A Christmas Carol (2024)

James Alexander Rankin as Bob Cratchit
"A Christmas Carol"
(Great Lakes Theater, 2024)
Costume design by James Scott
Scenic Design by John Ezell
& Gene Emerson Friedman
Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Great Lakes Theater first produced A Christmas Carol in 1989. Then-Artistic Director Gerald Freedman wrote an adaptation that cleaves neatly to the original work. As a framing device, the Cleaveland family (the name is never spoken, you can find it in your program) gather together on Christmas Eve to read Charles Dickens’ classic work, a simple and elegant entry to the story.

Recently, I discovered my ticket for the first time I saw the show, surprised to see it was from that first year. Dated December 22, 1989, it may even have been closing night. I was twenty-one, home for the holidays during my fourth year at college. At the time I was most impressed by the Ghost of Christmas Present, performed by Kevin McCarty. Kevin was completing his MFA in Acting at Ohio University just as I was an incoming freshman. A big man with a stern brown and a deep and resonant voice, his ghost was full of life and joy but also quite intimidating.

Since that time, the Great Lakes production has grown into a true institution. I cannot imagine anyone intending this or any regional theater production to continue for five years, let alone thirty-six and counting, and I truly believe the city would be poorer with its absence. Part of that is due to Mr. Dickens, but also Mr. Freedman and the entire original creative team.

Because of the sincerity of the framing device – which includes the youngest of the Cleavelands wordlessly witnessing the events of the story, casting members of his household as the characters – this adaptation has avoided becoming dated. It is commonplace for us to ironically wink at the audience because, you know, it’s A Christmas Carol, after all. But it’s played straight, and so it stands, not stuck in the 1980s or 90s, but entirely Victorian in style and language.

Kevin McCarty as the Ghost of Christmas Present
(Great Lakes Theater, 1996)
Photo by Roger Mastroianni

Credit is due to this adaptation embracing Dickens’ message of social justice and economic disparity, including details from the novel which are often glossed over. I am especially touched by the scene when Christmas Present takes Scrooge around the globe, and even beneath the earth, to see miners, a lighthouse keeper, and a ships’ captain out to sea. The breadth of humanity and the wideness of the world is sublimely depicted here through traditional stage tricks of light and darkness and fog. The hand-tooled appearance of the set and effects contributes greatly to the sweetness and enduring popularity of this production.

From 1982 to 2008, Great Lakes produced exclusively in the Ohio (now Mimi Ohio) Theatre. Relocating the majority of their work to the Hanna Theatre sixteen seasons ago, A Christmas Carol remains in the Mimi Ohio, the theater for which it was designed. Retrofitting the show to the intimate Hanna would for all intents and purposes mean redesigning the entire production, which would make it something entirely different, and not necessarily for the better. In the stately Ohio the show is like a handsome and antique holiday picture postcard.

I started bringing my own, living children to see A Christmas Carol when each turned four years old. But this is a ghost story, and there are some remarkable frights along the way. Marley’s entrance is startling (it includes a dramatic reminder of from where he is arriving) which often produces squeaks and squeals from youthful audience members. I stayed particularly attentive to our eldest their first year (2007) as the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come made its silent, awe-inspiring appearance. After a few intense moments, our little one leaned to me and whispered, “... is that a puppet?” They were spooked, but even at that age they knew a thing or two about stagecraft.

During the 2015-2016 season, Playhouse Square renovated the lobby of the Ohio, restoring it to its original 1920s grandeur. That holiday season, however, due to the construction, it was necessary to take a long, narrow, featureless tunnel into the theater. But what I best remember was that that was the year my entire side of the family – my parents, my brothers and their spouses, my wife and children and our nieces – we all saw the show together on the same night. Father said he’d never seen it before, which surprised me. The memory of this evening is all the more poignant for me as our father died early the next year.

Nick Steen in costume as Ebenezer Scrooge
handing out awards for the
"A Christmas Carol" Writing Contest
(November 26, 2024)

As should be made evident, in addition to my responsibilities assisting with student matinees and facilitating the A Christmas Carol Writing Contest, I have also seen the show many times, watching with a kind of fascination as the tone changes with each director (technically, it has always been “directed by Gerald Freedman” as each subsequent director works to maintain his original staging) and the several – though surprisingly few – men who have assumed the mantle of Ebenezer Scrooge.

A week before Thanksgiving this year, and just as the show was about to open, I was asked to join the acting company, a necessary last-minute replacement. An understudy would take the first weekend, and I would join in thereafter and for the rest of the run. And so my entire holiday schedule this year has been turned upside-down, a crash course in A Christmas Carol and an altogether delightful experience, though at first a bit like jumping onto a moving train.

It was not surprising to me that several members of the company assumed I had performed in this show before. I have worked for Great Lakes Theater for some time. But I have not done this show, and I am very glad to participate in this way, grateful for the opportunity.

