WBEZ | christmas

Not feeling Christmas Eve? How about a movie?

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 15:35:00 -0600

Christmas celebrations are already in full swing at homes in and around Chicago. But not everybody marks the holiday. If you’re Jewish or Muslim or just prefer to skip it – there is another, time-honored way to enjoy the night before Christmas: head out to see a movie.

The two big, brand new releases are "Les Misérables," the film version of Victor Hugo's epic historic novel (which has undergone epic adaptations, for film, television and most famously Broadway), and "Django Unchained," the latest ultra-violence from Quentin Tarantino.

Christmas-time viewing is also a good opportunity to catch up any of the big films that might end up in the "best picture" category at the Academy Awards (which will be announced January 10th).

Adam Kempenaar co-hosts WBEZ’s Filmspotting. He called Stephen Spielberg's "Lincoln" "essential viewing, especially for the performance of Daniel Day Lewis." But he also recommends "Skyfall."

"I’m not a big Bond guy," Kempenaar said. "But that was one of my favorite Bond films, well, frankly ever."

Just don’t expect to see Kempenaar in the seat next to you. When I asked if he ever goes to the movies at Christmas he laughed and exclaimed "Never!" For Kempnaar the Christmas holiday is "not about watching movies, it’s about finally taking a break."

Happy holidays to you, wherever you end up this year!

Dear Santa: Please help Chicago sports teams this Christmas

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 06:00:00 -0600

Children are not the only ones hoping Santa Claus can bring them all the items on their wish-list. Sports teams have compiled a list that they hope the jolly old man may put under their Christmas tree. OK, maybe they don't have a list, but here is what I think they want — it’s not sugar plums and candy canes.

The Bears, and specifically Head Coach Lovie Smith, have a long list of wishes. A playoff berth is top on the list in big bold letters. Smith’s future here as the Bears head coach may be tied into a postseason appearance. Winning the last two games and loses by other teams may get them in the playoffs (lots of work for Santa). General Manager Phil Emery must have plenty of wishes, too. High on his list are numerous offensive linemen, a wide receiver and a sure-handed tight end. Basically he's dealing with the personal that former GM Jerry Angelo left for him.

It's not hard to figure out what the Cubs would love to get: wins — lots and lots of wins. It is probably on top of every Cubs fan's list, too. Team President Theo Epstein and General Manager Jed Hoyer have been filling out the roster with some free agents: Scott Baker, Scott Feldman and Japanese closer Kyuji Fujikawa. Face it: The Cubs are going to be a struggle this year maybe the next, so wins may be on the team’s wish list for a few holiday seasons. Cubs owner Tom Ricketts may have something bigger on his mind: a plan for renovations for Wrigley Field. Is it time for Mayor Rahm Emmanuel to stop being a Grinch and start getting down to business at Clark and Addison?

On the South side, the White Sox wish is for fans over two million strong to move the turnstile this year. It would be nice since attendance has been on a decline for the past few years. Last season the Sox were in first place in the AL Central most of the year, but were one of the worst teams in baseball in fan attendance. With reduced ticket pricing and other fan-friendly deals ($10 parking on Sundays) maybe the numbers will improve; they also have to be competitive again on the field. Winning the American League Central would be a real present.

It is not hard to figure out what the Bulls want to see under their Christmas tree: a full-strength and fully recovered Derrick Rose. That may be a tall order for Santa to handle. No one knows for sure when that will happen. So, maybe a trip to the All-Star game for Joakim Noah would be a nice gift. Fans can help Jolly St. Nick by stuffing the All-Star ballot box — put votes in for Luol Deng, too. Another wish would be acquiring another major star player to complement Rose’s return. Now that’s a big wish.

The Blackhawks and their fans have one wish: a season.

Santa’s magic has to extend at least another week to make a special News Year’s Day for the Northern Illinois Huskies. They want to upset the Florida State Seminoles in the Orange Bowl in Miami. On that same day, Northwestern University head coach Pat Fitzgerald would love to snap the Wildcats bowl losing streak at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville Florida (NU is facing Mississippi State).

Keeping the win column filled with victories is the hope of the Illini basketball team; they got a nice present when they hired John Groce to coach the team.

DePaul, Loyola, Northwestern and UIC (men’s and women’s teams) are all hoping they get wins on the hard court floor to fill their stockings (and maybe some front-line recruits).

It would be great if Santa gave Northwestern’s women’s lacrosse team another NCAA Championship and let the Chicago Sky finally compete in the WNBA playoffs.

Of course, there will be coal put in at least a couple of stockings…the NHL's and Lance Armstrong's.

Whatever you celebrate, may I wish each and every one of you a Happy holiday season! Hope those going through tough times will find comfort and may your hopes and dreams come true. I still believe!

