On the getting and giving of Christmas presents & other Xmas stories....

Preface / Introduction
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Table of Contents
1. On the getting and giving of Christmas presents. 2. 'I sure do like those Christmas cookies, sugar. I sure do like those Christmas cookies, babe.' 3. O Little Town... Christmas comes to Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 25, 2011. 12:54 a.m. 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Winds W-NW 8 miles per hour.

On the getting and giving of Christmas presents & other Xmas stories....

On the getting and giving of Christmas presents.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant Author's program note. I started and just about finished my Christmas shopping last night, December 14. That is the anniversary of the death of Queen Victoria's much loved husband Prince Albert... and is the only day of any year when the public can view his mausoleum at Frogmore, on the grounds of Windsor Castle. The great queen is also buried there. I went once on a rainy day many years ago to see and found she had gone to the greatest possible lengths to make sure she was ready for him, her comfort through the anticipated blissful ages to come. Prince Albert is on my mind today because he is most probably the man who launched in England the idea of the Christmas tree. And once he had done so, loyalists in the empire on which the sun never set felt obliged to have Christmas trees, too, even former imperial colonies like our Great Republic. Prince Albert brought the idea from his picayune principality Saxe Coburg Gotha. If it had been up to them, the idea of Christmas trees would have stayed German, insignificant, and parochial... but Queen Victoria ruled over half the world... and her prince ruled over her. He liked Christmas trees (indeed, he liked all things that were family oriented and allowed him to drop a sentimental tear or two)... thus Victoria liked Christmas trees... it was the royal couple's gift to the world. I'm glad; I do like the things with all their trimmings and especially their fresh pine scents. Besides, all the presents do look nice artfully arranged under the tree, don't they? And since this is a story about Christmas presents, it's nice to know you have a beautiful tree packed with mementoes and memories of past years, a suitable place for packages wrapped and unwrapped. Thus, I have selected the seasonal favorite "O Christmas Tree" as the incidental music for this article. The best known version was written in 1824 by Leipzig organist Ernst Anschutz. It may also have been introduced into England by Prince Albert, whose aspects were serious, nervous, severely self critical and often lachrymose. If such a hard-working man (dead at just 42) could take pleasure in an actual tree and a fine tune about that tree, I am glad he found some comfort and joy at Christmas and thank him for introducing these features of the season to his wife... then the world. You can find many renditions of this song in any search engine. It's very soothing... Evening December 14 I am a person who has absolutely no Christmas spirit at all until I set about the important business of selecting gifts for my chosen ones. You see, I am one of the decided minority of people who actually like selecting and giving gifts. I do not regard the matter as forced (as so many others, budding Scrooges all), onerous, a ridiculous waste of time and money, over as early and inexpensively as possible. No, indeed. I grew up in an Illinois home, part of the famous Baby Boom generation which has, since its conception, had such a pronounced effect on manners and mores. Giving apt presents was one of the things my family and friends liked to do, even grampa Walt who could be notoriously crusty about such matters, especially if the spending of money was involved (as, with Christmas, it always was). I have carried this cheerfulness with me even during my earliest days when money was scarce and one was, therefore, often frustrated and impatient. That, at least, is not the problem now. The real problem I face is two-fold. First, my annual list is dwindling year by year, compliments of the Grim Reaper, who most assuredly is no cheerleader for Christmas. Second, with only two exceptions (niece Chelsea and nephew Kyle) there are only two young people on the list, and they are already young adults, teen-age years already gone. My adult recipients all have comfortable http://www.RevenueSource101.com Copyright Elizabeth Evans - 2012 4 of 13

