Temporary Structures, Tiny Tim’s Tinny Screeching, The Heroism of Live Theater, And An Ill-Considered Llama
The winter after I turned four, the Scientologists set up their first Christmas display on Hollywood Boulevard, a beautifully campy confection with the nondenominational theme “L. Ron Hubbard’s Winter Wonderland.” Santa, the patron saint of Nondenominational Winter, sat on a red velvet throne in front of a backdrop of ice-covered mountains. Over the years the set was upgraded to include a gingerbread break room for Santa and behind it, a two-story painted backdrop of the Hollywood Hills reimagined as an Alpine village, dotted with steep-gabled cottages and covered in snow, all surmounted by the Hollywood Sign.
My parents wouldn’t let me visit Scientology Santa, who handed out free copies of Dianetics along with miniature candy canes. Once at the laundromat, my mother caught me filling out one of those Scientology personality quizzes and reacted like she’d found me playing with a loaded gun.
“I wasn’t going to mail it in,” I protested.
“Still,” she said.
Finally she allowed me to fill in the lengthy quiz (I was very bored at the laundromat) as long as I promised to not put my name or address on it anywhere. “Never give Scientologists any personal information” and especially never give them your home address, or else they’ll show up at your door. We thought of Scientologists as something akin to vampires: never invite them in.
I thought of L. Ron Hubbard’s Winter Wonderland again at this year’s Very Denominational Christmas Creche at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church.
Every year St. Mark’s sets up a “living creche” on the street corner in front of the sanctuary. A plot about 10 x 15 feet is cordoned off with temporary fencing illuminated with two high-watt work lights and filled with about three inches of petting zoo straw. Every year a different young, kind-faced couple is asked to play the parts of Mary and Joseph; some years, a real baby is found to play the infant Christ, other years, Mary cradles a plastic doll. But the real stars of the show are the rented animals, the full roster of nativity favorites (sheep, donkeys, and goats) as well as, inexplicably, a llama.
In the dim narthex of the church, volunteers stand by with racks of costumes, and any child who comes in can choose to be an angel, a sheep, or a shepherd. Then the children, newly enlisted in Christ’s Great Pageant, descend down the dark church steps and into the bright creche corral, to pet goats and donkeys while the Blessed Virgin sits on a plastic footstool in the halo of a street light. It’s a busy corner across from a fire station and more than one photo-worthy moment has been marred by the red smudge of a speeding engine hovering like an impure thought just behind Mary’s right shoulder. After the children have thoroughly petted all of Christ’s menagerie, they continue into the church courtyard for hot chocolate and dry Episcopal cookies.
If I had to pick one earthly moment to inhabit forever, it would be there and then, watching a toddler dressed as a lamb offering a Lorna Doone shortbread to a rented Christmas donkey.
This year we started another Christmas tradition, taking Beatrice, Arthur, and William to see A Christmas Carol at Glendale Centre Theatre (note, please, the spelling) with our friends Lucas and Veronika and their two daughters. I went to see A Christmas Carol at GCC once before, when a high school friend had a small role in it, and I remembered it ever since as an absolutely masterful production. As an adult, I’d still recognize it as a very good community theater production of A Christmas Carol, which is exactly the tepid praise it sounds to be. Of course, the children LOVED it, every moment, from the blue hologram Marley to Tiny Tim’s shrieking benediction. At one point, the Ghost of Christmas Past stands with Scrooge at his second-story window and, against his fearful protests, she commands him to take her hand and together they will soar above the streets of London. Then they both walk down the staircase, but soaringly, like we wouldn’t notice.
In every stage production, there is at least one moment when something very dumb happens. A screechy mic, a dropped cue, a clumsy bit of stage combat. The entire thing is so fake, so obviously fake and so silly, and once you see it you can’t stop seeing it, the “invisible” wires that aren’t, the fake doors that lead nowhere. To put up such a spectacle - the plastic baby Jesus, the painted Hollywood Alps - requires bravado and immunity from embarrassment and belief. Belief in one’s self, and the good humor of others, in the evident value of salvation or Victorian paternalism or cosmic thetans.
Those of us who celebrate Christmas do this every year - pushing aside the living room furniture, hauling out the decorations, sweeping up the pine needles - not always joyfully but dutifully, or until the duty becomes the joy. We construct a temporary space for believing, however rushed and shoddy, and when you stand back and see it in the right light, it really is pretty convincing.
You Can Find Me
After taking some time off for the new baby, I’m teaching again. I just finished up a two-day seminar, Insider/Outsider: Writing the Participatory Adventure.
Starting next month I’ll be back to teaching my usual eight-week nonfiction classes. I’m designing an all-new syllabus of in-class exercises and readings and I think it’s going to be great fun. Come with a vague idea, leave with a complete essay!
Unless I’m Busy
Making my first panettone, selling Girl Scout cookies, attending meetings of the Los Angeles Mycological Society, becoming someone who wears a beret, listening to Anthony Oliveiera’s really excellent podcast on Paradise Lost, "The Devil’s Party"
What I’m Reading
I rarely round up my online reading here because so many other writers do it better, but two outstanding pieces caught my attention recently and I’d be remiss not to mention them. The first is “The Amazing True Adventures Of Macbeth and His Best Friend, the Cereal Guy,” in Electric Literature (and Electric Literature has been publishing many of my very favorite things lately). The second is Sara Lautman’s comic “What Haunted Maurice Sendak?” in Catapult (and, same).
I just finished Amy Fusselman’s Idiophone, a hybrid poem/essay/dream meditation on addiction, creativity, and mothering that I cannot recommend highly enough. I also finished Boy with Thorn by Rickey Laurentis, whose poems I’ve recommended in these letters before. Both Fusselman and Laurentiis write so bracingly about other art forms (ballet and visual art, respectively) that it rekindled my interest in reading more responses to and criticisms of non-literary art forms, so please send me some suggestions.
Also I found a copy of Arto Paasilinna’s The Year of the Hare just in my house? I have no idea where it came from, but I picked it up and read it. It’s a bizarre and at times charming picaresque, though with a bitter misogynistic streak that spoils the overall good humor of the story. Also a long segment where he murders a crow.
And of course, this month’s history book club recommendation, The Secret History of Magic: The True Story of the Deceptive Art.
Also I'm Very Excited About
Stila’s All Day Long-Lasting lipstick (of all the “long-lasting”/”all-day” lipsticks I’ve tried, the only one that is, in fact, long-lasting, all day); a recipe for truly perfect sugar cookies; my adorable plaid velvet suit, box jumps, the children’s board game Shadows In The Dark, our beautiful wedding illustration by Brianna Ashby of Bright Wall/Dark Room
Where I’m Giving
This month, I wanted to round up a few environmental organizations. Most of the environmental groups I donate to are well-known national or international organizations, but I added a few local places that support nature in and around Los Angeles.
Pasadena Audubon Society - Beatrice is a member of the Pasadena Audubon Society’s Young Birders Program and they do a tremendous job protecting local bird populations as well as offering great community events.. (There’s also the Los Angeles Audubon Society.)
Trust for Public Land - for creating and preserving public parks, from large national parks to small urban play area
Friends of the LA River - revitalizing the LA River is a major passion of mine, and FOLAR is at the forefront of bringing a natural river (no concrete!) back to our city, which will improve the health of our local watershed, support native plants and wildlife, and provide a great new space for community recreation and enjoyment
Heal the Bay - primarily focused on protecting the Santa Monica Bay, they also advocate for wiser, more sustainable water policies throughout Southern California
Move LA - advocates for an improved public transportation system for Los Angeles County, reducing carbon emissions while also giving citizens more and better options for how they get around