How do you do it, you Polar Punk. Last year I was sure my uncle, at least, had realized I was too old for the books about cute bunnies and duckies my mother buys me (secondhand, when she can find a good Book Fair, thanks to you, you red-coated rat) and was going to send me something cool. But NO. He had to ask you about Christmas shopping, and you sold him on the idea of old postcards being a perfect gift. Not for me, you fat foob. Now, THIS year, I think I have convinced him I’m old enough to start learning to drive, and am expecting a nice red sportscar, bright purple with real leather seats. Do NOT mess this up for me, Santa Boob, or I am going to start promoting global warming, and try to drown you out once and for all.
FILLED WITH INTENSE TREACHERY
Dear Full of IT:
I do so look forward to your letter each year, but you should know by now, Plum Dumpling, that I wish you everything you deserve. I’m sure your uncle will decide on the very thing which will make you glow with inner feeling.
I can only imagine what you’d be like on the highways. Surely, you would exhibit the same degree of maturity which has always impressed me in your letters. (Not a bit influenced by all those bunnies, I see.)
But if you do wind up with the Jaguar of your dreams, I do hope you realize that, as with any recipient of a Christmas cat, that you will be responsible for it, and take care to clean up any little problems you may encounter along the way.
Unless your uncle also provides you with a garage fully staffed with mechanics (and I’m sure you’ve made subtle hints about this as well) you will need to tend to that car’s every need. These modern cars, wonders though they may be, are not immune to the same old problems which have afflicted drivers for eons. Did you go for gasoline, electric, or a combination? Any way you look at it, you need to feed and water your new pet.
It may not be too late, Gingerbread Outhouse, to reconsider your gift and think about all the possibilities of mass transit. You won’t have nearly as many maintenance problems with, say, a year’s worth of mass transit. All you really need to worry about then is losing your pass. If that doesn’t sound like your sort of thing, there are other options. How rich IS your uncle? Could he buy you your own little railroad? You could run your friends out to Tiffany or Kate Spade or even Tesla.
I quite fancy the idea of you as a railroad tycoon, Quinoa Fruitcake. There are more rules now than in the good old days, but I think you’d manage it very well. In any case, I hope your uncle brings you JUST what you need most, and you enjoy it in the brand new year.
I took your advice last year, and sent my niece a number of highly collectible postcards featuring cheerful Santa Clauses. I received, the following Groundhog’s Day, a quite charming thank you email, saying she appreciated the thought, and would of course treasure these valuable artifacts, but that she was getting a little old for Santa Claus, and old enough to be considering driving lessons. So thanks for your successful suggestions last year, but what can we do about her this year?
GLAD SHE’S GROWING UP
Dear MATURE CONTENT:
Oh, they do grow up so quickly, don’t they? One day they’re teething on a blue plastic doughnut and the next they’re swearing off doughnuts because all those carbs will keep them from fitting into their blue plastic prom dress. How does a poor rich uncle keep up?
Fortunately, I can see what she’s hinting at and YES, there are a lot of collectible post cards with cars on them. For decades, the manufacturers knew their wares could be shown off by that method, getting people’s mouths to water at the elegant new styles and colors.
At the same time, car collectors realized that postcards were an excellent way to show off their classics.
As well as some of the more unusual vintage items in their collection.
Imagining your niece as a driver suggests another avenue (so to speak) of collection: the admonitory, or warning, postcard about the dangers of careless driving.
Distractions have been a feature of motorizing since the term “motorist” was invented, and the postcard cartoonists have not been shy about alerting us to the dangers of not keeping our eyes and mind on the road.
And, as discussed several times hereintofore, they have also not hesitated to discuss the distractions of simply parking.
So you will find a vast variety of automotive humor and/or information on postcards. A goodly selection of these is bound to cause loud cries of surprise from your niece, as well as a warm and grateful post-Christmas text.
I wish you all the best with your shopping (left it a little late again this year, haven’t you?) and hope the resulting Christmas is just joy on wheels.
She hurried out to meet him, and little Bob in his comforter—he had need of it, poor fellow—came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried who should help him to it most. Then the two young Cratchits sat upon his knees and laid, each child a little cheek, against his face, as if they said “Don’t mind it, Father. Don’t be grieved.”
Bob was cheerful with them. And spoke pleasantly to all the family. He looked at the work upon the table, and praised the industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They would be done long before Sunday, he said.
“Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?” said his wife.
“Yes, my dear,” returned Bob. “I wish you could have gone. It would have done you good to see how green a place it is. But you’ll see it often. I promised him I would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child!” cried Bob. “My little child!”
He broke down all at once. He couldn’t help it. If he could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther apart perhaps than they were.
He left the room, and went upstairs to the little room above, which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. There was a chair set close beside the child, and there were signs of someone having been there lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed himself, he kissed the little face. He was reconciled to what had happened, and went down again quite happy.