At a talkback last week, a student asked the company which moment in the show is our favorite, and I said the street scenes. There are three times when nearly the entire company crosses the stage – that’s a lot of people and not a terribly large space. The choreography is tight and I did mess up once or twice the first couple of times, crushed against a window or bumping into furniture. But by the end of Thanksgiving weekend I felt like an old hand, and am now truly able to breathe and enjoy those moments.

Myself, in costume emceeing the
"A Christmas Carol" Writing Contest
(December 3, 2024)

I’ve made new friends in the company, and am having the chance to work with others I’ve known for years but have never shared a stage with. Some members of the “young company” are the children of old friends, or even students I have taught in schools through the residency program. It’s a youthful, vibrant company – even for those of us who aren’t so young anymore.

And that may be why I love this season, and this production, and the lesson it brings. It is about our shared humanity, negotiating this one world together. No one is more respectful nor deferential than a player in a narrow backstage space, making way for a fellow company or crew member who needs a clear path to rush from point to point, holding a large prop or a basket of costumes, or sporting a voluminous, hallway-spanning skirt.

For closing thoughts, I give you nephew Fred:

“But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time … as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

“And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

- “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, 1843

Great Lakes Theater's 36th annual production of "A Christmas Carol" continues through December 22, 2024

Disclaimer: I am employed by Great Lakes Theater. The thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own.

The Santaland Diaries (revisited)

Recently I have been going through a lot of junk in my home, and came across photos from days long past that I must have taken and immediately stashed away. Among these were pre- and post-show photos for a few Bad Epitaph Theater Company productions.

This photo was taken from the booth at the (former) Brick Alley space at East 40th and St. Clair, opening night of The SantaLand Diaries by David Sedaris, starring Curtis D. Proctor and directed by Thomas W. Cullinan.

That was twenty-four years ago this weekend, in late 1999. What an adorable cabaret space. So rough, so Cleveland! See the photo at right for the view from the house (and look carefully at this first photo and you might even see where I am seated.)

Since we started having live children, the holidays have been the absolute last time I want to be involved in a production. I was needed at home nights, and that's just where I wanted to be.

And yet, looking at that picture, I am reminded once again how enjoyable to be on the Great Holiday Show Calendar. To be out and among the people, and to be the one providing them their festive and much-desired entertainment. Best wishes and many grateful thanks to my friends and colleagues who are all opening shows tonight.

This production is still currently available on YouTube. The video is a bit shaky, but the audio is surprisingly good.

Christmas This Year

We have a modest house. Three small bedrooms, one and a half bath. Some would call it a “starter home” but I have lived here since I was 24 and I believe I will some day die here. I hope so, to be honest, if I had to choose between that and somewhere else. 

And yet, this was the very first year I have ever had Thanksgiving dinner in my own home. Always at my parents’ house -- including last year -- on the other side of town. Or at my wife's folk's place. Never here. That changed this year, for obvious reasons. And the only Christmas morning I have spent here was in 2002, when my wife was expecting our January-born child.

So. A modest home. I love it here. But it’s not very big. And this year many of the things that would otherwise happen elsewhere are happening here. And it's taking up space.

We often wrap presents at my mother-in-law's house, to be doled out to nieces and nephews and other relations in person on Christmas Day. Our dining room has become not only this year’s wrapping central, but also the site for packing boxes for shipping, most of which has thankfully already been completed.

Normally, those presents that wrapped pre-travel would be stashed away somewhere, waiting to be stacked into our car. This year they are crowded under our usually present-free tree. They are stacked high, off to one side of the tree, or we would not be able to navigate the fireplace and the furniture of our living room.

There is also a cache of snack sized bags of chips and mini cans of coke and water and bars to put out for the delivery workers, postal workers, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, who stop by two, three, four times a day, working overtime to ship things which otherwise might be shopped for or brought personally to their destination.

The snack table has become an anthropological experiment. Given the choice of only Coke or water, most choose Coke. Chips over Nutrigrain bars. Doritos over potato chips. If I was delivering packages, these would be my choices, too.

Already one of our available downstairs tables has served as my quarantine office, there is little additional space to spare. The crèche of my childhood, recovered earlier this year from my mother’s house, is for the first time on display here, featured on the piano. I do not know its provenance. Norway? 

The child is made of wax, it has been kept cool and dry and has lasted I do not know how long. There is no longer anyone for me to ask. 

So here we are, we four. There is no one else I would more prefer to have in my company. We plan to rise late, open presents, Zoom with uncles and aunts and cousins and the grandmother. We will watch movies plays games, and dine on Chinese food. We have it good.

And the weather report is for a winter storm over the next three days. We may, indeed, have a white Christmas.

A COVID Christmas Carol
One of the grand prize winners of the Great Lakes Theater
"A Christmas Carol" Writing Contest (2020)

The Pudding Mixes

Ohio University used to break from Thanksgiving to New Year’s leaving those of us without anywhere better to go at home, with or without a job. Home for the holidays my freshman year my girlfriend broke up with me and that was particularly devastating because no one had ever broken up with me before.

She is still the only person who ever has. Yeah, I said it.

