Childermas

It is still Christmas until January 5th, so this is a Christmas post. Today is Childermas, which commemorates the “Massacre of the Innocents” described in Matthew 2:16–18. Chronologically speaking, it might make more sense to have this commemoration after Epiphany, which is January 6th, but so it goes.

Anyway, in honor of this somber day, I have a picture of myself with Magical Girl Number 2. Recently, we visited The One, an annual event in Enid, Oklahoma, which boasts of featuring the largest fresh-cut Christmas tree in the world. It seems a shame to cut such a stately tree for this purpose, but maybe it gets used for firewood afterward. It certainly is impressive to look at.

Posing with Magical Girl #2 in front of The One.
Posing with Magical Girl #2 in front of The One. The rest of my friends are laughing too, just off-screen.

Merry Christmas

It is okay to say merry Christmas still because Christmas is twelve days, not one.

The blog has fallen into neglect (again) since I’ve spent so much of my time on the publication and promotion of Rags and Muffin, a novel I strongly recommend you consider purchasing for your post-Christmas relaxation reading. But I’m now looking to get back into my regular projects since the promotion is, for good or ill, now largely on autopilot. I am working on a planetary romance, but I think I may be able to crank out a collection of Rags and Muffin short stories before I’m done with that one. Stay tuned.

Christmas was a good time for our family. The magical girls and I traveled up to visit my parents, so the little magical girl had four grandparents to dote on her. She also got to meet her cousins for the first time. She’s a very little baby who recently started the stranger-anxiety phase, so I was worried about how that would go, but she warmed up to them with surprising ease. She adored her older cousin, who’s five, though she merely tolerated the younger one, who is about her age, and she occasionally cried when he touched her. She doesn’t like being touched by other babies.

My wife is currently planning the baby’s first birthday party with a Filipino enthusiasm for social gatherings. I worry that the baby is going to cry the whole time with so many strange people visiting our house. Although she was unusually calm for the first several months of her life, she’s reached the point where every little thing that happens to her is high drama. So the birthday is coming at an innoportune time in her emotional development. But so it goes, I guess.

Merry Third Day of Christmas

Image by Yumikuamku.

Merry Second Day of Christmas

Movie Review: ‘Fatman’

Fatman, written and directed by Ian and Eshom Nelms. Mel Gibson, Walton Goggins, and Chance Hurstfield. Saban Films, . 100 minutes. Rated R.

As it develops, every genre slides steadily from idealism to cynicism to nihilism, and the genre of Christmas movies is no exception. Reveling in how mold-breaking it allegedly is, Fatman is, in fact, predictable and formulaic, though that doesn’t prevent some good performances from salvaging what is overall a lackluster film.

Competent but unspectacular direction, silly action sequences, a dull script, and duller set design mortally wound what might have been a quirkily fun movie featuring heartfelt deliveries from Mel Gibson, Marianne Jeanne-Baptiste, and a scenery-chewing Walton Goggins. The movie strains for serious commentary on the implications of Santa Claus’s role as a commercial mascot but fails to make any salient points. I wanted to like this movie because I thought it had a lot of promise, and I laughed several times while watching it, but I still walked away thinking about how much better it might have been.

Continue reading “Movie Review: ‘Fatman’”

Merry Christmas

I can only pop in for a moment. Today is the day the wife and I are celebrating Christmas since she has to work tomorrow. We spent much of the day making Christmas dinner. It was actually kind of nice, it being just the two of us, because we’re still newlyweds and we thought of this as a trial run at cooking a large meal. Not having guests meant it didn’t matter if we screwed up.

We made a ham with a bourbon molasses glaze, mashed potatoes, asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and a pavlova. This is my third experiment with hollandaise sauce … and the first time I’ve made one that came out well, which might tell you something about my cooking skills. On the whole, it was a success, so maybe when we are able to have guests over, we’ll be ready for prime time.

Merry Christmas

I have a movie review coming soon, but I’ve had trouble getting to it. I spent today doing several needful things around the house, including assembling the crib for the new baby.