Follow Cheryl on Twitter @CRayeStout and Facebook Cheryl Raye-Stout #AtTheGame.

The noble path: A Buddhist Christmas

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:00:00 -0600

Lately I’ve been doing a little reading and research in Buddhist literature and philosophy. At the core of Buddhist thought is the achievement of personal wisdom and the practice of ethical conduct.

Buddhism argues that the world is imperfect, that life is full of suffering and that human nature is flawed. Nevertheless, our goal as rational and spiritual creatures is to accept the imperfections of reality, overcome our limitations and try to create a self that is free from the false illusions of success and the deadening effects of fear, frustration, disappointment and depression.

My reading of this venerable tradition is that life is a journey of suffering and self-improvement. We must find a middle way between self-indulgence (hedonism) and excessive self-mortification (asceticism) to achieve contentment. The goal laid out by Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) is the achievement of the “Noble Eightfold Path.”

1. Right View

2. Right Intention

3. Right Speech

4. Right Action

5. Right Livelihood

6. Right Effort

7. Right Mindfulness

8. Right Concentration

At its core the “Eightfold Path” is, in essence, a prescription for ethical conduct with others. In an imperfect world full of suffering and toil each of us must try to find a way to live with others. The “Eightfold Path” exhorts us to free ourselves of false illusions, to detach ourselves from false decisions, to overcome selfishness, to pursue charity and good will, to avoid cruelty and violence, and to develop a deep compassion for those we live with and love.

It seems to me that the essence of Buddhist thought can be easily rolled into the ethos of this Christmas season. Both positions, by different means, are advancing the same issues and outcomes: an undistorted view of reality; personal serenity, right conduct and charity, peace on Earth; and, lest we forget, the true purpose of the season — “goodwill to all.”

Al Gini is a Professor of Business Ethics and Chairman of the Management Department in the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago.

Tips for guaranteeing a perfect 'Scared of Santa' photo

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:00:00 -0600

The best part of Christmas are those hilarious “scared of Santa” photos posted on the Chicago Tribune’s website. Truth be told, it wouldn’t feel like Christmas without a couple dozen photos of terrified children sobbing on strange men’s laps. So avoid feeling like a failure this year and turning out a regular boring old photo of your sweet child smiling on a friendly fat guy’s knee, here are some tips on how to elicit a surefire winner:

Try to find a hungover Santa if you can. His dour expression and the bags under his eyes will contribute to a hilarious image.
Better yet: skinny Santa. What could be worse?
Dress your child much too warmly for the occasion, and try to find a Santa in extremely high demand. That way, after the hours of waiting in line (don’t forget to forget the snacks), your little one will be uncomfortable and miserable.
Have the big “stranger danger” chat with your child on the way to meet Santa, but as you wait in line say, “Well, Santa probably doesn’t want to hurt you.”
Inform your child that Santa’s beard is full of earwigs which will crawl into his or her ear and lay thousands of holiday eggs.
Give your child a long script to recite to Santa and inform him that if he deviates from it, even by one word, Santa will kill your dog. Make sure you give him a lot to drink before you do this and go somewhere where there are no public restrooms in sight.
Tell your child that you’re sorry, but this year Santa has decided that every other child who comes to sit on his knee will be abducted on Christmas Eve and there’s no way of knowing which is which.
If all else fails, give your child a merry little pinch on the upper arm right before he or she goes up for the photo. Ho ho ho and a ha ha ha!

Getting into the Christmas (consumer) spirit

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 05:00:00 -0600

At least since the time I was in college (which was right after Guttenberg came up with the idea of a printing press), economists have been using the Christmas gift-buying season an indices by which to measure the health of the national economy. Depending on whose statistics you want to accept, 40 to 60 percent of all consumer sales happen during the holiday season (Thanksgiving to approximately January 15). In the last few years of course, Christmas sales volume has taken on an extra special significance. As the Recession drags on, businesses look more and more to the spike in sales usually associated with Christmas in order to perk up their overall sales numbers for the year. Consequently, more and more gimmicks have been created to draw people into the holiday shopping frenzy. The traditional “Black Friday” sales have now been expanded to “Black Wednesday Pre-sales,” and some chain stores and local stores have “Black Thursday” sales. (Question: Between three NFL football games and expanding shopping opportunities, will American families actually have time to eat?)

According to research generated by the National Retailers Foundation, the average holiday shopper will spend $749.51 on gifts, decorations, greeting cards, and various Christmas tsotchkes. The NRF is also forecasting that total holiday sales will increase 4.1 percent this year to $586.1 billion.

