We sang "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" last night, so I offer it to you this morning. The haunting tune is "Picardy," another of those nice French ones, and the words are from 4th century liturgy. Here you can pick an instrument to hear it with. I like the bells.

This is a very dramatic song, and you can sing it with carefully-chosen dynamics and changes of tempo and make everyone in the room cry, if you are in the mood for that. Here is the sheet music. Here is sheet music for guitar. Here is mandolin tab with a midi file. Here you can hear an actual choir singing a completely different tune for it (St. Thomas Choir, and boy are they doing a good job, even if you generally prefer Picardy, as I do).

The song tells us to "ponder nothing earthly-minded," and hey, good luck on that. The radio this morning was talking about how it is now "the twelve days of Christmas," which is not the case. It is apparently time for my annual burst of irritation about that, because the 12 days of Christmas don't begin till the 24th. It is Advent, which is why we aren't supposed to be pondering anything earthly-minded. Most of us are probably pondering what to prepare for the holiday meals and how to finish up our shopping and when we're going to get to the post office.

Actually, I am not pondering those things at all. I may be tired, but thanks to the HGP, I am on top of the holiday preparations and can contemplate the trinity when I am not working or rehearsing, which is nowhere near often enough. I have a peck of filing to do today, since I have been allowing chaos to reign by my desk while I've been so busy.

Just a week or two, actually, Chaos really leaps on the opportunity to reign, doesn't it?

So I will vanquish chaos today, which sounds like a pretty good thing to do, and get the rocks and minerals subunit going, and then this evening is the dress rehearsal for the Big Music at church.

We are so totally not ready. Chaos, in fact, reigns in the music, which is worse than having it reign by the desk.

However, "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" reminds us that

"Rank on rank the host of heaven
spreads its vanguard on the way,
as the Light of Light descendeth
from the realms of endless day,
that the powers of hell may vanish
as the darkness clears away."

In which case we can probably clear away a little chaos, be it paper or music or merely allowing ourselves to get overwhelmed by holiday preparations.

I did some lolling, and in the course of it discovered the answer to Universehall's difficult question: what holiday mysteries should you stay away from? Generally speaking, I forget books I don't enjoy pretty quickly, so I was stumped on that. However, Dog Gone Christmas is a really badly written book, so riddled with errors that it was about as enjoyable to read as the first essays in remedial English classes, and I wasn't even being paid to read it. I gave up on it and sent it off to a fellow frugalreader, who may enjoy it more than I did.

My show last night was at a gym, so I made highly nutritious wonton cups with chicken salad at 50 calories apiece, and dipped pretzels calibrated to be a mere 10 calories apiece. Only the thin people ate them. The staff ate them and exclaimed over their deliciosity. Fit exercisers ate them and then ordered pizza stones and cake decorators.

Heavier people, who might actually have benefited more from finding tasty holiday treats at such low calorie counts, rushed away as though I had been selling drugs. One woman, looking askance at my ten-calorie confections, picked up a catalog. I laughingly assured her that there were no calories in the catalog. "No?" she said in a worried voice. "Well, I don't know. I'm trying to be really good." She set the catalog down and left.

One of the goals I have for next year in my business is to determine which marketing efforts are worthwhile and which are not. Then I can focus on those that are. But at this point, I can't really tell. I had equal numbers of orders and bookings at the shows on Sunday and Monday. I did a good deal of driving for one, and bought some groceries for the other. At both, I might well have developed relationships that will turn out to be mutually beneficial for years to come. It's also time for me to renew my website, which has a cost and no site meter. I know that the price is small, as websites go, and that I have covered it with the profit of orders so far, but I don't know how it would compare with putting the same investment into a different medium. I don't yet have enough experience with this to know when I'm succeeding.

I like to think, during Advent, about my goals for the following year. 2007 has been a year of big changes for my family, including me. Those big changes have in some cases led to completion of my goals for this year, and in some cases they have derailed goals I had for this year. So I may have a couple of goals to recycle for next year, as well as a couple of new ones.