Sophomore year, for better or worse, I was much more self-possessed and relaxed into the holidays in a manner I never had before. They were big fun. I was taken by the spirit, the spirit of Christmas, if not of Christ. There were three albums I listened to a lot that season, driving my mother to distraction: George Winston’s December, Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the new compilation to benefit the Special Olympics, A Very Special Christmas.

Since then I have become something of a holiday music nut. I look forward to that time after Thanksgiving when I have permission (in my house) to begin playing holiday music. The house is decorated, I want my mind decorated.

But I don’t like all Christmas music, not just any will do. In the early 90s I made a cassette of my very favorite Christmas songs, C-90 minutes of tunes and that was the soundtrack for me. It was called The Pudding Mix, after the name of the extended version of Wham’s “Last Christmas.”

In 2004 I made a new Pudding Mix CD to share with my colleagues, another in 2007, and again in 2009. But I wasn’t happy with these, because in an effort to fill them out I added songs I didn’t really care about.


I made this fan video of the Firesign Theatre bit "Toad Away" ten years ago.
Unsolicited YouTube comment: "NOT YOUR TYPICAL ALBUM HACK WITH A BACKGROUND!"

But anyway, who listens to cassettes or CDs anymore? A few years ago some folks who worked on Bad Epitaph’s production of The Santaland Diaries asked for a playlist of the songs we used, and so I obliged. It is a great collection of songs. And it’s only an hour, perfect length.

When I played "Crumpet the Elf" three years ago I was inspired to make a collection of songs that I think of as holiday records, but really aren’t.

This year I received a passing request for a new "Pudding Mix" (it was from Daniel) and I was torn. Was I just going to throw together more Christmas songs, without a theme? Just to do it? I decided if I had an hour’s worth of music I could listen to more than once, by December 1, then I would share it. And surprise, I did.

I don’t need to explain too deeply just how to make a mixtape or playlist, Nick Horby has already done this much better than I. It’s not just about clustering a bunch of songs together, they need to sound like they belong together. And there are a number that I have been enjoying listening to recently -- and a few surprise covers I want to point up, cover versions of strange holiday favorites I’d never heard before.



The Closing of the Year: First performed by Wendy & Lisa (formerly of The Revolution) for the holiday bomb Toys, starring Robin Williams. Written by producer Trevor Horn, in its original version it is appropriately sentimental late 80s pop, but in the late 1990s he created a totally bonkers orchestral version featuring Plácido Domingo and Sarah Brightman.

Christmastime in Painesville: In the early 90s this novelty song by the band Slack Jaw was a favorite on WENZ. More recently the song’s composer John Koury joined former deadboys bassist Frank Secich to form The Deadbeat Poets, and it’s their version which is available for streaming. It’s more polished than the original, but then, they are older. And aren’t we all?

Even a Miracle Needs a Hand: In 1974 the Rankin Bass factory produced the cartoon (not stopmotion) special Twas the Night Before Christmas, in which an inventor has created a special clock to welcome Santa on Christmas Eve. However, when it is broken (we don’t need to get into this) a family of mice work to repair the damage. That explains this song’s lyrics … but I must tell you, I did not actually expect to find it when I searched on Spotify. Imagine my utter Christmas joy to discover this beautiful, retrofuturistic rendition, recorded only last year by soundcape hipster Sonntag (Zach Johnston).

Play a Day: Peter Cratchit, Esq.

Kerr Lockhart

For Tuesday, I read Peter Cratchit, Esq. by Kerr Lockhart and available at New Play Exchange.

A sequel to Dickens's classic, the son of Bob and Emily Cratchit is the director of the charitable organization left behind by Ebenezer Scrooge. Lockhart creates snappy, witty conversation, and peoples the story with characters original and familiar, a celebration of the world of non-profit and the pople in it.

This Christmas fable takes place in the middle of August, something I can entirely sympathize with as I, too, have to begin celebrating the holidays in my own way at that time of year, sending the guidelines to our holiday writing contest to Cleveland public schools in the middle of summer.

Who should I read tomorrow?

J. Todd Adams as Bob Cratchit
(Great Lakes Theater, 2014)

Christmastime In Painesville (song)

"I put the tree up last night,
And all the lights are blue."

What is the allure of the sad or bittersweet holiday song? Why do we enjoy them so?

Perhaps I should ask myself why I do.

Your Christmas songs can fall into several categories; the properly religious carol, the Santa-oriented song for children, the playful wintertime love song, and the song of heartbreak, disappointment and disillusionment.

Then there’s Fairytale of New York which is all of those in one number, which is why its the greatest Christmas song of all time.

There were many Decembers in my youth when I had no romantic partner at the holidays, and that’s fine, not perfect. People can be happily unattached. But I can think of two Christmases in particular when I was in the process of grieving a relationship and it was at those moments that the cold was so much colder.

I always listen to music to alter or enhance my mood, but it is at moments of great unhappiness that song becomes much more potent, and sad music acts as a palliative remedy. But why? How does that work, poking the wound?