They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother working still. Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness of Mr. Scrooge’s nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who, meeting him in the street that day, and seeing that he looked a little—“just a little down, you know,” said Bob, inquired what had happened to distress him. “On which,” said Bob, “for he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman you ever heard, I told him. ‘I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit,’ he said, ‘and heartily sorry for your good wife.’ By the bye, how he ever knew THAT, I don’t know.”
“Knew what, my dear?”
“Why, that you were a good wife,” replied Bob.
“Everybody knows that!” said Peter.
“Very well observed, my boy!” cried Bob. “I hope they do. ‘Heartily sorry,’ he said, ‘for your good wife. If I can be of any service to you in any way,’ he said, giving me his card, ‘that’s where I live. Pray come to me.’ Now it wasn’t,” cried Bob, ‘for the sake of anything he might be able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim, and felt with us.”
“I’m sure he’s a good soul!” said Mrs. Cratchit.
“You would be surer of it, my dear,” returned Bob, “If you saw him and spoke to him. I shouldn’t be at all surprised, mark what I say, if he got Peter a better situation.”
“Only hear that, Peter,” said Mrs. Cratchit.
“And then,” cried one of the girls, “Peter will be keeping company with some one, and setting up for himself.”
“Get along with you!” retorted Peter, grinning.
“It’s just as likely as not,” said Bob, “one of these days; though there’s plenty of time for that, my dear. But however and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim—shall we—and this first parting that there was among us?”
“Never, Father!” cried they all.
“And I know,” said Bob, “I know, my dears, that when we recollect how patient and how mild he was, although he was a little, little child; we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it.”
“No, never, Father!” they all cried again.
“I am very happy,” said little Bob, “I am very happy.”
Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from God!
Mrs. Cratchit’s surprise at Bob’s remark about them being ready long before Sunday suggests that Bob has in fact stopped to arrange a day and spot for the burial of Tiny Tim. Most filmmakers refuse to believe little Bob is happy, and make this scene, at best, one of temporarily lifted gloom, consistent with the pessimistic future Scrooge is seeing. But no one, if I may add some gloom for the NEXT version, points out that the Cratchits are facing impending doom. Fred, presumably not included in his uncle’s will, cannot do much for the family, and if Bob had retained his position under new management (see next section) he would surely be at work today. The family is likely to be living off the meagre earnings of Peter and Martha for a while. Having considered this, we can now move on to slightly less gloomy versions of the scene.
In Hicks, Bob enters and announces, “My, you’ve been quick. You’ll be done long before Sunday.” The dialogue proceeds through “How green a place it is.” Bob pats his wife’s head and chuckles a bit to show all is well. He sits, continuing the dialogue, but a little slower, and less enthusiastically, with every word. Turning away from the family, he releases a broken “My little child!” and leaves the room. As he moves up the stairs, he must pause to bury his face I his hands. Pulling himself together, he goes into the little room and kneels next to the bed where Tiny Tim is laid out. “My little child!” he cries again. Scrooge looks on in sorrow. Bob kisses the boy and leaves, not without looking back. It is Scrooge who declares, “Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from God!” Bob is much more himself when he returns to the family. He relates his meeting with Fred, omitting the lines about Peter. Lifting Tim’s crutch and clutching it to him, he notes that whenever and however they part from one another, and so on through “I am very happy.” The children do seem more cheerful, and so does Bob for a moment, though he starts to shake his head.
Owen watches the children run to Bob. They are subdued, compared to their last appearance, but rush to bring him his tea. He does not mention visiting the cemetery, but goes straight to the meeting with Fred, also skipping the section about Peter, moving to recollections of how patient and mild Tim was. He declares himself very happy. Scrooge is NOT happy. “Poor Tim,” he says. “Poor Tiny Tim. Everyone who knew him must feel sorrow; sorrow they’d never feel for ME.” You see a certain suspicion rise in his mind.
Sim I watches Bob enter. “I’m a little late. Forgive me.” “You must be very cold and tired. Come and sit by the fire.” “No no. I am content, my dear. Very content.” He describes his visit to “where he will rest”, and how while there he seemed to feel Tim’s hand in his, Tim’s own way of saying he’s happy now. We must try to be happy too, Bob tells them, and then breaks down, crying “My Tim!” His wife kneels at his side, putting her arms around him. The girls start to cry.
March skips this sequence.
Rathbone watches Bob arrive; the family rush to greet Father, solemn, mournful, silent. Mrs. Cratchit moves slowest of all. Bob explains about meeting Fred, leaving out the little pleasantry about a good wife. When he sits by the empty seat in the chimney corner, it is Martha who says “We shall never forget Tiny Tim, shall we, Peter?” “Never, Martha,” he replies. Bob sets his hand on his wife’s, to a tiny echo of Tim saying “God bless us, every one.” Scrooge, crying a bit, wipes his nose and turns away.
