Today Is My Day!

Happy Holidays. Today's the big day... that day that we eagerly await for as soon as the Halloween pumpkin is tossed on the compost heap- the Feast of Stephen or Boxing Day or Wren Day. Well actually, this is the start of The Week of Stephen. It begins today - the Feast Day of St. Stephen, to whom it shall be noted, was the 1st Christian to be stoned, no small significance to me personally.

At Post Apocalyptic Bohemia, birthdays are celebrated with a week long celebration honoring the recipient with a series of celebrations & kindnesses. We start today with St. Stephen’s day & wraps up onJanuary 3rd with the birthday of yours truly. Today, I am going to start to prepare for my birthday with a week of being celibate, doing a cleansing fast: no alcohol, no pizza… unless I should slip up & end up getting drunk & getting laid.

St. Stephen was stoned to death in 34 AD by a mob led by Paul (when he was still Saul). In Acts it says:
Then they secretly persuaded some men to say, "We have heard Stephen speak words of
blasphemy against Moses & against God." So they stirred up the people & the elders & the teachers of the law. They seized Stephen & brought him before the Sanhedrin. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place & change the customs Moses handed down to us." Since Stephen was the first martyr, he's referred to as a protomartyr, a word we only get to use once a year.


Good King Wenceslas is the big musical number for St. Stephen's Day. The tune was originally written for the song, Tempus Adest Floridum (It is time for flowering), a 13th-century spring carol first introduced in the 1582's Swede/Finn co-production: Piae Cantiones. Perhaps you have seen it? If you've never really listened to the lyrics to Good King Wenceslas, they deal with the Bohemian King going out on St. Stephen's Day to give alms to the poor. A rich Duke’s page is freezing to death but Wenceslas's footprints provide magical warmth…. or something like that.

If you live in the Anglo-land, then you don't need to have Boxing Day explained... unless you're from the USA or Ireland, the only Anglo-ish countries that do not celebrate it. On Boxing Day, you give a gift to your inferiors. This seems to me to be very patronizing & classist, or rather-very English. "Oh it's nothing. Just a little something I, your superior in class, got for you, one of the lower orders." Even the English seemed to have realized this seemed a bit condescending, now they just use today to take advantage of after-Christmas sales, to buy stuff for themselves. Back in a time far way, the Husband & I would travel from our home in Seattle to one of our favorite cities- Vancouver BC, to enjoy the Boxing Day sales. Merchandise at the Canadian stores- Eaton’s & The Bay Company etc, would be marked down 60%, which with the strength of the US dollar against the Canadian(those were the days!), would make for terrific savings. We would then spend our saved money on dining out at the swellest spots in Vancouver, & leaving tips for our inferiors.


In Wales, the people of my own heritage, they have their own peculiar brand of St. Stephen's Day acknowledgement. On what they named- Gŵyl San Steffan, it is customary to bleed the livestock & slash female servants with holly branches. How can we can explain the Welsh?

Why no Boxing Day in Ireland? The Irish celebrate- Lá an Dreoilín, or Wren Day. Before I looked it up, I thought- "Oh, Wren's Day. They must venerate the little birds on this day." Actually, traditionally on this day, young hooligans called- Wrenboys got together & hunted down the tiny, defenseless creatures. Then they'd go around with the dead wren's tiny corpse fastened to the end of a pole, singing songs & drinking. Wrens have a reputation for treachery in Irish culture & legend has it that wrens betrayed Irish forces during a Viking attack & so the Irish on this day kill the wrens out of revenge. By the 1930s, wrens were almost extinct in Ireland. That will teach a lesson to those traitorous wrens!

Holidays Have No Pity

The Ghost Of Christmas Past

Growing up the only child of fully functional, smart, affectionate, reasonable, & loving family, with working professional parents was the worst preparation for adulthood. I missed the hard-knock lessons doled out by mean siblings & alcoholic & abusive mothers & fathers. Christmas may be the toughest lesson to learn. I was not just an only child, but 1 of only 2 grandchildren, with 3 sets of grandparents. I didn’t have an inkling that so many other kids had so much less on this holiday. My family tried different kinds of Christmas trees, as my mother changed her style through the years. We most often had a traditional tree with a mix of ornaments from years gone by, but once in the early 1960s, we had an aluminum tree with pink lights that sat on top of our baby grand piano, & I recall having mixed emotions about our experience with a flocked tree with bubble lights.

The 3 of us would go to church on Christmas Eve (where I was often a performer), & return home to open 1 gift. My parents didn’t try & snowball me with the Santa Clause myth, so leaving milk & cookies & a note for the jolly fat man was always done with a wink. A few special gifts would appear overnight, but most of what was under the tree had been there for a couple of weeks & it wasn’t difficult for me, at even 5 or 6 years old, to ascertain what packages were clothing, books, games or record albums. I am sure I was one of the few 10 year olds to had asked “Santa” for the just published book of collected Cole Porter lyrics. When I was 11 years old, my Aunt Sharon gave me a subscription to Variety & The New Yorker.

In our jammies on Christmas morning, we would take turns opening 1 gift at a time, with a small discussion on each item, & because there were so many gifts, this enterprise would take a big chunk of the morning. Besides books & records, I would often receive something so special that even I was knocked out of my senses. On my 12th Christmas, I received a new stereo system. When I was 15, my parents gave me a trip to Europe to be taken in the summer to come. When I was 16 I received a set of keys, in a small wrapped box, for a 1949 Jeep Willys Station Wagon (don’t be too impressed, they were sick of driving me & my string bass around to lessons & rehearsals). When I was 21, the keys in the small wrapped box were for a 1959  black T-Bird.