Look at it this way, the converse makes no sense -- listening to happy music when despondent doesn’t make any sense. It almost seems cruel. It’s unwanted.

But a song of heartbreak is sympathetic. It communicates understanding. It means you’re not crazy, not alone. There’s someone out there who knows what you’re going through -- even better, they made a great melody out of it.

In 1992 there was a holiday single on WENZ by the band Slack Jaw (also once known as Rust) called Christmastime in Painesville.

A timely, jangly number, reminiscent of Reckoning-era R.E.M. If you’re not from the Cleveland area you’ve probably never heard it, because not only is it a holiday song, but a local holiday song, name-checking cities like Painesville, Strongsville, and, uh. Yeah. Painesville and Strongsville.

Once you get past the novelty of those local references, it’s still a wistful, heart-tugging period pop song, and I never get tired of it. My favorite recording of it is from a holiday rock show at Cleveland Public Theatre though that’s probably because I was there. I was young, in love, and very, very troubled.

And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Christmas Wrapping (song)

This weekend, ageing alt-rock hipster Twitter was going nuts over a tweet from Andy Partridge (XTC) in which he lavished praise on that holiday classic Christmas Wrapping by Akron's own The Waitresses.

"So much about this that I wished i'd done," Partridge said. "The cheekiness."

Waitress scribe Chris Butler on Facebook responded simply, "Speechless."

Indeed. If I received such praise from the man who wrote Dear God I would also be gobsmacked.

Why is Christmas Wrapping such an endurable bop? It's completely dated; early 80s white girl rapping, syncopated, post-punk pop with jangly guitars and jingle bells, even the lyrics lock it rigidly to the year it was released:

Had his number, but never the time.
Most of '81 passed along those lines.

Perhaps it is that sentiment, about never having the time, which makes the story part of the song something everyone relates to.

Butler was commissioned by a record label to create a Waitresses song for a compilation album of indie holiday tunes, and he found the idea of writing a Christmas song (especially in the middle of summer) to be as oppressive as the holiday itself can be.

This was on HEAVY seasonal rotation at our house... and still is.
The Waitresses, CHRISTMAS WRAPPINGhttps://t.co/BlTiPoUBDf
So much about this that I wished i'd done. The cheekiness.

— XTC (@xtcfans) December 1, 2018

"I hated Christmas," he told reporter John Petrick in 2005. "It wasn't about joy. It was something to cope with."

And so, he created a narrative of a young adult - not a parent or a child - working, dating, getting sick, looking for connection, settling for a solo Christmas dinner in her apartment before finding that last minute date at the grocery store.

Truth be told, I was not hip to this song when it was released. I was thirteen and not as cool as all that. But there was an early 80s revival in the mid-1990s, as Gen Xers were recovering bits of their lost childhood, and this record went to the top of my personal holiday playlist in a big way.

Because of nostalgia for the New Wave era. Because it’s downtown and upbeat. Because it’s about striving and failing and being happy with what you have. Because the late Patty Donahue knows what boys like, she’s a square peg, and she can use my comb.

Source:
"How an obscure 80s punk band created a Christmas classic" by John Petrick, The Star Online 12/22/2005

UPDATE: In my original draft, I erroneously said the track was synth-laden. "No synths!" - C.Butler

Wonderful Christmastime (song)

My father was a religious man, and growing up Christmas was a religious holiday. I have no memory of believing in Santa Claus, it wasn’t a story my parents told. But I believed in the nativity, the virgin birth, the love of Christ, no room at the inn.

It was a religious holiday, with presents. I had learned early on not to get too carried away. I would mark up the to section of the Sears catalog, circling all of the superhero action figures and had a particular interest in playsets with which you could make and ideally sell things for money. The snow cone machine, the easy-bake oven.

But I never got those things, my gifts were always very practical and age-appropriate. The gifts would accumulate beneath the tree over the course of days (because Santa wasn’t coming suddenly drop them in one night) and I would speculate upon their contents based on size and weight. The ABBA album I requested turned out to be the soundtrack to the recent TV version of The Hobbit. A RPG solo adventure was actually a wildlife calendar. My hopes were high, my expectations grounded.

On Christmas Eve we would attend the late service, which was one of my favorite traditions. It always began with The March of the Wise Men, the lights dim, the choir entered in pairs bearing candles, processing up the center aisle to the quire, as their numbers increased the slow, steady, low hymn would build and build, rising to a tremendous pitch. It’s the kind of deep organ music which settles in your abdomen, and travels up your spine to make the hair stand on your neck. I believed in Jesus, this music was my proof.

This is actually completely awesome.

There were imaginings of Santa Claus, but it was hard to square them with reality. Accidentally missing any of the stop-motion, Rankin Bass animations, which firmly established the late twentieth-century Santa mythology, was cause for tears and deep regret. (The first few are canonical - like it or not, Mickey Rooney is the only voice for Santa - by the time they were creating nonsense like “Happy the New Year Baby” the bloom was off the rose.)

