A Hodgepodge Post Involving Chesterton, Reindeer, and an Unlikely Christmas Album

Merry Christmas, my dears! I'm cozied up on the couch with a blanket of snow outside my window and O Come All Ye Faithful emanating from the speakers of my laptop, and I hope your Christmastide is off to a lovely start.

I have three Christmasy things I would like to squeal to you about today. You may interpret this post in one of two ways: 1) it is my Christmas gift of recommendations to you, because all three of these things are, by my dubious judgment, fairly obscure and if I don't alert you to their delightful existence you might have to live life without them forever; or 2) it is me taking advantage of the sacred Christmas season to fangirl about 3 things that I won't have a chance to fangirl about for another twelvemonth. 

My three things are 1) a movie, 2) a Christmas album, and 3) the chapter of a book. 

THE MOVIE: 

PRANCER (1989)

This movie was my CHILDHOOD, guys, but almost nobody else seems to have ever heard of it.

It's about a motherless little girl named Jessie who, at Christmastime, finds a reindeer with a hurt leg wandering around the woods. Obviously it's one of Santa's reindeer, right? That's what you would think if you were an eight-year-old girl with an indomitable belief in Santa Claus. The only problem is, Jessie's dad isn't so keen on letting reindeer stay in their barn (they eat young trees, reindeer do, and consume a lot of oats, which aren't exactly cheap). So it has to be a secret. 

The magical realism in this movie is done SO WELL, guys. Everything that happens is...like...it could be explained away? You don't have to believe Prancer is really Santa's Prancer. You could chalk it all up to Jessie's big imagination and the syrupy sweetness she wreaks on a small town at Christmastime. But you don't really want to.

For instance: there's this scene in the beginning of the movie where there are these fake reindeer strung up over Main Street--Christmas decorations, you know; very believable for a small town in the 1980s. And as Jessie is naming the reindeer one by one the cord snaps and one of the reindeer falls down, almost causing a car wreck and lowkey traumatizing Jessie. The grownups are all "stupid piece of junk, we should've thrown these things away a long time ago." But of course in Jessie's head the thing that matters most is not the car that almost broke, but the reindeer that did break. Its falling haunts her nightmares. And there's a feeling that the destruction of the fake reindeer is somehow connected with the sudden appearance of a real reindeer in the woods. But just a feeling. The movie never comes out and SAYS the two events are connected. 

And you could say that's all a coincidence, just like it's a coincidence that there's a full moon this Christmas. 

It doesn't HAVE to mean anything. 

But at the very least it sets a very specific mood. (A mood that's enhanced by the snowy setting, the 1980s cars and clothes and farm life vibes, and the whimsical-but-also-kind-of-heartbreaking score.)

It's such a SUBTLE movie. There are so many things that are well-established without being beat over your head with clunky dialogue--like the fact that Jessie's mother is dead. No one actually talks about what happened to Jessie's mother at length, you just know that she died and that everyone is still grieving. 

Jessie herself is one of the most believable little girls I've ever seen in cinema. She uses big words and tries to be adult about things but at the same time she's so realistically little. She's holding onto her belief in Santa Claus with all her might, partly because she's a naturally imaginative little girl who values wonder, and partly because she's lost her mother. Growing up and coming to a mature understanding of Santa Claus is painful enough for any kid of Jessie's temperament, I think...but Jessie's grief complicates things even more. She associates Santa Claus with God and Heaven, for one thing. For another, it's understood that her mother is the one who told her about Santa, so to deny him would be like denying her. 

There's this one part where Jessie's dad says, "Look, reindeer don't fly! I hate to be the one to tell you that, but they don't." 

You see the subtlety? He never says "your mom told you a fairy tale and never got the chance to un-tell it"...but that IS what he's saying. It's what he's dealing with as a single parent.

And speaking of Jessie's dad--Sam Elliott's performance in this movie is simply masterful. When I was a little kid I always thought he was a total grump, but coming back to the movie as an adult I understand him as a character with many layers. Mainly he's just stressed out. Stressed out and grieving. Which is a combination to make anyone become a total grump, I think. 

There's also a ton of subtlety in the way side characters are handled. I'm particularly intrigued by the reclusive old lady (Cloris Leachman) Jessie does chores for at one point. She's at once a trope and a unique character--reclusive, screams at kids to stay out of her yard, obsessed with her roses, apparently a hoarder, has lots of musical stuff laying around her house, owns at least one cat. Once upon a time she decorated her house for Christmas so beautifully that people would come for miles around to see it. And now she doesn't decorate for Christmas at all anymore. 