My wife, who’s a nurse, got an emergency call into work, so after she left, I went ahead and prepared the ham we’re having tomorrow for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, she has to work on Christmas day, but she’s supposed to have tomorrow off, so we’re planning to have our Christmas celebration then. Of course, it’s just the three of us this year, but fortunately, we have a lot of fun together when it’s just the two of us.

Where I’m at, it’s well after nine now that I’m done with my tasks, so I intend to spend what time I have remaining on my manuscript, which has been time-consuming, but which is also nearing completion.

Part of the reason it’s time-consuming is that it’s increasingly obvious that my laptop is on its last legs. I’ve known that for years, but I’m probably not going to be able to put off replacing it much longer. It took about half an hour to get it to turn on without crashing so I could write this. Even so, one of my favorite shortcuts, Ctrl + Left Arrow, has mysteriously stopped working even though the left arrow key and the control key are clearly both operational … I might reboot again when I’m done writing this to see what happens.

Replacing this computer isn’t really in the budget right now, but even my wife has agreed that this machine is ridiculously slow and unreliable.

In any case, merry Christmas, and although I’ll have a review later, maybe on Christmas day, for now, enjoy this image of Christmasy magical girls.

An Account of a Visit from a Magical Girl

Featured image: “Mahou Shoujo Madoka☆Magica Magical Girl Madoka Magica #900086” by SubaruSumeragi.

I think it’s time to bring back this classic. Merry magical-girl Christmas to all!

’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the town,
Lots of girls were a-stirring, to beat monsters down.
So they stalked all the baddies that threatened mankind,
For to blast them with magic and kick their behinds.

They crouched in the dark by the chimneys with care,
Or slipped across rooftops—villains beware!
One might wear a kerchief, and one has a cap,
But they all got short skirts, what you think about that?

Then at City Hall, there arose such a clatter,
That Plum Fairy Lyssa soon checked out the matter.
A monster showed up with a roar and a flash,
So Lyssa transformed and got ready to bash!

When what to her wondering eyes should appear,
But a slavering, fanged, and bloodthirsty deer?
’Twas Rudolph! Whose terrible, powerful nose,
Had at last warped his mind with its horrid bright glow!

Our Lyssa, however, so eager to brawl,
Quick leapt like a gymnast atop of a wall.
“Stop there, evil monster!” she said with a scoff,
“You’ve attacked us on Christmas, and that ticks me off!”

The Moon Princess blest her with power and might,
That she might be quick to kick butt in a fight,
To halt evil crooks in the midst of a crime,
Or to battle vile creatures beyond space and time!

Now punch him, now bludgeon! Now blast him with pow’r!
And yet his eyes glowed with a menacing glow’r!
Now kick him, now stab him, now strangle and blitz ’im!
That deer is no match for this young doe-eyed vixen!

At last Rudolph gasped and lay dead at her feet,
As his bright ruby blood ran out into the street.
“I’ve vanquished the creature,” the Plum Fairy mused,
“But why then do I feel as if I still should lose?”

In leapt Marionette, the famed robot girl,
With her magical pencil, which she gave a twirl.
“Young Lyssa, my dear, you have fought well and brave,
But killed poor Rudolph, whom you know you should save.”

“Well, no one has once taught me any of that,”
Said Lyssa, perplexed. (On the ground she now spat.)
“To fight off the monsters that threaten our world,
Is the constant hard job of a magical girl!”

“We fight for mankind, that is certainly true,”
Said Marionette, whose cold fingers turned blue.
“But always remember that we serve the Light—
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a clean fight!”