My first grade teacher had a glowing crystal ball on a pedestal through which we were told Santa could see us and hear our questions, like a benevolent palantir. The night of our school Christmas concert I peeked into my classroom and saw that it was not glowing. I walked over to it and saw the cord and switch which I had not noticed before, and what had been magic was rendered merely mechanical. I wanted to believe, but I knew better, even at six.

Christmas songs, as a child, seemed eternal. It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (1963) and God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (c. 16th century or earlier) were most certainly conceived of by the same man on the very same day, they are each found in the Bible, are they not? But as I grew into preadolescence and became aware of world events, so also did I begin to understand time and context.

I’d never heard John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War Is Over) until that night he was shot and killed. I was twelve and it was December. Released in 1971 it is both Christmas single and a protest against the war in Vietnam. No one played it in the late 1970s, the anti-war message was dated, but suddenly it was given new life as programmers filled the air with the works of the slain artist, and after all, it was Christmas time. Now, of course, it is regarded as a standard.

Wings does not appear.

The following year I became aware of Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime, which had actually been released two years earlier. It hadn’t even charted in America that season, but by 1981 it was making its way into holiday pop rotation here. It is very of its time, almost entirely synthesized, it was recorded entirely by McCartney, by himself, and sounds like it.

This piece, like so many others, could easily be dismissed as just another British holiday pop song (they make so many more than we do, seriously) except that coming from a former Beatle the recording is held up for particular derision and is even regarded as the worst Christmas song ever made, which, considering company, you have to admit is pretty harsh.

My own lingering affection for this song is a matter of timing, really. Wonderful Christmastime was popular in that season when I had my first girlfriend. Christmastime is many things to many people, deeply sacred, a midwinter celebration of light and joy, it can also be a time of great romance, and like it or not this is my first romantic holiday song.

The moon is right
The spirits up
We're here tonight
And that's enough 

It is evocative of walks in the snow and through the woods, of holding someone, having someone. Taking comfort in knowing you belong, that you are special and that you have someone special. Feeling love. Being happy. And it’s got sleigh bells in it and I love those.

If there must be secular holiday songs, Sir Paul's unbreakable chestnut ticks all the boxes. Its message is basic; the people I love are happy together, here at this moment. This season, that is all the Christmas I need.


You know you want to.

Simple Gifts (1977)

New York at Night (1979)

R. O. Blechman (born Oscar Robert Blechman, 1930) is an illustrator and animator, you probably recognize his work. He made a name for himself creating sequential editorial cartoons for the Village Voice in the 1970s, later for The New York Times and plentiful covers for The New Yorker.

DID YOU KNOW ..? Like all great men, R. O. Blechman graduated from Oberlin College.

Without actually doing any research on the subject, I imagine the artist he is most closely compared to is Jules Feiffer, because of the shaky line. However, whereas Feiffer's people have detailed faces of angst and giddy nervous energy, Blechman's characters visages are so glyphic they are almost childlike, often succumbed by wonder.

R.O. Blechman (self-portrait)

His most-seen animation is probably something like the Alka-Seltzer commercial (1967) in which a man has an argument with his own stomach. My favorite work, however, was when he produced an hour-long holiday program for PBS called Simple Gifts. Seven animators presented works on the theme of Christmas.


Blechman's own piece, No Room at the Inn, retells the story of the Nativity with social commentary familiar to those who treasure his work. This acknowledgement of economic disparity and the plight of the poor is also reflected in Maurice Sendak's Introduction where a shoeless, miserable boy sacrifices his life to become a tree that brings joy to others.

Artist Chwast gives life to a bizarre tale from the bizarre novel Orlando by the bizarre Virgina Woolf, and there is an silly Toonerville Trolley cartoon. Three pieces, however, are biographical, and summon up Christmases from America in the 1860s (rich future President Teddy Roosevelt's My Christmas) and in the 1910s (poor future playwright Moss Hart's A Memory of Christmas)
and the tale most haunting, that of the "Christmas Truce" of 1914.


The story told in this letter from by Sir Edward Hulse was only one example of soldiers, largely British and Canadian, emerging from their trenches to meet and greet Germans (there are far fewer records of any French participating) in no-man's land. First they arranged to retrieve their dead, which led to the singing of hymns, then carols, the sharing of family photos and stories and finally playing soccer and exchanging of gifts.

The afterward to this animation, that Sir Hulse perished in the trenches, doesn't make the story any more poignant, if you are familiar with the wholesale carnage of the Great War. He died on a godforsaken field in France. Of course he did.

Following this dangerous breach of continual murderous violence, those at the top mandated that strict punishments would be meted out if there were any further peaceful gestures made toward the enemy. And once poison gas was introduced in 1915, most Christian amity was successfully broken.

A commercially produced video for Simple Gifts was last released commercial in 1993, and is currently available on VHS for around $130. It has never been released on DVD.

The Joy of Christmas

Don't smile.

People, all kinds of people, like to kvetch and moan about how much better things were in the past. Some undefined past, could mean twenty years ago, could mean fifty. But things were less troublesome, more gooder, you weren't being inconvenienced by the thought police and gas was cheaper.


