Victorian Christmas(es)

One of my favorite Christmas stories is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. For me, it’s a story that cements a connection between Victorian England and the holiday forever in my mind. So, for this Christmas Eve, I thought I would write about a couple of Victorian England and Christmas related things that I’ve seen or read recently.

12 Blogs of Christmas Day Twelve: The Silent Night of the Batman

For my twelfth and final Blog of Christmas, I’m going back to an old favorite: “The Silent Night of the Batman” from February, 1970’s Batman 219, by Mike Friedrich, Neal Adams, and Dick Giordano.

12 Blogs of Christmas Day Eleven: Klaus by Grant Morrison and Dan Mora

Welcome to Day Eleven of my 12 Blogs of Christmas! Today, we’re looking at a comic of more recent vintage: Grant Morrison and Dan Mora’s Klaus! This premiered as a seven-issue miniseries a few years ago (collected into a nice book), followed by two annual Christmas specials the last two years. According to interviews that I’ve read, the plan is to do one more single-issue special next year, because the three will make a nice-sized book. Then, Morrison and Mora plan to follow that up with another longer miniseries. Whatever the plan, I’m on board, because I’ve come to love this series.

12 Blogs of Christmas Day Ten: Paul Dini's Jingle Belle

On today’s Tenth Blog of Christmas, we take a look at Paul Dini’s Jingle Belle. I first became aware of Paul Dini’s work through the Batman animated series, which he script-edited. I loved his episodes, and it was always a treat when he contributed to DC’s Batman Adventures, the comic based on the show. However, it was even more of a treat when his own character—Jingle Belle, Santa’s rebellious teenage daughter—began appearing in stories of her own. 

(Apologies for the poor scanning quality. I don't own an electronic version of this book, and it's really pretty thick and hard to scan easily.)

12 Blogs of Christmas Day Nine: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (The Comic)

I can’t say for sure what my first Christmas-related comic was. It might have been a big, fat Walt Disney Christmas collection. Or it might just as easily have been a big, treasury-sized edition of Sheldon Mayer’s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stories, collected in DC Comics’ Limited Collector’s Edition C-42. Disney Christmas comics are still coming out today from IDW, whereas the Rudolph stories live on mostly in my memories. So I’m going to talk about the Rudolph comics.

12 Blogs of Christmas Day Eight: The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum

Today’s blog features another Christmas novel: The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum. Baum is probably best known for the Oz series, which I love. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus displays the same far-reaching imagination as those books. I suppose, in its own way, it’s as all over the place as Hoffman’s Nutcracker and Masefield’s Box of Delights, which shows what I’m looking for in a Christmas story. (I also love Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, though, which has a laser-like focus, so there you go. When you think I’m going to zig, I zag.)

12 Blogs of Christmas Day Seven: Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas

The last holiday movie I plan on writing about this year is Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. And while I support being inclusive of all holidays and not assuming everyone celebrates Christmas—heck, we don’t celebrate a Christian Christmas, so much as we like the music and decorations and trappings, and like being nice to people—I’ve made no secret that these blogs are very much about Christmas things. And I’m not replacing Christmas with “holidays,” because all the things I have picked are very definitely about Christmas. Well, all of them except this one, because this truly is a  holiday (or holidays) movie.

My favorite holidays are the Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas corridor. I like the dark moodiness of Halloween, plus candy. I like the cozy autumness of Thanksgiving, plus turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy and sweet potatoes and pies and EATING. I like lighting the Hanukkah candles and celebrating that part of my heritage. And I like decorating the Christmas tree and exchanging presents with my wife and family and listening to Christmas music and watching Christmas TV shows and movies and reading books and comics and all the holiday eating. So a movie connecting Halloween and Christmas was always going to be right up my alley.

12 Blogs of Christmas Day Six: The Muppet Christmas Carol

Another favorite holiday movie is The Muppet Christmas Carol. If memory serves, this was the first Muppet movie to be released since Jim Henson’s passing, and the first major role for Steve Whitmire as Henson’s replacement as Kermit the Frog. As a lifelong Muppet fan, I was excited, but also probably a little concerned that it wouldn’t live up to Muppet films of the past. 

(Oh, who am I kidding? I love the Muppets, and I love A Christmas Carol. I probably didn’t have any anxiety about this at all.)

12 Blogs of Christmas Day Five: Arthur Christmas

A somewhat recent Christmas movie favorite is Arthur Christmas, released in 2011. As soon as I saw the Aardman Entertainment logo on the screen during the first teaser, I knew I was going to see it. (My wife was less impressed, which is understandable, considering it’s not a particularly engaging teaser. Once she saw the first full trailer, however, she was on board.)

(Spoilers, and that first trailer, after the jump.)