Further Reflections on ‘Krampus’

On my interpretation of the ending of Krampus, a reader has given a thoughtful commentary that deserves to be quoted in full:

A Christmas Carol can be seen as an early post-Christian artifact, with firm roots in Christianity that late Victorians and early Edwardians were beginning to see, in the light of scientific materialism, as a mythology like any other. This idea of religion as a source of moral guidance, exhortation, and cultural identity is the reason, in my opinion, for the enduring appeal of Dickens’ tale for us today. We are all post-Christians now, [or] at least we swim in a sea of post-Christianity. If we are anti-spiritual, we tend to be children of de Sade, doing good or bad depending on how we feel, because nothing is true and everything is permitted. If we figure “there must be something out there”, we are usually children of Crowley, and we syncretize whatever myths and legends suit us so we can justify whatever we want to do. We can dream of heaven, and aspire to be angels by our own efforts, but our home is hell, really, and most of us make our peace with it sooner or later.

Krampus is clearly a post-Christian film, and eager to mine the riches of Western Christianity for entertainment. As our culture falls further and further from the idea that there can be such a thing as the truth, and a God who is merciful enough to guide us to it, my hope is for signs of Grace. Will God truly lead the blind on their journey, by paths unknown? In presenting a version of hell as a place of punishment for evil, even in jest, does even a trashy movie like Krampus serve the truth unwittingly?

I don’t want to trivialize the plight of atheists and modern pagans who have no malice, but are simply following the indications of intelligent people who have concluded that there is no God. In the face of a seemingly meaningless universe, is the basis of morality simply the skill and persuasiveness of one’s own meta-narrative? One of our foremost moralists is Oscar Wilde, who wrote one of the best post-Christian fables ever written—”The Selfish Giant.” He converted on his deathbed, but during his life, he could not gather the strength to fight past the prevailing materialism of his day. As our peers engage in the same struggle, it seems heartless to think that pop art cannot have some role in turning our thoughts to the eternal. Maybe Krampus can do that, in a way, while not pandering to “Hallmark” Christian sensibilities.

My Comments:

There is a lot to unpack there. However we approach these dense three paragraphs, I think he is correct that Krampus is a “post-Christian” film. As I argued in my last commentary upon it, Krampus is a deeply Christian character (hypothetical pre-Christian roots notwithstanding), but the film is careful to avoid mention of any specifically religious purpose to the holiday that celebrates the birth of Christ. The movie also deliberately detaches Krampus from the plainly ethical purpose that he previously served: His job, as with most of the companions of Saint Nicholas, was to whip or at least threaten naughty children. In the horror movie, however, his job is to mercilessly destroy anyone who loses some nebulous “Christmas spirit.”

Ironically, this revamped and secularized role for Krampus is more in keeping with the maudlin and commercialized notions of Christmas that the movie artfully skewers in its opening scenes than it is with the original purpose of the holiday. After the filmmakers mock Christmas for becoming crass and commercialized, they might have pointed out what Christmas is really about—and what role Krampus might play in it. But they didn’t have the guts for that, or maybe didn’t have the knowledge or insight, so the result is a schlock horror film with a few laughs and a few thrills but not much of a point.

As for the notion in the final sentences of the comment, that Krampus might turn our thoughts to the eternal, I will say that I found its image of the mouth of hell to be quite frightening—but I am also aware that I say that as a Christian. I similarly found the image of hell at the end of The Mummy Returns frightening. Someone of a different background and different viewpoint, however, might find these images of hell merely thrilling in a theme-park or horror-movie kind of way.

Yes, we can maybe dig some deep themes out of Krampus, but I think it is next to impossible if we don’t already have an understanding of the mythological character and the religious basis of the Christmas holiday. As it stands, the movie is mostly an undemanding and shallow thrill ride.

Interpreting the Ending of ‘Krampus’

A few days ago, I posted a review of that cult classic of Christmas horror, Krampus, an exploitation of the recently popular Austrian Advent bogeyman. As I said before, I think the movie is a missed opportunity, a chance to delve into some intriguing lore that instead sticks to the familiar conventions of B-grade horror movies.

The ending of the film, however, is wonderfully ambiguous, so much so that it has led to some online arguments. I refrained from discussing the ending in my review, but I’d like to do so now. I will give the customary spoiler warning, though I will add that nothing I’m about to describe will surprise you.

Continue reading “Interpreting the Ending of ‘Krampus’”