Here is roughly what I said yesterday about surviving the season of Advent and being ready for Christmas. Enjoy!
I’m not much of a movie person, but I do, at this time of year, love to indulge in a good dose of Christmas flicks. I try to mix it up between Hallmark, White Christmas on a loop, The Christmas Story, Elf, and It’s a Wonderful Life—those kinds of films. There is one movie, though, that is not quite so well known, that is my absolute favorite. If I don’t watch it every year it’s like Christmas never happened. It is the film adaptation of a Terry Pratchett novel, the Hogfather, maybe you’ve heard of it? Are there any Pratchett fans here? Pratchett wrote spoof science fiction. The world he created was called the Discworld. It is a flat disk held aloft by 4 elephants hurtling through space on the back of a turtle called A ‘Tuin. In the Discworld, on Hogswatch night, the Hogfather gets in his sleigh pulled by magical hogs and flies through the air to deliver presents to children.
As the movie opens, though, the “auditors” of the Discworld, who keep track of everything, get above themselves and start wanting to control what people think and do. For whatever nefarious totalitarian reason, they decide it’s time to do away with the Hogfather. They go to the Assassins guild—because if you’re going to have crime, it might as well be organized—and engage the services of one Mr. TeaTime who has, ominously, already given the matter a lot of thought. The plot is pretty intricate, and long. Basically, Death—a staple Pratchett character—sees that time is running out on the Hogfather’s hourglass and decides to do something about it. He gets a false beard, a red Hogfather costume, his assistant Albert, and goes to deliver the presents into all those desolate stockings.
Quickly, though, he becomes overwrought about how unfair the distribution of holiday goods and cheer turns out to be and has a bit of an existential crisis. He wants to give all the children of the Discworld whatever they ask for and Albert has to explain that, based on socio-economic status, the little boy in the dark grimy hovel will be getting a rudely carved wooden figure and an apple, not the puppy he asked for.
But what about all the children in the department store, Death complains, who got to have whatever they wanted? To answer the question, Albert describes how he, when he was a little boy, stood with his nose glued to a shop window, longing for a large beautifully carved rocking horse. As he watched, a tall man walked into the shop and bought the horse—but not for Albert. He didn’t even know Albert. Albert was so disappointed. The film cuts to the scene of a little boy, eyes red, lips quivering, filled with unconsummated desire.
“Yes,” says the adult Albert, “I would have killed for that horse. But you know what? I still hung up my stocking on Hogswatch Eve. Do you know why? Because I had hope. And the next morning, our dad had put in my stocking a little wooden horse that he carved his very own self.”
Death replies: “Ah, and that was worth more than all the expensive toy horses in the world.”
“No,” says Albert, “cause you're a selfish little buggar when you're only seven. It's only grownups that think like that.”
Death is alarmed, and unhappy. “It is unfair,” he says.
“Well, that's life,” says Albert.
“But I'm not,” says Death—the point of a good Pratchett novel, incidentally, is the accumulation of puns. “This is supposed to be the season to be jolly, and other things ending in Olly.” He stalks out of the hovel to search out his granddaughter, Susan who is going to have to make sure the sun will still rise and the auditors won’t win. Time fails me to mention the tooth fairy’s castle, the Unseen University, and what happens to Mr. TeaTime.
The wonderful thing about the wisdom of Albert, would-be Hogswatch Pixie, is that he articulates so nicely what’s so hard about the stretch from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Most of the time, I think, with maybe the possible exceptions of Birthdays and anniversaries of both happy occasions and traumatic ones, those of us who basically have a grip on ourselves can keep our expectations and desires in check. When it’s a bright, sunny day mid-summer—or whenever one comfortably goes outside down here—and all you need to do is get your work done and decide what to eat for dinner, and yet you are thwarted at every turn, cut off in traffic, unable to get other people to agree with you, frustrated in work or a relationship—it might be annoying, but it is unlikely you will suffer an existential meltdown. I mean, who is really sad about not getting to the end of a to-do list?
But Christmas? Christmas is about the essentials of what it means to be a person at all.
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