to a really terrific cookie recipe and explained how to determine longitude by the behavior of a wounded dog, so you should use the calendar buttons on the left to visit that post if you have plenty of time. Just change the year to 2006 and you will be magically trasnported.

I like to offer you a song to sing every day during Advent, sort of a virtual Advent calendar of music. Mostly I like to give you Christmas songs that might be new to you, since it is intended to be an antidote to having heard "The Little Drummer Boy" so many times you're ready to spit. Today, however, I offer you one that you may already know, "Bring a Torch, Jeannette Isabella." Here it is in French, though rather too slow for what was, when it was collected in 1553, a dance tune. Most of the old French carols were dances, and are very nice sung at a bouncy pace. At this site, though, you can hear a clip of it being played slowly on strings, and it is quite pretty.

While I think of this as a well-known song, I haven't sung it yet this season, nor heard it on the radio, or anything, and it is a good one for this happy time of year when we have done everything we have to do to prepare for Christmas and are just waiting eagerly for the festivities to begin. It is good to sing all by yourself, if you are by yourself today, and also lends itself to pretty harmonies. You can play it on your tin whistle or your violin, if you have them handy.

We had a pretty good rehearsal last night, in spite of some tuning problems (and was it the flautist or was it just that the piano was out of tune?) and confusion over the whole Advent vs. Christmas music question. "Jeannette Isabella" is Christmas, but for me we are in the part of the year where you really can sing both for a few days. We discovered that our organist can sing very well, so of course I immediately began plotting to get him to sing in quartets and things. I am like that. I have agreed to join, or rather to form, the ministry team for music next year, so my frequently-quashed desire to arrange stuff will have an outlet. In our church choir, it is customary for people to stand where they like and sing what they like, and I am always wanting to balance things, or to encourage the second sopranos to sing soprano when there is no division, or have the second altos join the tenors when they have an exposed high note, or something. I bite my tongue, I promise you, but I am like a herding dog with no sheep. You know how they have to visibly restrain themselves from herding the people in the room? I am like that.

The cookies are from yesterday's baking (feathered bells, Christmas trees, and Scottie dogs with coconut fur). Also, yesterday, I solved all my lingering customer service issues and went to the abs class at the gym. Apart from the frequent cries of "I'm trying to work!" with which I responded to the innumerable interruptions (most of the family had the day off), I was very productive, and I am now feeling relaxed.

Nonetheless, I must rush off, virtually speaking, and do some work.

  Today's song is Tomas Luis de Victoria's extremely beautiful "O Magnum Mysterium." While this is very satisfying to sing, it is not the kind of thing you are likely to sing around the house while getting your holiday preparations finished up.

The song marvels at the thought that farm animals got to be present at the birth of Christ. A speciesist thing to marvel at, perhaps, but the music is wonderful.

I had no class last night, so I continued working on Christmas confections. #2 son helped me make turtles and Festive Cranberry Bark. This year, the Kraft people have made caramel in little pellets to melt more easily, and without all the unwrapping which makes using their caramel for your turtles as much trouble as making your own.

Then I made Painted Eggnog Cookies. The secret to getting good colors with these is to mix food color with egg yolk and paint them before baking.

The abstract designs on these make me think of my childhood, when paintings and even illustrations were like this.

I sprinkled some with sugar, for sparkle. However, it is easy with simple cookies to get carried away with the decorating, so that they end up pretty, but too sweet to eat.

I only did a couple of dozen of these last night, but I think that I can roll and cut and bake while doing my computer work today. This may make me slightly less efficient, but no more so than chatting with coworkers and helping customers, and I have neither here at my computer.

Plus, I am not only dabbling in the Dark Art of SEO today, but also getting that rocks and minerals subunit going, an undertaking that requires Thought. And Thought sometimes comes more easily when the hands are busy.

So, yeah, I've talked myself into that. And I am thinking that, while I will make more abstract stars and trees, I also might like to make some icing. Then I could make bells or animals or something, with feathering. Feathering is the most fun kind of icing effect, I think. It might look silly on animals. I am probably only thinking of animals because of the song. And even if we can imagine the Christ Child surrounded by animals in rapt contemplation, we can't very well imagine them with feathered icing on them.

I got a bit further with #2 son's sweater last night while the cookies were baking. This is the front. The back is finished. I doubt it will be ready for Christmas Day, frankly. Maybe New Year's. Epiphany, for sure.

