Merry Christmas

We took advantage of a break in the weather tonight to get our walk, Kuro and I did.

The rain stopped, the wind died down to a lazy zephyr and soon our December clouds parted to reveal the full moon rising in the east. When I first looked I did a double take because there was a silhouette of a reindeer's head and antlers crossing that moon. The second look disillusioned me because it turned out the silhouette was nothing more that an artful crossing of a cottonwood's branches.

I've never seen Santa's sleigh and reindeer, with or without Rudolf, so I'm always on the lookout this time of year. Thought I hit pay-dirt tonight but, no, it was a product of an active imagination confused by some tree branches.

One reason I keep a weather eye out for Rudolph is he and I are the same age. He was dreamed up by Robert May and first appeared in 1939 in a coloring book put out by Montgomery Ward, or Monkey Ward as we knew it when I was young.

For those of you too young to remember, Montgomery Ward, J. C. Penney and Sears and Sawbuck's (Roebuck) were the most popular mail order (and brick and mortar) department stores of the day. Their four pound and heavier catalogs would make the puny catalogs of today's mail order companies turn green with envy.

But back to Rudolph. I hadn't heard the name, as another reindeer in Santa's barn, until 1949 when Gene Autry's famous Christmas recording made the story known around the world. I've heard it every Christmas for sixty-six years since as it was the second most best-selling recording of all time until the 1980's.

As a matter of possible interest to the historically minded, Monkey Ward's catalogs were the preferred catalog in the outhouses of the day. Of course they made good reading but there was no dearth of mail order catalogs back then. No, the main reason was the low ratio of color pages (with their shiny surfaces) to pages in plain black and white with their greater functional effectiveness.

It's a good thing Ikuko isn't looking over my shoulder as she would have admonished me that the preceding paragraph had no place in a Christmas post. So please remember that it's strictly for those with an interest in things historic.

Speaking of my wife, around her home near Fukuoka this is the peak season of the strawberry harvest. Christmas has grown more popular in Japan since I was first there in 1960 and strawberries play an important part in the celebration. Strawberry cake with whipped cream and fried chicken (from KFC) are two of the modern Christmas traditions in Japan. If you search for "Traditional Japanese Christmas cake" it will bring up endless photos of strawberry and whipped cream decorated cakes and many photos of Kentucky Fried Chicken as well.

Well, our friends and relatives in Japan are already celebrating Christmas day and by the time readers in Europe and the Americas read this it will be Christmas Day on this side of our planet too so here's wishing a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all of you.