Christmas miracles from childhood to adults

This post was published in The Wilson Times on Dec. 22, 2019.

In practical terms, Christmas is over. The after-Christmas sales have begun. But indulge me as I think of Christmas in the present tense on this fourth day of Christmas, with eight of the 12 days of Christmas remaining.

When the children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of my parents gathered in Charleston, S.C., “the Holy City,” last weekend, I found myself reflecting on Christmases I have known over my lifetime. My conclusion is that life goes through several episodes of Christmas emotions.

As children, we are consumed by the excitement of Christmas, an excitement too great for young children to examine and understand. The word “miracle” pops up frequently in young children’s thoughts. They hear about the “Christmas miracle” of God made flesh-and-blood human in the form of a helpless baby in a stable. “Miracle” is also an apt description of the assortment of gifts, candy and celebration, in quantities with usually unimagined magnitude. Candies, nuts and fruits overflow stockings in quantities that are normally forbidden. Children get what they ask for, with some exceptions, and parents loosen their rules on candy consumption and behavior. A mysterious benefactor in a red suit and a magical sleigh makes this impossibility happen — one day out of the year.

Christmas is every kid’s favorite holiday. You can find them out on the street or front yards at daybreak, playing with new toys — bicycles, air rifles, dolls and games. This inexplicable mystery is played out against the soundtrack of Christmas music that every radio station and every store’s sound system plays endlessly leading up to Dec. 25, then the music goes away for 10 or 11 months.

I was sure my parents, who struggled to feed and clothe five children, could not afford the expensive toys that appeared magically in the living room. It had to be a part of the Christmas miracle discussed at church and of the legendary Christmas saint, who loved children so much he provided toys for them. It had to be a magical conjuring that got all those toys into all those houses. Nothing could be better than being a child on Christmas morning.

Then, when the child matures, questions myths and expects rational explanations, something else happens: The grown-up child discovers that there is one thing better than being a child on Christmas morning. It’s being the parent of a small child on Christmas morning. While a child glows with excitement, a parent feels a greater joy, greater gratitude, and a greater understanding of what human happiness really is. In family lies the greatest happiness of all.

As parents age, they observe the maturing of their children, and Christmas becomes not just a bonanza of toys and treats but also, and more importantly, a family ritual of celebration and renewal built around shared memories and a dining table that now includes grandchildren. The consumption of treats and the sparkle in the eyes of children with new toys mean less than the re-stitching of the family fabric. Grandparents enjoy the vicarious excitement they feel with each new grandchild. While nothing can replace the thrill of your child’s first few Christmas mornings, seeing grandchildren experience that same joy offers a time machine experience.

As a new parent many years ago, I wanted to show my children what my Christmas mornings had been like: a pre-dawn awakening, excitement that made my whole body shudder, and a drive in the dark to my maternal grandparents’ rural home, where a large breakfast and a crowd of aunts, uncles and cousins awaited. More gifts would be distributed after breakfast, then a hefty lunch would be served before our exhausted carload returned home.

I could not replicate that experience for my children, although we did something quite similar for several years. I could only tell them how I felt about that Christmas routine. Now my children and grandchildren have their own routines, and my wife and I have ours, which we try to mesh with those younger generations.

Republlicans see Democrats as Pontius Pilate and Trump as God

During the debates (which were more like a shouting match) Wednesday as the House of Representatives was about to vote on two articles of impeachment against President Trump, a Georgia congressman compared House Republicans to Pontius Pilate and said Pilate, the Roman governor who sentenced Jesus to death, was more fair than House Democrats. Jesus got better treatment from Pilate than President Trump got from House Democrats, he said.

Think about that. If Democrats are the equivalent of the 2000-years-ago Roman governor, then Donald J. Trump must be ... Jesus Christ. That makes Trump GOD!

No wonder Republicans are falling in line behind their leader: They have him mistaken for the one true God, who made heaven and Earth, who divided the Red Sea, who gave the laws to Moses, who is and was and always will be.

This explanation helps explain Republicans' boot-licking attitude toward President Trump and their refusal to believe overwhelming evidence of his wrongdoing and misbehavior. The trance he has imposed on every (R) in the Senate can only be understood as divine intervention or mass ignorance.

 

Words should be right, not almost-right

This post was published in the Wilson Times Dec. 14, 2019

“The difference between the almost-right word and the right word is really a large matter — ‘tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning,” Mark Twain said.

I spent most of my working life trying to find the right word or trying to explain to subordinates why the words they used were not right. The distinction was never as clear as lightning bug and lightning. Although I had earned a college degree in journalism and English, I had much to learn about the subtle differences between words that sound or are spelled alike. Several books devoted to correct word usage expanded my education.

In the 1970s, I read two books by television newsman Edwin Newman, “Strictly Speaking” and “A Civil Tongue.” Newman’s clear and often amusing explanations of word usage made me a crusader for proper usage. Both books are still available online. The Associated Press Stylebook teaches AP writers and subscribing newspapers the difference, for example, between a lectern and a podium. Often known as the newspaper’s bible, the Stylebook is a resource I still turn to, a decade after leaving the newsroom.