Magoo sees a hunched and depressed Cratchit walking home. At the door, Bob wipes away a tear and pulls himself upright, obviously bracing himself to greet his diminished family. “Sewing away, my dear?” “So late, Robert?” “I…I had something to see to on my way home.” “You went there again?” He tells her about his visit to the grave; here it is Peter who breaks down, crying on his mother’s knee. “Tears cannot bring Tiny Tim back to us,” she tells him. Scrooge exclaims, “Tiny Tim! Oh, no! No no, not Tiny Tim!” The Ghost points to the empty stool and ownerless crutch. Mrs. Cratchit murmurs, “Sleep quietly, my love.” Scrooge asks, “Spirit, could I not have done something so that Tiny Tim might still live?” He plunges his face into his hands. “Have I truly been so heartless?”
As Haddrick watches, Mrs. Cratchit rises and goes to the door. Bob enters and sit in the chair she vacated. The children actually say “Don’t grieve, Father! Don’t mind it!” “No, I’ll try.” He admires their work—which is light brown—and says they will be done long before Sunday. “Sunday! You went there to-day,. Robert?” “Yes. It’s a beautiful place. So green. But you’ll see it often. I promised Tim that I’d walk there on a Sunday.” A sob escapes him. “Try not to tink about it, Father.” Bob mixes the speeches at the end, about not quarreling and not forgetting Tiny Tim, demanding, “Promise me.” They promise. He is still very dejected. Scrooge declares, “Sprit, I hate your domain. Everywhere is death and misery.”
Sim II gets just a look at Bob Sobbing at the bedside. Tim’s face is not visible. Scrooge stares.
Matthau omits the sequence.
In Scott, the family wait for Bob to enter and greet him with “Hello, Father.” Bob sits by the fire. “You’re late,” says Mrs. Cratchit, her tone flat, “We were worried about you.” “The reason I’m late is…because I walked there today.” “Today?” “I couldn’t keep away. It’s so quiet and green. You’ll see it on Sunday. We shall all go on Sunday. I promised him we should all go….” Unable to go on, he hides his face in his daughter’s hair. Scrooge looks on without comment. “Father, please, don’t grieve so.” “I have all of you,” he declares, “A blessing to be thankful for.” Rallying, he goes on “Do you know who I saw?” He tries to tell about his meeting with Fred, but keeps turning away, and finally can’t continue. His wife says that Tim is a part of all of us, but we must go on. “So long as we love each other, he will always be alive.” Bob takes the speech about not forgetting Tim, his wife the lines about not quarreling easily. The children reply, “No, never, father!” Bob declares, “I am a happy man. I am truly happy.” Scrooge nods to the Ghost. “I asked for tenderness and depth of feeling, and you’ve shown me that. Nothing more I need see. Take me home.”
Caine watches Bob walk in. “Hello, my dears!” The children again rush to him, but without the glee of the earlier Christmas. Mrs. Cratchit sends them to set the table, as before, and Bob describes his visit to the churchyard. He picked a spot for Tim “where he can see…. It’s a spot on the hill. You can see the ducks on the river. Tiny Tim always….” Mrs. Cratchit has to finish the sentence: “Tiny Tim always loved watching the ducks on the river.” Scrooge turns. “Oh, Spirit, must there be a Christmas which brings this awful scene? How can we endure it?” There follows aversion of the speech about not forgetting Tim, about how life is made up of meetings and partings. “That is the way of things.” (This line is also used by Yoda, another Muppet, to refer to his own impending demise in “Return of the Jedi”.) The song “Bless Us All” plays in the background as we look at the empty stool and ownerless crutch.
Curry sees Bob walk in. “Sorry I’m late.” “You went there today, Robert?” He explains his visit to the churchyard and, sitting at the table, breaks down. “My little boy!” The family cluster around him; Scrooge is horrified. “No, Spectre, no! No! Not Tiny Tim!” The Ghost points to the empty stool and ownerless crutch. Scrooge covers his face.
Stewart finds Bob already at home; Mrs. Cratchit is saying, “The cemetery! You went today?” Bob describes the visit, breaks down, and goes upstairs to the room where Tim is laid out. “There, Tim,” he murmurs, “Don’t be afraid. We’ll always love you.” Scrooge, looking on, is trying not to break down himself. Returning to the family, Bob tells about the meeting with Fred. He goes on to not forgetting Tim and not quarreling easily among ourselves, and his wife kisses him. “I am very happy!” he declares, “very happy!” Scrooge, bowing his head, turns away.
Two versions take us to Tim’s gravesite for this part of the proceedings. Finney goes to a graveyard where snow lies thick on all the graves (which seems odd for so green a place.) Tim’s song plays in the background as Bob talks to the grave a bit, explaining how he has to go now and help with Christmas dinner. He promises to be back tomorrow, sobs briefly, and walks away, turning his hat in his hands. Scrooge looks from Bob to the grave, and murmurs, “Poor Tiny Tim.”
