If you’re a holiday cynic and enjoy crafting, you’ll love this post from The Art of Doing Stuff… Karen is a felted riddle, wrapped in a macrame enigma, wrapped in awesome sauce. Not only are her craft posts interesting and helpful but she’s super funny too. I heart her and her cool blog… 
Filed under Fun Stuff
So you have to find a gift for a book nerd but you don’t know what kind of books they might like? Let me clear up some common bookworm misconceptions:
1) Not all bookworms like Shakespeare. Technically he was a playwright, and not all actors like Shakespeare either. Yes he’s a big shot in literary history and required reading for anyone getting an English degree, but that doesn’t mean we’re all a titter about either of those points. So don’t think this is your easy way out, because that copy of “Midsummer’s” will end up on eBay faster than you can say “anon”…
2) We’re not all tech idiots. Now it’s true, most of us are, and many of us are even a bit proud of our neo-Luddite status, but there is a small constituency that is attempting to grasp the world of social media and all of it’s codalicious nuance. Neo-Luddites tend not to worry about such things, as we’re far too preoccupied with Derridean ethics and elbow patches.
3) We like bookish things, not just books themselves. Here comes the gift idea part of this post. Ready? Here it goes…
These are freaking cute! Anyone into vintage stuff, art, or books would love to get one of these journals…
For the tech-saavy bookworm… a great little app for reading when you don’t have WIFI or 3g…
Forget bookworm for a second… Any Office Space fan would appreciate this…
For the traveling worm… yes I know. I’ve resisted getting one myself (it feels like I’m cheating on my books!) but I do see how this little gadget makes a ton of sense when on the road.
And for the bookworm who has everything (or a serious E.A. Poe fetish) a rare volume is always most appreciated.
If you have a novel gift idea for book lovers please don’t hoard it… do share. 
Filed under Arts and Letters, Fun Stuff
So if you ended up at tree lot this weekend, despite my compelling and articulate plea as to why it makes little sense, I understand. I ended up going with friends, who bought a lovely tree at a charitable lot from an organization I love to support. My partner, Martin,* objects not to tree slaughter or holiday consumption, but rather to the arbitrary price points he’s set in his head that determine whether he’ll partake in a given holiday tradition. Here’s a clip of the dialogue at the aforementioned tree lot:
Him: “$80.00 is too much for a tree. We’re going to Home Depot.”
Me: “Why get a tree at all? We’re traveling, and it’ll only be up for a month. Let’s just appreciate other people’s trees.”
Him: “No. I like the pine smell. We’re getting a tree for twenty bucks.”
So, after coaxing me with an Arizmendi Bakery breakfast, we went. And just like he plotted, he found a tree, with a stand, for $25.00. And aside from being disproportionately wide in relation to its height, I’ll give it to him: the tree is pretty. I’ve named it “Fat-Prickly Bastard.”I think it’s cute.
Anyway, getting to my point. While at the Delancey lot, our friends also picked up mistletoe, which again, led me to google out its significance. Turns out mistletoe was sort of the duct tape of the pre-Christian world.
The word “Mistletoe” dates back to the 13th century, and is thought to be derived from the Norse word for sword, (“Mistilteinn”) and has long since been a symbol for manhood, fertility and romance. Other sources suggest that the word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon words, “mistel” (dung) and “tan” (twig), Old English “misteltann” after bird droppings on a branch. But even before that, in the 8th century, the Vikings thought mistletoe could raise the dead (I couldn’t find any results to back this claim…). The Celts used mistletoe for animal fertility but it served other uses too: poison remedy, medicine, hunter’s aid. Folks hung the branches in their houses all year long to protect against lightening and fire, and would replace it every Christmas. The connection between medicine, bird poop, and kissing seems a little blurry, but American author Washington Irving wrote about the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe back in 1820: “The mistletoe is still hung up in farm-houses and kitchens at Christmas, and the young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases.”
This hodgepodge botanical doesn’t have a clear line of provenance, at least according to the twenty minutes of arduous research I did for this post. And though many of mistletoe’s uses have faded into history, it’s interesting how the tradition remained for it to serve as a potentially creepy way to kiss someone you might not otherwise have access.
* Not his real name. He’s not shy, mind you, just paranoid.
Filed under Fun Stuff
I’m not getting a Christmas tree. Not because I’m secular, or because I’m weary of Judeo- Christian holiday rituals, but because I don’t get it. Why do we drag trees into our homes, spend an inequitable amount of time and money hanging tin and glass bits on them, only to drag them out to the sidewalk a few weeks later, collectively contributing to a miserable, brown, dendrologic graveyard? As a kid I never questioned tree trimming because Christmas trees meant cash and shiny stuff was coming my way, and if sacrificing a Douglas Fur was the collateral damage, so shall it be; I was getting my Lite Bright set, dammit. But now, in this foggy San Francisco dawn, I question the practice. Ever-seeking knowledge, and being horribly lazy, I go to Google for answers.
Turns out we’ve been slaughtering trees for centuries. In 15th century Estonia, a group of unmarried merchants known as the Brotherhood of Blackheads would place large trees in the town square, light them on fire and dance around them, a la Burning Man. Later chronicles depict the Christmas tree as being decorated with fruits and goodies for the local kids to eat during the Christmas season. But the tree-burning dance party was exclusive to the Rhineland until the 18th and 19th centuries, when it caught on in other parts of Europe, the UK, and Canada.
America didn’t catch tree fever until just before the Civil War, when an image of the Christmas tree at Windsor Castle was pirated by Godey’s Lady Book* in 1850. Like most cultural traditions, and not to be outdone by the motherland, Americans quickly adopted the ritual through its pervasiveness in early print culture. As seen in Wikipedia: “Folk-culture historian Alfred Lewis Shoemaker states, ‘In all of America there was no more important medium in spreading the Christmas tree in the decade 1850-60 than Godey’s Lady’s Book‘. The image was reprinted in 1860, and by the 1870s, putting up a Christmas tree had become common in America.”
Granted, there are a lot of areas surrounding the holiday season that don’t make much sense upon first glance**, but a little reading usually uncovers their historical symbolism. Despite the backstory of the Christmas tree in the twenty minutes of arduous research I performed for this post, I can’t seem to find the actual significance of the tree. Is it a fertility thing? An emblem of statehood? Or does the Western world simply have an especial affinity for the scent of cut pine? And what about the evolution of these symbols? Why does having a scrawny, half-bare tree echo a sentiment of tree sympathy? Is it the American yearning to root for the underdog? If we really felt for the little guy, wouldn’t we just pardon it and leave in in the ground?
Instead of spending fifty bucks on a tree, lighting it, and decorating it for a month, and throwing it out, I’ve decided to take that money and donate it to a local tree charity. It’s hard to argue with what makes sense, despite running the risk of being a seasonal wet blanket. I can live with it.
* A personal favorite antebellum publication…drool. Must find this issue for my collection.
** stay tuned, I’ll be researching all sorts of Christmas woo ha
Filed under Fun Stuff