But there are other books that will make you an unctuous corrector of verbal errors (and I do mean verbal, not oral — there’s a difference). Perhaps the best I can recommend is “Words on Words,” the alphabetical listing of words that are often misused compiled by John B. Bremner. This author conducted a class on correct word usage that I attended more than 35 years ago. He sold me after the first five minutes. The man — a former Catholic priest turned Journalism professor at the University of Kansas — knew his stuff and presented it in a delightfully entertaining way. The class I attended was part of a national tour sponsored by the Knight (newspaper) Foundation. Bremner died in 1987 at age 67.

When subtle differences in meanings arise between words, I turn to Bremner’s book, the AP Stylebook or (for really difficult issues) H.W. Fowler’s 1944 “Modern English Usage.” Fowler is written for the harshest of teachers with a very British perspective. Some of his explanations of correct usage are so thorough you’ll wish you never asked.

For someone who wants only a practical guide with simple explanations, I would recommend the “AP Stylebook” or “Words on Words.” Any teacher of any scholastic discipline should expect correct usage in their students’ writing. Using the wrong word in a history or sociology class should be penalized the same as it would be in an English class.

What’s the big deal? Are these the rantings of a handful of snobbish elites who like to say, “You mean lie, not lay”? As I told reporters when I was an editor, “Would you hire a carpenter who didn’t know how to use a hammer or saw? Your tools as a writer are words and punctuation. You have to know how to use them. Fortunately, you can look up most things.

Dictionaries, like encyclopedias, have gone on-line in the digital age, and I use a dictionary app on my computer for quick checks of word meaning or similar words (in thesaurus mode). This feature has made my writing more efficient because it’s quicker to use the dictionary app than to pull the dictionary off the shelf and thumb through the pages to the questioned word. But for more thorough understanding of correct usage, printed guidebooks, such as “Words on Words” are still important. Unlike a dictionary, these usage books explain how a word differs from similar words.

As with dictionaries or encyclopedia, usage books can be so intriguing that a user can easily get lost in the details. Aren’t words wonderful?

Primaries might not be best way to choose nominees

An article in the December issue of The Atlantic addresses an issue that has disturbed me for some time: Did we go too far in the 1970s in removing political “bosses” from the presidential nomination process?

The tumultuous party nominating conventions of the late 1960s — recall the image of Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daily cheering on police violence in the streets as Democratic Party delegates snubbed candidates not endorsed by the party establishment — and the post-Watergate campaign reforms of the 1970s fueled the shift in nomination process from collective decisions made by faithful party delegates in mammoth national conventions to a universal primary system, in which millions of individual voters make the decision once reserved for or controlled by party officials with years of experience in politics.

The “democratization” of presidential nominations seemed like a great idea at the time. The entire electorate would have a role in choosing nominees. Instead of safe, “establishment” candidates who have earned their promotion to the top job after decades of service to the public and the party, the primary system gave us unconventional candidates such as Jimmy Carter and George McGovern. Voters got to have their say, but what they often said was, “I like the cute one with a sense of humor.” Instead of a party convention, Democrats and Republicans sponsored two “beauty contests” of potential nominees.

Eventually, this led America to Donald Trump, a presidential nominee with no experience in government and no interest in learning about how the government works, even as he practices diplomacy by insult and policy making by impulsive tweets. It also led to useless enterprises such as this year’s Democratic candidate debates, featuring two dozen candidates, many of whom get few chances to speak.

The 2016 presidential campaign saw a Republican nominee who was not a Republican in the usual sense, and a Democratic candidate who did not refer to himself as a Democrat at all and had not been registered as one. This year’s candidate debates include a “spiritual adviser” with no experience in government and no clear policies.

Reforms that made presidential primary results the standard for nominating a president have not lived up to their promises. We all wanted to put an end to the “smoke-filled rooms” where presidential nominations were “really made” by cigar-chomping big-city party bosses, but we weren’t aiming for the circus we got.

We (I thought primaries would be a great way to select a presidential nominee) never thought the new process would turn into such a shipwreck. Without some “party bosses” to ride herd on candidates, we have ended up with candidates who don’t know what they’re getting into and voters who succumb to glitz, glib comments and greatly exaggerated promises.

In the Atlantic article, Jonathan Rauch and Ray La Raja suggest a new reform: allow veteran party officials (members of Congress, elected state officers, state party chairmen, etc.) to serve as appraisers of potential nominees and avoid embarrassing (and dangerous) surprises. These party regulars, with deep knowledge of governing and party principles, would serve as the “adults in the room” who can screen out the unqualified, the dangerously unhinged, the inexperienced and those untested or unsuccessful at lower levels.

Turning away from the exciting state primaries and caucuses will not be an easy sale, but a comparison of the nominees selected in traditional convention nominations and in primaries might sway opinion. Smoke-filled rooms gave America Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry Truman. The only major mistakes in this system, arguably, were Warren Harding and Richard Nixon. That’s not a bad record.