“I’m not good talking with this,” the Nasti of today says, miming typing on a keyboard. “I’m good talking like this”—and his hands go broadly gestural. “I’m Italian,” he explains (unnecessarily). Later he puts on his half-moon spectacles and squints through them, grabbing one end of his voluminous, storybook mustache for emphasis. “Don’t I look like Geppetto?”
A.J. Bayes’ 1889 illustration for Hans Christian Andersen’s “Little Match Girl”.
This half-hidden cynicism, this black ribbon, that runs through Christmas celebrations from the earliest surviving carols to schmaltzy holiday songs today grounds the aggressive merriment of the season with a potent understanding of how hard it is to live in the world. Christmas, like no other holiday, makes space for despair. O. Henry’s sentimental “Gift of the Magi” still deals with grueling poverty. There is so little pleasure in A Christmas Story, a cavalcade of small miseries. Home Alone’s premise is a forgotten child. Even songs with totally benign lyrics, like “Carol of the Bells,” sound as if they come out of some kind of dark, apocalyptic Christmas. (Don’t even get me started on Krampus.) For all the joy the holiday insists on, it acknowledges bleakness. For every rousing “Hallelujah Chorus,” there’s a slow, sad answer.
I wrote about one of my favorite subjects for one of my favorite magazines!
In heaven.
Be warned that I have boring/nonuntraditional taste.
I was going through my email just now looking for a picture of my brother Eamon so I can photoshop, at our mother's request, this hat onto him and I found this gem.