Now, since "O Magnum Mysterium," lovely though it is, is not a practical tune to sing while you finish up your holiday preparations (unless you are doing a group baking perhaps, with a group of friends who all happen to sing different parts, in which case go for it), I will offer you a second song today: "The Friendly Beasts."

This is a very sweet tune, which your kids will enjoy singing with you as you bake cookies and wrap gifts. Or, alternatively, you can enjoy humming it at your computer. Get your coworkers to join in. Play it on a comb and tissue paper, with the stapler for percussion. Process around the building singing it sweetly in close harmony. Next year, the office will be ready for "O Magnum Mysterium."

Today's song is "Behold That Star," a traditional American song which is a lot of fun to sing.

Yesterday I made Jam Thumbprints and English Toffee, finished my Christmas shopping, mailed the Christmas cards, and wrapped gifts.

I also went to a work-related dinner party which had, as you can see below, very elegant decorations, courtesy of Janalisa, who has a talent for this.

Today I am in a mad rush, largely because I slept in till nearly 7:00. Now I have so little time to do the essential computer work before time to leave for the store that I shouldn't be here at all. Only pictures and a song today, therefore. Fa la la la la!

"Come Ye Lofty, Come Ye Lowly" is another fine carol arranged by Gustav Holst. You probably know this guy as the composer of "The Planets," but he did a very nice suite called "Christmas Day" in 1910 which included this lively Breton carol. This is a very joyful carol, which is fitting for today, a week before Christmas Eve. You can sing it, play it on your sackbut, or dance to it. It will enliven whatever you need to do.

For me, this is the last day for going into stores until Christmas. And possibly for quite a while after, too. Of course, I do not refer to the store where I work, since I will be there three days this week. But I must get stamps, batteries, cream, apple cider, Scotch Tape, and whatever else I have run out of that is needed for the holidays. If I don't get it today, we will have to do without, that's all.

I expect you are wondering about yesterday's Big Music. It could have been worse. I missed, as far as I know, two notes in the bell piece. I do not like to miss any notes, but for bells, that's not so bad.

It is not that I am a perfectionist. You know that. It is that I am a musician. So playing the right notes at the right time is the minimal expectation. Missing notes is like ... hmm... trying to think of something comparable... Okay. How about if you read a page in a book and you only missed a couple of words? Doesn't happen, right? Not once you are past third grade. So that is why missing notes in the bell pieces is distressing for me.

However this was only the second bell piece I have ever played, so I am hopeful of improving.

As for the choir pieces, they also could have been worse. I did not make them any worse than they were.

We made people cry, and had a standing ovation. Yes, in church, unseemly though that may be. I have never seen that happen before. It was either because the overall grandeur of the occasion swept people away, or because they love us in spite of how underrehearsed we are, and it was pretty cheering either way. We sat up there in the choir loft laughing.

Then I drove home in the crisp winter, with the dusting of snow, and had a cozy afternoon with my family.

The dogs are all getting along fine. I took pictures of the three of them together, but my family says I shouldn't post them bcause they reveal how messy our house is at the moment, so I will clean the house up and try again.

Today's song, "El Cant dels Ocells" or "Carol of the Birds" is an Andalusian tune, and a very beautiful one.  Here you can find it played on guitar (click where it says "MP3"). Here is a YouTube. My favorite recording of it is by Kathleen Battle, but Mr. Casal's version is also lovely. I think you can sing this one in Spanish, or play it moodily on the piano, or hum it to yourself in a luxuriant fashion as you laze around drinking tall cups of mocha and looking out upon the snow.

I got home yesterday just as the rain changed to snow, and quite enjoyed it. The snow is now on the ground, but not on the roads, which is just as it should be. I put the ham in the oven and sat by the fire knitting. #2 son is concerned that his sweater won't be finished by Christmas, and well he might be. I don't remember promising that I would finish it by then, but I suppose I might have done so. My schedule is about to settle down, and I intend to knit as fast as I can.

I am having a slight panic over getting everything to my customers in time for Christmas, but I did get all those cookies made, and the fretting over the last-minute product glitches is distracting me from fretting over today's underrehearsed music, so that may be a good thing.

I don't get stage fright or performance nerves at all, but I really hate going on unprepared.

