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Holiday Gift Guide 2017 DECEMBER 7, 2017 • ULSTER PUBLISHING • HUDSONVALLEYONE.COM

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color 7, 2017 2 | December Holiday Gift Guide

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December 7, 2017 Holiday Gift Guide

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A time for more mindful gifts The power over happiness lies in small things and a few words, Elisabeth Henry reminds us

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his is our season. Our pine forests, our frozen lakes, our early snow, the windswept clouds streaming by in clear skies. We live in a holiday illustration, a Christmas card.

Our jam-packed grocery stores overflow with the local harvest. The atmosphere crackles with anticipation. We want to be with family and lovers and good The holidays are a complex time for gifts and the expectations that accompany them. This portion of an 1864 painting by friends.

Eastman Johnson captures a paternalistic holiday world now past.

But there’s more. We want to show love and give Again, my champion refused payment. I bought thanks to people who, not as intimate associates, thing about them that is important. him a bottle of Captain Morgan and left it in his but as helpers and service people who make our Cash works, of course. Well, not for new friends truck. I can say with authority that you get to lives work. What to do? (see line above about things “spinning out of conknow a lot about the people who help you when It’s a prickly time, and not the time to make trol”). If you do opt to give a gift of cash, take the you routinely drive your car off the road. tired old jokes like, “Have you been naughty or trouble to include a nice note or card. Anyone who This aforementioned sort of ambush-giving nice?” Who knows what will spin out of control helps us deserves a personal acknowledgement. works well for perfect strangers. Every once in a after that? Lawsuits. Media blitzes. Job losses.

Something fun to do is to snap a candid phowhile pay the toll for the guy behind you on the Elba. to of a person sometime in the year, and then inRip Van Winkle Bridge or the Rhinebeck Bridge.

There is a political piece to gift-giving, of course. clude that in a card. I did that for one of my son’s Or the person behind you getting coffee.

Your child is in public elementary school. Your football coaches, a huge, stern taskmaster of a guy Leave coupons you won’t use on the appropriate child is a boy. who looked absolutely teary when he saw himself shelf in the supermarket. I once got a super couTeachers’ daily lesson plans these days are standing in front of his team, giving them the talk. pon for “$40 off on your next purchase of $150 or dense. Children are required to sit for hours at a I love Christmas. I resent words that debase it, more.” Circumstances were such I’d never be back time. This is antithetical to boy nature. Teachshow disdain for it, dismiss it. It’s not merely the there again. A young guy pushing a cart filled with ers are required to do mountains of paperwork. religious element in my faith that I love, because groceries and babies was walking out the door That gal with your kid might appreciate a bottle I love how people in other faiths, at this time of ahead of me. He needed that coupon. of Captain Morgan, or, say, a nice Merlot. We can, year, cerebrate and show happiness. None of it has The life I’ve lived for the past few decades has at least, cut costs, given that she must spend so to do with commercialism or marketing or greed. robbed me of the opportunity to give gifts to mail much on classroom supplies and perhaps it is your It’s nice to keep the spirit of this time in your persons or garbage persons. I go to the post office child, (and not mine, this time) that is driving her heart. I refer to the ghost of Christmas Past who to get my mail. No one comes here. In fact, the last to drink. This may weigh in your favor at some fuasked Scrooge: “Does Fezziwig deserve so much time I ordered something delivered by UPS, the ture date. gratitude? He only spent a few pounds on these driver threw it out of the truck. There it was, on Take advantage of living where all the main boys.” the dirt road to my house. Perhaps he was a boy streets in all the little towns feature small shops And Scrooge replied: “It isn’t that, Spirit. Mr. raised in the suburbs. with unique inventory. Not only does this enhance Fezziwig had the power to make us happy or unThese woods do get spooky towards dusk. We your reputation for finding great gifts, but your happy. His power lies in words or looks. Things so take our garbage to the dump, but it’s usually so support for small businesses is also a political slight and insignificant it is impossible to add and frenetic there that whoever is in charge is in no statement. A solidly good one at that. count them up. The happiness he gives is quite as mood to get all it-takes-a-village” with me. Dump.

I can recommend some places for your considgreat as if it cost a fortune.”

Pay. Go. That’s the ticket. Keep moving. I don’t eration (I get no kickbacks for these mentions).

Be Mr. Fezziwig. And keep the spirit well. know those people, but who wouldn’t like my Rayann’s Creative Instinct on Route 212 in SauChocolate Oat Walnut Cookies? Perhaps somegerties is your place for vintage everything, oneone, but since there is no time to hang around for of-a-kind and rare specimens. The gift shop at reviews I feel as if I have honored the Season for Olana, home of Frederic Church, has lots of interGiving with my several dozen sweeties left on the esting stuff. Verdigris, a baker in Hudson, is cradesk with my $3.50/bag of refuse or $105/ton. zy beautiful and yummy. Mahalo on Main Street All summer I give vases of flowers to the lain Catskill is wonderful. Inquiring Minds bookOVER 100 CLASSES and dies at the bank. They really like that. I give them stores in New Paltz and Saugerties are so fabulous WORKSHOPS FOR AGES 12–99+ cookies, too, but they get lots of that stuff. that my heart beats a little faster just thinking For years I drove many miles to get my kids to about them. Church and community thrift shops school. I knew all the Thruway tolltakers by name. can have amazing surprises.

George is my favorite. He is the best-read person I have ever known in my life. I have yet to crack veryone appreciates being seen, so try the code of how George ended up in the booth. I to give gifts that indicate you really do recsuppose I will never know. I used to drop off hot ognize the individual getting your gift. One containers of coffee during the holidays. time my car slid off my farm road into a ditch.

Now, with the sneaky budget cuts, all those peoMy neighbor, whom I did not know very well, ple are gone. They made too much money. You happened to see my car up-ended. He stopped, have part time workers who are not as knowledgechained the rear bumper of my car to the winch able as those they replaced. I wish them well, but on his pick-up, and pulled me out. He refused I miss my old friends. payment, so I bought several months’ worth of his CALL or STOP IN NOW! daily morning coffee at our local village market.

2470 ROUTE 212, WOODSTOCK Dot, the counter clerk, said he turned beet red and eople love it if you remember their grinned every morning when she handed him his pets. If it feels presumptuous to give somecup. thing to a new acquaintance, or someone 845 679 2388 Another time I drove into a snow-filled ditch, who helps you or works for you, give something to woodstockschoolofart.org and a different guy stopped and pulled me out. their pet. That shows that you understand some-

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7, 2017 4 | December Holiday Gift Guide

Atomic presents What we desire changes over time, sort of, Chris Rowley contends

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here really weren’t that many presents that spark a strong memory.

Casting back for memories of presents given and received can be an interesting and, yes, humbling experience. Over the decades, I’ve spent Christmases and birthdays in three countries.

Goodbye to a torrent of scarves, bottles of sherry, record albums and books now forgotten.

Standout gifts I actually remembered featured a bicycle at age 13, a ring-and-earrings set I saved for months to give gave to my first wife, and a handsome bottle of burgundy that I gave an old friend who’d become a staunch employer.

I remember an even more handsome bottle of burgundy that my second wife gave me and which we drank together. It’s a marvel what pinot noir can do when it grows on the Cote D’Or in the Domaine Romanee Conti. If I were as rich as my good, now-departed old mate became, DRC wines would be about the only wines I would drink.

The inch-thick Himalayan wool coat I gave my wife a few years back to keep out the chill at the South Pole would have guaranteed one of those Emperor penguins hacking it through the Antarctic winter success in staying alive.

One present in particular stands out in my memories, for a number of reasons, some of which make unfortunate sense even today. It was Christmas 1959, my family’s last Christmas in Montreal before they went back to England. The box under the tree was huge. I knew it was for me, it had to be. Who else was that important in these ceremonies of giving and receiving? And so it proved to be.

of conventional explosives. The real thing fired a five-foot-long shell with an atomic bomb inside tuned to 15 kilotons of energy output. That’s 15,000 tons’ worth of conventional high explosive. It was only fired once with live atomic ammo at the Frenchman Flats sector of the Nevada Test Site in May 1953. It had made its public debut earlier that year in Ike Eisenhower’s inauguration parade. The inspiration for this monster came from the K-5 Railroad Gun developed for the German army in World War Two. A pair of them made a deep impression on the American forces trapped on the beaches at Anzio in 1943. The Atomic Cannon had two hefty diesel trucks, one at either end, and it was designed to be parked, disconnected, set up

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and ready to fire in fifteen minutes. Ideal had its toy on the market in 1958, when the Cold War had shifted towards the era of intercontinental ballistic missiles following the Russian launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite of planet Earth. Fear of atomic annihilation had been enlarged by the H-bomb tests and simultaneously subsumed into the culture of consumerism. There was nothing politically correct or even polite about this toy. Celebrating the use of atomic weapons — in Europe, to destroy Soviet tank armies should they be heading into West Germany — was pure and simple militarism. It was us versus them, and we were fighting for freedom.

In the light of current events, where the Russian state appears to have attacked the US via social media and turned the course of a presidential election, the old verities of B-52s hammering deep into Russia with cargoes of six-megaton bombs strapped underneath seem weird, unreal.

But, remember, both the US and the Russian state still have 6000 or so warheads each, on land and under the sea, and even on some big jet aircraft.

They are primarily kept by these two nations for use on each other, which, if it happened, would toast off the Northern Hemisphere and, um, severely stress human civilization, or what remained of it.  y father, who was inspired to give me the Atomic Cannon, was not bellicose.

