(No Place Like) Home for the Holidays

Home for the Holidays is one of those songs that makes me happy, then leaves me wondering what planet the composer comes from. It was composed by Robert Allen, lyrics by Al Stillman, published in 1954. Perry Como recorded it shortly thereafter.

It tells about how amazing it is to come home for the holidays (I expect it meant Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year at the time). Personally, I have had a rather unusual life, and I have lived on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. Having spent large parts of my life in the US and the Philippines, it's hard to define "home" for me. When we lived in the Philippines, we were too far away to be able to afford to come back to the US for Christmas. In the US, it hasn't necessarily made sense to go to the Philippines for Christmas. Thus, I've never really been in a position to make a long trip "home" for the Christmas season. The biggest trip I've ever made at Christmas was in 2009, when I "met a man who lived in Tennessee" (as the song says), and surprised my "adopted" big sister Jill Brasfield (which involved a lot of plotting with her husband and my "adopted" big brother Andy). I left Seattle on December 26, wearing a Tennessee Vols sweatshirt. I was particularly amused that someone at SeaTac Airport asked me if I was returning to Tennessee. I said, "Sort of. I've never been there before." That confused him. :-) But never fear, my "adopted" family in Tennessee definitely made me feel right at home. I'm sure for many people who actually do go home every year, it's a refreshing time of getting caught up on family life and seeing the sights and people you knew growing up. I know I had a blast visiting "family" in Tennessee! I don't recall having pumpkin pie there...probably because I went to Tennessee and not Pennsylvania...but pumpkin pie is always one of the highlights of November and December for me. :-)

I love traveling (for the most part), and this song is definitely about that. People travel from Tennessee to Pennsylvania, from Pennsylvania to Dixie, and elsewhere. Interesting, no mention of western states (at least by name). They also fail to mention some Northwesterners (such as Justin Donnelson) who like to vacation in Hawaii in the winter. Maybe because Hawaii wasn't a state yet in 1954 when this was written (and I'm pretty sure Justin wasn't born yet, anyway).

But there's one line that baffles me: "From Atlantic to Pacific, the traffic is terrific." Traffic is WHAT?! The busiest season of the year, when everyone is out shopping for Christmas, traffic jams are backed way up, impatient drivers have taken leave of common sense...they call that terrific? Maybe it was terrific in 1954? Or maybe Al Stillman enjoyed sitting in traffic. I don't know what planet Stillman lived on, but if it was terrific then, times have changed. (Of course, in Manila where I come from, terrific traffic means it only takes an hour to get 10 miles.) :-)

Aside from the bizarre traffic comment, this is a wonderful, heartwarming song, and I'm sure it embodied the wonderful feelings the composers had in the Christmas season, and many folks have had since then traveling home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and other winter holidays (or just vacation in general).

I Saw Three Ships

"I Saw Three Ships" has always slightly baffled me. What does the Christmas story have to do with ships? Why three? What were the Virgin Mary and Christ doing on a ship? The farthest the Bible tells about them going was when Joseph, Mary and Jesus fled to Egypt (probably via donkey or camel) to escape King Herod's murderous rage.

The singer claims to have seen three ships bearing the Virgin Mary and Christ come sailing into Bethlehem on Christmas morning (which is interesting, since, as Wikipedia points out, Bethlehem is about 20 miles from the Dead Sea, the nearest body of water). The singer goes on to tell how all the angels and "all the souls on earth" will sing. It then recommends that we all rejoice amain (which, according to Dictionary.com, means "with great strength, speed, or haste"...so in other words, we should rejoice at the top of our lungs).

I'm all for rejoicing at the arrival of the Savior, and it is definitely worth the angels and everyone on earth celebrating. But that still leaves us with the question... Ships?!

Apparently, the song is from the 17th Century, likely written in Derbyshire, England in 1666. According to The Hymns and Carols of Christmas, legend says that in the 12th Century, three ships carried the gold, frankincense and myrrh given by the Wise Men (one gift on each ship, I guess) to Koln, Germany. As the years went by, the legend replaced the Magi with the Holy Family (other versions of the song also mention Joseph).

That makes a bit more sense. I still think it's weird, though.

UPDATE: According to my friend Wendy Marcinkiewicz, camels were known as "the ship of the desert." That could be another explanation, which would make sense.