I have not spent a Christmas with my parents, healthy & sassy in their late 70s, since the Husband & I moved to Seattle in 1981, but every holiday would bring a big box of presents from my folks to the 2 of us & any combination of canines. For decades we noted that the gifts from my parents appeared to have been rounded up in 1 fell swoop during a trip to Costco. On 1 Christmas, the Husband & I thrilled to our gift of a do-it-yourself aromatherapy kit in the scent of rose! We asked our selves- “do the parents even know us?” We called it –The Miracle Of The Christmas Crap. Books, record albums, & automobiles were ghosts from my childhood. It wasn’t that we were not grateful. Really. The Husband & I were getting older & we desired less stuff, not more. I knew that my parents felt the same way. About 8 seasons ago, I told my parents that the Husband & I no longer gave each other gifts, & maybe they would enjoy the same luxury. My parents liked the idea & explained- “it was too late for this Christmas, the box had been sent… but starting next year, that would be the plan.” The Husband & I had a good chuckle when the box arrived, knowing it would be our last holiday to receive matching oven mitts & ice scrappers. As we opened our last Christmas packages from my dear parents, the big box revealed a charming mix of fun books, CDs, gift cards & vintage toys including my 1st Etch-a Sketch in 50 years! Just as we changed a long standing tradition, my parents came through with the best & most child-like Christmas gifts ever… minus the trip to Europe, of course.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

I am, at heart, a true curmudgeon, & I realize that I alarm people when I announce that I don’t really like holidays. Most people in my life are crazy & over the top about holidays, especial Halloween & Christmas. I am not out & out mean spirited or Scrooge-ish about this, in fact I give a nod to the major holidays: a beautiful heirloom pumpkin on the porch in October, or a big bowl of the Husband’s famous potato salad on the 4th of July. Christmas is the tough holiday; people are so offended if you declare a displeasure with what I feel is the most imposed upon celebration of all. I felt so bombarded with- “it’s the most wonderful time of the year…” as I traveled around Portland yesterday. I kept thinking- “Really, is it? Really?” Christmas has become a very modest holiday at Post Apocalyptic Bohemia, with no gifts exchanged between the Husband & myself. We have developed a new tradition, though. After decades of not having a tree, we are having our 2nd Christmas with a great big Tannenbaum. We have a 12 footer from a tree farm & it is placed outdoors in front of the big window that overlooks the back garden & Boy’s Fort. The big fir is decorated with blue lights & suet balls for the birds. My favorite tree was at the cottage in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle circa 1987. The Husband & I decorated a large sagebrush, found in the desert of Eastern Washington, with tiny white lights. It was beautiful & yet ironic. Another Christmas in the 1980s, the Husband did a small tree decorated with photo copies of photographs of the 2 of us from childhood Christmases past. The Photos were fastened to the tree with cloths pins. This tree was adorable without being precious.

The Husband & I both work on the 24th & 26th this year. On Christmas Eve, we will go to our friend Syslee's. Every Christmas, Syslee has a 36 hour long party that celebrates the Holiday from the point of view a different culture, complete with food, drinks, music & gifting appropriate to that tradition. In recent history she has done Kwanza, India, & Hawaii. This year it is Italy! Cia Bella! Buon Natale! When we return home, will watch our Holiday favorite- Bad Santa. The Husband & I will spend the special day going to a movie & then we will be in our home, with a fire in the fireplace & a bottle of whiskey at hand. We have invited a new friend- Peter, who has no family close by, to join us. My favorite Christmas song? That is easy: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, introduced by Judy Garland in 1944’s Meet Me In St. Louis, because Christmas, for me, has always been a little warm, a little happy & a big dose of sad. Of course, I will be wishing the readers of this blog & my fellow bloggers, no lumps of coal & instead- big of lumps of love & warmth.

Perfect For This Time Of Year: Everyday Will Be Like A Holiday

I am a big fan of Canadian jazz singer Holly Cole & her very original covers of the pop music songbook. I am also a big fan of William Bell's 1967 song- Everyday Will Be Like A Holiday, which I hereby nominate as a perennial December favorite. I have covers of this tune by Hall & Oates (oh, how I love Hall & Oates), The Sweet Inspirations & The Hearts Of Soul. The Holly Cole live version features Joshua Redmond on bass & the great John Pizzarelli on guitar:

“If you don't create change, change will create you” Noel Coward

The Christian Right went ape shit over this commercial, saying that the mention of the Solstice promoted withcraft, which made me love it even more:


This morning I went to Ikea to gather some items that I had spotted to use as Holiday display at my store. I usually use the wholesale flower market for most of my retail decor, but I was really struck with these large red paper Amaryllis, which I am doing in a modern glass cylinder with silver balls in the bottom as an anchor. I will be spending Thanksgiving setting the store for the Holidays, putting the Holiday merchandise out, & tranforming the place into a winter wonderland. I think it is very civilized to wait until after Thanksgiving to put up the winter Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, Solstice decor.

The Husband spent the day working on a wall of our dining room, a project that started with  tearing down the dining room walls to the bare studs (I don't mean the good kind) in 2005. This re-do has been making progress at a pace only the Husband could manage. I loved the old Post Apocalyptic Bohemian look, but I am more than pleased with today's result. Here are some photos to mark the transition:

Today's Progress:

& because I have posted recently about Junior, here is the other canine- the very crabby Larry: