Yule loggin & bloggin

May those of you who celebrate have a Happy Holiday, and the rest of youse, cozy up to your screen and enjoy the yule log! It’s been a chilly week and a long, dreary month, so relax and enjoy the day.

Would a buche de noel taste good right about now? This is a day for reminiscing, so I’m thinking of my first buche, which a girl in seventh grade made and brought in to French class hoping for extra credit. The class was happy to have a break from Madame screaming at us for our lousy accents and being bratty American kids. The cake’s taste was pure Duncan Hines, but the log effect was exotique and very pleasing.

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o little star above 13th Avenue

Think enough about holiday stuff and you’ll start to see things. A Brooklyn street becomes a desert with a bright, light glowing in the sky above. You’ll feel compelled to drive toward it, but streetlights, traffic patterns, and gravity will keep you firmly where you are. Modern astronomers and scientists confirm that there might have been a star or planet in the sky above Bethlehem around the time of Jesus’ birth, give or take a year. The people who lived then, believers in omens, took this as a sign of an important event. The rest of the story – it’s open to interpretation.

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Bonus nativity scene

Court Street, Downtown Brooklyn. The participants seem appalled by the weather and the snow-filled manger.

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HO HO HO and ho ho ho

Here’s the caption I came up with. I’m on the fence about it, har dee har. Please feel free to submit a suggestion of your own.

He may be diminutive, but don’t let that fool ya. The little Windsor Terrace Santa man is the one in charge, all the way.

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Second nativity scene of the season (detail)

Hurry, use the words frankincense and myrrh. You may not get another chance for 12 months.

This is another pic from Dyker Heights … a nativity scene that looks better in a photo than in person. Here is one of the Three Kings, those mysterious men from the orient, preparing to present his gift to the newborn Jesus. Christian traditions commonly have the wise men either present at Jesus’ birth or arriving on January 6, the Epiphany. Twelve days of feasting and celebrating the beginning of winter? The pagans had been doing that for centuries before Christians adapted the idea.

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Rudolph the red-nosed imposter

Oh, doe-eyed one, what is going on? You can’t answer because there’s a ribbon wrapped around your mouth? Maybe you’re just a regular reindeer, moonlighting for some cash impersonating the most famous of your brethren? The red thing affixed to your snout looks like half of a Silly Putty container. Is there another fellow like you wandering around the city with the other side of the egg strapped to his furry face?

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First nativity scene of the season

I went to Dyker Heights so that you wouldn’t have to. Wanted to check out the latest trends in holiday decoration, and observed few. You see more strands of all-red lights than ever, but their popularity doesn’t begin to compare to the year that everyone had icicle lights, or the years when multi-color bulbs went passe, and all-white, then all-blue, lights were the thing.

This old-school nativity sits serenely on a corner lot, the plastic figures holding up well, in all senses.

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Holiday season, North Flatbush

Now we know what the area around Atlantic Mall is called. (Few refer to it as Times Plaza; the Brooklyn Times-Union paper is long gone.) What I already knew is that the traffic around here, at the convergence of Flatbush, Atlantic, Fourth and Pacific Avenues, scares the bejesus out of me, night or day. The Atlantic Yards construction, if it happens, will mean even more cars. In the meantime, look both ways, not at the bland holiday decorations, and don’t try to beat the dollar vans when you’re crossing the street.

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