A Christmas Nightmare

Christmas 1818 was rapidly approaching, and St. Nicholas Church in the Austrian village of Oberndorf bei Salzburg was facing a serious problem: their organ was broken, with no time to fix it before Christmas. The church leaders were scrambling to figure out what to do. It was Christmas Eve, and they were running out of options. Assistant priest Josef Mohr remembered a poem he had written two years earlier. He showed it to Franz Gruber, the church's organist and choirmaster, and asked if he could set to music. So it was that at Christmas Mass (the next day!), the two men sang the new song, with Mohr playing the guitar and the choir echoing the last two lines of each of the six verses. The first verse went like this:

Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!
Alles schläft; einsam wacht
Nur das traute hoch heilige Paar.
Holder Knab' im lockigen Haar,
Schlafe in himmlischer Ruh!
Schlafe in himmlischer Ruh!

The song looks back to that silent night when (verse 1) a young virgin brought a baby into the world. (Verse 2) The news was announced by angels to the astonished shepherds. With the amazing gift of that night, God sent His (verse 3) light, (4) grace and (5) peace, to (6) send His only Son to earth to free mankind of our plight and woes.

St. Nicholas Church had a rather major problem that Christmas in 1818, but it was nothing compared to the first Christmas in about 4 BC, when Mary, in an advanced stage of pregnancy, had to make a difficult journey by donkey to Joseph's ancestral home of Bethlehem for the Roman census. Not only did she have to go through a painful journey, but she had to endure rumors and gossip about the fact she was having a baby before getting married. Under normal circumstances, having a child out of wedlock was punishable by death in their culture. Joseph very nearly divorced her, and would have if it hadn't been for an angel appearing to him in a dream. If Mohr and Gruber had problems, Mary and Joseph had it much worse.

When Mary and Joseph got to Bethlehem, all the inns were full and they had to improvise. When St. Nicholas Church's organ broke, Mohr and Gruber had to improvise. Never has a stable had so much in common with a guitar.

Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright.
Round yon virgin, mother and child
Holy infant, so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.


Josef Mohr, painting photographed by Wikipedia user Werner100359


Franz Gruber, painted by Sebastian Stief in 1846

Happy Holiday

"Happy Holiday" was written in 1942 by Irving Berlin for the movie Holiday Inn. The main premise of the movie involves an inn that is only open for major holidays throughout the year. (If I remember right, that includes Presidents' Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year. As Martin Luther King was alive and well at the time, his holiday wasn't celebrated yet.) For each holiday, they put on a show appropriate to that celebration. Happy Holiday was the song performed for...get this...NEW YEAR'S EVE!

When it was written, it was a song expressing heartfelt wishes for a happy holiday season, which started with Thanksgiving, and encompassed Christmas and New Years. Like Sleigh Ride, it is not specifically a Christmas song, but it is most commonly associated with Christmas.

As the years have progressed and folks from more diverse backgrounds have joined our ranks as Americans, the list of holidays celebrated at this time of the year have grown, including Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Festivus and the Winter Solstice (I'm probably forgetting some). The way I see it, diversity is a beautiful thing, and we should celebrate our differences as well as our similarities. I'm not saying we have to celebrate the holidays from other religions and cultures, but we should respect their right to celebrate their holidays. Sadly, the phrase "Happy Holidays" has become a bit of a political statement, as some folks are offended by the fact that we celebrate Christmas and not their holiday of choice (or in the case of some Jehovah's Witnesses, any holidays at all). It seems a sad commentary of human nature that too many Christians are offended when they hear people who want to be inclusive wish them "Happy Holidays!" rather than "Merry Christmas!" Why do we as Christians expect non-Christians to behave like Christians? We don't expect cats to bark (usually). Recently, the American Family Association initiated a boycott of Walgreens because they said "Happy Holidays" with no mention of Christmas. After hearing from many angry Christians around the country, Walgreens pointed out that it wasn't Thanksgiving yet, and they were planning to say "Merry Christmas" as Christmas got closer. The boycott was called off. Just think how many headaches it would have saved if they had asked first before starting a full-scale boycott!

I decided to comment on this song this morning when I saw a comment from my friend Mike Gibson, which said:

With all due respect, saying "Happy Holidays" is not offensive to the cause of Christ. Being loving and respectful to others with different beliefs is not denying Him, either.

I completely agree. Christianity is about what we do believe, not what we don't believe. Being offended that non-Christians may or may not celebrate Christmas, and when they do, they may or may not mention Christ, is not a good witness. I have a feeling it is one of the major reasons we are stereotyped as being intolerant and hateful. I wonder how much hostility toward Christmas would be calmed if we would calm down ourselves. Jesus hung out with people the Pharisees saw as hopeless cases and who they felt we should have nothing to do with. If we don't reach out in love, not anger, to the people who need it the most, who will?

