Christmas Music for People Tired of the Same Old Tunes

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: DECEMBER 04, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 120401np.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: David Sedaris
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:30

TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR, I'm Terry Gross.

On television, Christmas season means it's time for "A Charlie Brown Christmas," "It's a Wonderful Life," and "A Christmas Carol." But on public radio it means time for the "Santaland Diaries," David Sedaris' funny and cynical journal of the season he worked as an elf in Macy's Santaland.

The "Santaland Diaries" are included in his collection of Christmas related stories called "Holiday's On Ice." Sedaris' stories and journal entries are featured on "Morning Edition," and "This American Life," several of his plays have been produced in New York.

Last December, we invited him to talk with us about Christmas in his family and to read an excerpt of one of the stories in "Holiday's on Ice." This story shows what might happen if a tough-minded and pretentious drama critic reviewed Christmas plays staged by elementary school kids.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- PLAYWRIGHT DAVID SEDARIS READING FROM "HOLIDAY'S ON ICE")

"Front row center with Thaddeus Bristol. Trite Christmas. Scottsfield's young hams offer the blandest of holiday fare. The approach of Christmas signifies three things: bad movies, unforgivable television, and even worse theater. I'm talking bone crushing theater. The type our ancient ancestors used to oppress their enemies before the invention of the stretching rack.

We're talking torture on a par with Scottsfield Dinner Theater's 1994 revival of `Come Blow Your Horn,' a production that violated every tenant of the human rights accord.

To those of you who enjoy the comfort of a nice set of thumb screws, allow me to recommend any of the crucifying holiday plays and pageants currently eliciting screams of mercy from within the confines of our local elementary and middle schools.

I will, no doubt, be taken to task for criticizing the work of children, but as any pathologist will agree, if there's a cancer it's best to treat it as soon as possible.

Once again, the sadists at the Jane Snow Hernandez Middle School have taken up their burning pokers in attempt to prod `A Christmas Carol' into some form of submission.

I might have overlooked the shoddy production values, and dry, leaden pacing, but these are sixth graders we're talking about and they should've known better. There's really no point in adapting this Dickensian stinker unless you're capable of looking beyond the novel's dime store morality and getting to what little theatrical meat the story has to offer.

The point is to eviscerate the gooey center, but here it's served up as an entree, and a foul pudding it is. Most of the blame goes to the director, 11 year old Becky Michaels, who seems to have picked up her staging secrets from the school's crossing guard.

She tends to clump her actors, moving them only in groups of five or more. A strong proponent of trendy, racially mixed casting, Michaels gives us a Black Tiny Tim; leaving the audience to wonder: what, is this kid supposed to be adopted?

It's a distracting move, wrong headed and pointless. The role was played by young Lamar Williams, who, if nothing else, managed to sustain a decent limp. The program notes that he had recently lost his right foot to diabetes, but was that reason enough to cast him?

As Tiny Tim, the boy spends his stage time essentially trolling for sympathy; stealing focus from even the brightly lit exit sign. Bob Cratchit, played here by the aptly named Benjamin Trite, seems to have picked up his cockney accent by watching a few videotaped episodes of "Hee Haw," and Herschel Fleischman's Scrooge was almost as lame as Tiny Tim.

The set was not without its charm, but Jody Linens abysmal costumes should hopefully mark the end of a short and unremarkable career. I was gagging from the smell of spray painted sneakers, and if I see one more top hat made from an oatmeal canister, I swear to God I'm going to pull out a gun.

The problem with all these shows stems partially from their maddening eagerness to please. With smiles stretched tight as bungee chords, these hopeless amateurs pranced and gambled across our local stages, hiding behind their youth, and begging -- practically demanding we forgive their egregious mistakes.

The English language was chewed into a paste, missed opportunities came and went, and the sets were changed so slowly you'd think stagehands were encumbered by full body casts.

While billing themselves as holiday entertainment, none of these productions came close to capturing the true spirit of Christmas. This glaring irony seemed to escape the throngs of ticket holders who ate these under cooked turkeys right down to the bone.

Here were audiences that chuckled at every technical snafu, and applauded riotously each time a new character wandered out onto the stage. With the close of every curtain, they leapt to their feet in one ovation after another leaving me wedged into my doll sized chair and wondering: is it just them or am I missing something?"

GROSS: David Sedaris reading an excerpt of one of the stories from his collection "Holiday's On Ice."

Thanks for reading that David. I'm wondering what made you think about, you know, a theater critic who goes to sixth grade school productions and applies his stringent facilities on these sixth graders?