He didn’t talk about the war, in which he served as a radar scientist in service of the Royal Navy. He did once mention sailing aboard HMS Nelson, and being torpedoed but not sunk. This occurred in the Mediterranean, when the Nelson was damaged by an Italian air torpedo strike. The Nelson and sister ship HMS Rodney were peculiar beasts of war, with a huge armament of nine 16-inch guns set in three turrets forward of the bridge superstructure. They were slow but dangerous. Both pounded German defenses on DDay. I have the feeling that my father retained an affection for enormous pieces of artillery. He bought the Atomic Cannon in one of Montreal’s department stores. His generation of Londoners was to some extent inured to the costs of war. I happen to know that both of his best friends from his youth were killed in action against the Germans and the Japanese. In our Montreal apartment, which was a duplex with plenty of space, the Atomic Cannon could

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THE CHURCH OF A THOUSAND CRYSTALS

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nce the wrapping came off I stared amazed at the Atomic Cannon, a toy for the ages — well, for the age of atomic weapons, anyway. Since it was from Ideal, a toy maker in that era, it was called the “Ideal Atomic Cannon.�

What other kind could there be? It was an “exact replica� of the US Army’s 280 mm M65 heavy cannon, designed to fire small atomic bombs instead

WIKICOMMONS

Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower hosted their last holiday dinner in the White House in 1960, a month before handing the place over to the Kennedy clan.

December 7, 2017 Holiday Gift Guide

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Some of us remember Suzie Homemakers and children’s printing presses, while others always dreamed of their own cash registers at Christmas. hurl its six-inch plastic shells the entire length of dining room and living room. I made a target out of a favorite wastebasket with a facsimile of a newspaper front page from around 1900 with a photo of the winner of the Kentucky Derby on it.

I assured my mother that no harm would come of it.

Of course, by that point I had already tested the cannon’s qualities by firing it at short range at my younger brother. It did him no harm. In fact, he doesn’t even recall the shell bouncing off his head.

The Atomic Cannon, at least in the Ideal version, was inaccurate at the extreme range of about 40 feet. The nuclear payload had to loft over the nearside edge of the dining-room table, which despite requests from the gunnery section could not be moved, by order of my mother, who rather disapproved of this entire business.

Unharmed, the wastebasket went back to England with us. I vaguely recall it being in several of our family homes over the next ten years. When and where it was disposed of I do not know.

The Atomic Cannon made the trip across the Atlantic with us. When I turned twelve, gluing plastic model kits together became one of the primary activities of my leisure time. Somewhere in that year, the cannon went into the back of the closet for the last time and stayed there, never to be fired again. The Atomic Cannon was forgotten.

At some point my mother must have disposed of it, probably to a toy drive for less fortunate children.

The model kits, along with soccer, riding my bike through the Essex countryside and reading became my main activities. The first girlfriend was still two years away. I attended all-male schools from the age six onwards, and girls were very rare in my early life. How this may have warped my appreciation of both girls and women is something I should have worked out with a therapist long ago, though wives and some girlfriends have chipped in now and then with opinions both humorous and unkind.

Anyway, the plastic kits were now being assembled at the rate of two a week, or as often as pocket money would allow. On a 1/72 scale, they were much smaller and neater-looking than the 1/32 scale of the Atomic Cannon. Indeed the great cannon had looked grotesquely out of place in a space filled with Airfix model kits of Panzer tanks, Avro Lancaster bombers, Spitfires, Mustangs and Messerschmidts.

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ll this militaristic activity was about to end. The 13th birthday signaled a shift to the outdoors, anywhere that wasn’t home.

Cricket became obsessional. Other activities included prowling the woods with my friends and our dogs, firing airguns at targets, and haunting

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the local library in Shenfield. I read widely, with no plan whatsoever, but mostly history and fiction.

Another household somewhere in southern England must have been confronted by this odd relic of the early age of atomic warfare. I certainly never thought about it. Rock and roll and girls had driven everything except cricket and soccer out of my fevered teenage mind.

In real life, the Atomic Cannon was in fact obsolete almost from the moment it was deployed in South Korea and Europe. It survived until 1963, when it was removed from service, replaced with more effective and lethal weapons. With the belligerence of North Korea in mind, there are calls today for the US to once again deploy “tactical” nuclear weapons in South Korea as a deterrent to attack.

Today’s kids, if they still play with physical toys and are not entirely caught up in onscreen activities, are swamped with possibilities. The NERF Rival Nemesis MkXVII-10K Blaster, in red or blue, is perfect for shooting your stupid brother and having him survive. More peaceably, the Star Wars universe offers an R2D2 droid that can be controlled from a smart device (e.g. phone). It makes all the lovable noises associated with its kind.

The hot toys of this holiday season are Lego kits, robots, and the NetWisdom Magic Kids microphone, a demonic invention that lets kids karaoke while their parents grit their teeth or reach for the gin. Happily, there are no atomic weapons on any list of hot toys. You can still put a Death Star Model Kit under the tree, however, a weapon that, while imaginary, leaves the Atomic Cannon in the dust when it comes to destroying entire worlds.

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7, 2017 6 | December Holiday Gift Guide

Magic and mayhem Lisa Carroll tells how you find out what to give your kids for Christmas

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re-motherhood, I worried that keeping up the holiday ruse would ultimately bite me in the backside.

Intentionally lying to my future children — creating a web of credible fibs involving a rather plump man stuffing himself down countless chimneys to dole out mountains of presents — seemed like a lot of work. I had watched, over the years, how parents used the ole’ “Santa’s watching…” routine to keep little ones on track.

Fast forward seven years. I’m sitting in the car with my girls when seven-year-old Shelby asks her daddy the difference between reindeer and regular deer.

“Duh, they fly,” six-year-old little sister Sammie chimes in.

Score one for mom. The web of deceit is alive and intact at the Carroll homestead.

Since their first Christmas, I have carefully devised plans that would keep up the spirit and magic of the holidays. I have left soot-smudged letters and cookie crumbs behind. I have carved chunks out of carrots in the shape of deer teeth. I have urged the girls to behave, nudging the notion that the big guy himself was watching. He might be keeping records to decide in the number of presents heaped under the tree.

At the end of the day, I love watching their faces light up as beloved characters dance before them at Ellenville’s annual Christmas parade and tree-lighting. I love the squeals of delight when they bound down the staircase and see that Santa has left an overflowing stocking at the mantel and lots of wrapped gifts beneath the tree.

To be honest, they don’t seem to care how much or what exactly they get. They don’t count the presents to see if more has been left than the previous year. They don’t refer to their list to see if it all has been accounted for.

And each year, as they’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to rein in the number of gifts they receive to an appropriate and budget-friendly level. Tom and I work diligently to teach the girls about the true meaning of the holiday, to cherish the time for family and friends and the betterment of the world around us. The magic has fallen by the wayside with the commercialized push of the past few decades has disturbed us.

But, they’re still seven and six years old. They are attracted to all things that glitter, move, and make some ridiculous amount of noise.

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Whittling down a kid’s choices for Christmas presents involves a number of parenting skills.

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ucking them into bed last night, I began laying the groundwork for shopping.

“What do you want for Christmas, Sammie?” I asked.

“A dog,” she said.

A dog. That has been her answer to every birthday and Christmas question for the past three years. Her sister, not really interested in the responsibility of bringing a new family member into

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Listen to what your children say they want for gifts. With a little skill, the crafty parent can narrow the choices from everything to a choice few items. our home — she has accepted her sister — would much rather have a drum set like her cousins have.

“Hmm. What else?” I asked Sammie. A doll, Legos, a Red Ryder BB gun. Anything else.

“A bunny?” she replied.

I explain that lots of people ask for animals for the holidays and then realize they don’t really want them. It’s not good for anyone involved. A dog or bunny is a lot of work and responsibility.

It’s not working. She’s unfazed. All I heard from the back seat on the drive to school today was how the two could divvy up chores so they both could take care of the dog.

I told them to put it on their list. I’ll let the big guy take the fall on this one.

I’ve gathered enough ideas throughout the year to get a sense of what they want instead.

Shelby likes arts and crafts. Sammie likes building blocks. It’s a start. Tom has taken them up and down the aisles of Toys R Us to see what they

gravitate toward, though I forewarned him that in a place like that they gravitate to everything, like bugs to a zapper.

In the past, I’ve made the mistake of buying too much. We still have coloring books untouched from last year. Toys I thought would be a big hit are cluttering up the corner of their bedroom. I saw on Pinterest this idea of buying just four things: something they want, something they need, something to wear and something to read.

Last year, I tried to do that, but it didn’t feel like it was enough. Thank you, endless commercials and societal pressure. I intend to be stronger this year, to narrow down what it is my girls want, will appreciate and use.

Given that we have little more than two weeks left, I keep the Santa card in my back pocket. But “Santa’s watching” doesn’t have quite the same ring as it did in July.

December 7, 2017 Holiday Gift Guide

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Songs that matter Violet Snow provides the historic highlights of Christmas music

By Violet Snow

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hen I was a child way back in the Sixties, my family listened to one Christmas record over and over while trimming the tinsel-heavy tree. We continued to listen while drinking egg nog and admiring our handiwork, while opening presents, while playing with presents. My childhood involved plenty of tedium, but I don’t recall ever getting tired of the dulcet harmonies of the nine LaFalce brothers. One of them was the father of my schoolmate Linda, who lived down the street and was reputed to have a recording studio in her basement — cool, right?