Well, I don't know about all that. If you know me, you know I believe society is a continuum where fates and fortunes are rising for some and falling for others. Ask a member of the homosexual community if things are better for them now than they were fifty years ago.

One community, however, which is always being persecuted, because it is part of their charter, is the Christian community. And who can blame them, since Obama took God off our coins, and no one says the Pledge of Allegiance in our public schools anymore.


What I can say is this, The Joy of Christmas would probably not have been produced today. Fall, 1979 the choirs of Bay Presbyterian Church were asked to participate in a holiday Christmas special for WEWS (ABC) hosted by Eyewitness News anchor Ted Henry.

Anchorman 2 opens December 13.

The holiday set, with fake lampposts and artificial snow was set into one corner of a large room in the WEWS studios on Euclid Avenue. This one room also included the set for Eyewitness News in another corner, for Morning Exchange in yet another corner, with the much smaller set for the Ohio Lottery wedged between.

Mother tells me I joined the choir for that one year so I could be part of the broadcast, which I do not remember, but may be true. However, if I was hoping to "shine" on local television, that did not happen. While the producer kept asking us to put on a bright and cheery holiday smile for the camera, our choral director, Ernie Hisey, quietly warned all of us to do no such thing. The result is that I look a little pissed off.


The program was repeated a Christmas season or two, but was soon after shelved no doubt because of its strong religious content. This is a Christian celebration of Christmas, including Bible verses from the host, classical images of the birth of Christ, and a family sitting around to read the Bible to each other.

It is not true, however, that the big bad president has taken God off our money, he hasn't. It is also not true that kids no longer recite the pledge in public schools, they do, all across northeast Ohio for certain, because I see and hear them do it all the time as part of my job. The United States government, which is supposed to be religion-neutral, is not.

But a program like this may never again be created by a commercial television station, and for strictly commercial reasons. They aren't worried about offending anyone. They are worried about not pleasing everyone, which is quite different. They are worried about losing money, that same American money that still says "In God We Trust" on it.

Happy Black Friday.

Stealing Christmas (play)

Clockwise from left: Jen, Larry, me, Shruti and Victor.

Casing the joint.

Part of our responsibilities as members of the Karamu education department, in addition to the daily outreach tour to schools around northeast Ohio, was to perform in the annual holiday play for young audiences.

In 1991 that was a new play by John Cameron, Stealing Christmas, directed by education department director Justin Dennis.

The tale is straightforward. Four kids, Chris, Lila, Tony and Donny, craft a plan to make some money on a cold, winter's night. Chris (Victor Dickerson) is the ring-leader, deciding it would be clever to  knock on the door of some old person, sing carols or something, and when they get invited in, he would distract them while the others go through the place and rob them blind.

New Jerk Hustler

The first house they try, they meet Edna (Jennifer Silver) who lives on her own, and is all too happy to have company. Soon Chris is seated, eating cookies while Lila (Shruti Amin), Donny (my college roommate Larry Trice) and Tony (myself) have disappeared into the rest of the house.

Edna's childhood stories were played out onstage by three of us, with me returning as her father, Larry her brother and Shruti as a young Edna, showing how she and her family always got by without much, except love and happiness and positive feelings. 

In the end Chris learns the true meaning of Christmas, and his friends return to tell what they have learned: the old woman has nothing, her house is practically empty.

Christmas memories.

I was reminded of this tale when my family and I journeyed downtown this afternoon to see the new holiday play A Carol for Cleveland at Cleveland Play House.

Written by Eric Coble and based on a novella by mystery writer Les Roberts, this play tells the story of an out-of-work steelworker in the late 1970s. Originally from the Pittsburgh area, Ed Podolak (Charles Kartali) has been living hand-to-mouth in the armpit of the nation for a year, trying to find steady employment.

As in Stealing Christmas — indeed, as in the original Dickens' classic, A Christmas Carol — the past is used as a device not only to educate the audience about the history of an individual, and how they came to be who they are, but to provide a reminder of what they were always meant to be. Or could be. Or after all, should be.

Yelling at hobos on Public Square.

However, as my wife pointed out, it is Dickens who dared take that extra step, and to wade into class politics.

It is important for us, all of us, to be grateful for what we have, to share with those closest to us, and with those we do not even know, and above all to remain positive. To have hope.

But Dickens also suggests that those who live in plenty have a moral responsibility to contribute to the general welfare, and to engage with and to care for mankind.

Or to burn for all eternity in the pits of Hell.

The 12 Bands of Christmas Sing!

The first "12 Bands of Christmas Sing" was a benefit for Cleveland Public Theatre, held on Tuesday, December 22, 1992. Featured bands included Jehovah Waitresses, Moko Bovo, Hostile Omish, Giant Jack Johnsons, King of Clubs, Hot Tin Roof, Jericho Turnpike, Chuck Mosbrook and The Electric Monkey, 6 Feet Under, The Waynes, Odd Girl Out and Rust (aka Slack Jaw).