The commercialization of Christmas is now a foregone conclusion, and I don’t think that there is any way to stop it or slow it down. In fact, it can be argued that for the health of the economy and stability of society and our way of life, we need to continuously strive to grow our Christmas consumer patterns. Having said all of this, I do think we all need to pause in our consumer pursuits, at least for a moment, and reflect on the larger significance of the season.

In the Christian tradition, of course, Christmas is one of the two most sacred days in the calendar, the other being Easter. At the secular level Christmas is now recognized as a cultural celebration of the winter solstice, the new year, and the “rebirth of hope” in the future. And yes, it’s also about gifts and demonstrations of generosity. So buy mom, dad, the kids, your wife and friends a gift. But remember, the gifts we buy for them are only tokens of our esteem. Our true gift is that we love them and that we are thankful that they are a part of our lives.

Al Gini is a Professor of Business Ethics and Chairman of the Management Department in the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago.

Chicagoans read Santa letters, help grant wishes

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:16:00 -0600

Hundreds of Chicagoans are getting in the holiday spirit by reading letters that local children send to Santa — then making their wishes come true.

The U.S. Post Office in Chicago has received more than 12,000 letters at its Operation Santa station and more arrive every day.

Officials are receiving packages for delivery to some of the letter writers, and are urging Chicagoans to visit the station this week if they want to participate.

The Operation Santa station is open until Dec. 22 at the Main Post Office downtown. Letters are available from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.

Operation Santa has been operating since 1912, when Postmaster General Frank Hitchcock allowed postal employees and citizens to respond to letters.

There should be only one 'Santa Baby'

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 09:13:00 -0600

One of my favorite TV shows is Community and one of my favorite episodes of that show was last year’s Christmas musical special, and one of my favorite songs from that particular episode was “Teach Me How to Understand Christmas”:

Clearly the whole sexy dummy Christmas baby bit is a parody of the holiday standby “Santa Baby,” wherein the lady singing takes on a disturbing persona of a whorish infant who sexily begs for expensive toys. For a nice example of how weird this is see Madonna’s version of the song, mostly because the concept of Madonna being cute or asking for something (instead of demanding it) or even condescending to celebrate something so pedestrian and suburban as Christmas is completely alien:

What’s worth noting, however, is that the original recording of the song isn’t nearly as disconcerting. Sure, it still focuses on materialism and an imbalance of gender, but that’s really not as much at play when Eartha Kitt purrs the song:

Notice how there is a complete absence of babyishness in her voice? Instead, we hear an actual woman singing, and the “Santa” in question sounds a lot like an actual man she knows and has a relationship with instead of some indistinct daddy figure. The singer in the original “Santa Baby” sounds like she can probably take care of herself and doesn’t really need Santa cutie to get her all those things she asks for (even though she’d really like them).

It’s just a novelty Christmas song, obviously, and not that deep, but it’s worth noting that “Santa Baby” is one of very few Christmas hits written by a woman (Joan Javits), so it's interesting how the song, depending on the singer, can either be tongue-in-cheek or needy and vaguely depressing. “Teach Me How to Understand Christmas” is only a few hops away from the sophisticated Kitt song, which is disturbing, so basically what I’m saying is, please, ladies, stop covering “Santa Baby,” and while we’re at it, let’s just eliminate all the non-Kitt versions of the song, so there's only the one. And really, that's not a lot.

Chicago artists help deck the halls at the White House

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 16:13:00 -0600

Chicago artist and designer David Lee Csicsko is known for the whimsical mosaic characters greeting riders at the Belmont "L" station.

For the White House this year, he designed stained-glass medallions that look like wreaths for the East Corridor and 10-foot-tall white wooden trees for the East Garden.

A stained-glass rose he designed hangs in the window of the State Dining Room. While decorating the room, staff members took down a famous painting to avoid scratching it.

“So all of the sudden I looked over at the back of the Lincoln portrait, and this rose I had designed was shining brightly on the back of the Lincoln portrait," Csicsko said. "It was just this incredible connection to artistry and history. It was very, very special.”

Csicsko got the chance to tell First Lady Michelle Obama about all of his designs at the farewell reception.

“One of my friends shouted out that we were from Chicago and I had done the windows," chuckled Csicsko. "She said she was very excited to show the President and her daughters all of the work on the house."

Paper artist Jami Darwin Chiang said seeing her work go from her studio in Chicago to the White House was an amazing experience. Chiang and other artists helped decorate the famed Blue Room Christmas tree with their designs.

“You meet so many people that are from all different parts of the country that literally join forces to transform the White House in five days,” Chiang said.

Cscisko said seeing everyday people working together in rooms where heads of state normally convene was an enlightening experience.

“It just really felt like this was the people’s house,” he said.