Today I have for you one of my favorite Advent hymns, and indeed one of my favorite hymns at all, "Comfort, Comfort Ye, My People." This is one of those 17th century German hymns, but I like to sing it in a jazzy syncopated style, and if you listen to it, you will hear that it sounds good that way. In fact, it has such a modern feel that people generally think it is a modern song. I would love to hear it with a steel drum. That is just how it seems to me it would be best, though admittedly Olearius would not have had any steel drums on hand and therefore would not have chosen them. If you like your music bigger and flashier, not to mention slower, you can also find this in Bach chorales (eight of them; he really liked this tune) and Pachelbel organ pieces and stuff, under the name "Freu dich sehr." It is also known as "Old Forty-Second," from the Genevan psalter, in which it was used for the 42nd psalm. It works well as a madrigal, too, and with lush harmonies (well, yeah, Bach and Pachelbel are a clue there, huh?).

In fact, the only way I don't like this tune done is in even rhythms. A few years ago, #2 daughter and I got up a quartet to do this for the Christmas Eve service, and the organist asked, "Do you like it as a madrigal or as a dirge?" I thought that was very funny at the time. However, it is true that it is sometimes sung with a very slow, stately, even tempo. This is an error. Only do that if you have been singing this every Sunday in Advent for forty years and are desperate for variety.

The words are from Isaiah 40. Johann Schop wrote another tune for these words, but it is not as good. Advent is short, and "Comfort, Comfort Ye" is, like mince and pecan pies, only available to us at this time of year. You can go around all day humming this tune, and it will cheer you even if you don't have any pie.

"Hark the glad sound!" is an Advent hymn which I never really sing. You can click on the link and find the words with three tunes. I like Ravenscroft the best, myself. However, this song includes lines like "He comes, from thickest films of vice/ to clear the mental ray," and is thus disqualifed on the grounds of bad poetry from being sung at my house. You could sing the first and last verse, though, to any of the springhtly tunes supplied.

I'm including it, sort of on principle, because it seems to me that Advent hymns are being sung less and less, even in churches. Our church claims that no one wants to hear Christmas carols at their appointed time, that is between Christmas and Epiphany, so they have to jump right in with "Joy to the World" on the weekend after Thanksgiving. That means that the wonderful Advent hymns get short shrift. And if we only get to sing a few, we are of course not going to skip "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" or "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooking." So we may end up with only three or four Advent carols that people even remember.

So think at least briefly of Phillip Doddridge and his 18th century Advent hymn.

The hostessof yesterday's party had a pink and chartreuse color scheme for her lavish and lovely holiday decorations, and feather boas on her Christmas tree. Pretty cool.

I am plannng to take some portion of the day off today, finish up my decorating, get some buttons on Ivy,a nd also loll about in front of the fire enjoying the gloomy rainy day and reading.

I have a ravishingly beautiful tune for you today: "All My Heart This Night Rejoices".

I worked with JJ yesterday. She was expecting to have worked 86 hours this week by the time she left. I sent her home early, but even so. That is ridiculous. There is hardworking, there is gallant endeavor, and then there is just plain ridiculous. No one ought to work 86 hours a week.

I worked 44 hours for the store this week, and 7 for my business, and I have a show today so I will finish up at 10 or so there. I am therefore working only a little more than I am supposed to. I tell you this because I am bad about excessive working, so you may be thinking that I have no room to talk. However, I have been keeping track, in an effort to combat my tendency to work too much. I fully intend to get strict about that 40 hours for the store, and I plan to take the holidays off from the business. I can see that I am not getting the opportunities to loll around that I want, and I am not having the time to look after my home and family that I need, and I am making sincere efforts to fix that.

The thing is, if your work is truly what you love, and you have a butler and a housekeeper and a wife to take care of all the other responsibilities in your life, then you can work insane amounts if you want to. Why not? This could describe scientists and artists  and politicians, who might have their jobs as vocation, avocation, and recreation, and want nothing more from life.

But JJ is a teacher, and I know what her district pays. I also know what we pay her. She may be working for minimum wage at her third job, for all I know. Even so, it is not possible that she absolutely has to work that many hours in order to keep body and soul together. And, while she may love her teaching job so much that she freely chooses to work lots of hours there, her other two jobs aren't the kind of thing a person devotes herself to in that way.