The LaFalce brothers sang all the classics, from “The First Noel” to a towering “O Holy Night,” as well as less well-known but equally if not more sublime numbers like “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Loo-Lay Thou Little Tiny Child,” songs forever imprinted in my mind. Most Americans with a Christian or secular Christian upbringing have primal memories of Christmas, and the emotions of those memories are embedded in the music.

Like many religious traditions, Christmas carols hearken back to pagan customs that early religious leaders retained, in modified form, to engage their flocks. The word “carol” refers to a song of joy and praise, and the winter solstice carols were originally sung while dancing around a stone circle. Early Christian replacements for the pagan carols were written as early as the year 129 and intermittently over the next ten centuries, to be sung in churches and monasteries. The carols, sung in Latin, were not widely popular.

In 1223, St. Francis of Assisi changed the culture by inaugurating nativity plays in Italy, with the participants describing the action in song.

Holiday Gift Guide December 2017 An Ulster Publishing publication Editorial WRITERS: Scott Baldinger, James Beukelman, Jennifer Brizzi, Lisa Carroll, Elisabeth Henry, Teal Hutton, Chris Rowley, Paul Smart, Violet Snow, Sparrow, Lynn Woods.

EDITOR: Paul Smart COVER: Mohonk Mountain House’s renowned gardens as summer peaks, supplied by www.mohonk.com LAYOUT BY Joe Morgan Ulster Publishing PUBLISHER: Geddy Sveikauskas ADVERTISING DIRECTOR: Genia Wickwire DISPLAY ADS: Lynn Coraza, Pam Courselle,

Pamela Geskie, Elizabeth Jackson, Ralph Longendyke, Sue Rogers, Linda Saccoman PRODUCTION MANAGER: Joe Morgan PRODUCTION: Diane Congello-Brandes, Josh Gilligan, Rick Holland CLASSIFIED ADS: Amy Murphy, Tobi Watson CIRCULATION: Dominic Labate Ulster Publishing’s Holiday Gift Guide is distributed in the company’s four weekly newspapers and separately at select locations, reaching an estimated readership of over 50,000. Its website is www.hudsonvalleyone.com. For more info on upcoming special sections, including how to place an ad, call 845-334-8200, fax 845-334-8202 or email: info@ulsterpublishing.com.

WIKICOMMONS

Christmas carolers harken back to older, simpler times now, but were once a hallmark of the holiday season.

Christmas music took on a new vitality across Europe, as songs were written in the vernacular of each country. The sixteenth century brought such classics as “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen,” and “O Christmas Tree.”

In England, the puritanical Puritans sent Christmas caroling underground. Parliament actually abolished the celebration of Christmas in 1647.

The traditions were revived in the Victorian era, when two Englishmen collected Christmas music that had been sung in secret in the villages. Caroling in the streets and Christmas carol church services became popular in this period. “Silent Night” was written in 1863, “O Holy Night” in 1855. “Jingle Bells” (1857), one of the first purely secular Christmas songs, was written for Thanksgiving but somehow migrated to later in the season.

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n the U.S., the Great Depression yielded uplifting secular holiday music, as recording technology spread the range of popular song, including such tunes as “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” and “Winter Wonderland.” World War II brought us songs of longing: “White Christmas” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” “The Little Drummer Boy,” written by American composer and teacher Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941, was first recorded ten years later by the Trapp Family Singers.

During the 1950s, rock-n-roll gave Christmas songs an infusion of new energy, with irresistible swinging tunes: “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” Elvis Presley issued a Christmas album in 1957, including his hit “Blue Christmas,” a country-music tune from the 1940s.

Since then, almost no immortal Christmas songs have emerged. In 2006, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers tracked the top 25 most-performed holiday songs written by ASCAP members in the first five years of the 21st century. Only three songs on the list were written after the 1950s: José Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad,” “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” and “Do They Know It’s Christmas? (Feed the World)” by Midge Ure and Bob Geldof, recorded in 1984 to address the famine in Ethiopia. (My husband says I have to mention “Do You Hear What I Hear?,” written in 1962). Mariah Carey, Britney Spears and N*Synch have all ventured into the Christmas market without achieving iconic holiday status.

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hristmas music reaches our ears through various channels. The most relentless is radio. Over 200 commercial U.S. ra-

dio stations air Christmas music 24/7 throughout the holiday season and beyond. It’s said that the switch commonly causes a station’s listener share to double. Many of these stations are playing in stores, and one study suggests that the public generally enjoy having their Christmas shopping accompanied by Christmas music. Psychologists, however, have noted that subjecting employees to continuous holiday music may contribute to a hostile work environment.

If you wish to select your own music, rather than relying on radio or Pandora, you may buy a Christmas album or single, choosing from a multitude of offerings in a wide range of musical styles, from punk (“There Ain’t No Sanity Clause”) to novelty (“Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer”) to reggae (“Natty Dread Christmas”). Or you can go back to the classics, many of which have been recorded by modern musicians. Stevie Nicks, the Temptations, and CeeLo all put out versions of “Silent Night.”

Then there’s the option of hearing Christmas music live. You can go to church, even if you’re not religious, and enjoy a carol service, often by dramatic candlelight. In the Hudson Valley region, excellent choirs, such as Ars Choralis, the Catskill Choral Society, and Kairos: A Consort of Singers, offer holiday concerts.

Best of all, you can join a group of carolers and walk through the street, serenading homeowners, as we do in a number of local communities. If you can’t sing, don’t worry. Either your false notes will be drowned out by the people around you, or you can just listen (with the option of mouthing the words).

Joining a group of singers is a heart-opening way to celebrate the season of fellowship and good cheer.

Note: Historical information should be taken with a grain of salt, since it comes from websites, including whychristmas.com, Wikipedia, and an article from Elle magazine that contained some glaring errors. I did my best to verify information with several sources before including it.

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7, 2017 8 | December Holiday Gift Guide

The art of gifting Sparrow presents some thoughtprovoking ideas on what to give your partner

I

ncidentally, if any of you readers wish to buy me an anonymous gift, here are some tips. Either get me a hefty comic book (I dislike the term “graphic novel,” it sounds pretentious) or the latest rap album. Incidentally, I don’t have an iPod; I still laboriously load CDs into my Sony sound system or use cassettes.

What is the latest rap sensation?

I’m interested in PlayboiCarti and A$AP Ferg. And what’s the hot new thick comic book? My Hero Academia, Volume 10.

The poet Tom Devaney once gave me, for no particular reason, a “mountain harmonica:” two rectangular blocks of wood, each about three inches long, with a thick rubber band stretched between them. The instrument looked like an unpainted wooden harmonica, and when you blew into it a sound emerged resembling a fart. If there’s one thing I enjoy it’s silly instruments.

My friend Ada Calhoun, while on a book tour promoting Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, handed out free wedding rings. At her Golden Notebook appearance in Woodstock, I was the only attendee to take one. It’s a metal, gold-looking ornament that’s adjustable. I’d lost my wedding ring three years before, and had been too miserly to replace it.

Now I wear my new wedding band all the time, which keeps away adventuring women. What a useful gift!

A

gift is a portrait, a psychological profile.

When you stand before your cousin or employer or True Love holding a package covered with repeated images of a peppermint candy cane, you are, in effect, saying: “I know you intimately: what you cherish, what you despise.” (Incidentally, this brings to mind one devious strategy for the holidays: Wrapping Paper That Outshines the Gift. It works like this. You buy a forgettable 49-cent Deadpool coloring book, and cover it with a captivating topographic map of Cooper’s Rock State Forest in West Virginia, or a half-yard of sandpaper! The awardee of the gift will be moderately stunned, but ultimately pleased.)

The problem with gifts is that the really good ones are expensive. The one exception is books. A Picasso etching costs at least $29,500, but Billy Budd

by Herman Melville, which is as brilliant as a Picasso aquatint, may be purchased for $1.31 on Amazon (plus shipping and handling). But what is the chance your cousin Herbert wants to read Billy Budd?

Luckily my wife, Violet Snow, is a compulsive reader. The best present I ever bought Violet cost me nothing.

The day before her birthday, sweating with desperation, I walked into Famiature offers numerous ly of Woodstock and found three E.M. gifts, daily, free of charge: Forster novels in one volume: A Room tortoise-like hemlock with a View, Howard’s End and Maucones, brown Burgundy snail rice. Violet read all three and loved shells, rocks shaped like Aaron them.

Judge. The virtue of a natureBut now Violet is a Christian Scigift is that the recipient need not entist, and has no need of birthday clutter up her house. She may PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE presents. Mary Baker Eddy, founder LPs, CDs and VHS tapes made the grade as back up gifts for a while. Books, for place it on the path outside her of the church, wrote: “Never record those who still love to read, have become a perennial standby present for many. cottage. ages. Chronological data are no part A fine seasonal offering is of the vast forever. Timetables of witches’ butter — Tremellamesbirth and death are so many conspiracies against My wife will still accept Christmas presents, enterica — a bright yellow jelly fungus that grows manhood and womanhood.” however. on tree bark after a winter rain. Here’s a Chinese recipe:

N

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ne of my long-term goals is to make delightful gifts from garbage. Three ideas: 1) Thoroughly wash used dental floss, then knit it into diaphanous curtains. 2) Carefully shape extra metal clothes hangers into an elegant birdcage. 3) Cut open eight or ten shopping bags from Hannaford’s, Scotch-tape them together,

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color December 7, 2017 Holiday Gift Guide and voilĂ : a sensual, form-fitting sari!