Christian activist feuds with suburban park district over a nativity scene

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 15:33:00 -0600

A controversy over a holiday display in a suburb west of Chicago could have a simple resolution: a little paperwork.

In early November, Christian activist Jim Finnegan offered to donate a large nativity to the Arlington Heights Park District. The town’s annual holiday display includes a Christmas tree and dreidels, but Finnegan was not satisfied.

“It’s like the difference between Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas,” said Finnegan, who lives in Barrington and used to be a resident of Arlington Heights. “We stand up for what the true meaning of Christmas is, and that’s the birth of Christ.”

In addition to being the only current member of the Illinois Nativity Scene Committee in the western suburbs, Finnegan is a board member at the Illinois Family Institute and a co-founder of a group that advocates against abortion rights in Ireland.

When the park district said they didn’t want Finnegan’s nativity, he called up his lawyer, Tom Brejcha of the Thomas More Society. The Thomas More Society is a Chicago-based law firm that represents people who oppose same-sex marriage and abortion.

Finnegan and Brejcha are both connected to a group in Springfield that advocated successfully to place a large nativity scene on the state capitol five years ago. In the 1980s, Finnegan was involved in a battle over the nativity scene in Chicago’s Daley Plaza that resulted in a lawsuit. That nativity scene went up this month without a hitch. Finnegan said the various nativity scenes he has advocated for were paid for by an anonymous donor.

The pair sent a letter Nov. 20 indicating that Finnegan’s first-amendment rights were being violated.

But Timothy Riordan, the attorney for the Arlington Heights Park District, said Finnegan had simply never filled out an application for a permit. Instead, he asked the district to accept a donation of a nativity they didn’t want.

“In our view there’s no real controversy,” Riordan said.

He sent Finnegan’s lawyer an application for a park use permit on Nov. 26.

“He wanted to donate the nativity scene to the park district," Riordan said. "The park district indicated it wasn’t interested in accepting that donation. The park always had a holiday display and just didn’t think it was consistent with the display they’d had in the past. If you want to use a park for any purpose, there’s a form.”

Finnegan said Tuesday that he plans to apply for a permit to place the nativity in a different part of the same park.

“I trust that the story will have a happy ending,” Brejcha said. “I congratulate Arlington Heights on having a beautiful park display. It’s a positive step that they may be hospitable to the nativity scene after all."

Tis the season

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:26:00 -0600

They are putting up the stands and the barricades today, making ready for the one million people, give or take, coming to watch tomorrow the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival parade make its way down Michigan Avenue.

Think back, way back and imagine the delight that must have been felt by the fur-clad gang huddled in some cave on the night that one of their buddies walked in holding a burning torch and said, more or less, "Hey, everybody, look at this! I call it light."

So it has been ever since—light as the answer to the ancient need to dispel the fears that lurk in darkness and bring hopefulness into the bleakness that is winter. For centuries, light was used by various cultures and religions in their rites and festivals. Then Americans and their Christmas celebrations came along.

Before Thomas Edison invented the filament lamp in 1879; light meant fire and fire meant danger: Those who decorated their trees with candles risked a very incendiary Christmas. Though lights in many styles were being manufactured by the 1880s, they were so expensive as to be out of the reach of all but the wealthy. Even after that most dour of our presidents, Calvin Coolidge, turned on the lights of the first national Christmas tree on the South Lawn of the White House in 1923, few citizens took to decorating their homes, or even their trees, with lights.

But by the '50s, with suburban homes and lawns providing plenty of room but also large areas of darkness, holiday lights began to appear on houses and yards in ever-growing numbers and ever more creative designs, soon to be embellished and sometimes overwhelmed by a sort of Christ-meets-Rudolph weirdness.

Most city folk lacked large canvases for their holiday handiwork, but that didn't stop designers Joe Kreis and George Silvestri. One day in 1959 they took strings of delicate little lights that Silvestri had discovered in Italy and put them on the branches of otherwise barren elm trees near the corner of Michigan and Erie.

Michigan Avenue will tomorrow be ablaze with a million of those little lights, give or take. Some people complain that this sort of flashy bash is yet another example of the crass commercialization of the holidays. Others will tell you the more lights-and Disney characters-the merrier.

Though the most outlandish displays—and my-tree-is-brighter-than-your-tree competitiveness—add fuel to the arguments of those who deplore decorations as yet another example of the corruption of Christmas, most resist the call to excess.

We are no longer, most of us, living in caves, and so we know that winter eventually will move to spring, the darkness to dawn.

Let me ask you…isn’t it wonderful to be driving and turn down a street you’ve never been on before and then see a light, a decoration on a lawn or in a window.

What does it tell me?

It tells me that there is hope in the world.