Obviously, I don't think that JJ will read this, or that anyone who does will recognize her and tell her what I said. If she did read this, she would be well within her rights to say it is none of my business. And it isn't.

But I really understand how it happens. It is so easy to think that something has to be done and if you won't do it no one will. Or to have trouble saying no if someone asks you. Or to be seduced by material rewards. Or to think that you will just finish this one more thing...

And then, once you start working too much, your costs rise. Even without the butler and housekeeper. #1 daughter is working 45 hours or so each week, and she finds that her food costs are eating up any extra she makes, since she doesn't have time to come home and eat. She also needs more clothes, and part of that is probably a feeling that you deserve some treat since you worked so hard.

So she works more and benefits from it less. And that makes her feel that she needs to work all those hours.

And there are people who work too much in order to escape from the rest of their lives. If you're working, you can avoid the empty house, the unhappy marriage, the disappointing children, the spiritual emptiness... Working for these reasons is akin to drinking for those reasons.

So, anyway, "All My Heart This Night Rejoices." Click on its name for sheet music with midi. The link at the top just has the sound file and words. This site has a slightly different arrangement, and I prefer it, but all of them are gorgeous. Paul Gerhardt wrote the words (in German) and Johann Ebeling the music, both in the second half of the 17th century. That was a great time for German carols, presumably because Lutherans allowed carols while practically everyone else was forbidding them. Catherine Winkworth translated it in 1858, and here you will find all the words, though the version in your hymnal is probably shorter.

If you have a good chamber singing group at your home or church today, you should certainly do Bach's arrangement of this song. It's nice with an orchestra, too, even a little orchestra, so if you have one of those on hand, definitely go for it. However, you can also just sing the traditional one with a friend or two, or even play it on your concertina, because a tune like this will bring tears to your eyes and joy to your heart with its sheer beauty, no matter what. The words, too.

I am aware that there are people who will not have this response. I am sorry for them, of course. I am also sorry for those who are working way too much and see no way to stop doing so.

Fortunately, I find today's song sufficiently uplifting that I can transcend the weltschmerz and move right on to joy. I hope you can, too.

 I'm in a hurry today. I'll be at the store today, and doing some customer service for my business, and have a show to do tomorrow, and somewhere in there I need to do the grocery shopping, plus the computer work.

I was also at the store yesterday. I was creating alluring vistas of toys. I rarely do this nowadays. It is a peaceful occupation, creating order from chaos.

It made me think of my pantry at home, though. Some of the newest gifts from Central Office are too big to fit in my cabinets, so I've just sort of been tucking them into the pantry.

I'll think about that later.

Apart from my unfortunate pantry, the rearrangement of the toy section made me think of the fact that people aren't buying toys for children so much this Christmas. Partly it's the fear of Chinese toys, following a number of recalls of toys for lead contamination and whatnot.

I have to say that this is the direct result of the American consumer's decision to put price before all other considerations. If you are determined not to pay enough to cover the cost of the raw materials, you will have to expect that the raw materials that end up being used are not going to be what they should be. When parents decided to buy three poor quality toys instead of one good one, and became outraged at the price of good toys, they made it almost impossible for any company to avoid outsourcing their toy manufacturing to China, where workplace  human rights abuses are commonplace and safety rules are considered economically unfeasible. Consumers who are now seeking for someone to blame should look, if not in the mirror, at least at the person next to them at the toy store who said, "I can get practically the same thing at Sam's for half that much!"

But aside from the toy safety scare, it is also the continuing trend toward buying electronic stuff for children at ever younger ages. The big products for preschoolers this Christmas are MP3 players. I've bought an MP3 player this year, but for my 16 year old, not for a 4 year old. Little children, and schoolchildren as well, spend way too much time interacting with electronic devices. They should be interacting with each other, with their parents, with the natural world, and with figments of their imaginations.

What's more, my electronics buying plan has still not been put into effect in the electronics stores of our nation.

I proposed this plan a couple of years ago. It is very simple. Electronics stores or departments should be laid out like zoos. All the music-producing devices should be in one clearly labeled area and all the DVD playing things in another and so on, so that no person, however unhip, would have to fear walking out with a phone when they meant to get a camera or vice versa.

