The Simon Sisters Sing

Here's something that I bet wasn't on your Christmas playlist: Carly and Lucy Simon, as the Simon Sisters, singing Lucy's setting of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "Christmas Bells."

It's from a very unusual children's album first released in 1973. This is one that I did not have growing up, but when I was a child I once heard one of the songs on it, Lucy Simon's setting of William Blake's poem "The Lamb," at a neighbor's house, and never forgot its haunting, chant-like melody (unfortunately, there's no Youtube of it, but you can listen to an excerpt on Amazon), in spite of the fact that I never heard it again and didn't know whose song it was. Then one day last year the Daedalus Books catalogue came in the mail -- I'm a hopeless addict -- and I saw the Simon Sisters' re-released CD advertised in it, with a little blurb describing some of the songs, one of which was a setting of Blake's poem. Could this be the song? I took a chance and ordered the CD, and yes, it was.

The album is outstanding. Lucy, who wrote all the music, was long overshadowed by her younger sister, but would later gain recognition as the composer of the Broadway musical The Secret Garden. Although the songs on the album are arranged for the full gamut of instruments used in 1960s pop to suggest whimsy and the fantastical -- flute, organ, glockenspiel -- the squareness of the sisters' singing has a kind of rectitude to it -- indeed, almost an austere quality, echoed in this undated performance from the "Hootenanny" television show:

Aren't they beautiful, too? Their older sister, Joanna, was also a singer, a mezzo-soprano who had a moderately big career in opera (yes, that's what most big careers in opera look like -- I had never heard of her, either).

Everything about the Simon Sisters, from their singing to their dresses to the songs themselves, evokes a more innocent time, a kind of lost paradise that cannot ever have really existed.

Christmas Wrap-Up

Christmas was greatly anticipated in my childhood home. My mother could cook and bake like you couldn't believe, and preparations went on for days and weeks prior to the day. Then after the inevitably un-pretty release of all that tension and expectation -- someone would always be in tears by mid-morning -- we would pile into the car and drive around to look at the impressive displays of Christmas lights put out by our same-ethnicity fellow citizens to gladden the hearts of all.

In contrast, I have tried to keep Christmas relatively simple. I don't cook and bake like a mofo, though my siblings do (my sister rivals my mother's astonishing ability at this sort of thing, while I am merely competent). Christmas lasts for twelve days, after all, or until February 2, if you stick to the old calendar. My son gets one "present" present and some books and candy in his stocking. Here is how we did it this year:

The main course:
- A ten-pound kosher turkey purchased for $4 after Thanksgiving at the local ghetto supermarket, where there can't possibly be much, if any, of a market for that sort of thing, stuffed with bacon-celery-apple-sage dressing, which sort of misses the point, I guess.

The dessert:
- Clementine cake, the easy dessert so good it makes you cry.

The presents:
- A discontinued Playmobil castle wished for over the course of several months and gotten on Ebay. This is a good strategy if you are Playmobil-assembly-averse, as I am, since most of the heavy lifting -- like the attaching of all those infernal little connecter pieces -- was done for you long ago by another parent.

- Out-of-print children's books about Sir Ernest Shackleton's polar expedition and the voyage of the Kon-Tiki, and The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, which is set in my erstwhile 'hood.

The playlist:
- Paul Hillier and Theatre of Voices: Carols from the Old and New Worlds (this is my favorite)
- The Americas Vocal Ensemble: A Hispanic Christmas Celebration
- Chanticleer: Our Heart's Joy: A Chanticleer Christmas
- Saint-Saëns: Christmas Oratorio (a beautiful but little-known piece; I had never heard it myself before getting a gig as the alto soloist a few years ago. The bass on the gig, who was black, told me that it's often performed in Catholic Churches in Harlem on Christmas Eve)
- Assorted Celtic-Traditional artists: Comfort and Joy
- Anonymous 4: Wolcum Yule
- Singing carols in the living room around the piano, the accordion (my husband plays), and the autoharp.

