Holidays

The Mystery Of My Favorite Christmas Song

/ animar64 / 4 Comments

Holidailies 2015

The Mystery Of

My Favorite Christmas Song

I love Christmas songs- I pull out the music on Thanksgiving and I’ve got it going on until Christmas Night

Christmas movies are great, but the music?

That’s the most important part of the festivities- I can do without the the tree, but I must have the tunes.

carol1

When I was a child I only learned part of a song that I say on every single holiday that came up, though I rattled it off more during Christmas.

Nobody in my family knew where I learned it and why I thought it was a holiday song- so it was an earworm.

Worse yet, I only knew one line and I would sing that one line over and over and the words weren’t even in English.

I’d get grilled about where I heard it, I guess the reasoning was if they knew the song title and the rest of the lyrics the mystery would be solved and it wouldn’t make everyone crazy when I sang :

Caput apri defero
Reddens laudes Domino

So it was years and years later when I was at a friend’s house and up comes THE SONG on their CD player that I tortured everyone with at Christmas, Birthdays, Funerals and Dinner parties.

It was a real song.

The mystery remains though, where I heard it.

It’s a nice mystery, a Christmas mystery and those kinds of mysteries are fun when you just let them be.

So I don’t put too much thought into solving the question.

Now that I know the entire song I like to sing it with as much joy and gusto as I can. If I’m not feeling it when I start, I always end up getting caught in the moment and I feel it  to my bones once I get going…

And here it is:

Boar’s Head ( Lyrics )

The boar’s head in hand bring I, (Or: The boar’s head in hand bear I,)
Bedeck’d with bays and rosemary.
And I pray you, my masters, be merry (Or: And I pray you, my masters, merry be)
Quod estes in convivio (Translation: As many as are in the feast)

CHORUS
Caput apri defero (Translation: The boar’s head I offer)
Reddens laudes Domino (Translation: Giving praises to the Lord)

The boar’s head, as I understand,
Is the rarest dish in all this land,
Which thus bedeck’d with a gay garland
Let us servire cantico. (Translation: Let us serve with a song)

CHORUS

Our steward hath provided this
In honour of the King of Bliss;
Which on this day to be served is
In Reginensi atrio. (Translation: In the hall of Queen’s [College, Oxford])

The Boar’s Head Carol is a macaronic 15th century English Christmas carol that describes the ancient tradition of sacrificing a boar and presenting its head at a Yuletide feast. Of the several extant versions of the carol, the one most usually performed today is based on a version published in 1521 in Wynkyn de Worde’s Christmasse Carolles.

( Wikipedia)

There’s A Monster Under My Bed…YAY!

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:::Holidailies Prompt:::

Not a creature was stirring …

wolfman

When I was little I used to feel sorry for the monsters in horror  movies.

If people weren’t trying to shoot them, they were burning them or pushing them off of cliffs.

So every Christmas Eve I would sneak treats and food into my room, put them on a plate and shove it under my bed because duh, that’s where monsters hide.

monsterbed

We used to have this little dog Blackie and one Christmas my Mom found him in my room halfway under the bed and from the sounds of it he was busy chewing on something.

She pulled him out and his face was smeared with gravy and frosting. He was chewing on a roll of Lifesavers candies from my Lifesavers Christmas Storybook.

He got loose and dove back under the bed.

She pulled him out again and this time he was dragging the plate with him.

I think most of the turkey was gone, but there was still a lot of goodies on the goodie plate.

Too bad Mom took it, there was still enough on that plate for a couple of monsters and a dog.

savers

My Dad saw my Mom carrying the goodie plate to the garbage bin under the sink and he asked, ” What the hell was that mess.”

My Mom told him where she found it.

I was right behind her giving her the evil eye the entire time.

” Are you crazy?” He asked my six year old self ” what did you do that for?”

I glared at him too and stomped off.

They wouldn’t understand I thought. But had I told them I was leaving food for the Wolfman and the Mummy they probably would have understood.

This is why:

mummy1

One Christmas I saw my Mom in the kitchen cutting up Turkey and Ham that she had just taken off of the serving platter. She cut it up and mixed in with our dog’s regular dried food.

When I saw her doing that I was surprised.

She wasn’t a pet person for the most part.

I asked her outright why was she giving the dog so much turkey and ham and she said, ” Because it’s their Christmas too.”

We’ve had several dogs over the years and she still does that.

Now days I’m willing to I will bet  the Wolfman would have benefitted from her generosity too.