There should be interpretive features, just like zoos, such as signs with lots of information, and buttons to press that will play an informative tape (well, file, then) explaining the objects in view. It should be very clear what they do, whether they have special needs (if they can only be used in a car, for example, or will require a $35 a month subscription, or if there are legal issues with their use), and why there is such an incredible range of prices for what seems to be the same item.

Then there should be a bin of buttons or stickers that consumers could put on to identify their level of tech-saviness. Staff would then immediately know whether a particular customer should be handed the item most likely to please their grandchild, or entertained with lots of stats.

After work, I finished up Ivy. She needs some buttons, but is otherwise complete. I like Ivy a lot.

Okay. Off to work. If you go to this page, you can hear an advent carol called "Followers of the Lamb" which has a frenetic quality suitable for a day like today.

And even as I write that, I am thinking that today really doesn't have to be frenetic. It's a matter of attitude. It is a hurried and busy day, to be sure, but that Shaker tune can be perceived as exciting and dramatic, and so can a busy day. With sufficient self-discipline and oatmeal for breakfast.

I've been asked to explain "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentleman." Or, specifically, the confusing words. It is, as the requester suggests, a comma issue. The song is saying to the gentlemen, "God Rest You Merry," or as we would say, "May God keep you happy." Maybe we wouldn't say that, but we would at least understand it. Nowadays, we tend to punctuate it as "God Rest You, Merry Gentlemen," and understand it to mean, "May God help you relax," directed toward some Merry Gentlemen.

This is a confusion not unlike that found with "O Come O Come Emmanuel," where we understand "Rejoice, rejoice, O Israel!" as "Rejoice! Rejoice! O Israel..." and then descend into confusion. Or "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," in which "herald" describes the angels, when we think it is "Hark the Herald! Angels sing."

"God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" started turning up in hymnals in the mid-1800s, but it seems to be essentially an English folk song, the first English song I've brought you this year. As is the way of folk songs, the words change around a bit. "This holy tide of Christmas all others doth efface," one of the links here gives you, while the other gives you "deface" instead. "Efface" makes more sense to me. Nowadays, we often sing it, "The holy tide of Christmas is coming on apace," which helps a little bit, but only for people who know that "tide" means "time" and "apace" means "quickly."

A 1548 dictionary defines "mery" thus: "Aye, bee thou gladde: or joyfull, as the vulgare people saie Reste you mery." Possibly something like, "Don't worry; be happy."

The "gentlemen" part is just a red herring. Since no one nowadays would direct a song to gentlemen, it makes us more likely to imagine that it is being sung to some group known as the "Merry Gentlemen." I read a news report that a church somewhere in Cardiff (Wales) has replaced "gentlemen"with "persons," but I don't believe it. I think that anyone who was trying to fix that problem would go with "Christians," that being the more common solution to gender issues in hymns.The presence of the word "Jewry," which is meaningless to most of us but doesn't sound nice, is probably more of an issue, and may cause that verse to be left out. At that time, it meant the part of a town where Jewish people lived, that being a rather segregated time in history.

There have been attempts to add a new verse:

"Alternatives' verse to "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen," by Cynthia A.
Douglas, doesn't mince words, either.

Here's the old:

God rest you merry, gentlemen,
  Let nothing you dismay.
For Jesus Christ, our savior,
  Was born upon this day
To save us all from Satan's power
  When we were gone astray.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy . . .

Here's the new:

Now he is come to all the world,
  This lesson to impart
If we're to show his love there must
  Be action on our part
To feed the poor, protect the weak,
  Show kindness from the heart,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy . . ."

I doubt that the first verse is actually left out, and see nothing wrong with adding a reminder, though I would prefer that new verses remain more in keeping, linguistically, with the old ones.

Here's the sheet music with midi, because this is a good song to sing with friends and family gathered around the piano in the parlor. It's a ballad, which means that it tells a story. That is why it has so many verses.

This is a good song, with very nice traditional harmonies, but it is also well-suited to raucous shouting, which makes it good for caroling through the streets or in the car or at parties.

