Christmas 2011

Originally posted 12/20/2011; updated 12/24 to include the closing video portion of It's A Wonderful Life, Frank Capra's 1946 best Christmas movie ever.

Has Doug Dawg become a religious person in his aging years? Maybe ... I once was, and maybe still am, and/or may yet come to be ... the position continues to perplex me as to where I stand in the religious cycle of things to this date.

But, if one sets aside the commercial aspects of Christmas and the politically correct names of the season, one winds up with only one thing — Christmas, that being the world calendar's date (even if historically incorrect) for the birth of Jesus the Christ Child.

Literally, "Christmas" is a truncated form of "Christ Mass," a decidedly religious date on Christian and civil calendars for the birth of the Christ Child. While you probably won't find "Christ Mass" mentioned on religious calendars on many church calendars in Oklahoma (perhaps other than Catholic, Orthodox, and Episcopalian), that's what the conjoined word "Christmas" means ... the Mass (aka Eucharist or Holy Communion) associated with the birth of Jesus.

Listen, watch, and enjoy the sweet haunting sounds of Enya ... O Come O Come Emmanuel. Click the full screen icon at the lower right for full screen or click the YouTube icon for the original size.


As beautiful as the master painters' classic works of art are for this occasion, in this video I've avoided those images, favoring instead the less deified and simpler human images which reflect better upon the humility, humanity, and intimacy associated with the birth of the infant Jesus, the Christ Child.

Here's more Christmas music for you to enjoy.

Bob Seger. I'll start with Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band which performed on December 15 in the Chesapeake Energy Arena to a wholly grateful crowd. A fine review of the performance appeared in the December 16 Oklahoman. Credit the photos below to The Oklahoman.


Below, two videos showcase Seger's rendition of The Little Drummer Boy, a tune originally written by Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1942 as "Carol of the Drum." The left video is a November 17, 2011, performance by Seger in his 2011 tour in Louisville, Kentucky, about a month before his Oklahoma City performance; the right video was done much earlier when Seger's hair was still brown, with background video from the popular "Little Drummer Boy" animation. Click the full screen icon at the lower right corner of each video for a full screen display, or watch them in their original size by clicking the YouTube icon.


Yusuf Islam. "Who's that," you say? That would be the person you know as Cat Stevens. Born in England as Steven Demetre Georgiou in 1948, in his prominent professional carrier he was known as Cat Stevens until he converted to Islam in 1977 ... he assumed his new name in 1979. Now, fairly elusive, his "Morning Is Broken" remains associated with Christmas and also, perhaps, presents the Christian world's present greatest challenge to acceptance of someone outside their Christian sphere ... shall we accept Yusuf Islam, a Muslim, whether he accepts US or not? What a Christian might ask is, "What would the Christ Child Jesus have done?"


I'd originally intended to post a few more tunes, but, I instead changed my mind to conclude that nothing better could end this Christmas 2011 post than to include a video of the closing sequence of the 1946 Frank Capra movie, It's a Wonderful Life staring James Stewart and Donna Reed, in my mind the very best Christmas movie ever made. Thanks to FilmFTW1 for this video.


No, Potter never got his come-uppins, but that's really not what Christmas is about, is it? Enjoy, and Merry Christmas to you all!

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