On the getting and giving of Christmas presents & other Xmas stories.... lives, needing nothing but the one thing I cannot give: good health. Each and every one of them has a pressing health need... and we are all at the age when no conversation would be complete without a full and complete health update. Still, needing nothing, they would be most dismayed if nothing came from me... and I should think most poorly of myself. And so, December 14, 2011, after the day's work is done, I take out the stacks of catalogs I have been hoarding for months... and which are essential to the only kind of shopping I will ever do... shopping which can be done from the ease and comfort of home, never entering a store for any reason whatsoever. First, as in every year, I draw up my list and, as always, I remember the dead of my family tree and acquaintance, people I knew so well and loved over the course of a lifetime of Christmases. I never forget these sinews of my life, though thinking of them is always bittersweet. I complete my short list in just a minute or two; I know each name so well and wonder who will be the next to go, shortening my list and diminishing my world. I then make my preliminary pass through the 50 or so catalogs I have retained for just this moment. Some are automatically eliminated; the Sharper Image catalog immediately goes into the trash due to their astonishing ineptitude with an order for a dear friend. I shall never again trust my reputation and seasonable equanimity to those boneheads. Catalogs for children are disregarded; we have no children. Catalogs with soft furnishings are tossed; January sales will bring better offers. As for still others offering t-shirts with the inscription "She who must be obeyed", these are not my style. Having discarded the dross, I commence my real labors... this year made immensely easier by the generous gift of a Sacher torte from Vienna, the gift of Dorotheum, Austria's leading auction house, a place I do regular business. Two slices of this famous confection have put me in a very good mood indeed. And so I begin my perusal and selection... Unlike most Christmas gift givers, I have no pre-set budget. I buy what I like and which, from constant effort, I know the recipient will like. Cost is never the major variable; appropriateness for the recipient is. And so I ramble through the catalogs knowing I would give no present rather than something hasty or unsuitable for a single person on my short list, all loved and cherished by me. Yet except for Kyle who is difficult, I find over the course of the next 3-4 hours presents that I like, that I feel sure my recipients will like, too. Then today, most probably in the early evening, I shall call every 800 number indicated and use my credit card to make all the purchases. The most important thing about this way of doing business is that one must be patient, partly because it's a very busy season and partly because the help is often seasonal, with all the potential problems that entails. Yes, patience is required. And a sunny word to the order taker, if she feels down and bedraggled, conditions immediately apparent. In a couple of hours on the phone, my shopping is done... gifts now on their way, whilst I take up the next and final part of my shopping; a visit to Trader Joe's for purchase of the sherry I distribute to all the people who make my life easier, condo maintenance, house cleaners, et al. I have looked for a lifetime for the sherries I give now (for my taste includes both amontillado and cream); Real Tesoro is by far the best, and the least expensive; a miracle often performed at Trader Joe's. Now I am done... simultaneously glad and sad by the paucity of my gifts... happy that I shall make these special ones happy at least once more... but missing the dear ones gone before and still so loved. For these, I take out my egg nog, remembering the great silver bowl my grandfather used when he administered the nog with brandy; (who got that anyway?), whilst I need only a glass. And then I plug in my 13" tree, the one with the bubblers my grandmother gave me a half century ago. And in its undulating bubbles all I see is the past... Christmases past retaining a magic Christmases future cannot hope to duplicate or reprise. But in my dark, quiet room, punctuated by the brilliant lights on my little tree, "O Christmas Tree" seizes and sooths me... and reminds me how http://www.RevenueSource101.com Copyright Elizabeth Evans - 2012 5 of 13

On the getting and giving of Christmas presents & other Xmas stories.... sturdy God has made me... ready for the future to come... "O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree How sturdy God hath made thee! Thou bidds't us all place faithfully Our trust in God, unchangingly." ### We invite your comments on this article below.

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On the getting and giving of Christmas presents & other Xmas stories....