I was at a party last night, working, and it was a fun one. I packed up my gear and left around 9:30, when there was talk of playing games, though I might have stayed had there been caroling. Today I will be up at the store. I think I will take a CD of the King's College singers singing traditional carols. I may sing along on "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen." If there aren't too many customers around.

One of the reasons, and indeed the original impetus, for my annual musical Advent calendar is the way people say they dislike Christmas music. I always want to argue with them. "You don't dislike Christmas music," I want to say to them. "You just dislike hearing 'Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire' eleventy-seven times a day for three months."

I always feel sure that their minds will be changed entirely once they hear (or even think about) things like "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," a really gorgeous Advent hymn which you may hear once a year if you're lucky. Oh, and if you attend a church where Advent carols are sung, or listen to NPR. If not, you may never hear it, and your life would be poorer for that.

The tune is from the great Michael Praetorius. Here is Renee Fleming and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing it in the traditional Big Music fashion. I also like it in a capella groups.  Here is an odd recording of it by Sufjan Stevens, in case you wanted something really different. I am not sure where Stevens was trying to go with this, but it is interesting and modern-sounding. Here is a discussion of the lyric, exploring its theological and factual "uncertainties." It was translated from the German by Thomas Baker.

Here is the sheet music, with midi, so you can sing it yourself. Or play it on your violin. That would be nice.

I've been asked for a list of good Christmas mysteries. Here is the list:

Envious Casca, by Georgette Heyer. A tour de force.

Off With His Head, by Ngaio Marsh. Another classic, with a background of British folklore.

The Twelve Deaths of Christmas, by Marian Babson. Creepy but fun. A psychological suspense novel rather than a detective story.

Grave Apparel, by Ellen Byerrum. Just fun. Christmas sweaters are a pivotal point in this book.

Wreck the Halls, by Sarah Graves. A basic amateur detective story, with interesting characters and some knitting.

Visions of Sugar Plums, by Janet Evanovich. Funny and hard-boiled, with a dose of the supernatural.

'Tis the Season to Be Murdered, Deck the Halls With Murder, and We Wish You a Merry Murder, by Valerie Wolzien. A typical mystery series, but with lots of holiday detail. Sort of what you might get if Martha Stewart were catering a murder. These always put me in the mood to decorate.

A Holly, Jolly Murder, by Joan Hess. A madcap romp. No, really.

Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett. It may be a stretch to call this a mystery, but it begins with someone's taking out a contract on Santa Claus, and is full of suspense.

This may have to be Part I of the list. I hate really long lists, don't you?

They remind me of my to-do list. I had better get to it.

Oh! I have just remembered that it is the feast of St. Nicholas! Here is the creepy song about him. You can hear a sample by clicking at the bottom of the page. This page has an English translation. It fits perfectly with the Christmas mystery list, being perhaps the only Christmas carol to feature the murder and salting-down of children.

At the store yesterday, I had the opportunity to hear a bunch of Top 40 Christmas music. Yesterday's mail brought the first Christmas card (it also brought a magnificent stir-fry skillet from Central Office. #2 son was so impressed by the sheer size of this pan that he called me at the store to say that my prize had arrived. "You could stir-fry a whole chicken in it!" he assured me. That boy is always hungry). In class last night, we heard that we ought to work hard. I, having come directly from an 11-hour workday, was too tired to appreciate that suggestion completely.

If you have ever thought that I was dogmatic and intolerant about Christmas music, then you should check out this guy. His links don't always work and he is not always sound on music history, but I enjoyed reading his rant. If you're in the mood for a good rant, you might enjoy it, too.

Still, I want to offer you for today a song which I have previously found irritating: "Sleigh Ride." Leroy Anderson and Mitchell Parish wrote this thing in the late 1940s, during the 20th century Christmas Carol Renaissance. This was the time period that brought you pretty much all the great cheesy Christmas songs: "Frosty the Snowman," "Marshmallow World," "I'll Be Home for Christmas," all that. "Sleigh Ride" is the one with friends calling "Yoo Hoo!" You've heard it, I'm sure.

The thing is, when you listen to these pieces being performed by people of that vintage, they have a level of sincerity to them that is quite appealing, or at least begins to seem that way after you've been listening to 21st century renditions of the stuff for a while.

