Lorne Green’s greatest claim to fame is starring in the long running western Bonanza, playing the role of the family patriarch Ben Cartwright and being the first man most people ever saw in color on television. But Green’s oddest credit is that he had a number one single in the middle of the English Invasion in 1964: his talking ballad “Ringo”, (which ironically is not about the Beatle, but a Western gunslinger: Johnny Ringo).

This 7 inch record, “Must be Santa,” is his contribution to the subgenre of “annoying kids singing Christmas songs”, (of which I have somehow become a leading collector!?!), featuring some fine shrill warbling of the Jimmy Joyce Children’s Choir. Oddly enough the flip side, “One Solitary Life”, is the polar opposite; a morose, bleak, 2000 year old tale of loneliness, social deprivation and the ultimate execution of a doomed unnamed man (hint, hint) which is probably a more telling song of Christmas than we’d like to acknowledge. Loren Green really plays the fate card well.  Then again, years before Bonanza, Lorne Green was known to his fellow Canadian citizens as "The Voice of Doom", a nickname he earned as a radio announcer for CBC radio from 1939 to 1942, where his distinctive baritone painted the grim news of World War II in deep somber tones. Listening to such a desolate voice, especially on a Christmas record, is just a plain and simple holiday cheer killer …  that miserable tingling in your soul, its not unlike that vacant stare when you’re trying to find parking at the Glendale Galleria the weekend before Christmas, and you have an exhausted, yet frantic, raging, sugar-doped child in the back seat screaming that he wants to see Santa -NOW!- meanwhile babbling on a badly deteriorating cell phone connection is your employer going on about something trivial and asinine, and while looking at that pink parking ticket still stuck under the windshield wiper blades from the last failed attempt at shopping, you rear-end a new Lexus ...  

Celebrities, actors, politicians, actually any one with an ounce of fame and without an ounce of shame seem to always want to get into the glamorous record business. That is as true today as it has been for many, many a decade. And one of the simplest ways to back into a recording career is to release a Christmas record, either novelty or a heartfelt, weepy ditty. But I have to say it’s very odd when a cultural icon steps into these murky waters.

When Cary Grant recorded “Christmas Lullaby” in 1967 it was just a year after he retired from the movie industry, leaving as one of the most popular and respected actors of all time. Obviously, Grant learned a few things from his occasional, and unintentionally amusing, stabs at singing on screen. Check-out his performance as the Mock Turtle in the 1933 Alice in Wonderland, or his attempt with a ballad in Kiss and Make Up, because in 1967 Grant mostly recites “Christmas Lullaby” in that perfectly invented accent of his. He gently whispers to his sleeping daughter the joys she’ll find on Christmas morning, about the time Grant promises that angels will always be there to watch over and bless her he breaks into song … well sort of … I guess it was easier for the former Archie Leach to invent the actor we know as Cary Grant then it is for Cary Grant to invent a singer. But who cares, it’s still Cary Grant! Like Audrey Hepburn’s line in Charade whenshe asks and purrs, "Do you know what's wrong with you?  Nothing." 

Amongst the Sami, midwinter was an occasion for honoring the goddess Beiwe who was associated with the sun, fertility and sanity. She reportedly traversed the sky in a craft made of reindeer bones accompanied by her daughter, Beiwe-Neia. Beiwe's followers sacrificed white female animals and smeared their doorposts with butter for Beiwe to munch on during her journey.


Amongst the Germanic peoples to their south, Juletid referred to their take on midwinter festivities. By the late Viking Age the word "Yule" had come to refer to a pan-European bricolage of midwinter observances.



Yule logs were lit to honor Thor. The feasting would continue until the fires had burned out. Although
in 960, Norwegian King Håkon signed into law that Jul (Yule) was to be moved from the solstice to December 25, to align it with Jesus' birthday party; Icelanders continued to keep it real until the Reformation reached them and ended the fun.

It's already December 5th again. Everyone knows that I'm obsessed with holidays and St. Nicholas Day is one of my favorite. Most people have heard David Sedaris' story about Santa Claus vs. St. Nicholas and maybe some of us know that he was a Greek bishop in present-day Turkey who became the patron saint of children by resurrecting their little corpses and paying off debts of the living to keep them out of child sex slavery.
 
I know people still exchange gifts at least in parts of the Middle West. Fewer of us still stuff our shoes with carrots and hay for his white horse Amerigo (or in some places a donkey) with the expectation that tomorrow we'll find our initials in chocolate, chocolate coins or marzipan. Of course, if we've been bad there might be some salt or a bundle of sticks to get switched with.

In different parts of the world he's accompanied by different comrades.
 

Perhaps the holiday season has already taken something of a toll on my psyche, (though I do little shopping and I’m more or less done), I’m feeling a tad bit overwhelmed these last few days. I think it’s mostly due to the fact that my trusted computer is in the shop for some repairs, as is my guitar amp … and I think every electronic gadget I own. And on top of that, someone hacked into my own Myspace account. And today a plumber is suppose to show up and take care of a few problems we have here at the old homestead, but how often do plumbers actually show up on the day scheduled, and on time? I should perhaps lighten the mood, quit the blather - or just step boldly forth and augment the blather, and mention that I’m really fond of old school fear inducing literature on subjects like culture shock and modern paranoia, media paranoia, ("the medium is the message") … (my personal favorite faux-cultural-analytical phrase: “media derived fantasies”), conspiratorial governments, and discourses on the mechanization of middle class culture on their efforts to mute class … basically anything on the spooky-spooky future. I’ll just quote some Alvin Toffler here and put up a pretty picture of a galactic spiral. I’ll feel better. Hey, I do feel better!

"Man has a limited biological capacity for change. When this capacity is overwhelmed, the capacity is in future shock."

In short the definition of future shock is a personal sensitivity to "too much change in too short a period of time". I think Toffler is speaking to me directly, and that’s not a good sign!

I recently came across one of Toffler’s old books in a thrift store, The Third Wave. I glanced through it, and it’s not as richly paranoid as I would like it to be- I need more suspicion. If I was on my own computer, I could just click over to some eerie bookmarked pages, and just settle in with a nice cup of Earl Grey tea. There is a crumb of comfort there, don’t know why, but on some of these sites I find just enough soothing reassurance that whatever the hell is going on, seems to keep right on going on. It’s a disquieting assurance, yes, but it’s consistent, besides you know in this day and age you grab whatever peace you can find, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. Now, now ... here's looking at you kid.