And the movie never explains why. It's content to paint us that much of a portrait and then let us imagine what lies behind it. 

I guess you could say that's unsatisfactory, that it's leaving loose threads. 

But I appreciate it. 

Anyway.

Wow I've talked a lot about this movie. I'd better move on.

THE CHRISTMAS ALBUM:

THE 4 SEASONS' CHRISTMAS ALBUM

You may or may not know Frankie Valli and the Four Season.

If you do, then you may or may not adore Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

No judgment if you don't. I disdained Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons for a long time after I'd discovered them. And if you're in a place where you disdain Frankie Valli, then this album probably isn't for you. It may even strike you as blasphemous.

I mean, you would EXPECT Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons to do a rendition of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Specifically, this rendition. (The "don't cry ba-a-by" sounds like it was taken straight from "Sherry." Which latter song is kind of beautiful in its own way, but is one of the primary reasons I disdained the Four Seasons for months if not years.)

You would NOT expect Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons to do "What Child is This," much less to do it so well. 

At least, I think they do it well.

And actually, the more I think about it, the less I think I should be surprised that they do it well, because there's something childlike and wholesome and wonderstruck about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons at their best, even in their regular old secular romantic pop songs like "Stay" and "Peanuts." And that childlike, wholesome, wonderstruck sentiment is exactly what we should feel before the manger at Christmas. 

Also I just appreciate the instruments used in this album. The whole sound is very regal and joyous and classic, like it could jive with a snowy drive to midnight Mass or a family read-aloud of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I mean just listen to the "Joy to the World Medley." It sounds like the Four Seasons, but also it just sounds like Christmas. (Specifically, listen to "Away in a Manger" which starts at about 1:10 in the medley. It's not the traditional tune but it keeps the traditional feeling. Enhances the traditional feeling, I think--you have to listen to the words in a new way instead of just tuning it out as familiar.)

I just REALLY DIG THIS ALBUM, guys. Go listen to it. 

THE CHRISTMAS CHAPTER OF A BOOK:

"THE GOD IN THE CAVE," FROM THE EVERLASTING MAN, BY G. K. CHESTERTON

The Everlasting Man is a Christmasy book in my head, and I used to think that was mostly because I received it as a Christmas present and read it the first time by the lights of the Christmas tree.

BUT.

I've come to the conclusion that it's ALSO because the whole beautiful book turns on the crux of Christmas. 

Because this is Chesterton's take on human history--how human efforts to make the world a place worth living in came to naught in spite of all their excellence, and it was at that moment that God stepped in and saved the whole dear universe and made it warm and real again. 

The first half of the book is "On the Creature Called Man." The second half of the book is "On the Man Called Christ." And obviously the place at which those two things meet is in the cave at Bethlehem. 

Guys, I cannot recommend this 20 pages or so of Chesterton highly enough. It would be ideal, of course, to read the whole book. But I think that, in future years, when I don't have time to read the book as a whole I will still make a point of reading just this one chapter. 

You can find the whole book on Project Gutenberg here. 

I shall quote the first paragraph of the chapter in question for your perusal:

"This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. There is even a shadow of such a fancy in the fact that animals were again present; for it was a cave used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem; who still drive their cattle into such holes and caverns at night. It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces; and it was here beneath the very feet of the passersby, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born. But in that second creation there was indeed something symbolical in the roots of the primeval rock or the horns of the prehistoric herd. God also was a Cave-Man, and had also traced strange shapes of creatures, curiously coloured, upon the wall of the world; but the pictures that he made had come to life."

It's beautiful, I tell you. Chesterton talks about mythology and philosophy and even demonic forces in the world at large, and how the birth of Christ is the definitive and final answer to all three. But don't take it from me. Go read it for yourself.

Well my dears, that is all I have for you this fine Christmas day. (Hush. It is Christmas Day. We are in the Octave of Christmas, and that makes it a Christmas day even if "What Child is This" can't be heard on most radio stations anymore.) I hope your Christmas has been lovely so far! 

Are you familiar with any of these things? Do you like Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons? Reindeer? The Everlasting Man? If you are a writer, how would your characters be spending their Christmas? (One of my initial ideas for a Christmas-themed post was to make that last question into a tag, so I should dearly dearly like to know your answers. One thing I know for sure about MY characters' Christmas is that if Dick ever stumbled across The 4 Seasons' Christmas Album, he would cry.)