Those of you who revere Bach (which ought to be every one of us) should also know about the yearly broadcast of his complete recorded oeuvre, played nonstop on Columbia University's radio station, WSKG, from December 22 until December 31 each year. It's fantastic.

We miss little Jude today, and wish he were already here.

A blessed and joyful Christmas to all. And a word to the wise: if you're going to post status updates that include your opinion about female reproductive organs (referred to using a schoolyard expletive) on a day that you refer to as "Newton's birthday," I am going to unfriend your ass.

Poem: B.C.:A.D.

Go to Maria Horvath's blog to read an amazing Christmas poem. Happy feast day to all!

Spiritual Lullaby

This is the second of Brahms's two alto-viola songs, op. 91, the "Geistliches Wiegenlied." Brahms uses the German Christmas song "Joseph lieber, Joseph mein" as the melodic theme in the viola. My favorite composer, my favorite instrument (yes, the viola! let the jokes begin), and my favorite singer of all time, Dame Janet Baker, a.k.a. the only mezzo. Merry Christmas to all, and much love to all of the wonderful friends I've met through this blog. May God bless everyone who reads this and all whom you love. 

You who float
About these palm trees
In the wind at night,
You holy angels,
Hush the treetops!
My child is asleep.

You palms of Bethlehem,
In the rushing wind
How can you today
Swish so angrily?
O do not rustle like that!
Be quiet, lean
Down softly and gently;
Hush your treetops!
My child is asleep.

The heavenly boy
Has to endure hardship;
Ah! How weary he was
With the sorrow of earth.
Ah, now in sleep he
Is gently consoled,
His pain dissolves.
Hush those treetops.
My child is asleep.

Grim cold
Blows upon us;
With what shall I cover
The baby's limbs?
O all you angels
Who on your wings
Wander in the wind,
Hush the treetops!
My child is asleep.

(poem by Emmanuel von Geibel, after Lope de Vega; translated by William Mann.)

Quick Takes: Advent Theology for Tykes and Regular Grown-up Ingrates

1. I frequently read on other people's blogs about the great love of God and near-mystical grasp of holy truths expressed by their young children. Lest I believe these qualities to be inherent in children, or somehow conveyed by the solid faith of their virtuous parents, I have my own son. He used to have a mini-devotion to John the Baptist, which sprang to life when he learned of the method of the saint's death, and every supper until the start of Advent he would close out grace with the plea: "Saint John the Baptist, pray for us forever." That appeal has now been replaced by "Santa, pray for us forever." I tried to unpack this one, only narrowly avoiding the argument that we can't ask Santa to pray for us because he's not real. Instead, I feebly remarked that we can't really ask Santa to pray for us because, well, he's not dead. My son acknowledged this, though not as any sort of preventative to Santa's prayers; "Santa never dies," he noted.

2. We still don't have our Christmas tree; we're always last-minute about it, a holdover from being broke in New York, where you can get a big, gorgeous tree on Christmas Eve for small change, because the very handsome Canadian tree-sellers who set up shop on every street corner in the city on the day after Thanksgiving are packing up and heading home. I did, however, set out a creche that I got at a garage sale last year for a dollar (it includes the swooning pasha above, who I don't think was original to the set, but I thought could stand in for one of the wise kings -- or maybe not), but my son immediately used it to enact a battle scene in which Baby Jesus killed everyone.

3. His kindergarten teachers invited me to come and read the wonderful Tomie DePaola book The Clown of God to his class. I suppose I overprepared a little, making a chart of the Italian words in the story (Really Rosie phoned me in the middle of this, and asked if I was planning to give an exam too) and discussing pictorial symbolism with the wee ones, but it was a hit nonetheless. Yes, this happened in public school (the teachers are required to teach about other holiday traditions too; my son announced the other day that he celebrates Kwanzaa).