Apparently this dog named Moose, who played the wolf that bites Lawrence Talbot, totally became buddies with Lon Chaney Jr. on the set of The Wolf Man and followed him around wherever he went.

Apparently this dog named Moose, who played the wolf that bites Lawrence Talbot, totally became buddies with Lon Chaney Jr. on the set of The Wolf Man and followed him around wherever he went.

So now I’m 51, I still love my Monsters and at Christmas I have this little plate of treats that I will set up on a high shelf where the dog can’t get it.

I’m a little disappointed when the treats are there the next day, because I was sure, I was positive that the creatures were stirring in my house.

Maybe next Christmas I think as I take the treats down from the shelf.

And then I say what I’ve been saying since I was five years old:

Maybe next year.

universal-monsters

Just Sign Here

/ animar64 / 1 Comment

:::HOLIDAILIES PROMPT:::

New Year’s Resolutions.

I make New Year’s Resolutions every year-only two.

One is to have more fun then I did the year before:

funp

That’s an easy one, as I get older it’s easier to have fun.

 I’m not as concerned about trivial things like how big my butt is or what I look like when I cry or about being right about anything.

Do you know what a carbon footprint is? It’s basically the damage you do to the environment and the idea is not to leave any footprint behind.

I intend to leave behind a trail of fun that will scorch a trail across the face of the Earth.

Enviros will hate me until the day the Sun turns into a Red Giant and burns the Earth to a crisp for what I did to the Earth.

However, on that day the  Earth will melt and then get fried. At that point in time any of the stupid things I did for a laugh won’t matter so…

What the Hell.

friedearth3

My second Resolution is to Write more.

 I clear that one every year because I’m afraid of going Robert Johnson in desperation

robert j

Legend says Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads to achieve success.

In those  Deals you get screwed, so Johnson got famous…after he died.

I know, what a burn right?

By the way, I don’t believe that legend at all. Johnson was a great musician and giving the Devil credit for his talent is like saying Aliens built the pyramids.

My point- and I do have one, is that writing means so much to me that I’m afraid if I don’t work at it and become the writer I’ve wanted to be since I was 9 years old I could get a little desperate and end up at the Crossroads myself.

devilgirl

There they are in all their glory

 My New Year’s

 Resolutions.

tada

I know, I know.

New Year’s Resolutions get a bad rap because we promise to do things at the beginning of the New Year and most of the time it doesn’t work out.

The thing of it is, when we don’t follow through on those promises doesn’t matter. Who remembers what you said on one night in a roomful of other people who are all talking about themselves?

That’s right.

So I’m all for adding the fear factor into the deal.

If you’re serious maybe you should up the stakes, sign on the dotted line and strike a bargain.

It’s an option- so legend says.

Or you could keep  your word to yourself.

Choose one.

And have a Happy New Year.

faust

Dear Holiday Buzzzzz Killerz

/ animar64 / 4 Comments

Straight up, I want to make it clear the ‘WAR ON CHRISTMAS’ is a bunch of hooey.

But there is an attitude out there that needs to be called out and I’m here to  do it:

 I would dearly appreciate if those among us who have appointed themselves the “Keepers of The Calendars” would just step back and let people enjoy the holiday in whichever way the Spirit moves them.

If people want to put up their Christmas Trees on Thanksgiving, STFU and let them put up their tree and keep your bony fingers OUT from under their noses.

If they want to Deck the Halls before December 1st how’s about YOU just letting them make things a little more cheerful for themselves and THEIR friends and family without YOU shooting your mouth off and ruining their fun?

In case you haven’t noticed- times are hard people have a lot to be sad about for different reasons, especially at this time of the year. So if they’ve found a way to celebrate would you FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS THAT SPARKLE LET THEM.

And before you go on a screed about when people should go shopping and why they’re working on YOUR HOLIDAY SCHEDULE  may I suggest you take a look at their bank accounts or ask then what’s going on in their lives before you slam ” shaming posts” all over social media about their bad behavior.

Some of you would make Scrooge blush and Dickens would probably sit there with his pen in hand and his brain would short-circuit because how do you capture a mean spirited Holiday shamer in ink? Hell. You’d have Stephen King and Clive Barker in tears and NOT in a good way.

So dammit, read a Christmas Carol, watch the movie the cartoon whatever- but I think that  Scrooge is alive and well in your heart and I’m pretty sure he’d rather NOT be.

Even Scrooge learned to have fun during the holidays-

Word.

amm

scrooge