So "Sleigh Ride," originally a brief orchestral piece, sounds pretty good when sung by Bing Crosby or Ella Fitzgerald. And I even kind of like it sung by Ronnie Spector. You can click on the link at the beginning of this paragraph and find an interesting article on the history of the piece, and also links to download 51 different versions of the song, in case you were writing a thesis on it or something. That irritable guy I linked you to at the beginning says, "Musically, it throws notes at the listener in bunches as rapidly as possible, hoping to invigorate him."

If you are tired, go ahead and download one of those 51 versions. Maybe it will invigorate you. I'm hoping it will do that for me. I think this song does need an orchestra, so I am not proposing that you sing it yourself. If you do, you may need to enlist some friends to supply the orchestral sounds. Or just think them as you sing. Especially the whip crack, which is really not optional.

We put the Christmas tree up yesterday, and did the other indoor holiday decorating tasks.

We even did some of the housework, though not all that needs to be done. Today I will be up at the store, and then at class, so I doubt that much more will be done today. Still, for inspiration, I offer you today's song, "People Look East."

This beautiful Advent carol was written by Eleanor Farjeon, who may be best known in the United States for "Morning Has Broken," since Cat Stevens recorded it.  Farjeon used "Besancon," a traditional French carol which ought to have a little twiddly bit under the C, but I don't know how to do that on the computer.

 Here is a guitar arrangement for it. Here you can hear it played on handbells.  Here is Michael Ekhblad's arrangement of it, with some medieval-sounding percussion. I am not wild about this choir, but I learned last year that not everyone can listen to the little midi robots and arrange the music in their minds, so I figure it is better if you can actually hear it sung.

Here are the words:

People look East. The time is near
Of the crowning of the year.
Make your house fair as you are able,
Trim the hearth and set the table.
People look East, today:
Love the Guest is on the way.

Furrows, be glad. Though earth is bare,
One more seed is planted there:
Give up your strength the seed to nourish,
That in course the flower may flourish.
People look East, today:
Love the Rose is on the way.

Stars, keep the watch. When night is dim
One more light the bowl shall brim,
Shining beyond the frosty weather,
Bright as sun and moon together.
People look East, today:
Love the Star is on the way.

Angels announce to man and beast
Him who cometh from the East.
Set every peak and valley humming
With the Word, the Lord is coming.
People look East, today:
Love the Lord is on the way.

I like this song as a reminder to get the chores done early in Advent so that we can have that Mary spirit rather than being Marthas all season long. This is because it contains the words "Make your house fair as you are able; trim the hearth and set the table."

However, it is also a good Christmas song for those pagan gatherings. There is plenty of nature imagery and light and stuff. You will notice that the refrain has lines like, "Love, the guest, is on the way" and even "Love, the Lord, is on the way." Since it's an Advent carol (the author said so), we assume that she meant Christ, and we sing this in church. However, it is pretty noncommittal. 

I hope that you will avoid this sort of thing. Taking a Christmas carol and writing a bad pagan-themed pastiche of it is not only in poor taste, it is also entirely unnecessary. There are some good Yule songs out there that can be used as they are, I would think. "Deck the Halls," "The Holly and the Ivy,"  "The Rising of the Sun," all the wassailing stuff. If not, then I think you should write good new poetry for the purpose, instead of just changing a few words and pretending it's a Yule carol.

Seriously. If people don't feel committed enough to their holidays to write good music for them, they shouldn't get to have them at all.

Ivy is nearly complete. For the reasons mentioned above, I doubt this sweater will be completed today, but I think it will be this week, for sure.

Yesterday morning's trio went well; when we finished, a baby yelled, "Yay!" and we all laughed. Four hours later, when I got home, my throat was sore and I was very tired, so I fixed some soup and rested for thirty minutes before going on to the matinee.

Where, oddly enough, the same thing happened. After the orchestra's first bit, a baby in the audience shouted, "Yay!"

The only performances I have left this year are in church, and Master Chorale isn't meeting the next three weeks. This means that I have no rehearsal tonight. I am relieved.