I'm all for keeping Christ in Christmas, but we need to respect the people who aren't. We need to show them love, not offense. Many of them aren't Christians, and we shouldn't expect them to act like it. As Gibson also pointed out, "He told us to remember his death, anyway. Not his birth."

If someone says "Happy Holidays" to me, I will probably respond with a smile and "Merry Christmas!" I celebrate Christmas, but I respect other people's right not to.

I leave you with Straight No Chaser's version of The 12 Days of Christmas, in which Hanukkah and Africa make cameo appearances. :-)

Last Christmas

The song "Last Christmas" is one of my least favorite Christmas songs. It's truly a study in incorrigibility. The singer seems to want to improve his lot in life, but he just never learns.

"Last Christmas," he sings, "I gave you my heart, but the very next day you gave it away. This year, to save me from tears, I'll give it to someone special."

First of all, he needs to understand that a heart is a very precious thing to give, and he needs to learn not to give it lightly. He seems to be beginning to grasp that, but it just doesn't sink in completely. How do I know? Because the next year, I hear him singing it again. This tells me that every Christmas, he gives his heart to someone special, and the very next day, that someone special gives it away. Instead of saving himself from tears, he ends up collapsing in tears every stinking December 26 because the "someone special" turned out to be not so special after all. He must have a serious case of insecurity, and no wonder, as he is consistently dumped every Boxing Day!

I guess the moral of the story is that you need to be much more careful in giving your heart than this singer. There are better things to give as Christmas presents than your heart. Especially if you give the same thing every year.

"Have you considered My servant Jerri?"

“Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” - God, Job 1:8

The past year and a half, my friend and "adopted" big sister Jerri has gone through more pain than I can imagine, including the collapse of her marriage and sudden death of her husband, who I considered a big brother, in addition to losing her mother to cancer. I have watched her go through so much, raising their teen and pre-teen children by herself and suffering more grief than anyone should have to bear. I have seen her work through her pain, yet still cling to her faith in our amazing God.

During this time, I have come to understand that the number 11 and strings of 1s have special significance to her, and God has often used this to remind me of her. I often "happen" to look at the time at 11:11, and it always reminds me of her. Sometimes I feel moved to pray for her and her family when that happens. Yesterday, I "happened" to look at my watch at 1:11:11 (that exact second), and today I looked at my phone at 11:11. Today, shortly after that happened, a modified version of Job 1:8 came to mind, which I believe was from God: "Have you considered my servant Jerri? There is no one on earth like her; she is blameless and upright, a woman who fears God and shuns evil."

Job also lost so much when Satan put him to the test, but he came out a stronger man for it, and God blessed him more richly at the end of the ordeal than before it. He even replaced everyone that Job lost. May the same blessings be true for Jerri.

Update: On the way home, I saw this:

I rest my case.

Who Knew?

I shared my memories of September 11, 2001 back in May, and now I thought I'd post this poem I wrote shortly after the horrible events of that fateful day.

Who Knew?

by Steven Sauke

© September 2001

It began as a peaceful Tuesday morning
The sun shone, the birds chirped
Who knew what was about to happen?
Who knew the peace would be shattered?
That planes would crash into buildings?
That thousands of lives would suddenly be cut short?
That fireballs so huge could billow out of national landmarks?
Who foresaw bodies falling 110 stories to the ground?
The World Trade Center plummeting after them?
The Pentagon in flames?
Smoke billowing into the sky,
Blotting out the sun,
Turning the bright blue sky a dismal gray?
Dust blanketing a city in a velvety, macabre coat?
Who could have known on such a bright sunny day
That in a few minutes a nation would be in shock?
That a planet would be in grief?
That in 225 years the US had never seen such a disaster
As what was about to happen?

Who would have guessed that in one morning,
A sharply divided nation would come together
To donate blood, to pick up the pieces, to pray for our fellow Americans?

Who could have known that in one morning,
A nation, an earth, would forever be changed?

Who foresaw an outpouring of grief,
Of sorrow,
Of love,
Of flowers,
Of candles,
Of silence,
Across the nation,
Across the earth?
Who knew flags across the world
Would soon be placed at half-mast?

Only God knew
And He held up the towers for an hour
To let people escape

Only God knew
And He caused the planes to hit the towers high enough
That they collapsed straight down
Rather than falling over
And wiping out more of Manhattan

Only God knew
And He diverted a plane away from the White House
Into the only part of the Pentagon
That had been retrofitted
For terrorist attacks

Only God knew
And He stopped in mid-flight
Another plane headed for the White House
Sending it crashing
Into a field.

Praise be to God
For sparing us from something worse
Praise be to God!