christmas is lovely at home. we had salmon and potatoes (czechs have carp, which is revolting, and potato salad, which i am sure i have told you about my hate affair with potato salad). Friar Tuck tried to reproduce the food categories to reflect tradition but to make food so that we would be pleased, and i am so pleased to have this. Squire Tuck was his perfect self, commenting on the beauty of black olives against pink salmon. we ate on my grandmother's china. i got a sparkly thing because Friar Tuck has figured out that i like sparkly things, which is very clever of Friar Tuck. Squire Tuck got seven books because we think he likes reading, i guess. if you fill a martini glass half full of griotte and then layer gin on top it looks like christmas and it tastes like heaven. i could fill you with details to last you to the new year. we've been listening to laurie anderson's life on a string and iva bittova's kolednice and of course nohavica. i love this song because it seems so rousing and lively and the lyrics are so sad and determined; it doesn't work quite without the music but i'll give it to you anyway. merry and happy and i hope things are half as good where you are as they are here.
Mary, Virgin Mary
She went around the world, she went alone
Just with Joseph
He was a little useless
They both wandered around the outskirts of Judea
They wandered through the night looking for a place
Where they could lay their heads
They were expecting a child
And none of the people
wanted anything to do with them
All of them said,
you will reap what you sow.
Mary, Virgin Mary
Solved this problem on her own
She found a little stable
It stank a bit
but a bucket of water washed it clean
And then she lay down
and cried a little
And Joseph was hopeless
With a face like a mule
And then near midnight
with the help of god
and thanks to courage
She brought into the world a boy as pretty as a picture
Mary, Virgin Mary,
Who was almost alone in everything
And then a comet flashed across the sky
Mary said,
Josef, let's go out into the world
There is no place for us here
They don't love us here
They will kill our son
And so the three of them left
What happened next you surely know
What you don't know, you can imagine
Mary, Virgin Mary
Who was in all things almost alone
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