A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN EIGENHEIM

 

A CHILD’S CHRISTMAS IN EIGENHEIM

Rosthern Museum & Mennonite Interpretive Centre, Winter 2018

(Being a mixture of nostalgia, unverified memory, pure fiction shamelessly riding—in part—on the coattails of Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales. The narrator and all the characters mentioned here are pure fiction, as are the details of their acts and words. The Eigenheim School and Christmas concert, however, existed and included here in as accurate a representation as distant memory would allow, but still, tentative.)

It was't so much celebrating the birth of God’s Son that we were focused on as we crowded—Grades One to Eight, older and younger siblings, parents, and others from the church also known as Eigenheim—into the Eigenheim School classroom for the school Christmas Concert. Oh, we were reminded often enough that this was where our thoughts should be, but symbolism was lost on us; we were focused on that morning coming up in a few days. Perchance, there would be some goodies from the Eaton’s Catalogue under the tree, wrapped in colourful paper, promising hours and days, perhaps, of endlessly building towers and cranes, ships and trains with a mountain of Meccano girders and a million tiny bolts and nuts. Or revolvers so realistic that they could be loaded with rolls of gunpowder-flecked paper so they’d actually bang when pointed at the head of an irritating younger brother and their triggers pulled. (This latter was a very long shot since, being an Anabaptist family, guns were instruments of evil and we knew, even as we wished for something, anything that would enhance our lustful games of combat, that we’d have to continue to make our own slingshots and bows and arrows out of found materials and binder twine.)

I didn’t know what my sisters’ under-the-tree longings were about … couldn’t care less.

But first the mandatory memorizing of lines and song verses: we all knew Joy to the World but I had a hard time remembering if He rules the world, or No more let sin and sorrow cease came next. I remember chiming in on only the second syllable of verses as a substitute for memorizing, which I abhorred and wasn’t any good at. And then the nativity with a doll in a basket and Grade Ones and Twos with fake horns and fake sheepskin and the rest of us in old bathrobes or cinched car blankets and willow-stick staffs, performing like robots with shoes glued to the plank stage mumble-singing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace” with the three hoity-toity Grade Four and Five girls in bedsheets and paper tiaras with glitter, pushed to the front to herald that, despite our appearances, we were a host of heavenly beings.

To our parents, we were, perhaps, although it was only the pastor who stooped to thank and praise us, but only as an aside to his eulogy on the prowess of our teacher, Mr. Arthur Epp (same surname as half of his charges; what a lucky coincidence) and to Mrs. Toews on the pump organ. And we (read, “I”) felt for a moment, if not that I was a star, at least a warm glow of having been for a critical moment, a well-trained and obedient puppy.

But we all knew that the lead angel, Sarah, was better loved by this audience than any of the rest of us, or should I say, all the rest of us together, only because it was she who delivered the baby Jesus to the decorated cardboard manger, we told ourselves. I was equally drawn to two impulses regarding Sarah, one being to marry her and the other, a vague, undefined dream involving strangling and burying her out behind the horse barn on the school yard. My daydreams weren’t complicated, but they were dramatic.

The Christmas tree had to be as tall as the high ceiling would allow, and finding, cutting, delivering and decorating it was the only thing I ever knew the trustees to actually do—except for handing out those bags of treats as the last item on the program. The candles on the tree had to be real burning candles; how else would that tantalizing, sprucy smell be released to set the mood, or how else would our Christmas joy be elevated by having wandered so near to the death we would face if the tree ever caught fire … and not dying after all.

And then, the treat bag,  and tearing open the Cracker Jack box to find inside “the prize.” I don’t know if we were actually expecting that it might one Christmas be a gold coin, or a diamond ring, but the disappointment when, as always, it turned out to be a tiny plastic animal of some sort or a decoder ring that decoded nothing (which was lucky because our world contained absolutely zero secret messages requiring decoding, as if). That disappointment was a foretaste of what we would only learn grudgingly as adults that—not unlike life itself—what you get is invariably less than you’d hoped for. (We were also taught later that one shouldn’t use prepositions to end sentences with. I, at least, forgot what a preposition actually is.)