Oh, well.

There is the Big Music in church this morning, and there is also a potluck dinner and the kids' performance, but my family will not attend those things with me, and I may end up staying home and baking. And knitting.

We have a new dog at our house. This is Spicer, #1 daughter's dog. She is a cutie, as you can see.

Having recently been the recipient of girlish confidences about romantic crises from several young women, I was thinking about Christmas love songs.

Most are sad. "Blue Christmas," by Billy Hayes and Jay Johnson, is not much of a song, but Elvis Prelsey made it a classic, so we can't fail to mention it. It is possible that it really only ought to be sung by Elvis. Charles Brown's 1961 "Please Come Home for Christmas" is, I think, the best of the genre, and it has been recorded well by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to The Eagles, and you can hear Brown singing it here.

Everyone can sing "Please Come Home for Christmas," and you should sing it today while you finish up your holiday preparations. All those songs where someone has died but an angel or a little child or Santa Claus makes the narrator see that everything will be okay in some spiritual sense, they should not be sung except by drunken revellers. "Last Christmas" should never be sung under any circumstances, and people who sing it with a lisp (like the guy on the radio) should be slapped.

"Baby, It's Cold Outside" by Frank Loesser is, depending on your generation, personal experience, and political leanings, either a cute flirtatious song or a really creepy one. Here you can hear Betty Carter and Ray Charles sinigng it, and find the chord progression so you can play along.

There is another group of Christmas songs, which have as their theme the desire of the singer to have the beloved for a Christmas present. Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Chrismas is You" is probably the best of this group, though it still sounds to me as though she has stomach cramps. Here are the lyrics, so you can sing it yourself.

"The Greatest Gift of All" by John Jarvis is the sweetest Christmas love song I've found. I think that Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers are the ones most often heard singing this, and the link has a video clip of them. We have the sheet music at our house, and we like to sing it in a jazzy style. Nice tune.

I have one and a half million things to do before I have to leave for work.  I am seriously hoping that it won't snow till I get home.

Today's song is "Carol of the Bells," a song which I would never choose to sing, but which we are singing in church this Sunday. Click on the link for a nice midi bell performance and all the words. Here is a downloadable midi file and sheet music and stuff. Here is an impressive guitar version. Here is a PDF file of the sheet music for flute.

This is a grand arrangement of a Ukrainian folk song, with rudimentary words set to it by Peter Wilhousky at the beginning of the 20th century. It is sort of exciting to listen to, especially if sung by a large and skillful choir, though #2 son finds that it reminds him of "Danse Macabre." (Scroll down at the linked page if you need to refresh your memory -- it's on the left.)

The reason I am thinking about this song today is not only the horror I feel at having to sing this on Sunday in a severely underrehearsed condition, but also the feeling it evokes. It is a little bit fast and threatening, isn't it? A little bit like Christmas shopping, or not having sent out your Christmas cards yet, or not yet having made the 6 dozen cookies for tomorrow's bake sale, and also having to be at work at the store the next two days, with snow threatened, and needing to get the paperwork for two shows in tonight or they may not arrive for Christmas.

Yesterday I made deliveries and did computer work and went with #1 daughter to finish up the shopping and did a party at which I got involved in conversation and actually burnt almond bark in the microwave. Smoke and everything. I apologized, set the stinking dish out on the porch, and carried on.

I also had an hour or two by myself.

I can't remember the last time this happened. Probably last spring.

It was wonderful. I love my family very much, and enjoy them. I also enjoy my work, including my customers. But if you never get to be alone, being alone becomes a great luxury.

As with "Carol of the Bells," which is a very crowded song, crowds and Christmas can be fun and exciting and jolly but also a little bit overwhelming. The best plan is probably to throw yourself into it headlong, and also to carve out a couple of hours to yourself in the middle of it.

My husband brought home a ham from work. A ham is a very good positive economic indicator. Rough years, we get a second turkey. Really bad years he gets laid off. This year it's just a two or three week shut down, beginning tonight. Monday is my last evening engagement till Christmas Eve. #2 son has some finals next week, but is otherwise feeling finished with the semester. We are beginning to feel pretty festive.

Remember yesterday's chaos?

I vanquished it.

Here's what I believe about papers: you touch them once. If they require action, you take that action. If you are actually going to use them again, you file them immediately. If the information would be easy to get again, or will never actually be required again, you throw them away.

