Happy Christmas! Here’s a holiday mixtape and a quick note of gratitude.
This week I played a bunch of Stardew Valley, ate a million cookies, wrapped a ton of presents, and had a terrific conversation with filmmaker Penny Lane.
Now I’m off to drink some more wine, play Santa, and read some more Sherlock Holmes stories in bed.
Comfort and joy!
We’ve had this wonderful drawing by Jules up on our fridge for the past week or so.
On Christmas Day in 1858, Thoreau wrote:
I hear an owl hoot. How glad I am to hear him rather than the most eloquent man of the age.
I did not hear any hooting this morning, only the maddening mobbing of blue jays, who were not only mobbing Coconut’s box, but the side of the house.
I went looking for an owl in one of the trees along our driveway. Didn’t see one. Eventually the blue jays flew off.
Later, I went out to get fireplace tools from the shed. I looked up and saw… ANOTHER owl in our extra owl box that I have hung up to try to keep squirrels out of the other one.
And just like that… a two-owl Christmas!
It’s been almost two years since we first spotted an owl in our backyard, and I’ve learned yet another lesson from the owls: What seems like a nuisance, if paid attention to, can actually be a great gift. If you know how to read it, the noise can point you to the signal…
The Public Domain Review has a great collection of Christmas-related material.
Yesterday I read Robert Louis Stevenson’s “A Christmas Sermon,” which was “written while he convalesced from a lung ailment at Lake Sarnac in the winter of 1887.” (I, too, am doing a little convalescing, and perhaps was in the right frame of mind for it.)
He speaks, in a sense, of a cousin of the hedonic treadmill, that of the heroic treadmill, this feeling that our life must be spent in pursuit of greater and greater things or else it is being wasted.
It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life’s endeavour springs in some degree from dulness. We require higher tasks, because we do not recognise the height of those we have. Trying to be kind and honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemen of our heroic mould; we had rather set ourselves to something bold, arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us, which is to co–endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled.
To be honest, to be kind—to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but these without capitulation—above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself—here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living well. Here is a pleasant thought for the year’s end or for the end of life: Only self–deception will be satisfied, and there need be no despair for the despairer.
I have been thinking a lot today about the question, “And then what?”
And also of Walker Percy’s problems of re-entry.
I’ve always found the week between Christmas and New Year to be a little tricky.
“The heroism required is that of patience.”
Filed under: Christmas
Heads up that tomorrow, Dec. 7th is the last day to order signed and personalized copies of my books from Bookpeople.
I’ll be signing all the orders this weekend and I’ll sign as many as you buy! Get a whole set for the office, if you want. (Please be sure to follow their instructions and include personalization details in the comments of the order.)
If you don’t care about personalizations but still want to place a bulk order, try Porchlight.
My books make great gifts, but sometimes people want to know which books they should buy for whom, so here’s a little guide.
If you have a local indie bookstore you can support, that’s always the best place to buy. (The Painted Porch in Bastrop, TX also has signed copies.)
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Happy holidays!
Wishing y’all a very happy holiday season and sending out love at the end of a very hard year. Thank you for reading!
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