Christmas Eve 2020 - Kalle Anke

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Kalle Anke this year was in the form of a Disney DVD I picked up years ago featuring a bunch of winter themed Disney shorts. My two favorites are Mickey's Good Deed from 1932 and Rescue Dog from 1947.  

The Depression era Mickey's Good Deed finds Mickey wanting to bring Christmas joy to a downtrodden family at great sacrifice to himself. Amazing to me that this short is 88 years old. 

Rescue Dog has Pluto interacting with a mischievous seal who keeps trying to steal his cask of grog. 

I got a kick out of the sign that Pluto displays early in the cartoon. It makes me think it would be nice to have such a sign at the entrance to our house as a testament to our residence being graced by Athena, our own lovingly dutiful dog who watches over Dale and me. 

Here is Athena on duty as we watch another Disney short during our Kalle Anke observance.

I read recently that in Sweden in 2019 Kalle Anke och hans vanner onskar God Jul (Donald Duck and His Friends Wish You a Merry Christmas) had 3.3 million viewers which is just under a third of the entire Swedish population. 

Christmas Eve 2020 - Merry Christmas from Us

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Merry Christmas to all!

(And from Athena too.)

Christmas Eve Day 2020 - White Christmas and Cookies

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Apreciative to have gotten snow to make it a white Christmas.

Jean, our next door neighbor, made some cookies and was kind enough to bring some over to us. They sure tasted good!

Christmas Eve Day 2020 - Listening to Brett Eldridge

Thursday, December 24, 2020

This is becoming one of my more recent holiday favorites. 

Eldredge is a country singer with a gentle, pleasing  twang. His beautiful baritone and skillful phrasing works quite well with the big band/standards style of music which accompanies him. 

Christmas Eve Day 2020 - One Final Ghost Story

Thursday, December 24, 2020

I saved this one for Christmas Eve itself. Worked out well since this one ended up being the lighter of the three I read this holiday season.  The other two were great but a bit more on the intense side. In this one, a man who fears death finds a very special town in which to retire. 

Christmas Eve Day 2020 - Revisiting a Ghost Story

Thursday, December 24, 2020

I woke up thinking about  The Story of A Disappearance and Appearance by M. R. James, the ghost story I finished yesterday. The disappointment I felt in feeling the story wasn't resolved prompted me to do some research on it and I found the following article:

Fandom: The Story of a Disappearance and An Appearance

Included in the article is a link to the youTube video which it references:

The Story of a Disappearance and An Appearance by M.R. James (youTube)

I began to look at it all from the standpoint of how well the story was constructed and the sense of eeriness and chill it conveyed rather than just the resolution. I also realized that although the ending may not have been satisfactory to me it may well have been for the characters. 

Christmas Eve Day 2020 - Shoveling and, Sorry to Report, Some Hopelessness (and Not Due to the Snow)

Thursday, December 24, 2020

Began the day by shoveling. Dale shoveled yesterday before the storm was over and it's nice he thinned it out because there was a lot of snow. The airport is officially reporting just under 9 inches. 

Dale wrote on his blog: "And with this snow, I can again take pictures of the beginnings of Mt. Crumpet in our backyard.  In a normal year, this pile gets to be 6-8 feet high.  We’ll see what happens this year."

Also: "Most of us up here in the usually great white north figured we’d see a snowless Christmas this year, but that emphatically changed yesterday. I’m not even sure how much snow we got -- 8 or 9 maybe? --because it was a full fledged blizzard yesterday so it’s hard to know from looking at it.  Joe and I just finished up shoveling. It’s -4F with a -24F windchill so this snow is fluffier than early season snows and I like it so much better.  The wind kind of packs it hard though, so we did have to put our backs into it.  You can see all the leaves that got trapped under the snow. They kind of sully the freshness of the snow, but at least now most leaves that escaped being raked and bagged this fall are trapped under the snow until spring."

Yesterday I realized how my current emotional state parallels the current weather. The temperature plummeted yesterday. By late evening I felt frozen and hopeless. I don't know that I've ever entered the Christmas holiday feeling the way I did. Mind you, I've felt many strong emotions during the holiday itself: anger, joy, exuberance, melancholy, but never hopeless. It wasn't the change in temperature. This feeling has been building over the past year and now I have time to be with myself and think about it and process it and all I can say is that this year has been just awful. I know there are others who have had it easier than I have and I know there are others who have had it worse but it's been awful. I don't know that I even know where else to begin to put the feelings I have into words. Maybe I'm not quite as hopeless as I think because I'm aware that I'll eventually come out of this and will hopefully be better for it.