McDuck turns to look where the Spirit points; the Cratchits stand by a grave. Mrs. Cratchit bundles the children away, leaving a distraught Bob to lay the ownerless crutch against the headstone. He backs up a step and then turns reluctantly to join his remaining family.
For years I have enjoyed your advice on how used books and/or used postcards can make excellent gifts at this festive time of year. I have a slightly different problem. I am finally getting around to thinking about possibly arranging to get ready to do my Christas cards. Have you any advice for me?
Postal Holiday Laborer
Dear Post-holidays:
I presume you WILL get this done before Labor Day? There WAS one great writer who is said to have mailed all of HIS Christmas cards in June, allowing people to apply them to the Christmas before OR the Christmas after: either way, he had taken care of his obligations.
Now, Christmas postcards have existed as long as postcards, as a bargain for those who didn’t want to pay two whole cents to send good wishes across the country. You can still find those, but I figure you probably bought actual greeting cards already in last January’s clearance sales and, if you can find them again, merely want something to write inside. Our Dutch kids have plenty of suggestions, including the one above and the one below, which offer excellent alternatives to those long family newsletters explaining how Junior has qualified for the U.S. Olympic Tiddlywink team, and how last year’s Christmas newsletter was a runner=-up for the Nobel Prize.
All you REALLY need, of course, is a phrase or two about how pleased you are to remember your buddy after a year that worked hard to knock all pleasant thoughts from your brain.
The Dutch Kids frequently expressed thoughts where all you need do is substitute “Christmas card” for “postage card.”
We need not consider the loaded question of whether your friend will read any more than the return address or the signature and just mutter “Ah, there’s another pizook I forgot to send a card to.” But there is no need to write anything more than this, unless you have friends who really expect you to be witty and clever (fewer than you think, in my experience.) The basics will do for most of your list.
Don’t forget, either, that many Christmas carols and cards link this holiday with the next. “We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.” There’s always something to say about the prosperity of the coming year: that boat, Buick, baby, or ballot referendum your friend has been wishing form say.
When in doubt, Postal, whether sending cards by email, text, or old-fashioned cardboard, just remember how happy you are that both you and the recipient are still alive to exchange pleasantries, and let yourself be guided by that.
This is not, as mentioned hereintofore, a food blog. But special times call for special measures, and it is time to speak of holiday food.
Every family has its particular recipes at this time of year, whether they be for sausage gravy, lefse, fruitcake, or alcoholic enhancer to pour into the punch and/or egg nog. With many families, too busy in the modern age for lutefisk or hasenpfeffer, this is expressed in cookies. I have known several families who look ahead with joy and dread to the annual making of pfeffernusse. I have eaten the pfeffernusse of at least five different families, each claiming it as an old German, Bohemian, French, Danish, or Welsh recipe. (The Welsh family told me they were pepper nuts, which is, of course, the English translation of the original (ahem) German name.)
My family did not make pfeffernusse, though we accepted any cookie donation (like the deep-fried springles apparently made with a branding iron in batter, frosted sugar cookies, and the ones with the chocolate star in the middle.) We did have three cookie traditions for the holidays, each with its own ritual.
DECORATED SUGAR COOKIES: Once a year, the Christmas cookie cutters were brought out from their hiding place in the belly of the kitchen china cabinet. They spent the rest of the year in a paper bag, and a mixed bag it was: at least one from somewhere in the 1930s ever so slightly rusted, a majority of steel from, no doubt, the turn of the Fifties, and one or two plastic ones. There were snowmen, Santas, stars, bells, and other holiday shapes. These were for cutting shapes out of sugar cookie dough, rolled out by Mom and, in the early years, cut out and placed on the cookie sheets by her as well. WE were there as artists, not artisans.
Our job involved colored sugar, red cinnamon drops, and metallic sugar balls impossible to eat and eventually, I believe, declared toxic by the FDA. We naturally went all out for those two last ingredients, which could be jammed down into the dough and which made the cookies very hard to eat afterward. (But perfect for reindeer noses, snowman buttons, and bell clappers.) We DID eat these, crunching against the green and red sugar granules and chewing the cinnamon blobs which invariably went all the way through and melted to the cookie sheet, but we weren’t fanatics about it. Decorating these cookies was a lot more fun than eating them, and I believe this cookie was the first holiday tradition to be abandoned. (There was a LOT of sugar for decorating left over, which, since we never used it for anything else, remained tucked up into the top of the spice cabinet until the Family Home was broken up and one sentimental fool took them home to sit in my…in that person’s cupboard.)
BRAUNSCHWEIGER: A family MUST have at least one cookie tradition with a foreign name. Braunschweiger is, of course, another name for liverwurst, and I never did track down the reason for applying it to a cookie. This was an ancient family recipe, going back, I was told, to an issue of Good Housekeeping my great-grandmother read in 1903. I have not checked this out either. I worked in a library, I did, and it’s a rule that the longer ago the article you’re looking for was published, the more likely that the year, month, and name of the magazine are incorrect.
