Xmas from the Kays - 2014

Maybe this Christmas… 

You are looking at perhaps the penultimate of our Xmas CDs. It is not a matter of finding material, no overwhelmingly every year there is more and more music to pick from, but it is the delivery that is getting more difficult. It has become hard to find a CD player to play this on much less the media to record it. We do maintain a website at http://www.thekays.us/xmas where all of this is stored and that may be the means of distribution in the future.  

This year found us much subdued as we continue settling in our home. We adopted another dog a terrier/beagle mix “Lilly” (named after Lilly Pulitzer to keep in accordance with our Dixie Dingo “Coco” named after Coco Chanel). And Lilly has made us reconsider our open yard plan so another new fence went up. Someday I hope to have finished that fence. Jo got her Sugar Maple tree so some day long from now there will be shade once again in our yard. The black Walnuts have fallen but got buried by the early snow. Hopefully they will degrade by spring and I won’t have to clean them up. Each year we find another page in the “This Old House,” book. Jo got her way and we refinished the floors, which are beautiful, but that means the walls are feeling insecure and the ceiling, well it complains about having to look at the floors all day long. 

This year’s theme came out of a slow walk with the Memphis blues: whiskey in hand as Elvis journeys through swampy renditions. I keep hearing cries bemoaning about “the way it was…” and yet the way it was never happened. In the early 16^th century Martin Luther was bemoaning the idea that St. Nicholas was outshining Jesus so he opted to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25^th in order to reconcile that disruption.  That spirit of Christmas is always being chagrined for what we think it is supposed to mean. We are constantly hearing this argument of tradition and change. This year we embrace that ambiguity we celebrate the tradition and encourage the new. Christmas is home, a celebration of coming home and being with those we love. Christmas is sharing, sharing a new squeak or bone or the stories that others have to speak of of their lives. Christmas is giving, giving of ourselves to make the lives of others more pleasant. Christmas is celebrating, it does not matter if you are celebrating a new/old job, home, love, family member as long as you are celebrating. 

John picked up a new job this year at Trek and it has taken him in an entirely new direction, a change that brings hope and worthiness. Valerie is still an active part of his and therefore our lives and this in itself marks an occasion for celebration. Pat and Jenna (Patenna? Penna? Jennat?) have become inseparable and are celebrating this year as the “Prinzenpaar” (http://www.mardigrasmilwaukee.com/Prinzenpaar/Default.html) with John holding court, literally. Michel and Shelby are still keeping house but I do not hear much from them. 

When I first met Jo I had an abstract black velvet painting of a bull fighter that I loved because if you looked at it one way it looked like Jesus nailed to a cross, but if you looked from another angle it looked like Elvis in his white jumpsuit. What is more fitting than to celebrate the season with both icons questioning our principles?  

And as icons go it just ain’t Christmas until we hear John Prine sing… 

Happy Xmas 

Khristian ‘14