But this is actually more of a faith statement than a reality. because sometimes when you're busy -- or at least when I'm busy -- the papers end up in piles.

Yesterday one of the women in my small group shared how stressed she was by her messy desk, and that she had taken all the papers and sorted them into piles.

This wouldn't work for me. In fact, a desk of piles would still be a messy desk for me. It would just be moving the mess around some more.

I have all the papers filed so I can find them immediately when I need them. I do own a filing cabinet. Unfortunately, the desk is in the little space between dining room and kitchen (not a great decorating move, but needs must) and I felt that the filing cabinet would be too intrusive there. So instead I have portable file boxes. They may be ugly, but they aren't messy. In theory, I ought to put them away at the end of the workday and bring the one I need back out in the morning. I haven't done that yet, but today might be the day.

Well, that was the chaos of the desk area. There is still the chaos of the music.

Rehearsals last night were pretty horrible.

First was bells rehearsal, where I kept losing my place. We were playing "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence," and I was just flat out singing along in hopes of keeping my place, but then there was thumb damping and table damping and other fancy stuff I don't even know the names of, and I just grimly continued, hoping I was occasionally playing the notes in the right place.

Very stressful. Not fun at all. We are doing this piece on Sunday, and there will be no more rehearsals.

There will also be no more choir rehearsals. In the choir, at least, it is not a case where everything would be fine if it weren't for me, which is how it sometimes seems to me in bells. But I am still making errors. The music is for Sunday. We have about a dozen pieces. At this point, we should be working on little nuances of dynamics, or perfecting interpretation, not asking for notes.

It sounds hideous.

How much does that matter? It isn't a performance, after all. But surely if we are just making a horrible cacophony, this will distract people from the joy of their worship experience?

Ah, well. We had a slight controversy over "In the Bleak Midwinter" last night. One of the Oldest Members of the choir wanted to revive an ancient tradition of singing it on Christmas Eve, but the newish pastor points out quite rightly that it is an Advent hymn, and not proper for Christmas. Not to mention the whole "bleak" part. He wants a festival air for Christmas.

Christina Rossetti wrote the words at the end of the 19th century and Gustav Holtz wrote the tune at the beginning of the 20th century, demonstrating just what a couple of highly talented people can do in the way of a carol. It is quite beautiful, both words and music. You can sing it, play it on your cello or clarinet, hum it -- really, there is nothing you could do to mess this up.

People have tried, though. James Taylor recorded it with an odd little "bleak" followed by a rest, suggesting to the listener that he didn't understand the words. Sarah McLaughlin recorded the lines "If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a wise man, I would do my part" as "If I were a shepherd, would I bring a lamb? If I were a wise man, would I do my part?" Perhaps this was intended to suggest soul-searching. She may be encouraging us all to ask whether we are doing all that we should... or something. In fact, it just causes the words to quit making sense.

This is one of the Victorian snow carols, though just barely Victorian. Many people don't like to sing these songs at all. Let's face it, the following words would not really describe Bethlehem:

"In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago."

If you want something peppier, consider another of the group, "See Amid the Winter Snow." This is rarely sung today, having somewhat unfortunate words, but it is a wonderful tune, very uplifting. Edward Caswell and John Goss put this together during the great Victorian Christmas carol revival, when lots of snow was customary in carols. It includes "See the tender Lamb appears" which has culinary overtones, and "wherefore have ye left your sheep on the lonely mountain steep?" which has a desperate for a rhyme quality to it. But it also has this stirring refrain:

"Hail that ever blessèd morn,
hail redemption's happy dawn,
sing through all Jerusalem:
Christ is born in Bethlehem."

You have to sing this bit thunderously, with big trumpetlike sounds if you are an alto or a bass, and soaring high notes if you are a soprano or a tenor. Or just shout it out raucously if you aren't any of those things. Sweeping arm gestures are good, too, if you are not in a choir at the time.

See, this way you have options. If it is actually snowing where you are, you can stay at home singing a plaintive tune about snow on snow on snow, or you can go out boldly, singing "Hail!"

#1 son got his classes picked out for next term, and starts his Christmas break job this morning (at 8:00! gasp!), so I am making beignets for him, as well as eggs and sausage so he will survive. I must go and do so.