There was snow, of course, and a makeshift road plowed across the fields to make possible the trip to and from the school. And there was cold, and the sound of dads shaking up the coals in the furnace and shoveling in the hard black nuggets when we got home to a frigid cracker box of a house. The squeak and clank of the basement furnace door and standing on the register above the furnace and the delicious warm air up your pantlegs.

And there was the spilling out of candy on the dining table and the trading, a peeling and slow savoring of zipper-skin Jap oranges, the toffee that would stick your teeth together and the satisfying smack when you pulled them apart and the sweetness set your mouth to delicious drooling. And there was the turning on of the electric tree lights and the estimation of what might possibly be in the few packages already ranged beneath and knowing that there would be more packages in the morning, most likely resting for now on the top shelf of Mom’s wardrobe where snooping would be easy, but where I, for one, would never, ever consider going. Thus, Christmas divided our worlds—for many, permanently—into two parts: the nostalgic baby in a manger with sprucy aromas wafting symbolically through a church sanctuary and the part that would be real, the certainty that real joy comes in the form of windfalls of goods, roasted birds and cousins galore, those cousin reunions that might well start a festive afternoon with high-fives and “I know what let’s do” … and end with black eyes and bruised egos.

No one ever loved their mom more than I did mine. Not even the Son of God could ever tuck me in with such warm and gentle hands. In later life, theologians would say that a mother’s warm and gentle hands are guided by their love for the Saviour, and I would withhold my skepticism: I’ve seen a cow lick and lick her newborn calf, you see. I’ve seen a mother’s entire world focused down to just her and the newborn nestled in her arms, feeding at her breast, tiny fingers wrapped around her thumb. Does God invent love and hand it down, or do Mary and all the other moms incarnate the particular kind of love that we experience first—whether born in a barn, a hospital or a taxicab—and teach it to God?

But back to the real stuff. Among lean years of homemade socks under the tree, there was the year of abundance: 1952, possibly, when there was an electric train with tracks and a headlight and switches plus a box of Meccano spans and girders and nuts and bolts and tiny wrenches. We never did our chores in the barn as rapidly again as in that snapping-cold doldrum when, what I now know as the solstice time of the year when the day sleeps in ‘til ten or so, gives up on ever being warm again and goes back to bed in the middle of the afternoon, pulls the blanket over its head. And with the Meccano, we built a trestle over which we ran the train and as it laboured its way over the trestle bridge, we cheered and the whole world turned right side up in that instant.

And stayed right side up until my annoying youngest brother was tempted by Satan to paste his treat-bag chewing gum to the track, thereby derailing the locomotive, the coal  car, the passenger and the freight car and the caboose, a sorry scene of death and destruction. It took only seconds to cuff my brother’s head and restore the train, and taught us no lesson whatsoever. Some feminist of 2022 might declare this to be an example of the early development of toxic masculinity in boys. And Archie Bunker might say, “Those were the days, my friend, when girls were girls and men were men.”

I just turned eighty-one. I have little interest in Meccano or model trains, or Cracker Jack prizes or Nativity scenes, for that matter. We haven’t put up a tree for years, don’t give gifts and hope not to get any: we’re not upsizing, we’re downsizing for Pete’s sake. At some point, the joy of cutting a tree, decorating and lighting it gave way to a realization that the tedium of taking it down pretty much equaled any good feelings generated by putting it up. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away …” sort of. Who first thought that bringing trees into the house would be a good idea? Why not put a sofa in the woods and decorate it? Festoon it with live candles?

Call me Scrooge, or at least an old fart or a boring curmudgeon. I’ve had far too much time to think about the millions of children born under tents in refugee camps, in substandard housing in ghettos of poverty to unwed, teenaged mothers. Too much time mourning how human anguish falls so unmercifully on the weak to marvel at the virgin birth, especially as we have homogenized and pasteurized, civilized it for tasteful consumption. And if it didn’t begin as a folk legend, it certainly became one over the eons of telling and retelling it. Heavily symbolic, it must have been realized at some time that many who lack the imagination to interpret its parabolic import must be served the legend as story if they’re to benefit from it at all.