'I sure do like those Christmas cookies, sugar. I sure do like those Christmas cookies, babe.'
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant Author's program note. I've got this day all planned. First, I'll finish this article and get it out to the awaiting world; then I'll finish my Christmas shopping. I've been well organized about it. So far, so good; even the help at the other end of the telephone line, the people who take the orders, seem better and friendlier this year. Maybe they're glad to have a job, even a seasonal one, with so many unemployed and likely to remain so. I've got an objective that keeps me focused today... and that objective is to help myself to some good old, home-baked Christmas cookies... and not just one or two either. Diabetes be damned; Christmas and its cookies come but once a year.... and tonight I'll translate that into some serious munching. One guy you may know who'll be helping me get in the mood is George Strait. He's called the "King of Country," his brand of music a toe-tapping mixture of western swing, bar-room ballads, honky-tonk style and fresh yet traditional Country. He seems a genuinely nice fellow, the kind of man who in real life would give you a big smile, a strong hand shake, and a tip of his over sized cowboy hat. Under the right circumstances, I could be persuaded to give him one of my Christmas cookies... but not more, no matter how nice he is. In 1999 Strait recorded a peppy little number by Aaron Barker called "Christmas Cookies." It's got the necessary "gosh, ma'am" twang factor and an infectious beat that'll follow you around the house like your favorite dawg, "I sure do like those Christmas cookies, sugar." The tune is about how he wolfs them down before his sugar babe even finishes the sprinkles and the icing.... his good woman outwardly chiding, but inwardly glad she has this big overgrown boy around the house; women like a little boy in their man... at Christmas and watching them down those cookies at record speed constitutes proof positive that she's got one. "Ah, shucks, babe, I didn't mean to eat them all.... but they were so good I couldn't help myself". What woman, and especially at Christmas, could take offense at that?" No cookies, no Christmas. Christmas for me means many, many things. Of the school pageant where my Midwestern school fellows shuffled through the first Noel all gawky embarrassment and barely suppressed giggles. Of the all important trip to the car lot where one of those trees was ours... and no matter that it wasn't quite symmetrical and never, ever of decorator quality. Our trees were mauled by love and had, from the very first moment, a family look... that became pure Currier and Ives when we tossed on the tinsel; (we were too impatient to put it on piece by piece; clumps were more our style). And when my father put the star on the top of the tree (and it was always the job of my father to do so), we all agreed, with our dog Missy reaffirming with her strident barks and capers, that this was the best tree yet. And so it was... every single year. Christmas was all about tradition... and no one was more traditional than the three children in our home.... and woe if such and such a thing done a certain way the year before should, by an unthinking adult, be done differently this year. It was done that way before; it must be done that way now. This adamancy makes me smile when I think of it now. No army officer of ancient regiment could have been more devoted to the old ways and true than we were. And this, of course, is where Christmas cookies come in. We were most dedicated to and unyielding http://www.RevenueSource101.com Copyright Elizabeth Evans - 2012 7 of 13

On the getting and giving of Christmas presents & other Xmas stories.... about them, and not just because we always had the best cookies in the world baking in who's ever kitchen we found ourselves. Quite simply, certain cookies with their unmistakable contours, tastes, and looks meant Christmas, and there would have been no Christmas at all without them. The minute Thanksgiving was over... I was born in Illinois in 1947, in February, so I was almost a year old when my first Christmas came along. There were just three of us for that first Christmas, two young parents in their mid-twenties... and me, the apple of every eye with consequences still playing themselves out over 60 years later. The first cookie story I remember is so good I have to insert it here... even though it's not about Christmas, but says everything about my mother and her unceasing concern about my welfare and place in the world. When I was about three or four POM (Poor Old Mother) was so anxious that I have lots of friends and assured position at our neighborhood park, that she sent me into that park alone (whilst she watched anxiously from a distance), a backpack strapped to me and a big package of Oreo cookies filling that pack. So accoutered I became the bait that would ensure my popularity and social advance. There was a certain crazy logic to the scheme... and whilst I do not remember the incident itself, POM told me years later, I was mobbed by moppets who were not about to turn down free cookies, whatever the strings attached. And so my charismatic career was well and truly launched... ... thus was the importance of cookies made clear... so much so, that I can never recall even a short period of my life when I was cookie-less, and certainly never at Christmas. Klotschkis My grandmother was of English descent; my grandfather's was German. Yet neither English nor German cookies were favorites. That was the klotschkis which truly symbolized the holidays. Needless to say as a boy I cared nothing for the proper description, where it came from, even how they were made. I was simply mad for this one cookie, the cookie we only got at Christmas and ate wildly, regardless of its astronomic sugar content and stratospheric calories. And I was not alone in this. Klotschkis were everybody's favorite... and so my English-born grandmother bearing the name of the great queen who died the year she was born, was kept baking what we all craved... and knew too well would be gone soon, severely to test our patience before returning. This year thanks to Sharon Oshatz and fast Internet searches, I got the low-down on the klotschkis, everything but the taste; that I had never forgotten and needed absolutely no assistance to recall. Klotschkis are simple Polish butter cookies festooned by various jams... particularly strawberry, and the ones I remember best... apricot and prune. My grandmother always finished them with white confectioner's sugar. She knew the importance of tradition, particularly but not exclusively to her youngest relations; she never tampered with what she knew we wanted, expected, and would have been disappointed, dismayed and distraught had even the smallest particular concerning these cookies been neglected or overlooked. And in her kitchen they never were. Though common sense was. The problem with traditions is that they all have the feeling of forever about them; that what one celebrates today will necessarily be here to be celebrated tomorrow. Nothing could be less true... for every tradition (like everything in the human condition) is doomed to fade, become uncertain and inaccurate, and pass on; and we humans are careless about such matters. We believe in "forever"; when we should be working instead to ensure that forever, by working hard to avoid forgetfulness and oblivion. And as a species we are just horrid at this. Thus, in this year of our Lord 2011, I shall not have the joy of klotschkis, either the memory or the richness of flavor. My grandmother Victoria, as stolid and certain as Queen Victoria herself, would http://www.RevenueSource101.com Copyright Elizabeth Evans - 2012 8 of 13

