SOUNDTRACK: BEST COAST-“Little Saint Nick” (2019).
It was only a few years ago that I realized that this song is about a car. For years you can sing words to a song and not realize what you’re actually saying.
The song is a fun upbeat Christmas song that I rather like.
Best Coast is a rock duo: Bethany Cosentino and Bobb Bruno. They sing California indie pop with a rocking edge.
This version of “Little Saint Nick” is not radically different from the original. The biggest musical difference is how fuzzy and distorted the main guitar is. But her deliver of the lyrics is pretty clean (with some very nice backing vocals).
I appreciate this version because it finally taught me what the deep-voiced part is in the song “he don’t miss no one.” I could never tell form the Beach Boys version.
This is a delightful poppy version that with just enough edge to get you moving for the holiday.
[READ: December 23, 2019] “The Adventists”
This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar. This is my fourth time reading the Calendar. I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable. Here’s what they say this year
The Short Story Advent Calendar is back! And to celebrate its fifth anniversary, we’ve decided to make the festivities even more festive, with five different coloured editions to help you ring in the holiday season.
No matter which colour you choose, the insides are the same: it’s another collection of expertly curated, individually bound short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.
(This is a collection of literary, non-religious short stories for adults. For more information, visit our Frequently Asked Questions page.)
As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check back here to read an exclusive interview with the author.
Want a copy? Order one here.
I’m pairing music this year with some Christmas songs that I have come across this year.
Ian Williams has my favorite answer to one of the Q&A questions:
When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?
IW: I wrote “The Adventists” because Michael Hingston asked me for a story for the Short Story Advent Calendar project. I pretty much already had a title from the invitation. He said that the story didn’t have to be religious or about Christmas, so, good lawkeeper that I am, I wrote a story that was religious and about Christmas.
Indeed, this story is about Adventists. Seventh-Day Adventists. The narrator is the father of a family of Adventists and his daughter has just come back from college in Leeds for Christmas.
The story begins, “Our daughter is trying to persuade us that the world is more than 6,000 years old.” She’s also got quite the posh British accent (after being away for a semester).
She doesn’t dismiss the Bible out of hand–it gives comfort to many people. But not you? her father wonders. She says you can’t deny science. He retorts, “You’re going to trust some rocks above the Word of God?”
Soon enough, his daughter took out her phone and started “texting or tweeting or whatever she does when she has no retort for the real world.”
The Monday before Christmas [that’s today!] they went to Walmart.
I love this aside:
For a significant period our family refused to celebrate Christmas in protest against its pagan origins. Made no dent on the economy. Now we were back, somewhat grudgingly to being standard Protestants.
In the Walmart, his daughter tried to persuade them that the Flood was not a literal event.
His wife tries to calm him: she’s only testing her faith, she;s being millennial, the more you indulge her the worse it’ll get.
But when his daughter brings up the age of the earth he replies with something the pastor used: “Isn’t it possible that a traumatic even for the earth like a Flood could have caused it to appear older than it is?”
She narrowed her eyes, “You don’t have to be right all the time.”
For Christmas they went to his sister-in laws’s house. I love that one cousin “was all Iamobsessed! to everything Erin said and did.” And then like any party:
The house settled into sediments: the top floor was a layer of people under 25, the main floor a layer of adults, and the basement a dense layer of kids under fourteen.
When gifts came out Erin received a “gift from her IamobsessedI cousin.” It was a black T-shirt with pink sequins that spelled SLUT. The in-laws laughed. he tried not to have a unreasonable reaction
What does that mean? I asked
Iamobsessed! shrugged a shoulder. It’s a joke.
But why would you give that to her>
His wife tries to calm him down with a gift for him
It was a flashlight keychain. Whoop-dee-doo.
On Boxing Day his wife and daughter went shopping. When they returned his wife informed him that the girl has a boyfriend. The boyfriend bought him joggers a Old Navy. I love the description of the joggers:
they were ridiculously confused pants: track pants but in a herringbone pattern, snug at the calves but baggy at the crotch.
He confronts her about the boyfriend. Is he an Adventist? i Is he Christian? He’s an atheist!
His daughter retorted “he’s more open to Adventism than you are to atheism!”
By the middle of the week she was wearing the SLUT shirt around the house.
But he has a surprise for his daughter. They are looking to sell their house, to downsize. The daughter is thrilled that they are going to move to a condo in the city. But he says no, they are moving out to the country. She was already texting the atheist.
The next day they all (including the Atheist) went out o the country to look at the place. The atheist tried to make conversation, saying he’d never met Seventh Day Adventists before. The father says you can just say Adventist. “Why’s he stretching out the whole thing?” That bruised the boy who then looked out the window for the rest of the ride.
The second place they look at is a decommissioned church. This leads to a teleological and eschatological discussion with the end of the story showing three different opinions for what might happen.
I enjoyed this story a lot, which is why I quoted it so much!
The calendar says, Ian Williams, author of Reproduction, is not going to make a scene in this Walmart.
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