4. My son has told me that he doesn't like speaking English; he prefers to speak Italian and Chinese. Admittedly, he knows a few words in each language, mostly curse words in the former (though not their meaning) and polite expressions in the latter, which he's learning in school. We say a decade of the rosary together each night as a family, so sometimes, to mix it up a little, I'll say a Hail Mary in Italian.  My son can actually say all the prayers in Irish Gaelic, and he does. Then we mention our intentions. His are usually along the lines of "That [his friend] will stop saying 'poop,'" or that another friend "will stop calling me 'poop-man.'" But most often, he says, "Thank you for my good day."

5. It's that time of the year -- it always is, isn't it? -- when I question God assiduously as to why He took me from a life I knew and loved and to which I felt profoundly connected and put me in this backwater. But it helps to remember that the Savior of the world was born in one place, and raised in another, whose backwaterness probably rivaled this one's.

Poem: December

I hope I'm not violating anyone's copyright by posting this poem here. I found it stunning.

*************************************

A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here—and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
           Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
           And are there angels hovering overhead? Hark.

-- Gary Johnson

Saint Joseph, Adoptive Father

[The] Nativity story is also a story of adoption. A strong man heard the call of a God to take into his heart and home a baby that was not his biological child. Against the raised eyebrows of those around him, but because he dearly loved his wife and the God they served, he traveled a great distance. He wasn't sure what he'd find there; to say that the accommodations were less than what he was used to is to understate the case. And then, almost immediately, it was his job to rescue the baby, to save him from grave danger.

Once they were safely at home, he raised the child as his own. He shared the faith of his fathers; he taught him the family trade. Certainly, there were challenges in this family that related to the adoption. This child, at 12, left his foster father for three days to return to the home of his real Father. How many children of adoption have experienced that same restlessness and caused the parents who have rescued them the grief that Mary and Joseph felt while they searched for their child?

St. Joseph was faithful. Perhaps he recognized that we are all children of adoption. We are all broken, disenfranchised, wounded and in grave danger. . . . 


There are literally millions of children in this world who need rescuing. We are called in James 1:27 to care for the widows and the orphans. What does that mean exactly? Do we toss a few coins in the poor box or wrap an extra gift at Christmastime or do we take a risk? Are there brave men out there after the heart of St. Joseph who will travel great distances to difficult places to rescue a baby and give it a home all because it's the will of God? It is the will of God.

 -- From an old-ish blog post by Elizabeth Foss. Do read it all; it's excellent.

Random Thoughts Particular to the Day

1. I am wondering, today, about the reasons for the apparent overlap between the grooming and sartorial choices of hippies and those of practitioners of early music. I am not naming names, but if you're curious, take a look at some Google images of actual early music players. And, lest you think that my musings are based solely upon the internet, let me assure you that it was ever so in conservatory, too. I wonder if it's because there's a back-to-the-land ethos about early musicians, which one can expect to go hand-in-hand with the delving into a past that's dead and gone, on the part of musician-scholars who spend their time plumbing old archives and playing models of excessively antique instruments that have long since fallen into disuse.

2. I am thinking, today, that there's one thing I really don't miss about Christmas in New York, and it is the unstoppable proliferation of panettone (above) in everyone's life. I really hate the stuff, and everyone brings it over when they make holiday visits. I used to be inundated with it at Christmastime, especially when I cantored at a church down in Little Italy. I often had five or six unopened boxes of panettone in my kitchen after Christmas, getting progressively even drier in my overheated apartment than the stuff is naturally. I hate to waste food, so I would spend several weeks after Christmas toasting slices of panettone in the morning for my miserable breakfast. If you want to try something Italian for Christmas that's good, go for panforte instead.

3. On the other hand, I have discovered something really good: gummy army men. Each is about two inches long, and they're molded into various poses just like little plastic soldiers: standing to hurl a grenade, lying prone and firing bazookas, etc. They're all green, naturally, and taste like sour apple. Saint Nicholas left a few in my son's shoes last night, along with a profusion of Swedish Fish, which I think is the best candy in the world.

