Storytellersunplugged

by Jeffrey Thomas

Well, you’re probably too busy wrapping presents and sipping spiked eggnog right now to read my Christmas Eve essay here at Storytellers Unplugged, but I’ll plug on nonetheless. In fact, I’m writing this entry ahead of time, on the 20th, because tomorrow night I’m heading off to spend the holidays with my wife’s family in Viet Nam. Consequently, I’ll be too busy to be visiting the web site myself, except to paste in the following. It’s a holiday buffet of random thoughts on Christmas past, present and future…the year gone, the year ahead…and the lovely craft of writing.

This year, I’ve been so extra busy with various distractions both creative and sordid that I did not have a chance to send out the dozens upon dozens of tree-based Christmas cards I usually do, many including a school portrait of my son Colin. Instead, I had to content myself with creating an email card — based on a recent photo of Colin in Santa’s hat — that features a wee and cozy poem about Christmas by H. P. Lovecraft. Love…craft? I know. His work usually does not conjure images of cocoa-swilling teddy bears in red and green mittens. My brother Craig, upon receiving this virtual card, said surely the poem was missing a stanza about, “Cthulhu delivering warm, steaming innards to rich and poor alike…with mottled eye and dappled liver.”

Thomas Hardy had a view of the universe no less gloomy than the Love-meister, and the Christmas poem I associate with him is truer to that character. It is also, sadly, very relevant to the year of 2005 despite having been inspired by the first World War. His poem “Christmas 1924″ is barely more than a limerick, but packs a terrific wallop in its few words. Hardy observes that, “After two thousand years of mass, we’ve got as far as poison gas.” Not much hope of a Scrooge-like redemption for the human race, there. Thoughts of Viet Nam lead to thoughts of Iraq. As Freda Payne sang back in that earlier war, I wish we could, “Bring The Boys Home” this Christmas. The irony isn’t lost on me that I am willingly spending the holidays in a land that many of my countrymen were desperate to leave, on Christmases of decades past. I wonder if someday soon, Americans like me will freely travel to Iraq to introduce their people — with brotherly cheer and pompous missionary zeal — to the joys of Christmas. Well, maybe the locals won’t object, if like my Buddhist in-laws they’ll be receiving Christmas cards stuffed with good old US dollars. Peace on Earth, good bills toward men!

By the way, this month I was going to write an essay I’ve been planning for a while, in which to vent my spleen about those publishers I’ve worked with who don’t give me the royalty money I have coming…or even copies of my own books (!!!)…and other such horrors. Yet in the spirit of Christmas, I will try to keep in mind only the wonderful, ethical and professional publishers I’ve had the tremendous good fortune to work with. God bless them, everyone. But beware, that rant is coming in 2006. I’m Tiny Tim with a shark-killing bang-stick instead of a crutch, baby.

Dicken’s ghost story hasn’t retained its impact for no good reason (and to me, nothing evokes this holiday better than watching the 1951 film adaptation starring the incomparable Alastair Sim). On a holiday focusing upon our loved ones in particular and the human race in general, those who possess empathy and conscience can not help but wax a little philosophical on our relationship with those fellow souls. And as the year crackles down to its last embers, we can’t help but reflect on what we’ve achieved and dream of what we hope to accomplish in the dawning year, and in the forthcoming few scant decades we are gifted with. We are creatures haunted by our pasts, by our futures, by ourselves.

As for myself…it’s been a delirious, overwhelming, often stressful year, but a fantastic one overall, bringing as it did my second marriage and a number of gratifying book sales. Not to mention, my invitation to participate in a very cool concept called Storytellers Unplugged. I want to extend my wishes for a wonderful holiday season and bright New Year to my fellow bloggers, and to the readers of this blog site. May your numbers increase abundantly in 2006! So…gather your loved ones close. Forget those diets and stuff your face with life’s rich and sensual delights. Don’t swear too much as you assemble those toys (you might wake up the kids). And if you see a tentacle come slithering down the chimney, have no fear from Santa Cthulhu. At this time of year, even H. P. Lovecraft got the warm fuzzies:

“Down from the sky a magic steals
To glad the passing year
And belfries shake with joyous peals
For Christmastide is here!”