To answer about the advent wreath... This is a very simple custom. It is not too late to do this, because you can prepare it in under five minutes, for under five dollars. You need three purple candles and a pink one. Depending where you live, you can probably find them in bundles meant for advent; if not, you can just buy cheap candles in the right colors. Sometimes we also use a larger, central white candle to light on Christmas Eve, but often we don't. It doesn't matter.

You need to put the candles in a circle. If they will stand up by themselves, that is all you have to do. If they won't, then you need holders of some kind. Then, either every evening (usually at dinner) or just on the four Sundays of Advent, you light a candle. The first week you light one purple candle, the second week two, the third week two purple and one pink to show that the wait is nearly over, and the last Sunday you light all four. The distinctions among the colors and the symbolism of the various candles and all that are recent innovations, and different people or churches use different things. So you might call the pink one "the angel candle" and the others things like "the shepherd candle," and so on. We are accustomed to having the Hope candle, the Peace Candle, the Joy Candle, and the Love candle. You might think of the purple candles as penitential colors to remind us that Advent is a feast time, and the pink one as a hopeful reminder in the form of the color of the rose, a traditional Christian symbol. None of these things is really central to the point of Advent, so you can just pick the thing you like best, just as you do with your customs for stockings or Christmas trees.

We have a plain white ceramic wreath shape. We've had it for years. Sometimes we use an evergreen wreath. Sometimes we decorate it. If you have flower decorating skills, this can be a wonderful way to show them off, and your wreath will make a lovely centerpiece for your table. Theologically, it doesn't matter. Here are simple instructions for making an Advent wreath from a styrofoam disk, with verses to read while you light the candles. Here is a slightly less simple one using tea lights. Here's a really fancy one with embroidery.  Here are prayers to say while lighting the candles. We like to sing a verse from "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," and that can be the song for the day.

The words are from the 12th century and the tune from 15th century France. It was translated into English in the 1800s by John Mason Neal, and it is therefore his fault that people are so frequently confused by it. The refrain, "Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel is come to thee, O Israel!" is frequently heard as "Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel!"" and then there's the whole "is come to thee part," and folks are left wondering what they're singing. Linda Ronstadt recorded it differently, singing, "Rejoice, rejoice, O Israel! To thee is come Emmanuel."

Whole crowds of people have recorded this song, and here are a bunch of choices on YouTube. I think that this song is lovely with one voice in the silence, and also terrific with full orchestra and enormous choir in eight parts, so I suggest that you enjoy it today with whatever resources are available to you.

Okay. In today's following-up spirit, I'll tell you how The Fattening of America ends. Finkelstein explained the economic reasons for the phenomenon in the first half of the book. In the second half he considered the economic costs of it, in three ares: to individuals, to the society, and specifically with regard to children.

For individuals, he concludes, the costs (monetary and otherwise) of being fat are generally less than those of being thin. That's why people aren't getting thinner, he says, and probably won't. For the society, there are some costs. Health care is higher for the obese, and productivity may be lower. There are extra costs associated with providing larger seats in public places, stronger nurses to lift bigger people, and stuff like that. Finkelstein goes all economist on us at this point and talks about cases of market failure and stuff, but concludes that the government probably ought not to step in and couldn't do much anyway if it did. This section of the book is interesting, but the overall effect is of a well-supported shrug of the shoulders. Unless we are ready to redesign our cities, subsidize the prices of fresh produce, and institute employer-funded reward systems for weight loss on a very large scale, we can't expect to see any changes.

When it comes to children, Finkelstein is less laissez-faire. He sees more serious health consequences for kids born in the 80s and later, and has proposals for changes in schools that he thinks would make a real difference. He notes that his ideas aren't new, and that most communities, under pressure both from No Child Left Behind (which he correctly dubs No Child Let Outside) and from financial constraints, have refused to do any of these things. So he leaves us here with another shrug of the shoulders.

This is a well-written book that should interest those of us who are interested in things like health, economics, the history of agriculture and food science, and public policy. Those who are not interested in these things may find it too fact-stuffed to make good reading. Those who wanted a diet book will get one thing: "Eat less. Exercise more. Keep doing it." You knew that already.