DAVID SEDARIS, AUTHOR "HOLIDAY'S ON ICE"; NPR COMMENTATOR: I was in France when I was writing these stories, and I had a stack of old "New York" magazines there. And John Simon is the theater critic for "New York" magazine, and I may have missed it but to my knowledge he has never liked anything.

LAUGHTER

So, I was just thinking that what if a person like him was assigned to review children's theater because if your were a child -- if you are seven years old, what do you do with this review?

GROSS: Really. Did you participate in school Christmas plays when you were a kid?

SEDARIS: I didn't go to -- I went to a public school. I think if I had gone to a Christian school I probably would have snagged a part of a donkey or shepherd or something. But no, I was never -- our school would have a pageant every year.

Just a very simple thing, but it was mainly the students dress up and get on stage, and then they would pull out all the janitors. And the janitors would receive dented cans of fruit cocktail or cans of Crisco. And then the janitors would bow their heads and thank us for it, and that was the pageant.

GROSS: Oh. Your most famous story, the "Santaland Diaries," is collected in this new Christmas collection "Holiday's On Ice." I'm wondering if you've ever going back to Macy's Santaland were you once worked as a Christmas elf just as an observer to see what it's like now?

SEDARIS: No, but I got a call last week from a former Santa because Macy's changed their Santaland this year. They spent millions of dollars, and my understanding is now it's like an interactive Santaland.

GROSS: Like with computers and stuff?

SEDARIS: Yeah, the children were having riots, you know, they were waiting for two hours to see Santa, and all they saw were some elves and a couple of candy canes. And that wasn't enough for them so they spent a lot of money.

I just read an article about it in the newspaper, but apparently there's -- I don't know, virtual -- because I don't have a computer I don't even know what -- exactly what these words mean but something about it is virtual.

GROSS: You don't have a computer?

SEDARIS: And maybe you can send Santa e-mail, I don't know. No, I've never touched one. So, whenever I hear words like ".org" I have no idea what they're talking about.

GROSS: Do you hear from a lot of current and former Santaland elves who want to commiserate with you?

SEDARIS: I hear from former elves and Santas who have written screenplays. Those are the former elves and Santas that I tend to hear from.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: My guest is David Sedaris, his collection of Christmas related stories is called "Holiday's On Ice." We'll talk more after our break.

This Is FRESH AIR.

BREAK

GROSS: Back David Sedaris.

Now, I want to talk to you more about what Christmas is like for you and what it's been like for you. What was Christmas like in your family when you were growing up? Did your family celebrate it or give gifts?

SEDARIS: Oh, we were very involved in Christmas; we still are. You know, Christmas begins the day after Halloween, basically, and then everything is just this march towards Christmas. And we were big gift givers -- it was -- I love Christmas. Absolutely love it.

GROSS: What went on in your house on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day?

SEDARIS: Well, when we were children we had to go to church on Christmas Eve, but it was a Greek Orthodox church, and so it was pretty and there were -- still you just want to get out of there but it didn't take that long.

We would usually be up all night, you know, wrapping gifts -- by the time we were teenagers -- by the time we were old enough to smoke pot we were definitely awake all night.

And, you know, but not with that: oh, I think I hear Santa thing. That's like I think I hear dad coming downstairs, throw the roach out the window kind of thing.

But, no, we were really really -- gosh -- I mean, my mom always made -- my mom was kind of in charge of -- my mother was responsible for making Christmas so wonderful.

You know, just doing mom things, you know, baking mom things, and buying mom kind of gifts, and putting, you know, wreaths on the door; we would just make fun of, but still we were glad that they were there.

GROSS: What are some of the best gifts you ever got?

SEDARIS: I got an electric typewriter which really changed my life. I'd been using a manual typewriter forever, and then at the age of 32 my mother gave me an electric typewriter where you could correct things. You know, you could go up two lines and that word would be gone, and that was -- that was a present that really changed my life.

Last year I got a really nice taxidermy ostrich, a little baby ostrich. That was a nice gift.

GROSS: Who gave that to you?

SEDARIS: My sister Gretchen gave me a stuffed ostrich. It is just adorable. It's about a foot tall -- I got a lot of taxidermy last year for Christmas, and that's always a good gift. Gosh, you know, I've never received, like, the title to a country home or anything like that.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Maybe next year. Do you remember the worst gift you ever got?

SEDARIS: The worst gift I ever got was probably a football helmet which I had absolutely no use for whatsoever. That's not even good for storing things.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Who gave it to you?

SEDARIS: My father.