What it means for me at eighty-one is that I’ve become a consummate believer in the message of the incarnation, the man who so clearly caught the vision of the kinship of all humanity under an ideal of peace, love and well-being, the one we have for the sake of those who need that help, was named “God.” On the message of the incarnation, namely that Jesus’ witness tells us we are all—like him—children of God and therefor siblings, I’ve become a stumbling fellow traveler alongside, not beneath, the Christ our brother. On the worship of the symbols that characterize our Christmases, I’m a skeptic harbouring a suspicion that the legends that meant to clarify the meaning of family under God, are unable any longer to convey what that essential oracle was meant to teach us. 

But however messy our understanding might be at times, the fact that in that country classroom when the days of the years were at their shortest, darkest and coldest, we could hardly wait for the Christ child, well, that must tell us something too. If I look northeast from my living room window this morning, across the balcony with the pots of brittle grasses waving in a stormy wind, across First Avenue blown in with snow this Christmas morning, across the parking lot behind the library, I can watch the blinking lights of the Christmas tree in the square. And something in their valiant determination to shine forth through the drifting snow makes me feel a surge of contentment. Maybe it’s the thought that all those people who put up all those lights for me to see are either stupid to hang these strings with hands numbed by the cold, or are exercising a basic, mother’s-milk love that tells them to do something, whatever they are able to lighten the lives of their neighbours while they can.

I choose to believe the latter. Perhaps the striving toward joy and the occasional grasping of a handful or two is enough prompting for me to wish you, A Very, Merry Christmas.

Even if it comes from successfully building a Meccano trestle and running a train over it. Even it it comes through listening to Handel’s Messiah on YouTube. Even if it’s sharing the breast of a sacrificial turkey with your family while the radio quietly plays Old English Carols in the background.

Again, Merry Christmas.

George G. Epp

December 25, 2022

... To Talk of Many Things

 

If you recall Lewis Carroll’s The Walrus and the Carpenter [i] as only an unusual, word-play, a bit of nonsense doggerel, you may have missed something. But it could be fortunate if as a child you missed the conniving betrayal by the two principals, who lure a multitude of oysters to their doom with promises of “a pleasant walk, a pleasant talk.” And once having assembled boatload and-a-half of oysters, the walrus continues the pretense even while preparing the bread and butter that should have been a sign to the oysters:

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
   "To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
   Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
   And whether pigs have wings."

And in the ending of the piece, the depth of the betrayal of the innocents is made clear:

"0 Oysters," said the Carpenter,
   "You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?"
   But answer came there none—
And this was scarcely odd, because
   They'd eaten every one.

Walruses eat oysters; it hardly makes sense to heap derision on this one on that account. The Carpenter? I’m not so sure. Had we not been cautioned in earlier verses of the poem to their dullness of mind, we might be more inclined to write off these two deceivers with appropriate derision. They are of the kind who think the beach would be a better place if all that darned sand would be removed.

I can’t claim to know what goes on in the thoughts of Donald Trump, or Jordon Peterson, or Alex Jones, or Rex Murphy, or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Of course, I can’t read the deepest motives of Justin Trudeau, Chrystia Freeland, Pierre Poilievre, Scott Moe or Danielle Smith, either. When I hear them holding forth on “shoes and ships and sealing wax; cabbages and kings,” I must say I feel like an oyster being cozened by walruses. And when they spread the butter really thick, I start to think, “ah yes, the promised pleasant walk, the pleasant talk.” 

The rest can be deduced from Lewis Carroll’s inimitable take on human history.

I’m not sure assigning roles to the carpenter and walrus symbols wouldn’t raise more questions than answers, and Lewis Carroll died in 1898, so won’t answer if asked. Why choose a carpenter and a walrus, beyond the fact that one has three syllables and the other two and as a pair make a nice, musical line? In my reveries, I recall that Jesus was a carpenter and a walrus is one of the most voracious, largest, most formidable of creatures. Church and state? Socialism and Fascism? If it was symbolism that Carroll was after and not just poetic sounds, the two antagonists in combination—whatever they are—cooperate to lure us oysters into a state where we’re easily consumed.