On the getting and giving of Christmas presents & other Xmas stories.... never be anything but forever; that's the way we acted... only to be upended by the predictable death that turns "forever" into a macabre joke. No recipe written; no recipe transmitted to her daughters, then to me and mine. If only she had said such and such amount of butter, so many dozens of eggs, blended in a bowl and baked for so many minutes. For without these simple directions, this cookie, made magic by Grammie, becomes the task of historians and archeologists. Still this evening I shall do my best to recreate perfection, recipe in hand, high standard daunting but not inhibiting. For I was there to sample this perfection in the first place... and I must try to recapture it before I, too, cannot do so. I owe it to Grammie... my mother and siblings et al. And I owe it to myself, too, because you see "I sure do like those Christmas cookies, sugar I sure do like those Christmas cookies, babe." Dedicated to Sharon Oshatz, colleague, friend, cook, on the occasion of her birthday. I didn't ask how many, because I know she's just getting better and especially appreciate the help she's given to make me better, too.

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On the getting and giving of Christmas presents & other Xmas stories....

O Little Town... Christmas comes to Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 25, 2011. 12:54 a.m. 20 degrees Fahrenheit. Winds W-NW 8 miles per hour.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant Author's program note. Before I left on my Christmas walk-about at not quite 1 a.m. Eastern today, I turned on every light in my brilliantly lit house. On the lights in the hallway thereby exposing in radiance the wistful picture of a young 18th century prince of the House of Brunswick-Luneberg. Dead too soon, not even 20, he craves all the light I can give him, and that is much. On the lights, all the lights in the Red Drawing Room, on the lights, all the lights in the Green Room, on the lights, all the lights in the Blue Room from where I am writing you now, where the chandelier throws out over 10,000 facets of light. So the seller told me; I have long since given up counting them... but their colors entrance while its welcome heat warms me... What kind of mania is this that demands every light lit, every treasure burnished, everything bold, audacious, polished, warm and, to my uttermost ability, welcome? Just this: It is Christmas Day, this very day, this day of days, to come but once and go... and I am alive, ready, eager to take myself from here and see how this 2,011th Christmas is evolving from my vantage point in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I command all this light, first, to celebrate the advent of this day and its great meaning, that on this very day, over two thousand years ago the Prince of Heaven was born, a boon to mankind, our sustaining hope unto the ages. And I want Him to know that He is welcome here... and always has been, though often I did not know or show it... And, too, there must be light, an explosion of light, to welcome me home, for I mean to go out and see for myself how this Holy Night is faring and what my neighbors may be doing. Red hat, white fur, my lassez passer. This is my 63rd Christmas; the year when my many friends worldwide, of so many climes and countries, offer their advice freely before I venture out into the dark and cold. "Bundle up," says Mark Anderson. "Remember to cover your ears," proffers Dale Thomson. "Don't stay out too long," offers David Mobile. Such words, each one on any other day lese majeste', convey care and love... and make me smile. A man like me knows well the warmth of such words and how to conjure them; they cheer the heart such as no fire can. Age hath its wisdoms and privileges; no one knows that better than I do, and I crave them as surely as air or sun; and get them, too. And so I put on the foolish Santa hat I was given by a young friend who looked raffish when he wore it, whereas I look just silly... but I know that wearing it out this night of all nights, will safely mark me as harmless, eccentric, a man who has imbibed too much of the grape, erroneous conclusions to be sure, but useful when a man leaves his cozy house at midnight, and warm bed, too, to venture out into the piercing cold of a Bay State Christmas in pursuit of... but you must come out of your snug world and along with me to see. Presents for me... In the lobby of my building where I am now, I think, the senior resident or close to it, I see two boxes for me. These neat parcels, festooned by words like FedEx and UPS and the numeric mysteries of their tracking systems, firmly establish me as a card-carrying person of the middle classes and of means; poor people shop at stores and carry home their packages, often on buses and late-running subways. Mine ascend by elevators and are given by delivery men, exceptionally polite http://www.RevenueSource101.com Copyright Elizabeth Evans - 2012 10 of 13

