***

 

December!

***

December, blessed December.

Season of great excess.

Excess of food… Excess of drink… Excess …of love.

We float about in a haze of Stardust, Moon-dust,  Snow-dust,

Dazed but not confused.

Our Illusions are Deliberate, Anticipated and Well-planned.

December Blessed, Beautiful, December.

Sparkling, Luminescent, Saccharine

December.

***

At the Chemainus

Theatre

***

• Waiting for the play to start we take in the buffet. As usual, the buffet drips opulence: reeks of decadence. Tiny Tim, the smallest and  youngest among us overindulges and spends 24 hours with a well earned bout of digestive discomfort.

 

• Absolutely absorbing, the play serves up the treacle of Americana with an outstanding cast of professionals squeezing out the last dregs of emotion from the audience. But of course the cast is preaching to the converted. We, audience and actors all sing from the same songbook. No protest. No dissent. Total consensus. Blessed, Peaceful December. (Oh wouldn’t that be nice!)

 

• On Central Vancouver Island at the Chemainus Theatre Festival we are seated in a Norman Rockwell America in the warm glow of a canvas of Thomas Kincade, and  watching a Frank Kapra production. It is, after all blessed December. We live the month enchanted, bedazzled, in a happy daze and blinded by the lights.

 

• December, Blessed, Beautiful, Sparkling, Luminescent December.

 

•  Next December we will agree once more to have:

‘The IQ of a Rabbit

But the Faith of a Child’*

The two remarks  in the quote boxes are taken from the script of It’s a Wonderful Life by Frank Kapra.

***

Post Scriptum:

• Where is Canadiana? Have Americans cornered the market on feel-good-at-Christmas? (We did see Anne of Green Gables 4 years ago).

 

• Dammit! you have to give it to the Americans. They have refined “Let Me Entertain You” to such a degree that long after American geopolitical hegemony is over, we will still depend on the templates laid down by the American Entertainment Industry to take us to another emotional place, to transport us momentarily from the many global, national and personal cul-de-sacs and into a refreshingly and seductively simple world of boy meets girl, poverty is eradicated for another year and a child leads the way to a problem free future.

 

• Where are the Indigenous people in the audience or in the cast? How can they be enticed to participate in the feast?

 

• Two of us are gluten intolerant and were able to get many items gluten free. Unfortunately  however the bounty of comestibles did not come guilt free.

Grace before Gluttony

***

 ***