This is my weekly column for the Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.
Jump back, recession; here comes Santa
By Aaron J. BrownThere’s a moment after Thanksgiving dinner when the pants feel tighter, the couch calls like an upholstered siren, and you realize that this is your reality for the next month at least. This is the holiday season, you see, and while not everyone in America recognizes the same holidays, we do retain our God-given right to get fat and broke really fast.
It’s been a tough year for many. Nevertheless, if anything in this world is recession proof it’s the passage of time. Christmas will come just as assuredly as Thanksgiving and Fourth of July came before. While the middling economic situation we’re in might diminish holiday gift shopping, I know what I’ve seen. The Snuggie ™ , a warm fuzzy garment/blanket hybrid that resembles a cult uniform, is available at a prominent local box store. As long as that’s the case I’m going to bet that most folks aren’t starving. At least, for food. Human affection remains another matter.
This week a solemn annual ceremony was performed. Across the cities of the Iron Range, out into the tameless countryside, along the major highways rose hundreds of bulbous, white sentries. An army of inflatable Frosty the Snowman replicas, each larger and more windswept that the last, snapped to attention in yards of all sizes and socioeconomic landscaping design. These inflated snowmen defy the fact that there is no snow on the ground. The green grass taunts the season, but here we know the snowmen, even if false and plastic, will win. White on green today will become white on white all too soon.
The repetitive lawn decorations notwithstanding, this season brings reckoning. Every year I decorate my house with lights. Or, so I say. In truth I didn’t put up a single string of lights last year. I remember the first year I strung up lights on my own, just about a decade ago when I illuminated a tree in front of our house before my new wife returned home from work. Since then we’ve had three children, and like all children they are irrational beings who do not facilitate the decoration of one’s home with elaborate electrical adornment. They do, however, light up the house in their own rowdy way, a method invisible to the outside world. Not to worry, we live in the country, anyway. Who’s going to see it but us?
Hibbing alumnus Bob Dylan recently released his first full length Christmas album, “Christmas is in the Heart.” For a lot of Iron Rangers that’s the sort of Bob Dylan news that passes without much notice. For instance one could say, “Hey, did you hear that Bob Dylan is a centaur now?” Another could reply, “Geez, he’s always up to something, isn’t he?” But for me and a lot of other fans, a Christmas album initially seemed a bridge too far, even for Dylan – kind of like a winter invasion of Russia. (Ask Napoleon).
To my pleasant surprise the Dylan album is actually pretty good; weird as heck, but a treat for fans of Dylan and/or ironic musical twists. His new music video “Must Be Santa Claus” is what sold me initially. Here’s Bob Dylan, singer/songwriter of some note, performing a lighthearted song about Santa Claus with accordion accompaniment. He sings and sings, and then some kind of strange party fight breaks out in the video, something that could have come from 1939 as easily as it could have come from 2009. There’s Dylan for you. Why follow the trends of today when you could dip back into a previous century?
There’s something about Dylan’s unusual Christmas album that seems apropos for the upcoming holiday season. This year is not typical, it is, however, the year we have, and there is joy to be found within.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Contact him or read more at his blog MinnesotaBrown.com. His recent book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” explores the humor, history and potential of northern Minnesota.
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