1. When God comes among men, He comes not as a figure of awe and terror, but as an infant sleeping in His mother’s arms.

2. I’m home in Michigan for Christmas; going back to Arizona for New Years’. It’s nice to see rain again, though I wish it were snow (meanwhile, my sister in Maine is getting temperatures in the single digits).

3. Here’s a Christmas carol I missed: The Huron Carol by St. Jean Brebeuf (written in Wendot, translated into French and then into English)

It’s particularly interesting for translating the tale of the Nativity to pre-Columbian North America, with the shepherds being hunters, the infant Christ is wrapped in rabbit skins, and the three Kings becoming three chiefs bringing gifts of fox and beaver skins.

4. There is the now-common notion that the celebration of Christmas, or at least the emphasis on it in English-speaking countries, had been largely forgotten until it was revived as a result of the massive popularity of A Christmas Carol, with Dickens depicting more what he wished the holiday to be than what it was.

Personally, though I have not the means to debunk it, I find this a dubious bit of common knowledge. In the first place, there’s the fact that English Christmas celebrations were already a feature of Dickensian fiction back in The Pickwick Papers (complete with an embryonic version of the Scrooge story in the form of “The Goblins and the Sexton”). Then, of course, there’s the question of whether the story would have made the impact it did if the public were not already familiar with the idea of Christmas and the accepted style of its celebration; what hash this would make of things like young Ebeneezer staying over at school for the Christmas holidays, Fezziwig’s office Christmas party, and so on. The way the story depicts the celebration of Christmas is as a long-established custom, which, to my mind, doesn’t fit with the idea of it’s being more wished up than described by Dickens.

Then, even in my own limited reading, Christmas celebrations lurk, assumed, in books that long-predate Dickens, such as Jane Austen. They don’t receive the same attention, being but incidents in longer narratives rather than the focus, but it is taken for granted that Christmas time means family parties and good cheer: the Gardiners come to stay with the Bennets, the Wodehouses venture forth to spend the evening with the Westons, where drink is provided in sufficient abundance to prompt Mr. Elton into making his ill-judged proposals.

I can certainly imagine that more Christmas celebrations took on Dickensian trappings following the publication of A Christmas Carol, but my amateur judgment is that his effect on the essential celebration of the holiday have been overstated to make a pleasing narrative.

5. Speaking of A Christmas Carol, it must be said that A Muppet Christmas Carol is an excellent adaptation, however I believe it’s reputation has rather grown a little too large. There is a tendency for those of my generation to declare it hands-down the best version, which it certainly is not. It’s very good, but its short run time and the need to fill in space with gags and songs means that much of the original story has to be left out or skated over. Nothing too essential, of course, but certain weighty elements, such as Ignorance and Want, Scrooge’s sister Fan, his reconciliation with Fred, and so on (it is a tribute to the film’s quality that they pack as much of the story in as they do).

Which is only to say, it’s a very good film and has a strong claim to be one of the best versions, but let’s not get carried away here (personally, I’d say my favorite is the George C. Scott version).

6. The worst version I’ve seen is the Jim Carrey version, though not due to Mr. Carrey, who does his level best in the role. Rather, it’s due to the ridiculously stupid, over-the-top gags and distracting nonsense that fills up the screen, like Scrooge getting shrunk to tiny size for most of the future segment (which is supposed to be the most dramatic and serious part of the film, begging the question of just what the heck anyone was thinking), or shooting off like a rocket after snuffing out the Ghost of Christmas Past. Then, of course, it was part of Robert Zemeckis’s ill-fated effort to make his CG-motion capture style into a viable medium, which, like Cryptocurrency, seemed like such a good idea at the time.

7. One Christmas gift I received this year was finally learning how to play Poker, which was extremely fun and, I feel, something of a rite of passage. Poker, along with chess, is a classic game of western culture and everyone should have become at least a little familiar with it.

There’s also the immense satisfaction where someone thinks they’ve won with two-pair, and you lay down four-of-a-kind.