'tis the season

When I was a kid, we had a tree. We decorated the tree and had carp and potato salad around 6PM on Christmas Eve. Then I'd rush to open my gifts: choo-choo trains and cars at first, then later books, books, more books. I remember one Christmas receiving 11 books. There was one about oceanography and one was a kids' encyclopedia and the rest were adventure stories. I read and loved them all. Christmases stopped when I was 12. We are Jewish. The reason we had the tree and the gifts and the dinners in the first place was simple: growing up in marxist Czechoslovakia you could be different at your peril. The regime was strictly atheistic but NOT to celebrate Christmas like all neighbours, friends and foes would have been unthinkable. Just one of the countless paradoxes of the labyrinthine communist nightmare. Anyway, when I was about 12, I believe my parents' original Jewish instincts had finally kicked in, coupled with the fact that there was a political thaw and I was getting older and wiser. I still got books, but no tree.

Many years later, living in Israel, I missed Christmas in Prague: the dusting of snow on the ancient rooftops, carps swimming in big barrels in marketplaces, the smell of pines and (warning, cliche coming up! ) roasting chestnuts. On the other hand, if I so wished, I could actually have attended Midnight Mass in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Many did - this is before the insanity of the intifada. The church was always booked way, way in advanced and packed to the rafters. One could celebrate Christmas in the town where Christmas was born: Beth Lehem (meaning The House of Bread in Hebrew).

And then came my own kids and the Jewish Christmas dilemma reasserted itself. We couldn't entirely skip it and we couldn't entirely celebrate it. Ouch! So the kids got gifts but there was no tree and there was no Santa: instead, I invented a very successful proxy - the Hanukka Clown.

Later yet, I started hating Christmas with a passion...I never felt lonlier and more isolated than on Christmas. Suddenly, without warning, around the age of 40, my Jewish heritage, such as it was, came back to haunt me and simply forbade me to participate in the mirth and the merrymaking. I was fortunate enough to share a few friends who felt exactly the same way and so on Christmas day we could get together and kvetch about the awfulness of it all.

Now - now, I'm sort of indifferent to this holiday. It doesn't thrill me and it doesn't kill me. It doesn't fill me with fear, it doesn't bring much joy - I am not a practicing Jew, yet neither am I a goy. You want to have Christmas and endure the insanity of clogged malls and highways - go ahead! I delight in the fact that my favourite Toronto restaurant "SABABA" is open EVERY SINGLE DAY throughout the holiday.


mmmmmm.....olives......

I don't need to worry about closed supermarkets, oh no, my friends: I will feast on falafel and shwarma and lamb burger and makhtuba and hummus and tahini and baba-ganouj and more and more. And fresh baked pitas on Christmas Day.

I do have a few presents for my wife and I try to put on as jolly a face as I can - just for her. God love her, around Christmas she becomes a kid again and who could begrudge anyone that?
HO HO HO
yours truly
Rudolph

walkin' the dog

baby's back
dressed in black
silver buttons running down her back
hi - ho
tippy-toe
she broke the needle and she can't sew
*walkin' the dog*
*walkin' the dog*
and if you don't know how to do it
I'll show you how to
*walk the dog*

I try to walk about 4 kms a day. Yesterday, walking through Cedarvale Park, I noticed about two thousand dogs. Barking, running, chasing each other, frolicking in the crisp winter air. Being a dog has got to be the highest form of bliss known to man, er, I mean, to *dog*. The innocent playfulness, the trust, the love, the profound happiness of retreiving a stick...

On the other hand, there are dog-men and dog-women. Entirely different categories. The dog men bark but are not playful or trusting. They snarl and growl and bark. They bite. Dog-women look like this....



Don't know if they're playful because no one wants to play with them

Played a dog-gig yesterday. Worked like a dog. Drooled like a dog when I heard my keyboard player's chops. He drooled like a dog when he got his burger and fries. I dogged the manager to give me another gig but he dodged my dogging. Came home dog-tired.

See: everything dog-related sounds negative, yet dogs themselves are such great creatures. Why is that? Doggone it if I know....

musings...

Back from Iceland for a few weeks now, still mulling over the visit occasionally: the northern darkness, the majestic mountains, the sense of isolation, mid-winter boredom, the joy of being with my daughters Hanna and Naomi, the prices, THE PRICES

Well, Toronto is vast and vastly cheaper and I am vastly busier.... There are spikes of excellent fun, such as the gig I just did recently at the Distillery District with Jamie MacPherson on banjo and Don Tiffany on trumpet. The idea was for us to be strolling minstrels but that's a bit tough to execute on a sleety Toronto December day. We ended up playing a few tunes outside to a few frost-bitten bystanders, then dipped in and out of different stores and played tunes of Christmas cheer and jazzy bend. A great time was had by all, including the guys in the band. Don's joie-de-vivre is infectious as he greets all and sundry, coaxing Satchmo-like growls from his trumpet. Jamie is a superbly talented musician, a Canadian national banjo champion. A pleasure to work with these fellows, despite the inclement weather. See my gig listings - we're doing it again this Sunday (December 19)
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Don - Jamie - GG
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Other gigs are more routine, though even on the routine gigs, when the audience is not very attentive and the waitstaff indifferent, I keep this thought at the top of my mind: this is way better than any 9 - 5 gig out there.

Have now played two or three gigs with Amy Rivard. Not only is she a talented singer but she is also very eager to work and knows how to promote and hustle. Yippee! A chick singer with a cardinal difference, baby!

No xmas blues this year - at least not so far. No tree, no gifts, no cards, no blues. Last night I lit the last Hanukka candle and then realized I was making myself ham and eggs for dinner. Something wrong with the picture....