We oysters all know by now what content “the pleasant walk, the pleasant talk” really contains: a myriad of strawmen conjured in the imaginations of people hungry for power and recognition, symbolized here by the walrus’ enormous appetite. Here are some strawmen examples:

1.      Freedom: Canada used to be a “free” country, but Justin Trudeau’s policies rob the oysters of the freedom he doesn’t want them to have.

2.      Justin Trudeau: The prime minister is an evil, ignorant tyrant whose aim is to reshape Canada in his own misanthropic style.

3.      The Environment: Canada needs to be a world leader in reducing the use of fossil fuels and conserving nature, and we’re doing it.

4.      Media: Mainstream Media are in the pockets of the government, so only news from independent sources is worth listening to.

5.      Government: Governments in Canada are mostly illegitimate because parties win elections with less that half the votes.

Each of these has a germ of truth, but the walrus and the carpenter ignore the complex realities that could support or refute their validity, and instead, paint for the oysters a slanted “strawman” version at which to direct their approval or anger. The number of “oysters” who will parrot descriptions of this or that strawman without being able to defend their opinion with any detailed support shows how easy it was for the walrus and the carpenter to lure oysters onto a slice of bread.

There are some elder-oysters who recognize what “shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings” talk--especially when accompanied by “a pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,”--really promises. Perhaps our elders need to be more vocal; perhaps we need to be more attentive to their hesitation when such delights are promised.

The eldest Oyster looked at him,
   But never a word he said;
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
   And shook his heavy head—
Meaning to say he did not choose
   To leave the oyster-bed.

---

[i] The Walrus and the Carpenter is in the public domain. The full text can be found at The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll - Poems | Academy of American Poets.

?-?

 

?-?

"A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again." – Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1709.

(2022-English translation: Learning a little about a subject can be dangerous; either go deeply into that subject or leave it alone. A mere sip from the well of wisdom can make you drunk with an egotistical sense of yourself as being “in the know,” and you’ll only sober up if you go back and “drink deeply” from the wisdom/knowledge well.)

There’s a saying about that goes something like this: people pronounce on subjects of which they have insufficient knowledge; unfortunately they lack the knowledge that would be necessary to realize that their knowledge is insufficient. Another, briefer way to put this might be, “My friend, you’re just too uninformed to realize how uninformed you are!” That wouldn’t be nice.

Pope’s four-line, often quoted, anecdote might well alert anyone who pronounces, pontificates on any subject through speech, reporting, blogging, in interviews or over Christmas dinner with family, to exercise a bit of humility, and maybe end their pronouncements with a question- rather than an exclamation-mark.

It might also seem to contain a logical flaw, since no one ever has been able to determine whether or not they possess all—or at least enough—knowledge to confidently hold a position, or even an opinion. Christians say of God that he is omniscient—all knowing—which point likely serves only to emphasize that we humans are not. All and enough defy measurement. Does a doctor know all he/she/they need(s) to to make a definitive diagnosis of a patient’s dis-ease?

If I were to say, “Politicians are to blame for the current financial crisis,” it would take no genius to recognize that I lack sufficient knowledge of politics and of economics to make my pronouncement trustworthy. Question is, would I be conscious of the fact that a whole heap of knowledge that I don’t possess would be necessary to conclude confidently that my pronouncement is trustworthy? Or would I, like so many, operate under the delusion that what comes out of my mouth is, de facto, true, just because… well, because… I believe it to be so.

If there is a planet where everything is orderly, where absolute, complete knowledge has been determined and catalogued and resides in the public domain, that planet is, most certainly, not this one. Here, we speak and write impressions and opinions as if they were facts, as if we possessed knowledge enough to speak with certainty on a given subject.