12 Blogs of Christmas Day Four: The Nutcracker by ETA Hoffman

An annual Christmas favorite is the Nutcracker ballet. However, another favorite for me is reading the Nutcracker novel by E.T.A. Hoffman, written in 1816. 

The first part of the story will be very familiar to anyone who has seen the ballet, with Herr Drosselmeyer attending the Stahlbaum family Christmas party. He displays some works of clockwork genius, but the prize gift is a beautiful nutcracker. The nutcracker ends up in the hands of Marie (Clara in the ballet), is broken by her brother Fritz, and repaired by Drosselmeyer, using one of Marie's ribbons.

12 Blogs of Christmas Day Three: The Box of Delights by John Masefield

For the third day of Christmas, I want to talk about one of my favorite Christmas books: The Box of Delights by John Masefield. I was actually introduced to the story through the BBC TV adaptation, which aired on PBS, on the sadly-missed Wonderworks series, which aired in December of 1984. As a young Doctor Who fan, I was excited to see that the part of Cole Hawlings was played by former Doctor Who Patrick Troughton. The show was great, and I was pleased to rediscover it a number of years ago. I was even more pleased to discover it is available in its entirety on YouTube. Since the book isn’t heavily illustrated, I’ll share the episodes of the series here to break up the text a bit.

(Spoilers after the jump. Spoilers from a book written in 1935, so sorry if that’s upsetting.)

12 Blogs of Christmas Day Two: The Christmas Toy

While Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas is our favorite Jim Henson Muppet Christmas special, The Christmas Toy is a close second. This is produced by Jim Henson, but not directed by him, since, when it was produced in 1986, the Muppets were much bigger business, and presumably Henson was busy with other things. It’s still a great TV special. I remember loving it on its original broadcast, and that love hasn’t faded a bit in the intervening years.

(Spoilers after the jump. Although, again, this special is 21 years old, long past the spoiler statute of limitations.)

12 Blogs of Christmas Day One: Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas

Merry Christmas! Welcome to the first of my 12 Blogs of Christmas, running every day from Christmas Day to the Epiphany (that’s the way it works; look it up). Every day, I will be talking about something that particularly means Christmas to me.

One of our annual Christmas traditions is watching the early Jim Henson special, Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. Produced 40 years ago, based on the book by Lillian and Russell Hoban, this hour-long special oozes charm. It tells the story of Emmet Otter and his mother, together since Pa Otter passed away, scraping by on the income from Ma taking in laundry and Emmet doing odd jobs using his father’s tool set. 

(Spoilers after the jump. But seriously, it’s 40 years old. I think the spoiler statute of limitations has expired.)

Christmas Eve and I'm Back!

So, as I’ve mentioned in earlier blogs, I’ve been having a lot of trouble staying cheerful and happy this year. It just feels like we’re in the middle—or, worse, just at the beginning—of a period where people are feeling way too comfortable being nasty to each other and treating the world like crap. So I haven’t had the energy to blog about the things I enjoy, For that matter, I’ve been having trouble feeling that enjoyment from things that would usually make me happy, because the darkness of the world is overwhelming all my joy.

I want to change that. I want to find ways to feel happier and more optimistic. Part of that is doing what I can to make the world a better place, which, admittedly isn’t that much. But if all I can do is call my congresspeople and tell them I want them to stop passing laws that hurt people, because even that stresses me out, then that’s what I’m going to do.

Another thing I can do is make a conscious effort to let things make me happy. Tomorrow is Christmas. After tomorrow, Doctor Who will be played by a woman, and that’s exciting. This time next month, I will have gone to Disneyland to celebrate my wife’s birthday, and that’s exciting. Six months from now, if all goes according to plan, I will have driven a real train, and that’s exciting. So many positive things I have to look forward to, and I need to embrace them.

I’m going to try to get back in the habit of blogging weekly again, too. I don’t know how successful that will be; maybe biweekly is a more realistic goal. I think I stopped enjoying it because I was putting too much pressure on myself. For example, I still really want to promote the Catalyst Prime line of comics, because they’re great, and a fantastic example of diversity in a world that seems to loudly wish it was all white male. But I was having trouble finding the time to write about their new comics every week, and so it started feeling like a burden and a failure rather than a joy. I need to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

I’m going to try to start things off with a bang. Starting tomorrow, I’m hoping to post 12 shorter blogs in a row, for the 12 Days of Christmas. (Yes, the 12 days start on Christmas and end on the Epiphany. Look it up.) I’m going to write about things that make me happy during this holiday season. They’re almost all Christmas-related, which I suppose isn’t very inclusive. However, none of them are particularly Christian, which reflects the way my wife and I view Christmas. We are Strict Decorationists. 

Please check out my blog starting tomorrow, to find out about some of my holiday favorites!