GROSS: Is that wishful thinking on his part?

SEDARIS: He went through a phase where all of the gifts that he gave me would hopefully wake me up to the world of sports. So, maybe I would have asked for a discrete, you know, portable tape recorder so I could spy on people, and instead I would get a child size set of golf clubs which --the cat was the only person who would enjoy them. She would just shred the golf bag to bits, but I -- she was more than welcome to them.

GROSS: What about you as a gift giver? Are you a careful and thoughtful gift giver?

SEDARIS: I think I am. I always feel so bad, you know, when people say: well, I'm going to do my shopping on Christmas Eve; I feel bad for the people that they're giving gifts to because you're not going to find anything on Christmas Eve.

That kind of panic buying that people do -- I love watching it, and I'll still go to the store of Christmas Eve just so I can see people that panic.

LAUGHTER

GROSS: Do you really do that?

SEDARIS: Yes. I love -- like the same way I love going to the grocery store the night before Thanksgiving. And I'll just buy -- I'll just by a head of lettuce, but I'm more than happy to stand in that line for 45 minutes just to see people -- just to see people at the breaking point.

But I got most of my -- I have a few things to buy, but for the most part I finished my shopping by August.

GROSS: Really? So, you must always be thinking about potential gifts for people.

SEDARIS: Well, I don't think about it in February, but I think about it by March.

GROSS: Mmm-hmm.

SEDARIS: And I love to shop, and this gives me a reason to do so.

GROSS: Did you ever go caroling during your life?

SEDARIS: No, I -- carolers are one of those things that even my mother would be like: "don't answer the door, don't answer the door. They're at the Shirks house, or they're coming this way. Turn out the lights. Hide.

Because I don't know how you respond. Do you know what I mean? Like, when you open the door and then there's people there's singing and they're looking at you with -- it's like do you just give them the money now and maybe they'll go away or maybe they'll stop?

Caroling is what -- it's like mime to me. It just one of those things where I don't know what choice the spectator really has. It's just so uncomfortable.

GROSS: You live in Manhattan now, there probably aren't a lot of people out caroling in Manhattan.

SEDARIS: Well, I don't have to worry about them coming to the door in my apartment. Someone would have to buzz them in.

LAUGHTER

I don't worry about them coming to my door, and that's a good thing about living in a city.

GROSS: You know, when you're young you spend Christmas the way your parents spend it. When you get older you have the option of, you know, maybe doing it with friends or whatever.

You're not necessarily home with your family. Do you remember, like, the first Christmas that you were old enough to decide for yourself how you were going to spend it?

SEDARIS: I am 40 years old, and I've never missed a Christmas at home.

GROSS: Really?

SEDARIS: Never.

GROSS: Mmm-hmm.

SEDARIS: I -- because you can't really expect good presents unless you're going to show up and get them in person. And if somebody thinks that they can mail you something, then you're liable to get anything. You're liable to get a pound cake or something like that, but if they know that they have to face you and hand you a gift then you're much better off by going home.

I can't -- there's no other place I would want to be for Christmas, really, than with my brothers and sisters.

GROSS: David, I would like to end our Christmas interview with -- by asking you to sing a rendition of one of your favorite Christmas songs. A song that is a favorite because you particularly love it or hate it.

SEDARIS: Well, somebody sends us a tape every year -- different obscure Christmas songs that he puts together. And there's one, and I don't have -- quite have all the words, but it's like a really obnoxious child with a full voice. Almost like a young Wayne Newton voice, and it's:

(SINGING)

"I want a hippopotamus for Christmas
Only a hippopotamus will do
Don't want a uh
A dinky uh uh uh

I want a hippopotamus to play with and enjoy
I can see it now on Christmas morning
Creeping down the stairs
Oh what joy and what surprise

When I open up my eyes
And see a hippo hero standing there
I want a hippopotamus for Christmas

SEDARIS: And then he restates again and again reasons why he wants a hippopotamus, and the fact that the hippopotamus will, most likely, be a vegetarian. That's the gist of the song.

LAUGHTER

But I could listen to it over and over and over again. It's just so confident, and it's not a -- and it's not like a wacky song, you know, not like when they have babies crying out "Silent Night" or dogs barking it or something. It's really just a wonderful little song. And I don't even though the fellow's name who sang it.

GROSS: David Sedaris, recorded last year after the publication of his book "Holiday's On Ice." He'll read more of his holiday stories on the Christmas edition of the public radio program "This American Life."