Christy Rupp’s recent show at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties (“Catastrophozoic�) replicated famous works of art using plastic netting, the very material which kills wild creatures by choking and trapping them. Contact Christy through the gallery, and learn how to turn this consumerist trash into totemic art.

And why the obsession with physical objects in our culture? Why don’t we give each other experiences for Hanukkah (and Kwanzaa)? For example, do you know what a tableau vivant is? It’s a group of actors dressed in costume, standing motionless, to create a “living painting.�

Here’s how to make a customized tableau vivant. Go through your spouse’s (or partner’s) photograph album (or cellphone). Find a meaningful picture from the past. Gather a group of friends to re-create this image with the exact clothing and facial hair of the original. Find an excellent makeup artist. Have a skilled draftsman paint a backdrop. Set up the tableau vivant in the living room just before your partner comes home from work.

Imagine her surprise!

One gift we all need is time. Lou Pollock, the multivalent Woodstock neo-conceptual artist, sells time coupons. The lucky recipient will find 60 minutes, in coupon form, to be redeemed at any opportune moment. Contact Lou at lou@loulabelle.com. (Minimum order is 15 minutes, for $15, but Lou’s offering a limited holiday special of five extra minutes!)

Consider haiku!

Nearly everyone appreciates books of three-line poems, with bleary color photos of Japan and captions like “Gardens of the Sanzenin Shrine at Kyoto.� (I’m quoting from Haiku: Gems of Intimate Beauty in a New Collection of Classic Japanese Poetry, published in 1970 by Hallmark Editions. I found it for free at the Formerly Yours thrift shop in Phoenicia, but you can buy it on Amazon, used, for $1.19 plus shipping.)

No matter how busy your friend is, she’ll have time to read a nine-word poem like: I sit here Making the coolness My dwelling place.

(That’s by Basho.)

UT OUR EELINGS NTO HE OMENT

| 9

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December 7, 2017 Holiday Gift Guide

| 13

Political decisions Advice from Paul Smart on what to give family and friends

M

y father’s always been a hard man to buy a gift for. I can’t tell you how many times he’s opened a wrapped book, CD, film, piece of art or article of clothing, looked at it for a moment or two, and then handed it back to whoever’d given it to him. He’d never get around to it, he’d say. Better to give the thing to someone else.

The man was a college English professor. He’s all about best-of lists, high-ended criticism, and going over what he knows already.

My mother, on the other hand, appreciates anything and everything that’s wrapped. Or not. Or just a call. She’s like my grandmother, who once gushed for an hour over a card with a five-dollar bill that we’d mischievously re-gifted back to her through a half-dozen people as a joke. Though she didn’t quite comprehend why we had done what we did, she loved seeing everyone’s signatures on one card.

The holidays are big-time when you are a kid.

But what do you do with gift-giving beyond such easy targets? Growing up, I remember family friends who passed along books and record albums. It was a way of sharing enthusiasms, maybe even a bit of one-upsmanship.

For years my wife and I put together an elaborate mix tape, and then CD, every holiday season. It was a means of stepping it up from the old holiday-card tradition to something akin to what Woodstock artists used to do each season, making original works of art for friends and family. We’d whittle down a selection of music, my wife and I. My wife, a visual artist, would design a cover. The process took weeks.

By the time we ceased giving such things every December, our list had grown both extensive and expensive (especially considering the cost of mailing). We switched to mashing together family photos of the year and settling on an appropriate song for a Facebook/YouTube e-mailing disbursement.

That was when our lives were simpler. Several years back, my wife and I got a few of our siblings interested in joining a non-profit together instead of in exchanging gifts. But then the gifts were exchanged, anyway. Before we knew it, we’d doubled our seasonal expenses. The only thing that had changed was that the non-profit started would now be hitting us for funding year-round.

Two of my sisters don’t exchange gifts. My wife gets things for her siblings and their kids. I do the same for my other sister and nephews. Despite the challenges, the same goes with our parents. It’s what’s expected.

The hardest thing for us to do is to send lists of what our son wants, within reason, early enough for relatives to ship things in their preferred bookrate time slots.

As for friends, we send out that end-of-year e-blast. We try to get together with people. And yes, we still figure out what might work best for the dozen or so people who’ve stayed on our regular list as much out of expectation as anything. We send out small items that speak of where we live, items one of us has created, or even (though my wife’s still getting used to the idea) passing on an item we’ve treasured but had enough of.

Given how busy and complex our lives have become, letters -- either mailed or e-mailed – or long phone calls may be the perfect gift for these days.

They are about catching up and getting together, about sharing experience, and about simple fondness and appreciation, that most elegant of gifts.

Some folks spend more time over-thinking what they’ll give as presents than mulling what their family and friends need from their relationships. This is a recipe for endless disappointment,

WIKICOMMONS

Charles Dickens got the idea of the holidays just right, for many, in his examination of the need for communication between Scrooge and Bob Cratchit. as I’ve found with my dad. Disappointment, now part of our holiday rituals, constitutes a diminution of why we give in the first place. Situations filled with warmth and good cheer, from the soft glow of lit trees and lit people, devolve too easily into talk of the politics of gifts and giving. We expect gushing thanks not just for the thought behind what we’ve done, but for the actual choice of gifts, as though such objects were the end-all and not merely a small part of something larger.

So what do I give dear old dad this year? Maybe I’ll take him out to a movie, just the two of us,

some afternoon this winter. Or maybe we’ll resume regular phone calls again to end our latest bout of estrangement.

Everyone should look for communication.

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7, 2017 14 | December Holiday Gift Guide

What kids want to get and give Wish lists can be more specific than you think, reports Paul Smart

I

’m at our son’s school, a freewheeling place where all kids start each week with an activities meeting where they discuss special classes, field trips, announcements, and whatever else is on students’ or teachers’ minds. I’m on a mission. I want to find out what the kids really want for presents this year, not what we grown-ups believe they want through marketing analyses, polling or other means.

Twelve-year-old Gianna is first to step up.

Bright-faced in a hoodie, she starts off by offering that she “doesn’t really want that much this year. I mean, I have this shopaholic for a mother.” Pushed a bit, though, she admits that she does want another dog, wants to spend more time in pet shops, and remains interested in Pokemon cards. What does she want to get others? Gianna says she’s thinking about getting her mom “a bracelet or something.” She wants to get her brother something, too, “although he already has pretty much everything he wants already.”

We turn to Sadie, a dark-eyed and loud-voiced eight-year-old wearing a pile of costume jewelry and google eyes. “I want ... whatever,” she replies with a theatrical flourish. Asked again, she demurs loudly again, and then rolls her eyes toward her sister Camilla about what she might be getting for others. “I can’t say anything,” Sadie says in a loud stage voice.

Camilla steps up as her sister runs off. She says her name, declares her new age of seven, and then proceeds into a litany of “umms” when asked about presents for herself or others. She, too, runs off.

We turn to Simone, who’s five and a half. She is clear about wanting a Gel-a-Peel Deluxe Fashion Maker kit and some magic sand. “And I want to get my mommy a bracelet,” she adds. “I like that everybody gets together at Christmas and gets what they want and everyone is happy.”

Lincoln steps up, announces he’s seven, and reels off a list of undecipherable things that he wants. Plus there’s something “to be decided” for

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Last year for the holidays, Albany Free School students were given fancy designer duct-tape and aviator sunglasses. The teachers really knew what the kids really liked. his mom.

“Hi, I’m Roscoe, and I’m nine, and what I want for Christmas is the Lego Star Wars Gunship and a Lego Death Star.” Plus something he refers to as an “Atte.”

Nash, all of five, is playing with Legos when I catch up with him. And more “Yeggos” is all he wants for presents this year. “I really want a Jurassic World set,” he adds quickly. What is Nash thinking of getting for his parents? “I want to get a diamond for my mom.” As for his favorite thing about the holidays: “You get lots of stuff, and sometimes even money.”

Atoosa, one month older than Nash (a fact everyone is quick to agree on), doesn’t have any idea what she wants for Christmas, and heads off.

Settled into a corner looking a bit wild-eyed, Finn agrees to tell me her age (eight) and what she wants (a camper). She adds that presents are her favorite thing about the holiday.

Upstairs, nine-year-old Enzo takes a while thinking about what he wants for the season, later writing out the word “Sega.”

In a loud classroom where our son Milo is holding court with his classmates, Javi — who spent a week with us last summer attending Wayfinder Experience camp — chips in before anyone else. “I

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want a TV,” he says, strutting a bit.

“I’m Lyric and I’m eleven,” says the first boy in a row after Javi has strutted off. He answers each question — about gift wishes, gift choices for family members, and even what he likes about the holidays — with an increasingly more animated “I don’t knows.”

Colin, age twelve and Finn’s older brother, says he wants controllers for his Playstation Plus. He has already gotten presents for his mother and father, wrapped (and forgotten as to specifics regarding his dad already), and “haven’t bought anything for my sister yet.”

G

oing around the room we come again to Javi, who states his name, his age of twelve, and his wish again for a TV. “Followed by a Playstation Plus,” he adds. “Followed by a purple pillow.” He has no plans for presents for his parents or three brothers other than nods to the suggestion of hugs and, in reference to a repeated joke from last summer, cole slaw.

