A Christmas Story Nighthawk
Vol. 130, December 10th, 2024 Published a day early online
Christmas Stories
Have you ever seen A Christmas Story? I think I’m the only one on the planet who hasn’t, but I fixed that this Friday. It was my birthday, and a local theater showed classics on the big screen.
My folks took me to a showing. “Now that’s how my brain works” I said, especially of the scene where he imagines his teacher swooning over the essay he wrote. “What a sentence!” It’s every writer’s dream, right?
In particular, the decorated downtown made me smile. The snow fell, and the kids pressed their noses to the Christmas wonderland in the storefront window.
But where I differ from Ralphie is while his gaze drifted up to the mythical BB gun, mine would have stayed on the miracle of transit anchored in the fake cotton snow. The trains, folks, the trains.
The neighbors gave me a set one Christmas long ago, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’d lay on the floor watching it. How it would clatter by, the sharp smell of electricity wafting from the tiny wheels, whizzing off ‘round the bend, and then back again. Many years passed. The COVID lockdown was a good excuse to build a train set for the community I worked at. We all kept smiling at it. That’s Christmas for you: little sparks of light, in spite of the dark.
All Aboard!
There’s nothing like a Christmas train to set the festive tone. Here’s a set I built once with some buddies. All aboard!
Carol’s Appalachian Word of the Week
Holt (hold). “Grab holt of that rope and help pull it tight.”
Jolly Well, Huck Finn
The iconic Mark Twain tale hits the shelves in the UK today, 1884.
Movie of the Week
A Christmas Story
“You’ll shoot your eye out!” Don’t forget this feel-good Christmas classic if you need a laugh this holiday season.
Quote of the Week
“Life is a combination of magic and pasta.”
–Federico Fellini
Write to Us!
The Nighthawk is a new old-fashioned way to connect, published weekly. You’re invited to write back, or just enjoy reading. Let’s have some fun! It’s a social paper! Send stories, etc to: PO Box 783, Rustburg, VA 24588 or Joshurban@protonmail.com
Letters from Josh
(A weekly update from Josh Urban’s adventures on the farm and in the city. #215)
Appearing in the Altavista Journal, etc: Christmas in the Air
Howdy folks, and welcome back to the show! That Burl Ives Christmas album is terrible. I love it. It’s a time capsule, bringing me right back to the early days and holidays. Mom would always start the season with the coffee table. Made from an antique trunk, it would sit closed all year, quietly holding books and propped feet and all the other things a living room coffee table should–until Christmastime rolled around. Then we’d open it, unpack the decorations, and fish out the music. If I close my eyes, I can almost smell the incense for the smoking toy soldier.
Have a Holly Jolly Christmas was always first, with Burl Ives looking strange but festive on the cover. Ding, dong! The season would start. What a time. My folks knew how to do Christmas, and the music was a big part of it.
Now, as Christmastime is here again, the music is back, along with the memories. I never know when they’ll hit. Stressed and sinking in a red sea of brake lights and traffic one December evening, I fumbled with the radio. An old recording of a choir crackled over the airwaves. Suddenly, I was in my grandparent’s living room again.
The music always sounds tinny in the big box stores, but I like that. Even the silly songs get to be old friends as the years go by. They bring Christmas Past to the aisles and confusion, putting something human in the plastic and cardboard. I’m terrible at shopping, and after a few minutes, stagger around with glazed eyes, punch drunk.
“Josh, why’d you buy that?”
“I don’t know, it was on sale or something.”
But the songs get me through. I remember old friends with them. Maybe a little bit of sadness goes into the best tunes. Irving Berlin wrote “White Christmas”. He was Jewish, but the season had significance to him. He lost a child on Christmas, 1928, and would visit the baby’s grave with his wife that day every year.
Bing Crosby sang the tune for the first time on December 24th, 1941, weeks after Pearl Harbor. With a world at war, the peace and nostalgia of the song took on a new meaning. Later, during his overseas tours to entertain the troops, he would shy away from playing it. “Didn’t want to bring them down” he said. The soldiers asked for it anyway.
As we muddle through in our own ways, grieving, celebrating, struggling, overcoming, and getting boggled by what wrapping paper to buy, keep an ear out. There might be a song heading your way.
And the Burl Ives album? I put it on the record player today. Glancing at the cover, I saw the strange art, and a label. It was Rosie’s last name. She was a dear friend from a nursing home. She gave me the record shortly before she passed away suddenly. The strains of “Holly Jolly Christmas” fill the air. The song isn’t terribly deep. But man, the memories are.
What a blessing we get to celebrate the season, with all of it’s seriousness, joy, salvation, and silliness. What a blessing to remember.
Keep those songs spinning.
Catch you on the flip side,
–Josh