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington, DC
Guest: David Sedaris
High: Playwright and NPR commentator David Sedaris. His "Santa Land Diaries" which debuted on NPR's Morning Edition in 1992 is puported to be the network's most requested tape. His collection of short stories "Barrel Fever" and this year's "Naked,"a collection of autobiographical essays, were both bestselelrs. Last year he released a collection of Christmas stories, "Holiday's On Ice."
Spec: Entertainment; Holidays; Profiles; David Sedaris

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: David Sedaris

Show: FRESH AIR
Date: DECEMBER 04, 1998
Time: 12:00
Tran: 120402NP.217
Type: FEATURE
Head: Lloyd Schwartz
Sect: Entertainment
Time: 12:52

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not
be in its final form and may be updated.

TERRY GROSS, HOST: Now that Christmas music is everywhere, our classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz has a suggestion for people tired of the same old tunes.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP-- CHRISTMAS MUSIC)

LLOYD SCHWARTZ, CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC: Stop! I have to admit, I'm bored with most Christmas music. It's either the same old carols, "Jingle Bell Rock" in elevators, "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" or Handel's "Messiah."

I love them all, but I'm tired of them. And too many performances express the same old pieties instead of real feeling. So, it was a pleasure to receive a new disk, by the estimable Chicago-based choral group His Majesties Clerkes, with something completely different on it, something beautiful, and delivered with spiritual fervor and grace.

It's an album called "Hear My Prayer: Choral Music of the English Romantics." Surprisingly, the three pieces on this album were all composed in the 20th century which suggests that in English choral music the romantic period arrived, or stayed a little late.

According to the liner notes by the group's director, Anne Heider, what makes something romantic is a preference for the distant rather than the immediate past. A preference evidently shared by Heider and His Majesties Clerkes. "Majesty" ending not with a "Y" but an "I"-"E." and "Clark" spelled "C"-"L-"E-"R"-"K"-"E"-"S."

Even in 1922, Ralph Vaughan Williams' luscious "Mass in G Minor" was attacked for being old-fashioned. But who could have predicted back then that Medieval Gregorian chant which is how the Vaughan Williams "Mass" begins would top the charts in the 1990s.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- HIS MAJESTIES CLERKES PERFORMING VAUGHAN WILLIAMS' "MASS IN G MINOR")

SCHWARTZ: The earliest selections on this disk, from 1905, are three lovely Latin motets by Vaughan Williams' tyrannical teacher Charles Villier Stanford. Who, to a large degree, determined the conservative trend in 20th century British music.

The piece on the album I'm especially fond of is Oxford music professor Hubert Perry "Songs of Farewell." Six motets he composed during World War I, and completed in 1918; the year he died. The text's Perry sets, mostly 17th century including Psalm 39, seem to reflect his thoughts about his own mortality.

The Psalm by Sir John Davies concludes: "I know myself a man which is a proud, and yet, a wretched thing." John Dunne's apocalyptic holy sonnet "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" becomes more quietly ecstatic than you'd expect.

Henry Vaughn's "My Soul, There Is a Country Far Beyond the Stars" is a moving plea for peace and spiritual stability in a time of world devastation. The ending is particularly wondrous with its surprising and ironic tonal changes on the word "changes."

"If thou can'st get but thither, there grows the flower of peace. The rose that cannot wither, thy fortress, and thy ease. Leave then thy foolish ranges, for none can be secure, but one who never changes; by God; by life; by cure."

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP -- HENRY VAUGHN "MY SOUL THERE IS A COUNTRY FAR BEYOND THE STARS")

SCHWARTZ: "Hear My Prayer" is not specifically a Christmas album which makes it all the more appealing at what's supposed to be not only a season of joy, but also a time of spiritual contemplation.

GROSS: Lloyd Schwartz is classical music editor of the "Boston Phoenix." He reviewed "Hear My Prayer: Choral Music of the English Romantics" on the Chicago label Cedille.

I'm Terry Gross.

TO PURCHASE AN AUDIOTAPE OF THIS PIECE, PLEASE CALL 888-NPR-NEWS

Dateline: Terry Gross, Washington, DC
Guest: Lloyd Schwartz
High: Classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews "Hear My Prayer: Choral Music of the English Romantics."
Spec: Entertainment; Music Industry; Vaughan Williams; Holidays

Please note, this is not the final feed of record
Copy: Content and programming copyright 1998 WHYY, Inc. All rights reserved. Transcribed by FDCH, Inc. under license from WHYY, Inc. Formatting copyright 1998 FDCH, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to WHYY, Inc. This transcript may not be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission.
End-Story: Lloyd Schwartz
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.