“I’m Tamyra and I’m ten and I want a hover board for Christmas, and a new iPhone case, and a hover yacht, and a Gucci bag, a Gucci belt, Gucci slides,...” says a stylish young lady on a couch. Her classmates ask whether she knows how expensive her list is. “Yes, I do,” she replies, matter-of-factly.

“And I don’t know what I want to get for my mom because she doesn’t like anything, and my dad doesn’t want me to get him anything.”

Jillian, age ten, wants a phone for Christmas.

After which Tamaya, Tamyra’s older twin sister (by three minutes), has a long list of things she wants but most importantly rose gold wireless headphones. “I know, too, that I want to give my mom a hug, and my dad a hug, and my sister a punch.” Tamaya and Tamyra grimace at each other fondly.

“My name is Everest, and I’m ten,” says a serious-looking boy. “I want for Christmas a gaming

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| 15

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Santa Claus remains a force well into one’s teens, and even beyond, as we find ways to retain magical thinking in our approach to life and wishes. headset, and that’s all. I’m getting my sister a selfie-stick, and I don’t know what I’m getting my parents yet.”

Felix, twelve, says he wants a Champion Hoodie and Joggers for Christmas, “and I don’t know what I’m going to get my family yet except that I’m not getting anything for my brother since I got him something last year and won’t do it again.”

Thirteen-year-old Dor-Je is laid out on a couch.

He says all he wants this year is sleep.

Finally, our own boy Milo, who gives his age as twelve even though we all know he’s a month shy of the actual birthday yet, says he wants a PS4, a Call of Duty WWII and NBA 2K18. “I know that’s expensive,” he says, adding to the list he’s been pitching for over a year now, in most part. “I’m going to give my family, eh, earrings?”

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her mother “lots and lots of jewelry.” She stops at that. “We can also wish Jesus a happy birthday,” she adds.

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7, 2017 16 | December Holiday Gift Guide

Tommy Dan Klink Elisabeth Henry spins a new fable for our regional holidays

T

ommy Dan Klink grunted as he pulled himself in to his town’s biggest plow truck. Vapor swirled around the massive vehicle. Vapor steamed out of his nostrils. Tiny snow crystals poured down, steady and thick.

“She’s a bitch,” Tommy Dan grunted again, his eyes hooded and narrow. He set himself as if a sumo wrestler, in a clinch with his steering wheel, and chugged out into the storm.

At home, his wife Betty looked out the window above her kitchen sink. Where Tommy Dan was rough and fat, and hard and set, Betty was smooth and soft and shaped like a mermaid. Large bosom, a waistline in line with her hips, her legs long and narrow. Their teenage daughters, all three, in various styles of repose in the small living room, thumbing phones, glancing at the television, adjusting headphones. A small, sad artificial Christmas tree twinkled in a corner.

“Time to eat,” called out Betty.

“Where’s Dad?” called out one daughter.

“On the truck,” answered Betty.

“Maybe he won’t come back,” quipped a daughter. “Merry Christmas!” All the daughters laughed.

Tommy Dan moved through the storm in his truck like a predator. Calm. Certain. Indomitable.

He made the first pass on Main Street and opened it for smaller plow trucks to clean it up. He continued to plow the narrow neighborhood streets in the grid around town. Time to head out into the hinterlands.

When dinner was finished, the girls helped Betty clear dishes. Together they had an air of peace and quiet communication.

“Oh, don’t put that in the fridge.” Betty hurried to take serving bowls away from her 13-year-old daughter.

“Throw it out?” the child was incredulous.

“No, Daddy won’t like it if it’s cold,” said Betty.

“It’ll spoil,” said the child.

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Will snow become the setting for our future tall tales and myths in the region?

“Maybe it’ll kill him. No, wait. Nothing could do that,” muttered the 17-year-old in disgust.

The 15-year-old snickered, and the 13-year-old smiled shyly at her shoes.

“Your father’s a good man,” said Betty.

“He’s a monster,” said the 17-year-old, slamming a drawer. She looked at her mother’s stricken face.

“Sorry, Mom,” she said, and left the room.

T

ommy Dan navigated down the long hill that led to the one town road where nobody lived. He knew if he made a pass now, he’d get ’er done, and not need to go back. It would fill in, but who would care? And the bastards on the town board couldn’t say anything, because he’d get down to that old, abandoned farmhouse at the end, take a selfie in front of it for the date and screw them. Let them pussies get out and do

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this work. On Christmas.

“Well, I don’t give a shit about Christmas. It’s all crap,” Tommy Dan muttered to himself, his tongue sliding over the crack on his dry lower lip.

It was dark, darker than usual. The storm now seemed a mass, the truck cutting a cross-section.

The storm was not only all around, it was beneath.

The storm gripped Tommy Dan’s tires, and held.

He throttled down, threw it into reverse, backed up, and plunged forward. He sped as if alight, and took a curve in the road like a race-car driver, and then slammed into something.

He was knocked out of the truck and unconscious for what may have been hours.

H

e awoke, and there, in front of him, the world glowed in a beautiful but supernatural light, each snow crystal a dazzling, swirling jewel. The sky was a deep but brilliant blue, the banks of snow mounded softly. Little bells and chimes sounded, the air was perfumed by something clean and sweet and familiar yet unnamable. In the center of it all was a jolly old elf, fat and dressed in red velvet and white fur, with a posse of smaller elves and eight reindeer. And a sled loaded with a large green velvet duffel.

The elves and Santa held glasses and snacks.

The reindeer quietly browsed on nearby saplings.

Santa Claus’ smile abided as his kind eyes looked deeply into Tommy Dan’s astonished stare. The elves looked pissed off.

Tommy Dan tried to heave his overweight bulk up through the deepening snow that had fallen on him. “What the hell is this?” he snarled.

“What does it look like, fatso?” retorted a wiry, dark-green-clad elf wielding a Louisville Slugger.

Santa placed a hand on the elf ’s shoulder. “We just needed to make a rest stop,” he said. “And then we saw you. As soon as we finish up here, we’ll be on our way.” He saluted Tommy Dan with a red Solo cup filled with something hot.

“If you piss out a moving sleigh, you’re just asking for trouble,” quipped the bat-wielding elf.

Tommy Dan shivered mightily. His head pounded.

“You expect me to believe this?” he roared.

Santa sighed.

“No, Tommy Dan, I know better than to expect you to believe anything tonight. But you will. Believe. Here, have some of this nice warm drink.”

T

ommy Dan stared at the steaming cup.

He took it. He drank. It was just hot enough, tart and sweet, and it filled him with a sweetness.

December 7, 2017 Holiday Gift Guide

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DION OGUST

Woodstock’s annual arrival of Santa on Christmas Eve on the village green has become one of the region’s great holiday events After his first sip he looked at Santa, and his eyes softened. His face relaxed. His body sank away from all his tensions. The snow swirled around him, but it was warm, like feathers, and beneath the gaze of the kindly old elf Tommy Dan lost consciousness again.

The storm lasted for three days and dumped eight feet of snow. No roads were passable, especially not roads like the one that entombed Tommy Dan. Christmas night came and went and New Year’s Eve, too. Betty’s daughters felt guilty for all the bad things they had said about their father. He had never hit them. He provided for them. He was merely unpleasant. Self-involved. Bitter. Suspicious and cheap. Disliked and isolated. Your basic buzz kill.

Betty mourned deeply. Her childhood friend and champion.

D

ay eight of Tommy Dan’s disappearance and Scratchy Katacherville was out poaching deer. He came upon Tommy Dan’s immobilized truck. He saw Tommy Dan’s gloved handing holding a red Solo cup up out of the snow.

He screamed, and that woke up Tommy Dan. It was declared a miracle. Somehow, Tommy Dan’s concussed brain and body functions had slowed down in the bitter cold, blanketed by the extreme snowfall. He had survived his accident.

His persistent story about Santa and the snacking and/or pissing elves, which he told with glee, mirth and impressive detail, was disturbing.

Equally disturbing, but delightful, was the change in Tommy Dan. It was though a switch had been flipped. He saw beauty in everything, and was grateful. There was always enough, and plenty to share. He laughed easily and often. He remembered nothing of his past, miserable ways and when told about them,

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He chuckled when people called him Tommy Dan Winkle, happy that his name was on people’s lips. He cherished his memory of seeing and feeling everything about the mystery of the Christmas Spirit, and would often close his eyes to be with it in loving reverie.

But he never went out in a storm, hoping to have the experience again. He felt deep in his soul that it was enough, he had enough. More than enough.

And he always kept Christmas well.

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7, 2017 18 | December Holiday Gift Guide

The art of giving Jim Beukelman explores innovative ways of enriching family and community

Y

ou don’t need the brain of a rocket scientist to know that not all gifts are good gifts. When I was twelve years old I biked the mile to the strip mall on the edge of town to find the perfect gift for my mother somewhere in those eight stores. I excluded the grocery store and the barber shop immediately as the least likely locations for the perfect Christmas gift for my mom. That left six possibilities.

I spent a few minutes in my favorite hobby shop drooling over car-model kits and the current edition of Mad Magazine. Had I been eight, I might have thought that the model or magazine for which I lusted would be perfect for most anyone, especially Mom, and my gift quest would have been completed. At twelve, I knew better.