Vox in Rama

In the 1930s and 1940s, German emigré composer Paul Hindemith was in the habit of writing a spiritual motet each Christmas for his wife, a soprano (who was, incidentally, Jewish), to perform in their home.  I have performed the one inserted below, the highly dramatic "Angelus Domini apparuit," which corresponds to today's Feast of the Holy Innocents.  The Latin text is the chilling account in Matthew 2:13-18 of the slaughter of the innocents:

The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more."

May the Holy Innocents pray for us today, and especially for all those who mourn for their children, "quia non sunt."

A Christmas Card

This poem gave me chills when I read it excerpted at Karen Edmisten's blog.

A Christmas Card

When the white stars talk together like sisters
And when the winter hills
Raise their grand semblance in the freezing night,
Somewhere one window
Bleeds like the brown eye of an open force.

Hills, stars,
White stars that stand above the eastern stable.

Look down and offer Him.
The dim adoring light of your belief.
Whose small Heart bleeds with infinite fire.

Shall not this Child
(When we shall hear the bells of His amazing voice)
Conquer the winter of our hateful century?

And when His Lady Mother leans upon the crib,
Lo, with what rapiers
Those two loves fence and flame their brillancy!

Here in this straw lie planned the fires
That will melt all our sufferings:
He is our Lamb, our holocaust!

And one by one the shepherds, with their snowy feet,
Stamp and shake out their hats upon the stable dirt,
And one by one kneel down to look upon their Life.

-- Thomas Merton (1947)

O Magnum Mysterium

What mercy beyond measure that God should choose to be one of us, and to become utterly helpless, dependent upon His frail, fallible creatures. 

O great mystery, 
and wonderful sacrament, 
that animals should see the new-born Lord, 
lying in a manger! 
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb 
was worthy to bear 
Christ the Lord. 
Alleluia!

In the Bleak Mid-Winter

This is probably my favorite Christmas carol, with a text by Victorian poet and Pre-Raphaelite sister Christina Rossetti.  A happy and blessed Christmas to all.
 
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

Christmas for Nostographers

We've lived in our new town for two years now, and I've just started to leave behind the feeling of shock and dismay that used to strike me whenever I said my new address, a concrete reminder of the fact that we live here now, rather than there.  Though I don't feel a weight sinking in my gut whenever I say the name of my new town now, I still miss there more than I can say, for so many reasons, and especially so at Christmas.  Here are some of the things I miss the most at this time of year:

- Shopping for fish for Christmas Eve at Citarella.  It's always been traditional in my family to have smelts, linguine with aia'uol (i.e. aglio e oglio), and a salad made from dandelion greens on Christmas Eve, and it was always hard to find smelts closer to home.  And then, when I think of Citarella's (in New Yorkese, it's obligatory to add an apostrophe-s to every proper shop name, even if none is indicated), I start to think of my dear friend T. who lived a block away, and who's been dead for almost five years now.  I miss her.

- Shopping for Christmas dinner at Prime Cuts, otherwise known simply as "the Irish butcher" (or, rather, "the Irish butcher's").

- The tin boxes of Jacob's Afternoon Tea Biscuits (above) that were piled high in every Arab bodega in my old neighborhood this time of year.  Everyone has them out when you go visiting in the neighborhood on Christmas, and they are hella good.

- Walking to the Cloisters in the snow, and viewing the snow-covered Palisades.

How lucky I was to live for so long just blocks away from such a beautiful place.  The quiet that descended upon the musing, solitary walker under the snow-heavy branches of trees in Fort Tryon Park always reminded me of this wonderful song, for which you must overlook the camera and recording techniques (and some questionable notes on the piano):


- Walking to the Cloisters the day after Christmas, and getting Metropolitan Museum of Art Christmas cards at half-off, and possibly one or two Met Museum tree ornaments too if I had the extra tin in my pocket.