All the bands were asked to play at least one Christmas-oriented tune, and it was perfectly all right if it were blasphemous.

For our part, the Guerrillas had written the “Six Hits of Christmas,” to be performed between acts. That night we climbed the million stairs ... there were a lot of people behind us, in front of us, passing us on their way down. We could hear the music and all the people up there. This was going to be our largest audience yet. We found the Green Room, which was very small, filled with guitars and aspiring musicians. We had no props, we had no costumes, it was going to be just us and one chair against the teeming throng.

“Hey guys!”

It was The End's Maria Farina! Maria was hosting the show!

She bopped into the Green Room to find us and give us the low-down. She was sporting a groovy new sequined vest and a flat-topped, wide-brimmed, Debbie Gibson hat.

“So what have you got planned?" she asked.

“Well, we have six short plays to do.”

“Do you need the microphone on the floor?" Maria asked. "You could do your plays between sets and maybe you can help me give away prizes.”

“Okay, cool, uh, we don’t need the microphone, though, we’ll just project.”

We moved out into the house to check out the scene. Man, there were a lot of people here. Guerrillas scurried into the seating sections during a particularly rowdy set by Hostile Omish (the boys intimidated Maria into churning butter) and handed out flyers for You Have the Right to Remain Silent!

Guerrillas were scattered about the space. Hostile Omish concluded their set. Maria looked noticeably disturbed by her butter-churning experience.

“How about that, huh?” The crowd cheered enthusiastically. “Wow,” she continued, “there’s some angry youth here ... Yeah!”

She caught my eye. “And now, here’s a very special treat — the Guerrilla Theater Company!”

A smattering of cheers and cat-calls.

“They’ll be doing some sketches for you throughout the evening, and later we’re going to give away some most excellent prizes like they do in their show, let’s hear it for them!”

A polite round of applause as we appeared from everywhere to take the floor in front of the bandstand. Audience members got up in large numbers to get beer from the concession stand out in the lobby.

“Good evening, everyone!” I called out. My voice was thin and wispy, and it floated gently up, towards the ceiling. A large part of the crowd were talking and weren’t about to be quiet for us, not to mention the hubbub from the now very crowded lobby.

“Beginning New Year’s Day and every Friday and Saturday night from now until the end of time we do a show called —”

All Guerrillas: “'You Have the Right to Remain Silent!'”

“Make sure you get one of these flyers before you leave for a special discount —”

I was losing them.

“— and we’re going to do a very special Christmas play for you now entitled 'It’s A Wonderful Lie'.”

And we did our little play, an indictment of the Savings and Loan bail-out, there on this small stage with people walking back and forth in front of us, struggling against the din. When it concluded we ignored the light applause and quickly did another one, about all the leftist things we want for Christmas, said thank you very much and beat a hasty retreat from the stage.

We performed some more sketches after the next band, and performed an impromptu “Trivia Round” with Maria to give away some prizes.

As soon as our shtick was spent, we grabbed our things and slunk away, even though at the rate things were going, the concert was going to continue well after midnight.

Another disappointing aspect of our not choosing to use a microphone, apart from the obvious, is that there is no recording of our having performed there.

The Santaland Diaries (1999)

Curtis D. Proctor as Crumpet the Elf
Photo by Anthony Gray

Following the success of Hamlet, Bad Epitaph Theater Company decided to produce some more plays. In addition to Wendy MacLeod’s Sin, it was decided to try a Christmas show — The Santaland Diaries by David Sedaris, which had recently been adapted into a solo performance.

The radio version, which was simply a series of “reports” written by Sedaris for NPR’s Morning Edition about his experiences work as an elf in Macy’s Santaland in Manhattan were a huge hit in 1992 and established him as a popular humor writer. Listening to This American Life I had become a fan of his work and thought his sense of humor fit with our hip Gen-X vibe (I say that ironically, can you tell?)

Ordering a copy of the script, we found this one-hour piece was accompanied by a second act called Season’s Greetings. I’d heard that piece, too, on This American Life (performed by Julia Sweeney) and it’s, well … it’s a nasty piece of work. I couldn’t imagine following the potentially hilarious Santaland with such an ugly monologue. Don’t get me wrong, it’s funny … but it’s horrible. Take my word for it. You can listen to it here, if you are curious.

So during the summer of 1999 I sent a letter -- a real, paper letter -- to the company that holds the rights to the play version of Santaland. I asked if we couldn’t instead perform Front Row Center with Thaddeus Bristol, about a theater critic who is reviewing a Christmas pageant at a local elementary school. That thing is hysterical. In my imagination, we could perform that short piece first as a curtain raiser before the main event.

Dramatists Play Service got back to me in short order to point me towards Sedaris’s own publisher, as they do not have rights to his other work. Right. Should have figured that out myself. So I wrote his agent a letter — a paper letter, through the post! — and heard nothing.

By fall, I sent a follow-up letter (paper) and soon received a polite letter in response informing me that yes, they had gotten my letter and sent it on to Sedaris’s New York residence, but that I shouldn’t get my hopes up as he was currently residing in France. They also let me know that under no circumstances should I produce any work of their client I did not have the rights to.