The womenswear store tempted me, but I had previously learned my lesson in picking the size and style dress that Mom would like when seeking the best gift for her birthday 18 months previously. She was gracious at the opening of that gift, but she fawned over the perfume and jewelry others gave her, almost ignoring the dress. When she took it back to Mod-O-Day for an exchange, I knew I had come up short.

I scanned the remaining store options for one that did not leave me with an anxiety lump in my chest. I went into the hardware store. At twelve I’d matured enough to know that a drill or a set of six paint brushes would not make Mom giddy.

So I passed them and paused at the kitchen-utensil section. I found the one pan there that Mom didn’t have in her pan drawer, a seven-inch castiron frying pan, just the right size for small things and better than lugging out the big ten- incher.

I bought it and stealthy transported it to my bedroom closet. Lacking the right gift box, I put Christmas wrap around the perimeter of the pan, making sure to cover every surface. On Christmas Eve the final project was relocated to a hidden spot behind the base of the Christmas tree.

In the morning, when gifts were opened, she took my wrapped frying pan by the handle, exclaimed, “I wonder when this is.” She chuckled as the pan changed from a reindeer-spattered form into a black spectacle fit for a mountain man’s campfire.

It’s the thought that counts, right?

T

he tradition of gift-giving at Christmas can so easily become a circus of selfish consumerism — gifts opened without thought of the giver, gifts stockpiled with other possessions valued by vain standards. Often we morph gift-giving into gift-buying. Two days after a mere click on Amazon Prime, the new smart phone that can even measure your blood sugar level arrives on your porch, gift-wrapped if you so desire. Expectation, your own or others’, drives gift-giving — from the twelve-year-old whose life will lose all meaning without a pair of the sneakers that every seventh grader wears these days to the parent who weighs the size and value of each child’s gifts in order to avoid he-got-more-giftsthan-I-did comments.

I have noticed in the last decade or so a trend away from this distortion of gift-giving to something of greater substance. Examples include staffing a soup kitchen for the Christmas meal, making a cash contribution to a loved one’s favorite charity or help event, the anonymous gifts of winter wear to a children’s home, and a family Christmas visit to an elderly aunt at her nursing home. When we’re at our worst, we limit thinking about gift giving to ourselves and those close to us. When we break free from these limitations, we consider gifts for those struggling with physical challenges or subsistence living.

N

ot many people wonder how a gift could be given to their community.

It’s the classic giving-back challenge.

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Giving in celebration of Christmas goes back to the story of the three magi who came upon Bethlehem bearing strange gifts (at least by today’s standards).

We can go further, however. I think we should regularly examine how some community weaknesses might be overcome by us without regard to notice or recognition nor dependent on official action or statement.

Most communities share similar weaknesses. The system begins with local campaigning that leaves voters skeptical of campaign promises. Adversarial outcomes or leaks into the atmosphere from community boards and councils are not the best atmosphere for progress. Maybe we could be more positive.

Maybe we should find a way to thank community leaders, and community employees so they know their service is appreciated. After all, if it were not for them, we’d have to do it ourselves or find another way.

In a day when most communities seem to have less intimacy than in the past, neighborhoods could benefit from efforts of people to become better acquainted with each other.

A neighborhood elf or its human equivalent perched on everybody’s front porches for a few Sunday afternoons could change some loneliness into bonds. In a day when people are preoccupied with financial survival, adopting a struggling single person or family to shower with monthly blessings (a restaurant meal, a bag of groceries, winter ware, a movie outing, and a fishing trip are a few suggestions) would change perspective for a PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE small sliver of the community.

Many like to spread their gifts this time of year by Large community needs can sometimes be volunteering at community holiday events, donating to met by neighbors working together, like a new non-profits and charities, and helping out local food solar-panel array that will provide power for kitchens and pantries, many of which host unusual all electric customers in the neighborhood. displays to draw increased interest.

Sometimes the best gifts are not the ones that cost the most. If the suggestions above That’s already flawed wording, because we receive don’t strike a nerve, don your thinking cap and from our community all the time, even if it’s only find a different place where your resources and inpaved streets and mown grass at the local park. terests intersect the need of your particular comAnd we give to our community all the time, even munity. With a winsome lilt and a gracious attiif it’s only driving right of the center yellow line or tude, you will likely find your life richer, make new turning off the light in an empty public restroom friends and become a better person for the imas we depart. provement you will make to your own community.

color December 7, 2017 Holiday Gift Guide

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part 2

Season’s changes

color 7, 2017 22 | December Holiday Gift Guide

Decorating grows on one Christmas traditions keep coming back, Teal Hutton tells us

T

his is my confession: I spent the entire decade of my irreverent twenties in passive protest of the holiday season. No halls were decked, no trees trimmed with care, no candles in my windows. With the exception of the salt-residue-encrusted bootprints and the puddles of melted snow in the entryway, my life and home were conspicuously empty of evidence that the season had come and gone.

At some point, my four adult siblings and I had come to a consensus that the pressure was off.

There was no need for us to play along any more.

We would gather in our parents’ home once or twice a year from the corners of the country in which we’d all settled, to share each other’s company and an extravagant meal. Conveniently, we decided, at the same time everyone else was celebrating Christmas or Hannukah or Kwanza. But no, we didn’t have to participate in the madness of gift exchanging and seasonal adornment.

It was an easy choice for us. None of us had chil-

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inside or out. Our decorations were a modest expression in comparison, but they felt important.

Each December our growing collection of ornaments came out like a box of nostalgic treasures. We recalled the stories of how they were made or acquired. We found for each the perfect seasonal home on our tree.

One year my mother acquiesced to tinsel. Another, she gathered us in the half-newly-painted living room to create a border of our little handprints over three walls. Above the couch were a peace sign and a freehand outline of the earth. Peace on earth. The message of the season remained the centerpiece of the room long after the tree was taken down and the ornaments were packed away for another year.

M

y son is ten years old now. We sit around the Thanksgiving table with his grandparents and his aunt and uncle. The conversation turns to the upcoming holiday. My mother is trying to convince him that this year we ought to drive out to Bell’s Christmas Tree Farm and cut down our own tree. But Jonah is a stickler for tradition. He’s not interested even in the temptation of hot chocolate and cookies. “We always get our tree from Adams,” he says, “and that’s what I want to do.”

We reminisce. We laugh about the absurdity of an orange-lit eucalyptus tree surrounded by gifts. My mother has to be reminded of the few seasons she opted for a fake tree — she doesn’t remember, she says.

But we do. My sister and her husband tell me that last year was the first that they put up a small tree in their home — a surprise from him to her — but mine is still the only one of my family’s six households that is decked for Christmas each year.

When my son was two or three years old and coming into his awareness of the world around him, it felt right to embrace the things I love about the holiday season with him.

I think of what the Scandinavians call hygge, a seasonal coziness essential to our not just surviving but thriving through the harsh season.

The thought translates into English well. A tree lights up our home and fills it with the sweet scent of evergreen during the darkest months.

PUBLIC DOMAIN IMAGE Our own collection of ornaments Can one overdo the holiday decorations? Some espouse simple elegance this time of year. Others go for the gaudy. is growing each year. Jonah’s favorite is the silver right whale, gifted to gle string of lights across the front of our saltbox dren imposing expectations of stockings and milk us on his second Christmas. When it goes onto the colonial, artificial candles providing a warm glow and cookies left on the hearth for Santa Claus in tree, we joke about the origin of his name (hint: I perched on every one of the ten street-facing winexchange for his magical arrival and gift bestowwas the whale). I know now that I vastly prefer the dows, a yes, a real Christmas tree. al. We’d grown up in a secular home celebrating texture of a Fraser fir to a white pine, and that this We lived among folks who took the business of Christmas in the ways that secular families do, year I may just work a little harder to convince Joholiday decorating very seriously. Every winter adding only the slight countercultural rub our nah that it will be well worth the effort to walk out of that decade we looked forward to our drives mother couldn’t resist. In my early childhood winonto a tree farm and cut down our own. It may through the neighborhoods with the most extravters in Southern California, where boughs of holly even become tradition, I hope. agant shows of lights and scenes, the neighborand frosted window glaze felt especially contrived, hoods throughout which no tree went unadorned, I recall her stringing the family room’s potted eucalyptus with bright orange lights every December. She said it was our Christmas tree.

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7, 2017 24 | December Holiday Gift Guide

WIKICOMMONS

There were times when Christmas was for the more fortunate, and merely a dream for the rest. Stories abound about the divides, captured in this early anonymous image from December, 1910.

Just looking is perfectly okay...

Jennifer Brizzi explores window shopportunities

T

o shop, but not to buy. Why? We love to window-shop, whether at brick and mortar stores or online from the coziness of home. This time of year we’re likely doing more of it, to get ideas for holiday gifts or to escape the stress of these shrinking, darkening, chilly days.

The difference between window shopping and other shopping is that with the former there is no intent to buy. We tell ourselves that we’re just scouting for ideas. We may tell sales clerks we intend to buy something specific, or we put lots of things in our Amazon carts so that the mega-corporation can see how engaged we are as shoppers.

I’m a window-shopper from way back. As a kid, I used to pore over catalogs fatter than a New York City phone book, writing long wish lists in longhand. Later, I’d dog-ear the pages of mail-order catalogs during solitary meals.

T

he term “window shopping” can connote a lack of money to actually buy, but it can also be a fun pastime. The activity has bittersweet qualities.

The urge to shop, or pseudo-shop via window shopping or browsing, can have various causes.

