Elijah David

Last week, I talked about how the Rankin/Bass and said I'd offer up my theory on what the cause of all that wintry magic is. (Or laugh at me for taking a bunch of animated TV specials so seriously. Whatever floats your goat.) The Players In case you've forgotten, I kept track of all the magical wintry folk last week and they are (with their original story/stories in parentheses): Lady Boreal ( Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July ) Winterbolt and the Genie of the Ice Scepter ( Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July ) Jack Frost ( Frosty's Winter Wonderland or  Jack Frost , depending on external or internal chronology) Father Winter, Snip, Gypsy, the snow sprites, etc. ( Jack Frost ) Winter Warlock ( Santa Claus is Comin' to Town ) Cold Miser ( The Year without a Santa Claus ) Mother Nature [as Cold Miser's mother, she presumably holds sway over winter] ( The Year without a Santa Claus ) Eon ( Rudolph's Shiny New Year ) [I forgot ...

When Advent comes upon us and everyone else finally starts listening to Christmas music (I never really stop; I just take breaks away from it), I usually pull out some favorite albums to carry me through the season. I used to have only a handful of albums that I'd list as favorites, but the last few years have introduced me to more and I actually have a top 10 now. Here they are, in roughly ascending order: Chris Tomlin: Glory in the Highest A very contemporary-sounding album, Tomlin's Glory in the Highest  combines old songs and new, and takes some cues from Biblical passages, as in the song below, "My Soul Magnifies the Lord." Loreena McKennitt: To Drive the Cold Winter Away With a Celtic album to add some variety, McKennitt's voice conjures up firelit halls and minstrel-led singing. Emmylou Harris: Light of the Stable For the country/bluegrass part of me, there's this album. The opening track (below) gets me excited for the season like fe...

If you're at all familiar with Christmas in America, you know that there are some old claymation and hand-drawn animation TV specials that come out of the woodworks this time of year. Rankin/Bass made quite a few of them, and even branched out into other holidays like Easter and New Year's, and more than a handful of them featured at least one of a trio of characters that these specials have (further) established in the public consciousness: Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, and Santa Claus. A few years back, during our yearly rewatch of many of these specials, my wife objected to the disparity in Jack Frost's portrayal in the second Frosty special, Frosty's Winter Wonderland . I set about thinking up a way to bring this special into agreement with Frost's eponymous special and the seeds of this theory post were planted. The Rankin/Bass "trinity" of holiday figures Before I get into this, let me clarify which specials I'm including: Rudolph the Red-N...

I mentioned last month that I'd picked up knitting and crocheting again after a long break, and I wanted to share the projects that have stemmed from that renewed interest. First up, some fingerless gloves/arm warmers in the style of Gandalf. I made these to go with the wizard hat I mentioned in last month's post. They turned out well (and I even had someone pay me to make a pair for them). Here's the full outfit (with different long-sleeved shirts underneath to try out the effect of the greys). The staff is an actual walking stick I trimmed and tidied up from a hickory branch that fell in our yard a couple years back. I really like the effect of the hat with the gloves and the staff. I need more opportunities to wear this outfit. This picture also includes my Remus Lupin scarf that fits in well with the grey theme. A few years back, I misread the song title "I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" as "I want a Hippogriff for Christmas...

... being a post in two parts Part 1: Quiet Joy Last week I wrote  about my surprising disconnect from the Christmas season this year. Turns out I just had to wait a bit longer. The joy came — unexpectedly —in a quiet way. First, my friend Stephen shared his article from last January where he quoted from C.S. Lewis' chapter in Mere Christianity  on Christian marriage: This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. At the time, I only took this passage to mind in the way Stephen originally used it —in regard to fandoms and not killing the joy of partaking in stories by always demanding the first and strongest thr...

Before you start telling me about how wonderful the Christmas season is, believe me – I know. It's my favorite holiday season, just as autumn is my favorite season of the year. But this year, it seems a bit more distant than usual. Autumn felt the same. My two favorite times of the year seemed to take forever to arrive this year, yet they have come and (in the case of Christmas, nearly) gone without much more than a whisper of my usual joy. In autumn's case, the dissonance between this year and previous autumns lies in the delayed cooling of the weather (and our cold snap coming before Halloween). I also didn't have as much of a boost in my creative drive as I usually do. I made one cross stitch sampler and a pair of fingerless gloves this year (the former for Samwise's room, the latter out of necessity).  Normally, I'm bouncing from project to project in the fall, both craft and writing. This year, not so much. Part of that probably come...

When it comes to Christmas specials featuring Santa Claus, Rankin/Bass'  Santa Claus is Comin' to Town  is probably the most well-known, and with good reason. It's classic and the years have been kind to it, much like they have to A Charlie Brown Christmas . But for many years,  Comin' to Town  was not my favorite version of the Santa myth. That honor went to the lesser-known Life and Adventures of Santa Claus , also produced by Rankin/Bass and based on L. Frank Baum's book of the same name. Although I hadn't seen it for many years, I would still tell people that this was my favorite version of Santa's origin story. This last year, I was finally able to sit down and watch the special again, and I found myself comparing it to  Comin' to Town   as I had before, but now the scales of my favor were tipping decidedly toward the earlier special. I've been mulling over why that is, and I've come to the simple conclusion that it's all about myth an...

Hello, everyone! I'm sorry I all but disappeared last month. NaNoWriMo took up a lot of my spare time. To sum up: I won NaNo with about 52,000 words, but didn't finish There's No Place Like Home? by about 10,000-15,000 words. So December's goal is to finish that up and maybe get a couple other small writing projects off the ground. While working on NaNo, I've also been preparing for Christmas dramas at church. Really, I've been preparing for them since some time in August or September (I've slept since then, so the exact details are a bit fuzzy), but we are now in crunch time, with the next two Sundays taken up with adult drama (written by yours truly) and a children's musical (which I will only be participating in as a character). Not THAT character, but the show does have a Whoville-type setting. And in the last few months of preparation for these productions, along with an Advent-starting service this past Sunday, God has been teaching ...