What we need is a new punctuation mark to indicate that our knowledge of a subject may still be wanting:

1.      In writing, “?-?” might indicate that what we are saying is an impression which is open to being modified if deeper knowledge should present itself. So the politicians-are-to-blame declaration would look like this: ?-? Politicians are to blame for the current financial crisis ?-?

2.      When speaking, we could raise a closed fist, then extend and curl the index finger twice before and after an utterance. This would indicate to hearers that we are expressing an impression, not an incontrovertible, proven fact.

?-? Because we must write and read, speak and understand, throwing out our impressions and opinions as if they were facts simply stifles the joint search for the very knowledge we crave and know we need; we could benefit by correcting for this ?-?

And a side note: An old saying goes:  “He who defends himself in court has a fool for a lawyer.” It could also read, “He who treats himself (with guidance from internet ads?) has a fool for a doctor.” People who spend years of time and energy accumulating knowledge in a field deserve respect. Not worship, but respect, and our carefully listening ears.  

?-? Opinion is never an equal to knowledge-supported conclusions, anymore than a brick is a reasonable substitute for a potato ?-?

Did you get that sentence, enclosed with “?-?” punctuation? I might deservedly be taken to task by someone who has found that a brick can be quite delightful when eaten with a flour, chicken broth, salt and pepper mortar—I mean, bechamel sauce… or maybe, peppermint-stucco gravy. That new knowledge should oblige me to modify my opinion, eh? To go back and drink more deeply from the Pierian Spring, maybe?

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again. – Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1709.

Keep it Simple, Stupid?

 

I read this morning that Pierre Poilievre is proposing a law requiring government to make itself more understandable to more people by cutting the jargon, communicating in simple words and simpler, shorter sentences. Apparently, the USA and New Zealand have already passed such legislation.

How we logically determine which words are “simple,” or how many words there can be in a “simpler sentence” might be tricky. Depending on whether you grew up with English as your main—or only—language, or if you have a university education from an English institution, or have qualified as a specialist in a field where specific, even long words, are essential to precise communication with others in your field, or if you’re an avid reader and news junkie or feel yourself hard pressed to read the instructions on your pill bottles, all these and more factors come into play when judging what’s appropriate in a country where simplicity/complexity of language is an issue.

(The sentence above would have a hard time qualifying as a shorter, simpler example in New Zealand, one supposes.)

A mom of a three-year-old might say, “Does your tummy have an owwie?” She won’t ask, “Are you experiencing midriff pain distress due, probably, to a surplus of stomach acid?” Tailoring our speech and writing to match the vocabulary and the likely knowledge reserves of our audience is too obvious to merit debate. But to set language complexity to some three-year-old maximum would be as stupid as deliberately baffling the majority of your audience with specialized political, medical or any other jargon.

It seems obvious. Spoken and written communication is to human community and necessary progress as food is to life. Progress and well-being are and will always be beholden to the quality and clarity of communication. And yet, we treat it as one of many options in school curricula. Why do most of us go through life with a competency in communication stalled at the level we exhibited on the day we left school? If a generation grows up with substandard nutrition, is that the grocery store’s fault? And who’s to blame if a person educated in an English language system can’t make head nor tails out of a T1 Short, government document? can’t enjoy (or even follow) the insights in Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, for instance?

And in the end, is it simpler words, shorter and simpler sentences that pave the road to broader understanding? I’m sure every editor of every government document—or every letter, poem, novel, essay, column, meeting minutes, speech, for that matter—should have in mind that literacy levels vary. But there are counterweights to this consideration. Language doesn’t only communicate basic information. It can also provide clarity and nuance to thought, rhythm and musicality in its art forms, it can light fires of joy or indignation at its most expressive.

Before simple language legislation: “The overuse of garish colours and kitsch destroyed the ambience of what used to be a charming restaurant.”

After simple language legislation: “That place sucks now!”

The legislation: It is hereby enacted that no government communication may contain words of more than six letters or two syllables, and that no sentence may contain more than ten words. Abbreviations in order to circumvent the number-of-letters directive are not to be tolerated. (Simple language version of this directive: Keep it simple, stupid. {KISS})