We are preconditioned to be consumers, to acquire, to possess, to have ownership urges that feel like needs. It’s a kind of mini-imperialism over objects of our desire.

The darker side is the shopaholic addiction, when we develop an unhealthy relationship with the activity. Sometimes I get a little frisson of pleasure when I think of buying something or about spending money in general. There must be some sort of endorphin release. Scientists tell us the

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The holiday season has a quality of yearning. We can’t have everything we want. Sometimes it’s better to look and dream, and to feel human in doing so. pleasure chemical dopamine is released with a purchase. That titillating feeling that in itself can become addictive.

If I had lots of money, I think I could potentially shop to excess, like some do. It’s a pursuit more dangerous than spending too much time adding things to my overflowing Amazon cart.

Shopping addiction afflicts women and men equally. Compulsive shoppers — who number between two and twelve percent of the U.S. pop-

ulation (depending on the data source — jeopardize their financial health and their relationships.

Similar to other addictive behaviors, it can be an escape from bad feelings, to ward off loneliness, to fill a void. Many sufferers have a strong fantasy life, low self-esteem, and issues of anxiety and depression. Some signs of the disorder may include a craving for a shopping fix — making impulsive buys or having an urge to shop after a bad day or upsetting incident. Some hide evidence of their

color December 7, 2017 Holiday Gift Guide purchases or hoard unopened items, like shoes in boxes or unworn clothing with the tags still on.

As with other addictive disorders, there are treatments, if not cures. Sometimes window shopping just plain hurts, like when you have to wait when you desperately need to replace your ailing computer or car, or when you want to take your kids on trips but just can’t swing it. So you peruse tech sites, car sites and travel sites and pretend to buy those big-ticket items you need.

The term has a couple of modern uses in the romance realm, also painful. It can refer to someone who’s committed but looking around. Another kind of window shopper flirts online to amuse themselves and satisfy their ego. There’s no intention of ever actually meeting someone. Sooner or later they disappear completely. “It’s a compliment,� says author and relationship expert Susan Winter. “You’re a luxury item, tantalizing and greatly desired but way outside their budget.�

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H

opefully, most of us are doing shopping this time of year in order to gift our loved ones with things that will bring them joy. The holidays are a delightful excuse to browse and buy, activities some of us might normally feel guilty about.

Here in the Hudson Valley we have plenty of places for fine window shopping, from megamalls like in Albany or the Palisades to small-town communities like Woodstock or Uptown Kingston, full of history, character and myriad gifts from around the world. I have a bit of bias for Rhinebeck, since I’ve lived here for many years. I think the village is a great place to wander and gaze in the windows, getting ideas for holiday gifts.

Meander around Rhinebeck on a sunny fall Saturday or an evening when the wind is calm, snow is falling lightly and the sidewalk trees are all lit up with a billion lights. Some of my favorite stops include Oblong Books (I have been known

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to get 100 percent of my holiday shopping done there in one stop), A.L. Stickle (retro fun), Paper Trail and Winter Sun Summer Moon for lots of choices for great gifts, and several more. Not so great for window shopping but a fantastic browse is Warren Cutlery, just north of the village. So are the visitors’ center shops at the historic mansions in Hyde Park.

Or go further afield to the ultimate window shopping destination, Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Combine a day trip amidst the festive holiday finery with some time to window-shop ‘til you drop.

The slow repetitive burn of wanting glittery merchandise you see in shop windows and online

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color December 7, 2017 Holiday Gift Guide may have more value than the quick but intense burst of a major purchase, purport some opinionators. Studies show that to have an experience — generally speaking — offers more happiness than owning a thing. Wanting what you see in the window, wanting it a lot, over time counts as an experience. Trying it on or playing with the floor model fuels the fun. The joy of a big purchase can be all too short-lived.

Rather than just trying to make a gift list off the top of your head, some time spent window-shopping for ideas is valuable. From my perspective, time window-shopping is time well-spent.

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Christmas in perspective Lynn Woods looks back at her family holidays, and forward to her own

I

f you’re a Scrooge, avoid this area in the holiday season at all costs. You will be dismayed by Santa’s arrival on Woodstock’s Village Green on Christmas Eve. You will detest the light displays of Santas and snowmen, wreaths, reindeer, stars, candy canes and the like transforming the postage-stamp yards of Midtown Kingston into animated winter fantasias — complete with sound track, in a few cases.

There are parades and toy drives for underprivileged kids. Avoid these! Be sure to take a wide detour around the area’s churches, whose candlelight services on Christmas Eve resound with singing. At places like Old Dutch, a dignified 1853 stone building bordering a cemetery dating back to the 1600s in Uptown Kingston, the atmosphere of spiritual sanctity combined with the all-inclusive welcome will fatally melt your heart. Avoid also the shops in town when carolers dressed in Dickens-era capes, vests, hats and dresses wend through the cold streets, cheering up tired shoppers.

Since Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, first coined the term “Merry Christmas” and popularized the holiday as one of family togetherness and joyous festivity, people have complained of the commercialization of Christmas. Fixated on the shopping and cooking and gift wrapping, many of us who celebrate the holiday give the religious meaning of Jesus’ birth nary a second thought.

The secularization of the holiday, however, hasn’t completely obscured the message of “peace on earth, good will to men.” In my city of Kingston, for example, Christmas is a time for community togetherness, for supporting many of the nonprofits that contribute substantial quality-of-life benefits to the city (the envelopes are arriving in the mail), and for giving underprivileged kids and families a helping hand. It’s a time for shining one’s light.

For me personally, I’m glad Christmas has evolved into a festivity with a wider reach than simply making sure my kid gets a lot of toys. Growing up in the 1960s, I, like almost all the other kids in our overwhelmingly white, predominantly Protestant New Jersey suburb, had a fanatical attachment to Christmas that had everything to do with the stuff we got. Halloween was pretty great, since you got to stay out after dark, submerge your identity in a carefully curated costume, and collect a grocery bag’s worth of candy. But Christmas meant time off from school. It featured family rituals that lent a touch of poetry to our otherwise bland suburban existence, and most importantly a pile of presents.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF LYNN WOODS

Many Christmas mornings begin with the opening of stockings, as our author remembers from years in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Left, almost gone are the days when a holiday celebration involved a family making actual music together, and not just listening; right, each year brings one present that’s a bit more special than all the others, especially in one’s memories (especially when aided by old family photos).

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n retrospect, there was of course too much focus on the latter. In the status-conscious, excessively conformist world of our suburb (in fifth grade, every cool girl wore white go-go boots; when my mom refused to buy me a pair, I knew I would never be cool), one didn’t talk about how this form of celebration might be misguided, or comment on the weird family dynamics it happened to expose.

To be sure, getting a desired toy was thrilling.

One of my earliest memories, around age four, was the incredible excitement I felt when I opened the door to the basement on Christmas morning and glimpsed amid the stack of gifts the life-sized Patti Playpal doll I had desperately wanted. (When I Googled the brand name, the 1961 commercial came up on Youtube; it had doubtless enticed me, though I have no memory of the ad.)

Each year, as Christmas approached, my brother, sister and I went through the same extended ritual. We would search our parents’ closets for secret purchases (and hopefully not find anything, which would have killed the surprise on Christmas Day). On Christmas Eve, when we were supposed to be in bed, we’d do surveillance from the stair landing, as we lay on our pillows glimpsing our parents placing gifts under the tree in the liv-

December 7, 2017 Holiday Gift Guide ing room through the hall entrance.

We’d be up at dawn the next morning, comparing and assessing our individual piles. Before breakfast, to assuage our impatience, we got to open smaller packages stuffed into the humongous stockings our grandmother had knitted.

When we finally began to tackle the piles, everyone went in turn, which heightened the pleasure and the suspense.

Looking back, the importance we placed on those gifts seems a little too emotionally fraught, a little too disconnected from what they were supposed to signify. We opened up the boring stuff first — the rectangular packages that signified clothes — and left the most mysterious packages for last. One year, when my little brother was about six, he saved a large, odd-shaped present for last. When he ripped off the wrapping paper and discovered it was a dustpan and brush — encouragement from my parents to clean up around his workbench — his disappointment was so profound he burst into tears.

My dad was so evidently disappointed by his own gifts that he came up with a novel solution.

He would buy himself some expensive cologne and wrap it, pretending to be surprised and delighted when he opened the package. We joked about Dad’s gift to himself, but there was no hiding my mother’s annoyance. We sensed a fissure in our otherwise safe little world — that we had a father who felt like a left-out child himself, who was disappointed in our silly kids’ gifts of ugly coasters or plastic demitasse cups and lived in a Walter Mitty fantasy of aspirational wealth — perversely so, it seemed, considering our spacious Tudor house, excellently rated schools and total material comforts.

One year, my dad gave my mother a cheap Made-in-Japan knickknack of a miniature sewing machine, whose spindly wooden pieces practically came unglued when she removed the tissue. It was a hostile, awkward gesture, which we kids didn’t quite get. Why did he resent all the time she spent at her sewing machine making clothes for us and herself while he was at work? Now I wonder if he secretly desired a Total Woman.

Gift-giving could carry all sorts of messages, and they weren’t necessarily about love.

hristmas also connected us with earlier generations on my mother’s side of the family, an anomalous occasion in a family that eschewed ethnic identity and was solidly “American” in its complete acquiescence to corporate culture, down to the Wonder bread, Minute Rice, and frozen vegetables on which we subsisted. Each year, my mom’s mother, our “modern” grandmother, Nana — she was tanned, slim, chicly dressed, happily independent — came to stay for a week. She made a plum pudding from a traditional recipe of her mother’s, and on New Year’s Eve, when my parents were out, served us tea in tiny, exquisite porcelain cups reserved solely for that purpose.

