(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Marks and Sparks has got their Christmas decorations up. Let's take a moment to ponder the full horror of that, shall we?

Sometimes I hate the modern world so very, very much. The fact that I know perfectly well that, being what I am, I'd have hated any given century even more is very little consolation!

In other news, it is Reformation Day/ commemoration of Martin Luther. I've always really liked Luther, despite everything, and not merely for his prose style (though that helps). So have a gratuitous Luther quotation:

"If I knew that the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree."

The mixture of gloomily staring into the darkness and yet refusing to stop hoping is, somehow, very Luther.

Also: relating to that other holiday taking place today - I've just noticed that there is a row of carved pumpkins on the MCR piano. Criminally, I forgot my camera, but the one with the college crest (sort of - they haven't managed to difference it properly) is particularly impressive.

Comments

[ellid.livejournal.com]

It's worse here in the colonies. J.C. Penney has had its Christmas shope open for nearly a month.

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh dear. How do you stand it? I'd go mad, and I like Christmas.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether Nevil Shute was thinking of that Luther quotation when he wrote On the Beach...

[tree_and_leaf]

I don't know - I haven't read it - but the quotation always reminds me of Gerald Wimsey angsting over how the family can't last, and then planting oaks.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I can never decide whether the oak trees are hope, desparation, or emotional blackmail!

[tree_and_leaf]

All of the above? Though I don't think the blackmail element is conscious - it's too subtle for Gerald.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I'd always taken it as hope.

[el-staplador.livejournal.com]

*nods* - it's a post-apocalyptic work, the premise being that the northern hemisphere has wiped itself out with nuclear bombs, and the radiation is working its way down south. The quotation reminded me immediately of the couple in the book who are putting a mammoth effort into their garden despite the fact that they know they won't survive to see the fruits.

[tree_and_leaf]

Ah - yes, that does sound very comparable!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten about the garden - it is clearly too long since I have read it.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

On the Beach is one of my least favourite books by Nevis Shute. It was rather too negative for my liking. I wasn't keen on A Town Like Alice either, though I can't put my finger on why.

I much preferred The Trustee from the Toolroom, or Round the Bend, or In the Wet; though the latter is strange, probably the closest that Shute got to fantasy or SF.

[sangerin.livejournal.com]

("unser" Gott, nicht "under". Aber naturlich weisst du dass. :-) )

[tree_and_leaf]

Wissen tu ich schon - aber richtig tippen? Dass wäre eine viel zu größe Herausforderung ;)

[sangerin.livejournal.com]

Hee! :-)

[tree_and_leaf]

What on earth is your icon from?

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Kommissar Rex?

[sangerin.livejournal.com]

"Kommissar Rex" - aka Inspector Rex, an (old) Austrian show that we get out here and that has a cult following in Australia. It's cheesy as all get out and my parents and I love it to death.

[tree_and_leaf]

Ah, I did wonder - but I don't think we ever had that here...

[rivrea.livejournal.com]

Be grateful for small blessings. It's a show with an adorable superdog, and it's exactly as cheesy as that description sounds -- like way override Cheddar festering in a dorm refrigerator...

[grondfic.livejournal.com]

Orpington Christmas Shop has been open a while. Also a very exclusive Gents' Outfitters in The Strand suddenly 'arrived' this week, with highly dignified black trees and matching monochrome (maybe they're conflating Xmas with Samhain and targeting the Well-Dressed Vampire - like we get many of THEM down the Strand ...??!).

In Other News - our dept Xmas shindig is booked for Simpsons in the Strand this year. I shall of course take a taxi, and make sure to look out for highly amateur sleuths peering over newspapers from adjacent tables.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Less than eight weeks to Christmas ...

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Oh, shut up. *grin* I'll be glad when it's all over and the days start getting longer again.

[tree_and_leaf]

Tcha. That's longer than the school holidays!