This was the closest thing we had to pfeffernusse, but the ingredients are completely different, involving honey and mace and lemon peel with a LOT of flour and other spices. It had to be mixed by someone with a very strong arm until it formed a consistency that threatened to break the spoon. THEN, and this made it one of the most frustrating of all cookie traditions, the result had to be loaded into a cookie press and squeezed through a thin, ridged template to make long brown ribbons of cookie. All of this was beyond the skill set of children, and very nearly beyond that of my mother, who nonetheless, in spite of managing to strip the threads or break the handle of the cookie press every other year, produced a cookie which smelled of lemon and honey and brown sugar and was eaten by true connoisseurs (me) when still warm on the cooling racks, until chased off by the parent who had strained her muscles making them and didn’t want them disappearing before they were cool enough for the cookie jar. (We did not own a cookie jar. REAL cookies resided among a nest of paper towels in a large empty coffee can. This was useful. The lid of a coffee can does not clink, so you could not be heard sneaking out just one.) Properly made and kept in a tightly sealed coffee can, these cookies could last decades (honey being a miracle ingredient.) As if.
ANISE SNAPS: Of the three cookie creations, this is the one which has actually been produced by the current generation. It requires neither cookie press nor unchewable decorations. It is a round cookie well decked with anise seed, which gives the house an amazing aroma when cooked, attracts hunting dogs (which are frequently trained to follow a scent with anise), and provides a popular touch when taken to the dessert bar at the office party. Everything else on the table at the office parties where I slipped in these snaps, see, was thoroughly sweet, and the licorice/anise flavor provided a contrast which people liked, not as a substitute for iced gingerbread, but as a palate cleanser between that and the pecan molasses bars.
The irony of my taking these cookies out in public is that I never, to the best of my memory, actually ate an anise snap which had come out the way it was supposed to. My mother, unnecessarily humble about her baking, always gave in to despair while making these, as they did NOT look like the ones HER mother made. She settled for producing enough which were done clear through and unburnt enough to give people on her cookie gift list. (She always denied I had never eaten a real one, as she recalled a distant year when, for the only time, the cookies were just perfect. It must be true, but the rare cookies of that year did not stick in my memory with all the burnt and underdone snaps.)
I can tell you the proper finishing point for these cookies is a very delicate matter and I was, myself, relieved to find at least twenty (the recipe makes a bunch) fit for people to see. This did not bother me as much as it did my mother, because I could remember many happy times eating as many of the burnt or underdone snaps as I wanted. (The underdone ones are a little better, especially when warm, but don’t tell the FDA I said so. Eggs, you know.) But the smell of them in the kitchen was itself worth the trouble.
Having no office parties to attend these days, I have not hauled out the jar of anise or (I have one) the cookie press. I have developed new traditions which are entertaining, though they hardly take the place of the originals. Wanna hear the story of the packaged tree-shaped sugar cookies I bought on special and ate over the next three months until I started to wonder why the picture on the box showed red and green cookies, while mine were red, green, and blue? It’s a rouser, and maintains the basic truth of MY family’s cookie traditions.
As I will demonstrate if I can ever locate my great-grandmother’s copy of the Three Stooges Cookbook.
The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit’s house; the dwelling he had visited before; and found the mother and children seated around the fire.
Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were still as statues in one corner, and sat looking at Peter, who had a book before him. The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet!
“And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them.”
Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not go on?
The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand up to her face.
“The colour hurts my eyes,” she said.
The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!
“They’re better now again,” said Cratchit’s wife. “It makes them weak by candle-light; and I wouldn’t show weak eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It must be near his time.”
“Past it, rather,” Peter answered, shutting up his book. “But I think he’s walked a little slower than he used, these few last evenings, Mother.”
They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faultered once.
“I have known him walk with—I have known him walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast indeed.”
“And so have I,” cried Peter. “Often.”
“And so have I!” exclaimed another. So had all.
“But he was very light to carry,” she resumed, intent upon her work, “and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble—no trouble. And here is your father at the door!”
Some filmmakers are in a hurry to get to the BIG scenes, and skip past this, with Bob Cratchit already on the scene, or just arriving. Those screenplays which do include it do most of it as written, but generally have Mrs. Cratchit’s eyes weakened not by the color, but by something else handy. Those who know about such things have explained that the women are sewing funeral garments, which are naturally black: hence the line about “The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!” The boom Peter is holding is likely a Bible, the line spoken is from Matthew 18, and, if continued, would have reached the admonition to turn and become like a child. Dickens’s first generation of readers would have known this, and correctly applied the line to Tiny Tim.
March. Magoo, Matthau, and McDuck skip the scene. Sim II sweeps through the streets to the Cratchits’, but enters in the next sequence. In Stewart, the Spirit raises the sleeve it did not raise in that previous transition, and we see Bob coming home.