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Among the boxes of tree ornaments were a few made of fragile, milky glass in the shapes of a berry, Santa Claus, and a cottage, light as a feather, from her childhood, which we carefully hung on the most prominent spots on the tree. Loaded with bulbs, which sparkled in the glow of the colored lights, and doused in tinsel, the tree was magical, imbuing the living room with a touch of forest fragrance and mystery, hinting at folkloric fairytales. Beneath the swoop of its lower branches, on the dark-green felt skirt Nana had sewn, we arranged miniature cardboard houses covered in glitter in a row, and set up the wooden crèche, with its porcelain cow and wooden gray donkey.

We laid out the antique wind-up toys, which still worked; a brown-furred monkey that clapped a pair of cymbals, a clown that spun in circles, a seal that balanced a ball on its nose.

While we never “believed” in Santa — my parents considered him irreligious — and were supposedly commemorating Jesus’ birth, no one talked much about this outside of Sunday school. The Christian message was mostly transmitted to us through the holiday TV shows — the sad croonings of Mr. Magoo, and Linus’ citation of the Bible in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

ast forward 30 years. I’m now a mom, hosting my own family holiday gatherings — involving siblings, cousins, and eventually, when my son was in college, his dad and stepmom and their sons, and later still my son’s wife-to-be’s parents. I was working as a business freelance writer with a bunch of deadlines just before Christmas. I was hating the season — the lachrymose Christmas music that swamped the airwaves, the crowds, the pressure of having to buy a truckload of gifts, which stemmed from a family tradition I now resented. I envied my college friend’s family’s practice of buying no more than two gifts each, where each person would draw straws from a hat to determine the recipients. I hated the desperate, last-minute late-night wanderings through the mall searching for a present while having no idea what that person wanted, and spending money that not only felt like too much but a waste.

At that time the shopping opportunities here in Kingston were much more limited.

I never got around to purchasing a tree until the afternoon of December 24, by which time the pickings were slim but the discounts significant. One year, all the places on Route 9W in Town of Ulster were sold out, to the exasperation of my mother, who was accompanying me. We finally found a few trees at a farmstand in Esopus, although the smallest was eight feet tall. Though my house has high ceilings, dragging it into the living room and fitting it into the stand was a bitch. Trimmed and swaddled in lights, it was gorgeous, complementing my Victorian house — until it nearly caused a serious injury when it suddenly tumbled one evening onto some guests. My cousin’s husband subsequently stabilized it by tying a rope around the trunk and attaching it to the wall.

People would begin to arrive — from central New York, Washington, D.C., suburban Connecticut — filling the kitchen with tins and Tupperware containers full of homemade cookies, and stuffing the fridge with cheeses, veggie casseroles, a roast, pies and dips — you name it. Shopping bags full of presents lined the hall. Everyone helped, and despite my grousing, midway through the meal the pressure would lift and I would thoroughly enjoy myself.

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fter everyone had left, while basking in the sudden quiet and green-and-red glow of the tree, I had to admit that I was blessed with a wonderful extended family, generous, fun people all. The effort was worth it. My son was the only kid in my immediate family, and I was grateful for the attention toward him, even if my sister did go overboard with the gifts. He got to spend time with my cousin’s children.

Now he’s grown up, married, and lives in another city. Thanksgiving is the time we all get together. The lack of time off from his and his wife’s jobs and the horrendous traffic conditions curtail getting together at Christmas. Hence Christmas is now a subdued affair.

My brother’s tragic death a few years ago haunts the small gatherings of me, my mom and my sister. Never is the loss more acute than at Christmas. For my mom’s sake, we don’t reminisce too much, strive to stay in the present. I’m down to buying just a handful of presents, which is manageable and fun.

Because we celebrate at my sister’s, I don’t even have to buy a tree, and I usually don’t. We eat a couple of sumptuous dinners, sing some carols around the piano, binge-watch shows on TV I otherwise never get to see (not having cable), and sometimes go into the city for a play or a movie.

The holiday is no longer about excess. The huge mountains of trash we generated decades before are now much reduced, and carefully recycled.

I try to tamp down the inevitable tensions and be grateful that we’re still here, acutely aware of the resonating absence of others with whom we shared the holiday in years past.

This year, with the advent of so many wonderful new retail stores, I look forward to staying close to home and doing most of my shopping in Kingston.

I’ll buy a couple of toys this year and drop them off at People’s Place; when I did this last year, it made me feel like a mom again. I’ll give my neighbor, who is there to help when my furnace goes out or my dog is left out inadvertently, a mug or some other token of gratitude.

Christmas in Kingston, where family ties are deep and newcomers are welcome, opens your heart and fosters a feeling of belonging. When the jingles start up and the stores expand their hours, when the concerts are scheduled and the brilliant holiday displays are switched on, I no longer feel a creeping sense of dread — just simple contentment and a quiet joy, gladness for this refuge from the dark.

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Bring on the new year!

Self-styled curmudgeon Scott Baldinger offers his views

T

he holidays used to rank rather low in things that bring out the Jeremiah in me. I used to like them when I had the dough â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the vibe, the gettogethers, the giving of gifts. Or at least I thought I did. Quite unconsciously, when I recently started to sing to myself â&#x20AC;&#x153;Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;&#x2122;Â I had a violent negative reaction.

In the past Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have described myself more as a touchy and critical guy with a very changeable cranky quotient. But things have changed. Thanks to Donald Trump and company, I have gone from cranky to surly when not rendered speechless and driven to hiding under the covers, medically sedated. And this change has affected everything, including the holidays.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just Trump, although he has certainly taken the celebratory wind out of me. The holiday season seemed to come out nowhere for me this year. All festivities have popped up prematurely in a weird way.

I chalk it up to climate change, an unusually warm early fall and colder-than-usual late-season weather. Holiday biorhythms are all askew. And Robert Mueller is taking what seems to me forever.

When it comes to song, it takes a lot of effort to get rid of brain worms. At work, I started to hum the tune out loud. Someone nearby yelled, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Stop singing that goddamned song!â&#x20AC;? I started to think of all of the reasons why I might not like all the holidays: Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas, and New Yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (Sorry, Kwanzaa, I have no idea what to think of you). Draw your own conclusions as I cite my reasons.

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as admirable in its intentions as it is in its origins. Also consider, however, how much strife and dread it has caused by forcing families to spend time together in a officious manner. You begin to wonder about its plausibility, if not its beneficence.

I give this holiday a pass only because I happen to like my family (with whom I share political leanings). I also like turkey, especially the one that my mother orders from Citarella. I like Thanksgiving enough to feel put out by the fact it seems to have been skipped altogether this year, with commercials with jingle bells and whistles already taking over the airwaves and people already heading to Florida. Another little jab at its bonafides comes from the fact that we proceeded to commit centuries of genocide against the native Americans at the center of the Thanksgiving story.

Chanukah Leave it to us Jews, This holiday is barely mentioned in the bible and was trumped up in America of the 1970s to compete with Christmas. Eight days of celebration based on the shortage of olive oil ? And not just olive oil but properly sanctified olive oil (for the lighting of the High Templeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lamps). Oy. The whole light thing was essentially the only genteel (as opposed to gentile) event that took place after a violent struggle between Maccabean Jews and the Romans, and just as importantly Hellenzied Jews, which is like saying Hasidim over your average American Jew. Or to be even more dramatic, in their struggle with the government and regular people just trying to get through the day, almost jihadist in its combative fundamentalism, essentially a secular civil war.

We should celebrate this?Â

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color December 7, 2017 Holiday Gift Guide susceptible to divine interventions.

To quote a Christian scholar “It was a custom of the pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and revelries the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they too counsel and resolved that the true nativity should be solemnized on that day.” Drunkenness endured as a main feature of the celebrations. Christmas was once seen as so un-Christian that various religious groups tried to ban it altogether” Anyone found to be celebrating Christmas in Massachusetts from 1659 to 1681 would be fined five shillings for the offence.”

Christmas was finally proclaimed a national holiday in the US in 1870.

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Humbuggery or not, there’s always something that tugs at the heart when lights twinkle through the season’s darkness.

If ever there was a holiday to make one feel like a loser, it’s New Year’s Eve. If you happen to not like large parties, do not drink to excess (or at all), or have a circle of friends as socially inept as you are, you’re out of luck. You have to keep reminding oneself about the arbitrariness of the whole Gregorian calendar thing. Also, there are no presents or turkey, which renders the whole thing worth sleeping through in front of CNN and watching the silly camaraderie at Times Square. I plan to be hiding under the covers.

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Christmas Fox News ruined Christmas for me. Just hearing about it from a menagerie of stupid, gullible, arrogant people. Contrary to what stalwarts of the Christian faith such as Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Roy Moore espouse, Christ really had nothing to do with Christmas. Essentially, the holiday came about to stem the tide of wildly drunken celebrations that took place every winter solstice, engulfing entire villages in Brueghel-like depravity (often with beer infected with ergot, the barley fungus that had wildly hallucinogenic effects).

The trend had gotten so out of hand throughout Europe during the Middle Ages that the Catholic church wanted to sanctify it and make it more

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color 7, 2017 32 | December Holiday Gift Guide