A Merry Christmas!

Anna Quindlen 1989 NY Times essay:

We will have a cold antipasto and chicken parmigiana for dinner tonight.
I could have told you this a week ago. I could have told you this in March.
It is an Italian tradition to feast on Christmas Eve, to crowd the table
with calamari and scungilli, bacalla and pieces of fried eel.

But my husband does not eat any of those traditional dishes, so I have
adapted the menu. Afterward we will read “A Christmas Carol”, alternating
chapters. I realized years ago that he got the best chapters. He gets the
first, gets to intone “Marley was dead, to begin with.” And he gets the
last, so that at the end he can say, “God bless us every one!” But it has
always been so. It is too late to change now.

Christmas is the mainstay of my year because tradition is the mainstay of
my life. It keeps me whole. It is the centrifugal force that stops the
pieces from shooting wildly into the void. The only way I can bear the
changes that grind on inexorably around me is to pepper the year with those
things that never change. Bath and books for the boys before bedtime.
Homemade cakes on their birthdays. The beach in August. Chestnuts roasting
on an open fire. Jack Frost nipping at your nose. You name it, I do it.

We buy our tree at the same lot every year. “Where’s the biggest tree
you’ve got?” I ask, and as though he knows just what I need, the man who
runs the place repeats the same performance every year, looks askance and
says “The biggest?” Then we grin at each other, because we know he will
never find a tree higher than the ceiling in the corner of our
high-ceilinged Victorian parlor – the traditional place for our tree. It
will be decorated, not with any kind of theme or color, just the hodgepodge
of glass balls, pressed tin ornaments, and little stuffed figures I’ve
collected over the years. Each year I buy two new ones.

It turns out that this is the sort of person I am. For a long time I
wondered, but now I am sure. Sometimes I dreamed of moving on the spur of
the moment to Paris, of throwing a pair of black velvet pants and a black
shirt and some jeans and a T-shirt into a satchel and setting up shop on the
rue de Something, writing poetry and dancing till dawn until another fancy
struck me. But I never was that kind of person, and I never will be.
Perhaps I realized this the first Christmas that I was free, alone, mistress
of my own three rooms on the top floor of a little brick townhouse in a city
so big no one would know if I missed Mass because I was sleeping one off.
And I rounded up the children of my friends and set out bowls of colored
frosting and made them decorate cookies with me. And I dragged home a
pathetic little tree and hung the cookies on it. And I went to midnight
Mass at the church around the corner and hung my stocking on the mantel and
stuffed things in it the next morning. And took the bus home to my family.

I will never jump on the next plane to Paris, never travel light. I
often envy people who can. Their lives seem more exciting to me, less
calcified. I am sure that they have unlimited opportunities to re-create
themselves, and that they do. I look at Madonna, who was untidy in lace and
bracelets last year and this year is sleek in black bustiers and an elegant
cap of bleached hair, and think how exhilarating it must be to be that, to
be someone new each time you turn around.

I’m not like that. The question of moving the tree this year from one
end of the living room to the other is of enormous moment. The idea of
getting a slightly smaller, more practical one is simply not to be borne. I
will always need my sampler with the Irish blessing, the mirror from my
mother’s bureau, my applique’ quilt, the complete Dickens I bought at a flea
market for two dollars when I was fifteen, yuletide carols being sung by a
choir, folks dressed up like Eskimos.

Sometimes this makes oil and water of my life: getting married in Alencon
lace and pearls, and yet keeping my own name; answering all my son’s
questions absolutely truthfully, and then assuring them that Santa does
exist; questioning church teachings in my mind, and yet reading the
Christmas Gospel in church and feeling the power of its message in my heart:
“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling
clothes, and laid him in a manger.” The echo I hear is the sound of the
years passing: a little girl in a navy-blue wool coat with a velvet collar,
a teenager in a camel’s-hair coat wit big bone buttons, a women in a fur, in
tears, enamored of the ridiculous notion that some things need never change,
that some things are safe, holding the hand of her firstborn son in the
blood-red shadows of stained glass.

I know who I am. I am these things: the trip to see the tree at
Rockefeller Center, the plastic Santa with a spray of holly in his chimney,
the Advent calendar, its last door open to reveal the Nativity. I spend a
good deal of time looking at Advent calendars, and was finally satisfied
with this one, only to open the first door and realize with a rush of
memory, like a sudden sneeze, that it was the same one I chose last year. I
suppose that is just right, too. I need eternal verities – otherwise I
worry that there are no verities. When I consider it in the abstract, it
sometimes seems boring, odd and old. But in real life, it is, well, real
life. A cold antipasto. Chicken parmigiana. I have done it before. I
will do it again. Although it’s been said, many times, many ways, merry
Christmas to you.

Happy holidays

Jeff A



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http://www.latham.nl/audio/images/kaart.gif

Latham Audio wishes everybody a merry christmas!

A Musical Christmas Greeting!

Hansel and Gretel [Humperdink]

Klemperer leading the Philharmonia.

I played this one week leading up to Christmas.

Best wishes from George

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NNn3U1unnu0

Merry Christmas and a healthy happy 2009 !

I hope we all can continue the joy of the forums, the music and the Naim machines in the next year with a positive economical change at short notice.

Best wishes to the Naim management with lots of wisdom.
Best wishes to the Benelux distributor Lathem, one of the best hifi distributors at all.


Paul Labrador

Merry Christmas to you all. May you have good health throughout the new year. Happy listening...

Charlie

Merry Christmas everyone! Wishing you all a happy and healthy new year.

Peter

Merry Christmas and God bless to all. Greetings from Hong Kong. Hope your Christmas listening is as suessful as mine.

http://forums.naim-audio.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/4801938...942965717#7942965717

Merry Xmas - Happy listening!

Merry Christmas



I hope Santa brings you that most cherished of all Christmas presents - a Dukla Prague away kit.

Please click for one of the greatest Christmas songs ever

MERRY CHRISTMAS



Dean..

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year - and thanks to you all for your great company, humour and expert advice!

enjoy
ken

Merry Christmas and happy new year to everybody

Merry Christmas one and all,
Thanks for all the support and help from
the forum during 2008

Merry Christmas everyone and here's to a secure New Year

Guys,

Because of entertaining, visiting and generally attempting to be a family member and part of society i'm signing out now until probably Monday/Tuesday next week. Hope you get all you wish for and have a good Xmas. Thanks for all the banter this last year.

Regards,

Lindsay

For all those hoping for great presents in the morning, here's an appropriate song from Chuck

Merry Christmas, baby, you really did treat me nice
Merry Christmas, baby, you really did treat me nice

Bought me a hi-fi for Christmas, now I am living in paradise
Well, I am feeling mighty fine, I got good music on my radio
Well, I feel so fine, I got good music on my radio
Yes, I wanna hug and kiss you baby
While you're standing beneath the mistletoe.

Santa came down the chimney, 'bout a half past three
Left all these pretty presents that you see before me
Merry Christmas baby, you really been good to me.

I will always love you baby
Now I am happy as I can be.


Have good fun everyone.

Merry Xmas everybody. And a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year

Cheers

Don

and a Merry Christmas from the bear.

I wish you all good company, good food and above all good music.

Its been a great year meeting many old and new friends from the forum, chatting and exchanging experiences.

I look forward to an even better 2009 and wish everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.


Merry Christmas,



Polar Bear

A very Merry Christmas to all .... and all the best for 2009.