After many years of being unable to enjoy the holiday season, I find all at once I'm turning into a small kid again. I've mentioned before, I think, that from the time I was about ten until I was past thirty, someone in the family was either critically ill or newly dead at Christmas. I got paranoid, to be frank. I spent the next fifteen years or so waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Having finally reached an age at which I realize that these things will happen if they're meant to happen and there's nothing I can do about them, I can relax now and find I take a childish joy in the simplest things. Tonight it was ABC's broadcast back to back of SHREK THE HALLS and the animated version of HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS. (I think the Jim Carrey live action one is an abomination.) SHREK THE HALLS is new. I've only seen one of the feature films in the series, but I love Shrek, Donkey and Fiona. I once asked the Princess who her favorite character is, and she thought hard and then said, "Puss in Boots." She's right. I fell in love with Antonio Banderas's voice, so suave, so Spanish. Puss in Boots is like BEAUTY AND THE BEAST in a way; a children's favorite who turns adults on too. The story--of how Shrek, who has never celebrated Christmas because "ogres never celebrate anything," learns that Christmas is about fun, laughter and family (especially extended family) is awfully cute.

As for HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, it's WONDERFUL! The first books and videos I ever got for Bubba and Miss A when they were babies were of it. It's essentially A CHRISTMAS CAROL with a Dr. Seuss spin on it. Also the animation is excellent, mainly because it was done by Dr. Seuss (Ted Geisel) and the great Chuck Jones, best known for his work for Warner Brothers in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series. The narration by the legendary Boris Karloff is brilliant, but my favorite part of all is the "Mr. Grinch" song, sung by the late Thurl Ravencroft. Too funny, poignant and cute.

It really is beginning to feel like Christmas now. I already caught A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS, and before the season's over I hope to see RUDOLPH THE REDNOSED REINDEER and FROSTY THE SNOWMAN, if nothing else. And on that cheery note, fair thee well.

As decorating for the holidays goes, I'm a sort of Scrooge myself. Never gonna be mistaken for Martha Stewart with all her handmade gewgaws and fancy ribbon and occasionally overdone stuff. Years ago, when Bubba was little, I used to set up a Dickensian village on a card table. Cheap stuff, mostly from Dollar General and Wal-Mart; I'd get it all set up and it would look--well, Dickensian. Then Bubba would come to visit, declare, "That don't look right" and rearrange it. By the time he got through it looked like the projects a block or two from his daycare. (I was reminded of those days during Halloween. I have a collection of tiny haunted houses that I set on the mantel. The first time the Princess was over after I set them out, she looked up from the game of Yahtzee we were playing at the time and said patronizingly, "When we're through with this, I'm gonna play with your village people." Thought I'd pee giggling.)

The main feature of my decorating of late years though is a primitive Nativity set I bought at a crafts fair around the time Dad died, fifteen years ago. It's all on pieces of two by four: a baby in a manger, a Virgin Mary kneeling, Joseph, the Three Wise Men, a shepherd, and two sheep. So primitive are the paintings that the characters do not even have facial features; just flesh-colored half-ovals. I can remember to this day that I passed it twice, and kept being drawn back to it until I decided "I have to have this" and paid thirty-five dollars for the set. I never learned the artist's name, or if it was an original idea or out of a book. Flat, one dimensional painting that in a way reminds me of early medieval art; but oh, there's power in those images!

And until next time, fair thee well.

I have at one time or another seen most of the great Christmas movies and cartoons. My favorite cartoons are of course A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS and the one where Bugs Bunny has fun teasing the Tasmanian Devil, who inadvertently ended up in a Santa suit.

Of the movies, though, my favorite of all time is the 1984 made-for-TV version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, with the late great George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge. I watched it last night and am happy to report I love it just as much now as I did the first time I saw it, twenty-three years ago.

The sets look so authentic, you can willingly believe that you're looking at nineteenth century London--except the snow was too pristine. The music is wonderful. All the performances--on the mark, especially Scott's as Scrooge.

As a ghost story nut, I always am impressed by the special effects: the hearse that drives past Scrooge and disappears in the mist; the knocker that turns into Marley's face; and the entire sequence with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the shadows, the backlighting, the skeletal look of that hand, and that eerie, hair-raising silence.

I am also happy to note that my favorite line from the book is in there: Edward Woodward as the Ghost of Christmas Present bending from his august height to look into Scrooge's face and thundering, "It may be in the sight of Heaven that you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child" (referring to Tiny Tim Cratchit, for whom Scrooge finds himself worried in a way he has never known before).

Also love the late Frank Finlay in the sequence with Marley's ghost. Comic (untying and tying the bandage that holds his mouth closed) and frightening (that spectral makeup!) at the same time.

It's just one of those things like Linus reciting from the Gospel of Luke in A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS: it makes me feel good. Period. And I intend to watch it every Christmas I can manage. Till next time fair thee well.