Hicks sees Mrs. Cratchit weeping as she leaves an upstairs room; She descends to where her daughters are definitely sewing away at black garments. Peter reads as in the text. Tucking away her handkerchief, Mom smiles encouragement to them all. Sitting to sew, she has to turn away, saying “The colour hurts my eyes–makes them weak by candle-light” and so on, trying to smile throughout to show she’s all right, really. The children are all very solemn. We see a shot of Bonb trudging home, and she exclaims, “There’s your father at the door!”
Owen peers through the window (the Cratchits ALWAYS have a large window just where it’s convenient for passing Spirits and misers) and finds Cratchits at work on black garments. Peter himself is all in black. The dialogue is performed as written.
Sim I arrives as Peter is reading from Psalm 91, concerning the long life granted to those who know the name of the Lord. At one point, apparently in her thoughts since her lips aren’t moving, Mrs. Cratchit takes over the reading; our eyes stray to the empty seat in the chimney corner. Peter begins to feel the silence; he turns and asks “Shall I stop reading?” “No, no. It’s only the colour. It hurts my eyes.” The dialogue proceeds as written, Peter staring straight ahead throughout. Mrs. Cratchit breaks down just after “no trouble—no trouble”, as we hear Bob’s footsteps at the door.
This is Rathbone’s first stop with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Martha and Mrs. Cratchit are sewing while Peter just stands and watches. Most of the dialogue is here, except for the colour hurting Mrs. Cratchit’s eyes.
Haddrick drops through a sky shot to the house in time to hear Mrs. Cratchit wondering where Bob is. The dialogue proceeds from there, with one shot of the empty stool and the ownerless crutch. “And there’s your father at the door!”
The Spirit directs Finney away from the parade in his honor. Pouting a bit, Scrooge walks over to the window indicated. Mrs. Cratchit complains about her eyes and Bob’s lateness. Peter notes that his father has walked a little more slowly the last few evenings. She replies with the line about carrying Tiny Tim; they all look to the crutch. “Where is Tiny Tim?” Scrooge pleads. “Take me to him?”
Scott recognizes the neighborhood. “There must be some confusion. Your fellow Spirit brought me here earlier.” The Ghost points, and Scrooge moves on, grumbling, “Very well.” He glances back at his companion. “You’re devilish hard to have a conversation with.” Peter reads as in the text; the women are sewing ordinary rags. The children are solemn as Mrs. Cratchit complains about her eyes. “This work makes my eyes red, and I wouldn’t show red eyes to your father when he comes home. Not for the world.” The rest of the sequence proceeds as written.
Caine pleads, “Let me see some tenderness connected with this world, or I’ll be haunted by that terrible conversation forever.” He is profoundly grateful to recognize the Cratchit house, and says so, calling it “A place of joy and laughter.” Then he hesitates. “It’s so quiet. Why is it so quiet, Spirit?” The Ghost merely points; after another pause, Scrooge looks through the window. We discover Mrs. Cratchit in the same position as in our first sight of her, and, just as at that juncture, her daughters come up to accuse her of something. This time, though, they say she is crying. And once again, she denies it all immediately. “Oh, it’s just the lamplight…it hurts my eyes.” Scrooge guesses. “Not Tiny Tim!” Mrs. Cratchit explains about not wanting to show weak eyes to their father, and remarks how late he is. Peter, turning the spit for Christmas dinner as before, haltingly notes that his father has walked a little slower these last few evenings. Bob enters.
Curry exclaims, “This is too harsh to bear. Let me see some tenderness connected with a death, I beseech you.” “The lamp is so bright it hurts my eyes,” Mrs. Cratchit explains to her family around the kitchen table. “I must not show weak eyes to your father when he comes home. It must be near his time.” Martha answers that her father has walked more slowly these last few evenings. The two speeches about Tim follow.
Gather round, kiddledybooks! It is that time you wait breathlessly for: the appearance of Uncle Blogsy’s Annual Holiday Shopping Guide! We will once again…..What’s that? You don’t recall Uncle Blogsy’s Annual Holiday Shopping Guide from last year? Listen, mistletoe meatball, these annual traditions have to get their start somewhere. You didn’t realize you’d been waiting for the First Annual Holiday…kiddo, I hope you get sticks and coal. And not nice BIG lumps of coal but those miserable little gravelly ones.
Anyhoo, for those of you who are willing to play along, we are going to examine postcard suggestions of what you can buy for your nearest and dearest. A nice and decorative utensil, for example, perhaps an antique, is always a surprise to the recipient, and something they’ll remember whenever they think of you. (“That looks like Uncle Jasper coming up the sidewalk. Get that weird pitcher out and put it on the coffee table!”)
A utensil they need is always welcome, as well. Having a relative who keeps losing their watch or their pocket knife is an ever refreshing well of suggestions.
