The Thursday! Newsletter 1-4: Frosty the YOLOman
Volume 1, Issue 4
I just started listening to Christmas carols.
Yeah, yeah, I know. We are in Difficult Times, facing an Uncertain Future, standing in The New Normal, which means we can all start listening to Christmas music on the first day of November. We can have Black Friday for two weeks, Cyber Monday can reach into Thursday, and Christmas movies abound on television before the turkey hits the table on Thanksgiving Day. I'm looking at you, Hallmark Channel, on that last one.
Count me out, though. It's not that I don't love Christmas. I do. But I also like my holiday seasons in their places and, so far as I'm concerned, one of the things that helps make the year feel like normal life and less like Underpants-on-Head Anarchy Days are the warm, familiar routines we've known since before we were even born. Besides, as I may have mentioned recently, I really like Thanksgiving. It is an important holiday -- perhaps the second-most important holiday we celebrate, all of us together. I don't like that we barely give it a whole day before we're rushing on to haul out the holly and deck the hall and hang the tinsel on the evergreen bough.
More than that, though, I prefer Christmas be special. You can't say something is special if you stretch it to cover two whole months. It's not special if you get tired of it a couple days before it ends, is it? And we do get tired of all the Christmas cheer a couple of days after the holiday itself, don't we? If we're being honest with ourselves? It is better, it seems to be, if we leave a little bit on the table, if we take down the tree with a little reluctance, if we pack away a smidgeon of our childlike excitement for the season next to the neatly-wrapped string of lights.
And so, Christmas music starts the day after Thanksgiving. Thank you for listening to my TED gripe.
Anyhow, I'm listening to Christmas music and my nod to These Unprecedented Times is that I'm doing as much as I can to not only listen to the music but also to pay attention to the lyrics, too. Some of the songs we sing for Christmas have quite good things tucked into the lyrics, if we're willing to hear what they tell us. Take Frosty the Snowman as an example. We know the story, yes? Kids build a snowman, put a magic hat on his head, he comes to life and says "Happy Birthday!" A bad guy tries to steal the hat back and Frosty starts to melt, which makes him afraid and he wants to go north where it's cold so he can stay alive. Antics happen. Villain traps them in a greenhouse where Frosty went to save the little girl's life. Frosty melts. There is sadness. Then Santa shows up and re-magics him back to life. He promises to come back on Christmas Day. Happy ending. Yay!
But no. That's the Rankin/Bass special, not the song. The song, in my opinion, is better (and the very best version is here). The song contains these lyrics:
Frosty the snowman knew the sun was hot that day,
So he said, "Let's run and we'll have some fun now before I melt away!"
That's some heavy stuff! Frosty knew his time was short and, instead of running for safety, he opted to live as large as he could. He grabbed the You Only Live Once motto and strapped it to his broomstick, then he led the kids on a traffic-snarling, cop-astounding rampage through the down until the relentless gaze of the winter sun brought him to a halt. Even then, he promised the kids he wasn't done. Not even death could stop Frosty the YOLOMan. He would be back again. Count on it. And then there'd be more joy and thumpity thump-thumping.
And here's where we find the lesson. Our time is short, too. Our mortal days here on Earth will end and we truly don't know how many more we have. We can either measure our days out carefully in tiny portions like J. Alfred Prufrock, wondering if we dare disturb the universe, or we can grab up our broomstick and run. Our choice. Sure, there are fears. Sure, there is uncertainty. Sure, we might mess up and have go fix our mistakes. On the other hand, those fears might not be valid at all, and there might be more certainty than we reckon, and maybe we won't mess up nearly as often as our coffeespoon-measuring minds may imagine.
Who knows? We might as well go see. Thumpity Thump Thump, y'all.
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Here Are the Arts and/or Letters I Promised...
This week, I'm going to invoke Creator's Privilege and ask you to read a story I wrote last week during one of Sarah Werner's useful create-along sessions. "Become Like the Water" has a horrible boss, a book, Szechuan Chicken, a starfish, and water. It clocks in at only about 600 words, so it won't take very long to read. I present it to you because I think you'll like it. Which, come to think of it, is why I present everything to you here!
Read "Become like the Water".
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Here are Links, Either Useful or Fun!
Magawa is a landmine detection rat. He had cleared over 141,000 square meters of land (>168,000 square miles) and found 68 explosives. They gave him a gold medal. He is a Very Good Rat.
I admit to being utterly baffled by journaling. I'm less baffled now that I've listened to this podcast. Maybe I'm good enough now to try it for myself. Who knows?
I love everything the fine folks at HorrorBabble do, including this excellent narration of "A Christmas Carol".
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One Last Thing.
If you'd like to talk back to me, encourage me, suggest something you'd like to see or you'd like me to write about, you can always hit the reply button! I can't promise I'll always answer back, because I'm quite forgetful, but I'll read everything you send.
Remember, Thursday! is a constant work in progress. I didn't have a certain plan for what I wanted the newsletter to be when I started, so it'll change as we go along. Let me know what you like so I know I'm getting it right, okay? Okay!
Did you know that "I'll Be Home for Christmas" is a sad song? It is. Maybe I'll get to that in a later newsletter.