On the getting and giving of Christmas presents & other Xmas stories.... at this time of year, who say things like "Something else for you, Dr. Lant. Somebody loves you..." But I have no time for such packages now... I have a mission. Cold air, colder Puritan. The cold of midnight is piercing but by no means the worst I have felt; the Internet weather report (the only place I go for weather intelligence anymore) says the wind chill factor is 10 degrees Fahrenheit. I feel superior to that, and further plunges, too. I am glad to take it, and to know I can still take worse; more evidence of my evergreen condition; of increasing importance as I get older... The Cambridge Common, where by ancient law and privilege I could graze my cows (should I get some), is vacant tonight... but the statue of John Bridge continues its austere duty, scrutinizing the lives of Cantabridgians, ensuring not that we are as worthy as he (for that is impossible) but that we do not stray too far from his noble example. Bridge was a Puritan, a man of God and God's affairs and ran these, no doubt to God's satisfaction, for Bridge's all-worthy career prospered in mid-17th century Cambridge. Such men, the very fibre of moral rectitude and self-assurance (my ancestors, too, for the nonce) made a point of destroying the olde English Christmas of "God rest ye merry gentlemen." Bridge would no doubt have disapproved the frivolity of my chapeau... and so I walked on, glad he was not coming to disdain my liberated Christmas. The artistry of ice. Burdened by winter as I often am here, captive of the chill Atlantic and its perishing cold, I more often avoid the ice than consider it. Tonight I rectified this error and stopped to scrutinize the random beauty of ice, frigid patterns that turned yesterday's puddles into tonight's etched allure. It is beautiful, the kind of sharp avant garde pattern in black and silver a stylish billionaire might use to dazzle every penthouse guest; here this transient beauty goes unremarked by all but me. There is livelier fare across the street, when seven squad cars spurt police, busily at work at the main gate of Harvard College, just opened days ago from the thrall of the hapless revolutionaries who Occupied Harvard, but not effectively or for very long. The police are out in force, a tow-truck at the ready, a fellow human being in their arms, his Christmas and destiny to be paid out in hospital or jail cell. I look instead at the statue of Senator Charles Sumner (1811-1874), a man of such austerity and respectability that when he escorted Mary Todd Lincoln there was no touch of scandal at all, though he was reckoned the most handsome man at Harvard and in Civil War Washington. I often wonder whether the burden of such rectitude made him happy. Certainly his statue does not show it. He was cold in life, and perhaps the coldness of this statue is its truest aspect. I prefer to spend my Christmas night with another Harvard man, the Reverend Phillips Brooks (1835-1893). He is memorialized in Harvard Yard, but not in copper and stone. His is a memorial of people, for the people who admired and loved him created in 1904 Phillips Brooks House Association, a student-run, community-based non-profit public service organization whose mission is the true meaning of this holiday, to give and give until it truly helps and makes a difference. Brooks took the fine tune by organist Lewis Redner and graced it in 1868 with the words we know as "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and whose words are my prayer for us all this day, and every day. "O holy Child of Bethlehem Descend to us we pray... O come to us, abide with us Our Lord Emmanuel." (Concluded and sent to the world as the author's gift, 5:05 a.m., Christmas Day, 2011). http://www.RevenueSource101.com Copyright Elizabeth Evans - 2012 11 of 13

On the getting and giving of Christmas presents & other Xmas stories....

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About the Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Elizabeth Evans http://RevenueSource101.com.

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