- Singing all the Christmas Masses at Saint Anthony of Padua Church at the corner of Houston and Sullivan Streets, the same church where one of my Neapolitan cousins had attended Mass when he was working as a laborer in New York, as I found when I visited him in Italy in the late 1990s.  I would have Christmas Eve dinner with the Franciscan nuns and priests and sleep in the convent so I'd have no distance to travel for the next morning's Masses.

But missing all of these things is really missing another life, a life that I no longer live.  In some ways, it's much better that that life has now been put away.  It's not the difficulty of that life, its sadness, its loneliness, that I miss, but the shreds of color, of light, and of sound that it bore, and I miss the companions of yore, some of whom I will never see again.  There is so little of the beauty that I miss, and so little of consolation, here.  I pray every day that God will allow me and my family to plant seeds, where we live now, that will bear fruit -- seeds of beauty in a place that is starved for it -- and that, perhaps, my consolation will come in this way.

The Holy Souls

Dawn Eden has written a moving post about a life-changing dream (which sounds like one of the very few true dreams we may be fortunate enough to receive in this life). Christmas Day is traditionally regarded as a time when many souls are freed from Purgatory; may our prayers help them, and help those who remain.

I wish great joy on Christmas day and beyond to all who visit here.

The Loudest Voice

I just re-read the Grace Paley story "The Loudest Voice," about a Jewish girl in 1930s New York who, because of her clear, loud voice and expressive reading, is chosen to narrate the school Christmas play. Her mother is against the idea at first, but her father reassures his wife:

"You're in America! . . . In Palestine the Arabs would be eating you alive. Europe you had pogroms . . . Here you got Christmas . . . . What belongs to history, belongs to all men. . . Does it hurt Shirley to speak up? It does not."

So Shirley Abramowitz is allowed to continue with rehearsals. The day of the performance comes, and her voice -- as the voice of Christ -- booms from the wings as the actions she describes are pantomimed on the stage.

"I remember, I remember, the house where I was born . . . "

Miss Glacé yanked the curtain open and there it was, the house -- an old hayloft, where Celia Kornbluh lay in the straw with Cindy Lou, her favorite doll. Ira, Lester, and Meyer moved slowly from the wings toward her, sometimes pointing to a moving star and sometimes ahead to Cindy Lou.

It was a long story and it was a sad story. I carefully pronounced all the words about my lonesome childhood, while little Eddie Braunstein wandered upstage and down with his shepherd's stick, looking for sheep. I brought up lonesomeness again, and not being understood at all except by some women everybody hated. Eddie was too small for that and Marty Groff took his place, wearing his father's prayer shawl. I announced twelve friends, and half the boys in the fourth grade gathered around Marty, who stood on an orange crate while my voice harangued. Sorrowful and loud, I declaimed about love and God and Man, but because of the terrible deceit of Abie Stock we came suddenly to the famous moment. Marty, whose remembering tongue I was, waited at the foot of the cross. He stared desperately at the audience. I groaned, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The soldiers . . . grabbed poor Marty . . . but he wrenched free, turned again to the audience, and spread his arms aloft to show despair and the end. I murmured at the top of my voice, "The rest is silence, but as everyone in this room, in this city -- in this world -- now knows, I shall have life eternal."

Later, the Jewish parents discuss the paradox of their children taking the lead parts in the play. One mother opines that the teachers showed poor taste in assigning the major roles to the Jewish children, while the Christian children got cast in small parts if at all. But Shirley's mother explains: "They got very small voices; after all, why should they holler?"

Shirley listens from the other room to the talk of the grown-ups, then

I climbed out of bed and kneeled. I made a little church of my hands and said, "Hear, O Israel . . . "

. . . . I was happy. I fell asleep at once. I had prayed for everybody: my talking family, cousins far away, passers-by, and all the lonesome Christians. I expected to be heard. My voice was certainly the loudest.