Of course, something vintage and useful and wonderful perfectly describes, say, any of the vintage postcards Uncle Blogsy has for sale. Take this one, for example. Yake it, but don’t GIVE it to anybody unless you are REALLY sure of their sense of humor and can include it with, say, a bottle of good champagne or a fifty-pound box of chocolates.
This sort of postcard certificate comes in all manner of varieties, and is BOUND to add a note of cheer to any family get-together. (Has anybody written a Hallmark movie called “Holiday Tear-Apart”? Dibs!)
If you are somehow determined NOT to give your deserving and long-suffering relatives postcards, there are always boring things like jewelry. Birthstone jewelry hints that you actually remember when the person’s birthday is, too, which should score you extra points. (Although a birthstone jewelry POSTCARD would be even…okay, okay.)
For those especially dear deserving friends, there are, as always, lacy garments which can be excused by the recipient on the grounds of how much egg nog you’ve imbibed. (This fine postcard, by the way, was created by gluing actual lace to the card. Excellent bargain if you know someone named Alma.)
Lace or no lace, and in spite of those great Fruit of the Loom commercials of a few years back, you should probably think twice before buying anyone underwear. It’s not that you shouldn’t do this, of course; Uncle Blogsy just wants you to be a little discriminating in your choices, pine cone casserole. I KNOW your Uncle Jasper, and he would appreciate those socks with the naughty gingerbread boy on them, but think twice before sending Aunt Petunia that sport bra featuring the Elf on a Shelf. (Aunt Booney would be jealous anyhow, if she didn’t get one, too. You don’t want to start any NEW family…wait. I’m getting ideas for the plot of that Hallmark movie.)
In some cases, of course, a nice check would be the all-around gift. (A gift card, of course, would be almost as useful in this newfangled century. Either way, be prepared for the traditional holiday joke about exchanging it for a larger size.)
These are just suggestions, of course. Naturally, there are people to whom you will extend the Grand Gesture. Go ahead. Knock yourself out. It’s just once a year, after all.
Pop songs are just like pop singers. If they want to become really, really big, they have to be prepared to take a lot of abuse. A song which becomes popular has to deal with critics who find it shallow, derivative, and overly simple (which some critics feel are basic requirements for even being a popular song), listeners who find it annoying, extremely bad singers who do their own versions, and, of course, the song parodists, from skilled comedians to the kids on the playground who can find a bedroom or bathroom theme in any song that ever existed. (I recall fights on the playground over the Winston cigarette jingle parody, of which there were two competing versions: one in which the singer smokes “cotton-picking paper” and one involving “dirty toilet paper”, the latter being a parody of a parody.)
And then there are the cartoonists, postcard or otherwise, always willing to exploit the public’s familiarity with a tune. (HOW many cartoons did I see in the day of Frankenstein’s monster and a detached body part with the caption “I Want To Hold Your Hand”? For a few years…oh, yes, that was a song. Look it up under ancient history.) The pop song didn’t have to be a current hit, as seen in these ironic interpretations of “Home, Sweet Home”, a song loved and parodied. The fact that the author of this immortal hymn to home was single, and never owned a home, was not lost of postcard publishers, either.
But we can’t spend an entire blog on John Howard Payne’s creation. There are songs which could use more attention, having passed from the peak of their former popularity into obscurity. Annie Moore was a celebrity of sorts in her day, the first immigrant processed at Ellis Island, but it was her name, not her story, which attracted a songwriter, who wrote that we’d never see “Sweet Annie, sweet Annie any more.” We ignore both story and song for this picture, though.
Here we have an example of applying a title to a picture which COULD logically fit the line but doesn’t. The original was a lovelorn song, not at all involving Hubby’s late hours.
At least these folks ARE being “rocked in the cradle of the deep”, though they are hardly laying themselves down in peace to sleep. The original hymn (a good seventy years old by the time this card was published) WAS asking for God to watch over someone’s rest and safety at sea, so perhaps this isn’t as far from the original as that last example.
On the other hand, this hymn had nothing to do with railroad tracks, rails or ties.
This postcard keeps a little of the philosophy of the original, but switches the roles. This early twentieth century hit, which spawned a LOT of movie dialogue, was a bachelor’s song about how great is was to live alone, so you can eat and drink whenever you want. To judge by their facial expressions, this bachelor is completely surprised by someone who wants what SHE wants when she wants it.
While this one, and half a dozen like it, keeps only the title and changes the subject. We have spoken of Bert Williams, and how so many of his hit songs were swiped for postcards. If you recall, this was a song about financial troubles, NOT about the problems of the seasick. (Nor, as mentioned hereintofore, the processes of the laxative company which swiped the song for its advertising.)
And let us finish with another song that launched a thousand postcards. I would guess, though I have not seen enough to prove it, that some postcard cartoonist, as some time or another, has depicted just about anything the can be done in the shade of an old apple tree being done there (even if sometimes the tree trunk…well, that’s a whole nother blog, really.)