As an experiment, I've decided to choose five of my favorite performances of Christmas carols and write a short blog about each of them rather than try to do a whole blog of all of them together. Bear with me, and as always kindly hold your yawns till the end.

Some time ago I mentioned in a blog how I first came to hear the gorgeous American baritone Thomas Hampson at a Rossini gala. It was not too long after that that I purchased my first of his CDs: CHRISTMAS WITH THOMAS HAMPSON (1991), back in the days when the Book of the Month Club still sold the occasional CD. The usual stuff does turn up--such tired chestnuts as "White Christmas," the overdone "I Wonder as I Wander" (about which I will have more to say another time)--

Several of the tunes are sung in German, and of these my favorite is one called "Macht hoch die Tur." You'd think I would have chosen one whose tune was at least recognizable, like "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht," which is of course the beloved "Silent Night," or "Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen" which is in English "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming." Nope. Gotta be ornery. Chose a German carol I'd never heard before. Don't ask me for a translation. There was one in the long lost liner notes for this CD. Otherwise, my German is limited to "Gesundheit," which is universal; "hassenpfeffer," rabbit stew, for which I am indebted to Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny; and of course "Sprechen sie Deutsche?" ("do you speak German?") to which the answer is a resounding NEIN!

I just like the vocal. As the Bard might have put it, I have no other than a woman's reason. Thomas Hampson has a naturally beautiful voice anyway, he's comfortable singing in German, and the tune itself has this indescribable stately reverence to it. Give me this one over some pathetic pop singer crooning "White Christmas" in its nine hundred thousandth ersatz version anytime.

One tiny blow to my self-esteem, though: I rather pride myself on my alto, but when I sing along with Hampson (phonetically, of course), I sound like Minnie Mouse.

To continue the Bard's analogy, I think Thomas Hampson so--so sexy, so gifted, so--ACK! because I think him so. Hey, it's only my opinion, out there though it is. Till next time, fair thee well.

In October 1843 Charles Dickens was in a bind. Married since 1836, he was already the father of four children and his wife was pregnant with a fifth. His latest novel, MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT--published in installments, as were his previous ones--was not doing well. Worse yet, he was in debt. As a twelve year old, Dickens had seen his father imprisoned for debt, one of the more charming conventions of European history. He was damned if he would expose his family to that shame and horror. He needed to write a "potboiler" to raise cash, and he needed to write it fast.

Sometime during that dreary October, he had an idea for a story of a miserly old bachelor whose whole character would change after visits from a series of ghosts associated with the Christmas season. Eventually he would call that old buzzard Ebenezer Scrooge, and the little book that told his story was given the name A CHRISTMAS CAROL: BEING A GHOST STORY OF CHRISTMAS.

Dickens was, in fact, recycling material he had already covered. In his first great work, THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF THE PICKWICK CLUB, he used the theme in a story within a story, told by Mr. Wardle of Dingley Dell. Later extracted from the main narrative of THE PICKWICK PAPERS and anthologized as "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton," it treats of one Gabriel Grubb, a drunken curmudgeonly sexton who is spending Christmas Eve digging a grave instead of joining in the jollities of the season. He is dragged off by goblins, and changes in character after a series of visions shown him by the Goblin King convince him he lives in a wonderful world after all.

Dickens would in A CHRISTMAS CAROL enlarge upon that theme. He would replace the visions with actual visits from the ghost of Scrooge's dead business partner, Jacob Marley, and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come. He threw in a grossly sentimental subplot about a sickly poor child--Tiny Tim Cratchit--of the sort Victorians adored and wept over. He wrote in a frenzy; he told a friend that he laughed and cried, cried and laughed, throughout the composition. And he delivered it to his publisher in less than six weeks, with very little if any rewrites.

Dickens distributed advance copies of his little "Ghost of an idea" on December 17, 1843; the original printing of six thousand copies sold out within three days of its official December 19 release date. It never looked back; it has never gone out of print. It has been done as a one act play, a musical, and in any number of movies, the earliest being a 1908 production by Thomas Edison. Ebenezer Scrooge even lent his name to a Bill Monroe instrumental on Monroe's 1981 MASTER OF BLUEGRASS LP.

For our purposes, though, Dickens established the tradition of ghost stories being written, read and told at the Christmas season. Until his death in 1870, he produced a number of so-called Christmas annuals consisting of ghost stories written by himself and other Victorian writers. The tradition survived into the 20th century.

And by the way, he was able to pay off the debt that plagued him into writing A CHRISTMAS CAROL, and was from then on well to do. He was able to leave both his wife, from whom he was formally separated in 1858, and his mistress, an actress whom he met in 1857, independently wealthy to the ends of their lives.

And as Tiny Tim said, God bless us, every one. And until next time, fair thee well.