Comments on: Kala Kristouyina

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 12:18:28 +0000

Boxing Day here – and this is the only place I know of where Boxing Day is a public holiday, not having been eliminated in the big sweep some years back when the provincial government decided we might be in a better competitive situation if our number of public holidays was closer to the national norm. I can’t imagine why they missed Boxing Day – national store chains have to indicate ‘Or December 27, where applicable’ on their sales fliers, and one immigrant I know of thought ‘Boxing Day Sale’ literally meant ‘Boxing Day’ and was waiting outside the store advertising cheap washers at 6 or 7 AM wondering where the crowds were.

I like Boxing. All the busyness of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are over, and no one can expect you to do anything more energetic than to make a trip to one of the few drugstores or convenience stores (which aren’t covered by the shops closing act, but they won’t all find it worth their while to open).

I get a nice long holiday, and I intend to have a good rest.

Happy holidays to everyone – don’t give them up too early; you should get the full 12 days!

By: Mique

Mique — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 22:06:08 +0000

Merry Christmas from me too, Jane, and everybody. We’re also spending it at home this year as Jan came down with some fierce Lurgy or other so our plans to spend Christmas with the family in Sydney came to nothing.

By: MaryF

MaryF — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 17:20:17 +0000

Merry Christmas, Jane. We had Christmas Eve dinner at my brother’s house with him and my sister and brother in law. Today it’s just Ron and me and five cats.

By: robert_piepenbrink

robert_piepenbrink — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 13:11:31 +0000

Couldn’t quarrel with the list. I also am up early and on hold. The kids are visiting, but I rented them a motel suite two blocks away so we wouldn’t trip over one another in a one-bedroom apartment.
For myself: for music, another female a capella group–The Roches’ We Three Kings, Carpenters’ Christmas Collection and Arthur Fiedler’s Christmas at the Pops. A little trickier to get is “Great Songs of Christmas” the old Goodyear albums. After them, the Culture Wars broke out.
For film, I persist in thinking All I Want for Christmas (1991) is underrated–not a story of moral redemption, but a cute comedy set in the season of the sort Disney did 30 years earlier before they lost their touch. And–if you can find it–Fitzwilly, with Dick Van Dyke and Barbara Feldon.

Which leads to a book: Poyntz Tyler’s A Garden of Cucumbers, which was also published as “Take It Easy–But Take It” and “Fitzwilly.” If you have seen teh movie you have NOT read the book, but the book is only recomended for those 55 and up. It’s a delightful comedy with a serious point now and then, but it has a wealth of specific cultural referents, from the Taxicab Army to New York subway tokens and Mayor LaGuardia’s hats which makes it unsuitable for a younger audience.

It’s one of the reasons I always hesitate about longevity as a way of sorting books for quality. A book can be very good–maybe even great–but still pass away when the readers no longer have the necessary background information to make sense of the text.

To live long enough is to live in another world, and it doesn’t take as much time as it used to.