“If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion caused by this man’s death,” said Scrooge quite agonized, “show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you!”
The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing; and, withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a mother and two children were.
She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; for she walked up and down the room; started at every sound; looked out from the window’ glanced at the clock; tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and could hardly bear the voices of the children at their play.
At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the door, and met her husband; a man whose face was care-worn and depressed, though he was young. There was a remarkable expression on it now; a kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.
He sat down to the dinner which had been hoarding for him by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until after a long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer.
“Is it good?” she said, “or bad?”—to help him.
“Bad,” he answered.
“We are quite ruined?”
“No. There is hope yet, Caroline.”
“If HE relents,” she said, amazed, “there is! Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has happened.”
“He is past relenting,” said her husband. “He is dead.”
She was a mild and patient creature, if her face spoke truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of her heart.
“What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of last night, said to me, when I tried to see him and obtain a week’s delay, and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid me; turns out to have been quite true. He was not only very ill, but dying, then.”
“To whom will our debt be transferred?”
“I don’t know. But before that time we shall be ready with the money; and even though we were not, it would be bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creature in his successor. We may sleep to-night with light hearts, Caroline!”
Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children’s faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little understood, were brighter, and it was a happier house for this man’s death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one of pleasure.
“Let me see some tenderness connected with a death,” said Scrooge, “or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be for ever present to me.”
This scene always appealed to ME, but I guess it’s wrong to introduce new characters so late in the story. In any case, only two versions bother with Caroline and her husband, and only Stewart does much about them.
Haddrick demands, “But is there no one in this city who feels some emotion for this poor man? If there is, show me that person, I beseech you!” But the Spirit takes him to the Cratchit house.
Stewart asks “Is there no one who feels emotion at this man’s death?” The Ghost raises one arm; the scene comes out of his sleeve. A thin woman carries a baby along a poor street and stops before a door. Seeing a shabbily-dressed young man approach, she turns; they converse on the doorstep. Their dialogue follows the text from “Is it good or bad?” to “He is dead.” She then asks to whom their debt will be transferred, and he gives most of the textual reply. Her face slowly brightens, and when he has finished, declares, with shaking voice, “I never thought a death could bring such happiness!” All tears and smiles, she falls against the man’s shoulder. Scrooge shakes his head. “No no. Show me some tenderness connected with a death!”
The Interwebs, when it is not shooting me news stories it knows will upset me enough to open them, has been tossing seasonal trivia my way: what you don’t know about Thanksgiving turkeys, what you don’t know about Christmas trees, what you don’t know about A Christmas Carol. They are apparently unaware that I am a blogger and know almost everything.
One of the things I didn’t know was that, besides being a box office bust, the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” got a lot of complaints because it violated the rules about morality in Hollywood movies. These rules were starting to come apart a little when George Bailey had his crisis, but they were still there. And it had clearly violated one of the longstanding rules of morality imposed on Hollywood productions: the rule that anyone who commits a crime in the movie MUST be punished.
See, when Old Man Potter (some people’s very favorite Holiday Scrooge) hangs onto the money Uncle Billy accidentally gives him, he is committing an illegal act. And yet, when last seen in the picture, he is the same cheerfully hateful curmudgeon, glowing in the belief that he has brought ruin to the hero. And this was taboo. (I think Frank Capra got it right: not only would giving the banker his comeuppance have introduced a lot of distracting business to the ending, it would have meant the cop, Bert, wouldn’t have been able to go arrest George and thus attend the Christmas party.)
So, in the name of bygone conventions, I felt we should cover the aftermath of the crimes committed by heroes of postcards in our last column.
See, punishment was regarded as humorous by our cartoonists as well as the original crimes. (Must do that spanking blog one of these days, to show how some of them REALLY got into it.) So the wild, macho types who are holding guns on citified wimps in some postcards wind up with their heads shaved and their legs weighed down by chains and heavy iron spheres.
The ball and chain would seem to be essential to the gag, which generally involves a message that the sender is going to be a little later than expected. A barred window also helps show the protagonist’s plight, thus enhancing the definite nature of the sender’s difficulties.
The cliché of breaking big rocks into little rocks doesn’t turn up all that often here, but the business did exist. And you will observe that Wheeling, West Virginia, a city blessed by comedians for generations, was also present for the busy cartoonist.
You may also notice that, just like the postcards in the last column, we are somehow made to feel sympathy for the crook here. Life in prison, though it might be funny, was not especially fun. And as OUR lives are not always a basket of victories, we understand the prisoner’s emotions.
Laughing at them at the same time.
After all, as we were told in those days and continue to be told today, we have to make the best of things, and accept our lot. Those who grumble at what has come their way will never stop grumbling, we are told, and we must always look on the bright side, laughing at our troubles and enjoying the little benefits which come our way.
Blogsy Babbles 