(Hat tip to Denise Doyen, in a comment at the Seven Impossible Things blog.)
There’s Got to Be a Morning After
Centuries after the Eastern Orthodox Church began celebrating the Epiphany, the Roman Catholic Church decided to start doing so too. But for some reason, the Western Church really latched on to this image of the Persian priests bringing gifts of frankincense, myrrh, and gold to the infant Jesus, guided from their homeland of Iran by a shining star. The Magi are mentioned only in Matthew’s Gospel and he never specified how many magi there were — just that there were three gifts. In 1857, the Reverend John Henry Hopkins Jr. wrote some lyrics for a seminary Christmas pageant, a song that begins: “We three kings of Orient are / Bearing gifts we traverse afar / Field and fountain, moor and mountain / Following yonder star.”
(The Writer’s Almanac, January 6, 2010)
The scene: a roadside on the outskirts of a small town in the Middle East. It is morning, lots of years ago. Three travelers sit beside a fire, waiting for a pot to boil, warming their hands, rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Their names are Balthasar, Melchior, and… uh… The Other Guy.
Balthasar: So… so that’s it, then?
‘Twas the Night Before Cthulhu…
Ryun Patterson of the Bookgasm site/blog (slogan: “reading material to get excited about”) has reviewed ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas as you’ve never seen it reviewed before. Excerpt:
Descriptions of human sacrifice and the power of blood magic are commonplace throughout history, but one — Clement Clarke Moore’s ‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS — takes place on the eve of a holiday that most consider a time of joy, happiness and generosity. This makes a poem that would be unsettling in any circumstances an intense, dark and enduring tale of supernatural horror.
Set on the eve of the eponymous Christian feast day, the book begins innocently enough, with a desperately poor family bedding down for the night in their rodent-infested hovel…
…Despite its age, ‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS is a sure favorite for fans of supernatural horror, but because of its intensity and subject matter, it’s a work best read safely away from the Yuletide season — it can inspire dreams that are far more unsettling than sugar plums.
Read it all here.
Placeholder Post: Defeating the Aliens
[Working today on tomorrow’s post — my contribution to tomorrow’s Halloween Blogapalooza blog party, hosted by travel writer Angela Nickerson.
In the meantime, I thought you might find this useful. For, y’know, when They land and we have to, like, fight our way out of impending intergalactic apocalypse and stuff. Dude, these people know.]
