Grandpa Is a Weary Christmas Enthusiast

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial page staff
published by the StarTribune
December 14, 1969


   ALL MY long life I've been gung ho on Christmas and still must be numbered among the day's staunch supporters. But ardor has cooled to the point where I catch myself wondering why everybody scurries around so at this time of year, buys with such abandon, and never allows sufficient time for stringing the lights or whipping up the eggnog. Everything is done under pressure.
   No lights yet twinkle in front of my residence and I shudder at the effort required to establish the setting. For years we have draped blue lights on a Colorado spruce and strung yellow, green and red bulbs along the porch windows.

   I ONCE was revved up for this chore by the spirit of the season, but no more. This goes particularly for the spruce. Back when it was six or seven feet tall it posed no challenge. Now a 14-footer, it's not only a challenge but a threat. A ladder must be used and my meager aptitude for ladders is cancelled out when snow is on the ground and overshoes on the feet.

I MAY LEAVE the decorating job to the weather. It has done admirably for most of the month, and the snow on the branches provides a natural look that blue lights do not. Anyway, the bulbs are stolen as often as not and why risk a broken neck to gladden the hearts of thieves?
   My plaint about Christmas, I confess focuses on the grinding effort it demands. I am physically out of tune with the season.
   The Christmas card custom drives me to the brink of madness, which is a shameful admission. The attitude saves postage but does violence to the love, joy and fellowship the holiday engenders.

   CHRISTMAS cards have been blown out of proportion by those having a vested interest in their production and sale. You are a cad if you don't send cards to everyone with whom you have a nodding acquaintance. A cheery "Merry Christmas" to those you see regularly is not enough. You must send a card. I emphatically disagree-- but will spend hours, nevertheless, addressing cards, licking stamps and penning little messages to all and sundry.

   MY grandchildren--and most children-- simply dote on Christmas. Why shouldn't they? The abundance that awaits them is the stuff of avaricious dreams. They receive so many gifts that each one loses identity and blends into a glittering and confusing amalgam-- bicycles, tricycles, scooters, walkie-talkies, books, dolls, doll houses, radios, cameras, record players, construction kits and tools-- an all but limitless flood.

   WHEN GRANDPA was a kid he considered Christmas breathlessly rewarding if he got candy, nuts, an apple and an orange in his stocking, an Uncle Remus book, a necktie and a flashlight. He also got some time to reflect on the meaning of Christmas.
   But those days are gone. The journey to Bethlehem and the divine birth no longer are the big story. The hucksters have taken Christ out of Christmas and made Santa Claus the top man; the preachers can't compete with Madison Avenue and anyone who can spare a dollar for a gift might as well forget it. In today's world, a dollar is peanuts. Christmas comes much higher.


Copyright 2018 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.

Music (?) Has Turned to Noise

By CHARLES M. GUTHRIE
of the editorial/opinion page staff
published by the StarTribune
June 19, 1966


   WE'VE BEEN warned by the World Health Organization that it's time to worry about something besides air and water pollution. Mental pollution is an even more pressing concern.
   Mental pollution, says a WHO report, is associated with urban living and is caused by noise--honking horns, screaming jets, blatting radio and TV sets, loudspeakers, jackhammers, and the guy in the next apartment hanging pictures.
   Another cause of mental pollution is crowding. Dr. Arie Querido, president of the National Federation for Mental Health of The Netherlands, says that when too many people are massed in too little space, acts of violence occur and there also is a drop in the birth rate.

   HOWEVER, it is the debilitating effects of noise--a type of noise generated by youth--with which we deal here, noise from which there is no easy escape unless your house is big as a livery barn and you can isolate yourself from the racket.

Jimmy Smith running amuck

   Today's teenager seems unable to tolerate quiet. He is a different and mysterious breed. A phonograph is as important as his right arm. Far from being distracted by records or radio, he cannot study without their discipline, particularly if the music is rock 'n' roll or some long-haired folksinger is muttering in his whiskers or a jazz organist is running amuck.
   That celebrated folk rocker, composer and balladeer, Bob Dylan, no doubt pays his bills on time and is good to friends and relatives, but he is my sworn enemy. The author of a recent magazine piece was charitable enough to call him a poet, which I dispute. Poetry should make a scintilla of sense but I doubt if I could detect any in Dylan's even if I could understand him. His flat, blurred and weary monotone makes one wonder if he is trying to sing and simultaneously eat hash.
   I agree with Allen Tate, poet and professor of English at the University of Minnesota. Tate says that Dylan and others like him "flatter people who want to believe that, without knowledge and discipline, they may paint pictures, make sculptures, and write music or poetry."

   THE NORMAL ADULT, on hearing for the first time one of the new breed's instrumental numbers, swears that the needle is stuck, so persistently are identical cacophonies repeated. I used to hear better than this at charivaris.
   "I define nothing," Dylan is quoted as saying, "not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be."
   This I can believe--and Tate's judgment seems confirmed. Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby say that today's composers aren't writing songs fit to sing. The latter declares that had he come on the scene with only today's rock 'n' roll tunes to choose from, he'd have abandoned singing and been a lawyer.
   I have hopes that melody will return, but the quiet of yesterday probably won't. We are engulfed by cars,  people, television and radio, and there's no hint that the kids will turn the volume knobs down.
   My father used to make derogatory cracks about Ada Jones and Billy Murray, singing stars of the Victrola era. And when "Yes, We Have No Bananas" was a hit, he sighed and shook his head. But the Beatles and the Rolling Stones would have been too much. They'd have shortened his life by 10 years.

 Copyright 2018 StarTribune. Republished here with the permission of the StarTribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the StarTribune.