[tree_and_leaf]

(maybe they're conflating Xmas with Samhain and targeting the Well-Dressed Vampire - like we get many of THEM down the Strand ...??!).

Mm... well, I think it's nice that they're being inclusive. Or something.

I shall of course take a taxi, and make sure to look out for highly amateur sleuths peering over newspapers from adjacent tables.

Do have fun!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

In Other News - our dept Xmas shindig is booked for Simpsons in the Strand this year. I shall of course take a taxi, and make sure to look out for highly amateur sleuths peering over newspapers from adjacent tables.

Envies. I trust you will wear a monocle?

[grondfic.livejournal.com]

I might run to an onyx scarab ...

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

For a while in Newcastle, Christmas decorations went up at the end of September; and when I worked for the Evening Chronicle and The Journal there one summer, I learned that advertising had had the decorations up since the end of May, as that's when they started selling advertising for the winter months and the staff had to be put into the mood...

...and the Royal Oak have an impressive array of pumpkins (they are serving a seasonal beer for Hallowe'en too, which is rather nice) though it was pointed out to me by calliope85 that they had used stencils, which spoils the effect slightly.

[tree_and_leaf]

I'm very rarely in the Royal Oak - too far away from my usual haunts - but it has always seemed like a good pub when I've been there.

[dolabellae.livejournal.com]

Plus it is suddenly impossible to find anything in my local supermarket as everything has been shuffled around to make way for mince pies, wrapping paper, and gift packs of liqueur. Spent ten minutes looking for porridge the other day. Humph.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is the sort of stuff that ruins what should be a good and cheerful time of year. In my view, for many years now, Christmas has been converted into a celebration of the marketing man: commercialisation has taken over celebration.

[tree_and_leaf]

Awful, isn't it? I had to buy a travel adapter, and they didn't have them in Boots because of making room for Christmas stuff, forsooth...

[dameboudicca.livejournal.com]

Even in my remote part of the world the Christmas stuff has begun to pop up. Including the food aspect of it... Not to mention that the news-papers have had their ads for the "Christmas tables" (a very Swedish thing, you gather a group, often from work, and go to a restaurant and eat Christmasy food - which in the beginning was something you ate on Christmas, logically enough, but now begins in November so that every possibly constellation of people who knows each other can go off to eat it together) in September!

[tree_and_leaf]

That's a fascinating tradition - but September does seem a bit early!

[dameboudicca.livejournal.com]

It gets you a bit out of the mood...

Only sometimes?

[wemyss.livejournal.com]

And you in the home of lost causes.

Re: Only sometimes?

[tree_and_leaf]

Well, I have to admit that I quite like the internet and the NHS and being able to vote, and so on...

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

Don't get me started on the subject of early decorations. Let's just say that I'm trailing into a muddy field on Dec 24 to buy a tree. You'd be amazed what you can fit into a Skod a Fabia.

Oh and it mught be corny but "Wer liebt nicht Weib Wein und Gesang, bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang." He wasn't exactly puritanical was he?

[estelyn-strider.livejournal.com]

Luther also said, "In der Woche zwier schadet weder ihm noch ihr". Nope, I will not translate; you must be *this* big - umm, proficient in German - to understand.

Though I'm American-born, I do not approve of imported holidays here in Germany; the kids already dress up and collect treats at Carneval in February. Once a year is enough - who needs Halloween?!

[tree_and_leaf]

*g*

Thank you for that, Martin. (Given the late mediaeval church's rules about when that sort of thing was allowed, that's quite a change in attitude!)

[tree_and_leaf]

Luther was brilliant, despite his occasionally slightly dotty moments. He liked going to the pub and loved music, which makes him my sort of theologian.

And you have to admire someone who managed, despite being prone to severe bouts of what seems to have been severe clinical depression, to have such a generally life-affirming attitude.

... we don't put our tree up till the 24th at home, though we generally get it a bit beforehand.

[owl]

It's that never-quite-despairing thing, isn't it, with Luther. It's sort of reassuring.