Not a problem, we had moved on by that point anyway. Our plan was to present The Santaland Diaries on its own. Just a one-hour act, who cares, right? It will be fine. Besides, we had Curtis Proctor cast as “Crumpet the Elf” and he was fucking perfect.

Shortly before the holidays I got a call at home and checking the caller ID I could see it was a 212. I didn’t know the number, but figured it must be Harris. Picking up the phone I heard a familiar voice.

“Hi, can I speak to David Hansen?”

“This is he.”

“This is David Sedaris.”

“Oh, hi!” I said, and immediately sat down.

He explained that he had just gotten back into New York and received my letter, and apologized for not calling sooner but wanted to respond to my kind request but that he wasn’t letting anyone, anywhere adapt any of his work ever again.

I told him I really appreciated his call, and that it wasn’t a problem, we were going to produce just The Santaland Diaries, by itself, and leave it that.

He went on to tell me the story of how he had been approached by Joe Mantello about the possibility of an Off-Broadway production starring Paul Rebuens as him.

“Great,” Sedaris told me, “All I thought was, ‘I get to smoke pot with Pee-Wee Herman.’”

What he didn’t know was that by entering into this agreement, the stage adaptation (originally starring Timothy Olyphant, and not Paul Reubens) was no longer his to control, and that anyone who wants to and pays the fee can produce it. Put mildly, this runs contrary to the kind of control he would prefer to have over his own writing.

“It’s not really a play,” he insisted, “there’s no character there, it's just a bunch of stories.”

Again, I thanked David Sedaris for his call.

“I really wish no one would ever produce The Santaland Diaries,” he said again. “Anyone. Ever.”

Awkward.

We produced it anyway. It was a big hit. In fact, The Santaland Diaries continues to be one of the most-produced shows in America, year after year.

Sorry, David.

See also: The Santaland Diaries (2017)

Mister Jingeling

Max Ellis

Santa Claus is the man. You can't touch Santa. And since no one owns him, no one can corner the market on his business. Yes, Coca-Cola comes close to having a registered trademark on St. Nick, and good for them. But they can't tell you or anyone else what to do with him. And he can't sell cigarettes or booze. At least not anymore. At least not in America. 

Rankin and Bass did a decent job of adding ancillary characters, though all the best ones are from the original Rudolph special (Hermie, the Misfit Toys, the Abominable Snowmonster, et al.) And there's Heat Miser. After that it gets kind of pathetic. Baby New Year? Little Drummer Boy? Really? Do you have any of those ornaments on your tree?

Before I get too far afield, I am not talking about Christmas characters in general. I am not talking about Scrooge or Jesus, I mean people who are next to Santa.

This one's mine, and it is a treasure.

Now, how many American cities can say they have their own, personal assistant to Santa Claus? One - that's right, I said it, Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Jingeling is the official "Keeper of the Keys" to the North Pole. He is the guy who carries all the keys, to every single lock in Santaland. And you know what they say, the more keys you have, the more important you are.

Jingeling received this position when Santa lost his own key to the Treasure House of Toys, and fashioned a new one for the Big Man. He was created by Chicagoan Frank Jacobi as a promotional event for Halle's Department Store in 1956. He began making appearances on Captain Penny, performed by local actor Max Ellis (seen at top.) For live appearances on the 7th floor of Halle's, he was portrayed by off-duty Cleveland police officer Tom Moviel, carrying real prison keys.

He is best known, however, as played by WEWS producer Earl Keyes (nice one, huh?) who took on the role in 1965 both on television and at Halle's, and kept the copyright to the character when Halle's went out of business in 1982. I saw him on TV during the holiday season's of my youth, providing bumpers to afternoon cartoons on Channel 43, shilling for Halle's.

Keyes died in 2000. But his legend lives on.

Sterling Lindner Davis Department Store

Sterling Lindner-Davis Christmas tree, 1936
Located on grand Euclid Avenue at East 13th Street, this department store was a conglomerate of three other stores (hence the mouthful of a moniker) and as you can see, they always had a very large Christmas tree. Sterling Lindner Davis began the tradition of putting a stupidly enormous Christmas tree inside their atrium, starting in 1927. Legend has it the tree grew a foot while inside the store.

From a 1952 postcard:

A live, 50 ft. tree, festooned with 60 lbs. of 'icicles', 1000 yds. of tinsel, 1500 ornaments, and illuminated by 6 banks of 750 candle-watt spotlights. It requires 650 man-power hours to trim by swinging stages suspended from the skylight.

Their "Santaland" included a device where you could insert a coin and receive a gift that came down a slide, a train, and an enchanted forest display.

Update September 2023:  The former Sterling-Lindner Building is now home to the City Club of Cleveland.

Sources:
Cleveland Christmas Memories (about.com)
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
Cleveland Memory Project
POSTCARDY: the postcard explorer

Christmas Comes But Once A Year (1936)