HOLIDAY CHEER

Ah, here we are again. It's the holiday season and, if you didn't get the memo, it's the most WONDERFUL time of the year! It's the time to embrace the present moment, meditate on all of the years behind us, and make our wishes for what is to come. It is the time when we all, in a quiet moment with a hot drink (or a highball glass, depending on your mood), stare into the fire and recall holidays past. Despite the festivities and lights and family and frenetic running about, most of us have a twinge of melancholy in December.

Whether we celebrate Christmas, Hanukah, the Winter Solstice or some other esoteric (to me, anyway) winter rite, December has a way of tugging us back to our childhoods. We remember those years in bright relief, as if we are looking at a diorama in a museum cultural exhibit of what was before, and now, can never be again. For myself, this is a very good thing. Each year, the gulf between Christmases Past and Christmases Present widens and I get merrier and merrier.

My parents were both Old World stoics built for endurance rather than light-hearted frivolity. They did not descend from a partying people; nor did they have the philosophical capacity to reflect and say, "Yeah...things used to really suck before, but it's not so bad now. We're all healthy. We have what we need. Let's embrace the Power of Now!"

They were not, out of fear or habit or personality, inclined to nibble from the buffet of happiness even if the sideboard was groaning under the weight of plenty. You get the idea. My parents were gloomy, and they didn't get suddenly jollier because Christmas came around.

It wasn't easy to ferret out much tinsel and dazzle in the Gabriel household, but it wasn't completely barren. One man gave me enough holiday magic to give me hope that, one day, I too, would have the Christmas of my dreams. That man was Dean Martin.

Somehow, we had a recording of Dean's "Holiday Cheer" album and, for me, he WAS Christmas. There was something in that martini-slurred voice of his that promised me that out beyond the prohibition on pleasure imposed by my wardens, something exciting and dangerous and fabulous was going on. Somewhere, there were lights and parties and people were having a swell time! I was inclined to start playing Dean at Thanksgiving and not lift the phonograph needle from the vinyl until mid-January.

In a field of crooners, Dean stood alone. His holiday happiness did not include any sentiment toward a family or getting home for Christmas, if only in his dreams. To the extent that he was dreaming of a white Christmas, it was only to ensure that his weekend ski plans in Canada or Vermont played out to his satisfaction. Dean was not singing about Adeste Fidelis or a Holy Night. Bells of any kind - sleigh, jingle, church or silver - did not hold much interest for him, and he was, most certainly, not longing for faithful friends, drummer boys, or an opportunity to roast chestnuts. Dean was, always and forever, looking to get...well...you know...dames.

I knew, even then, that Dean was a smooth operator. Handsome, suave and possessed of many fine v-neck sweaters, I recognized that Dean had a powerful charisma and an eye for the ladies. While I could not have articulated my feelings then, I intuited, like any girl would, that he was just playing the field until he met a special woman. After he "found that love that [he] couldn't ignore", his wandering eye would ne'er wander again.

"Holiday Cheer" is sort of an exploration of the tension between Dean's restless sexuality and his unexamined longing for love. It's Christmas, or thereabouts, and he's simultaneously looking to score AND commit himself to a deeper relationship. On the way, he sings about flirtation, romance, longing and bitter disappointment. Over the years (and we're talking almost 50 years, here...the original tracks were mastered in 1959), I've come to identify the Three Aspects of Dean. There's Seductive Dean, Introspective Dean and Brooding Dean. "Holiday Cheer" gives us several musical portraits of each of Dean's aspects.

Seductive Dean always masters the weather. Like any skilled player, Dean manages to turn even a blizzard to his advantage. Dean doesn't obsess about snow tires or wrapping the water pipes. He reminds his companion that even though the weather is frightful, the fire is SOOO delightful. And since he and his lady have "no place to go", they might as well just stay in and let it snow.

On another bitter night, Seductive Dean insists that the lady stay over, because "Baby, you'll freeze out there!" Rather than risk her safety on the icy road, Dean suggests that she, "put some records on while I pour."

In one song, all the way to Maine on a romantic train, Dean holds hands with a woman he'd met in a station after she dropped her skis. Somehow, Dean's libido was keeping pace with the gathering dusk and we hear that "down, down, down, down came the sun; fast, fast, fast, fast beat my heart." Dean was off on a Winter Romance.

Things start to heat up on other tracts for Seductive Dean. It's off with his over coat, off with his gloves. Who needs an overcoat when you're burning with love (LOVE, ladies!)? Dean's heart is on fire and the flames just leap higher (and higher). The flame that he kindled hadn't dwindled at all...baby, it just won't cool off.

Introspective Dean shows us that despite being a lust-hound, he knows that it takes more than physical attraction and bad weather to sustain a relationship. Even though the snow is snowing and the wind is blowing, Dean can weather the storm. What does he care how much it may storm if he's got his love to keep him warm?

Introspective Dean acknowledges that even in the heart of winter there's an eternal summer. If you're in love, it's June in January and there's spring in your heart. Even thought the night is cold, and the trees are bare, with the right girl in your arms with all of her magical charms, you can feel (not "smell" but "feel" - Dean was very sensitive) the scent of roses in the air.

I was not as fond of Brooding Dean. It was beyond my understanding how anyone could snag Dean Martin for a boyfriend and then dump him:

The sang that you sang so sweetly, you called it our love refrain, It's gone and I'm left completely, out in the cold again.
I dreamed our love would
linger, but just memories remain, As I gaze at that ringless finger, out in the cold again. I wanted your arms around me, to shelter me from the rain, But now I'm back where you found me, out in the cold again.

Brooding Dean did seem to have trouble committing to a relationship. By the time Christmas rolled around, he was occasionally depressed and reminiscing about the things he did last summer that, somehow, had to sustain him all winter long. The leaves, around November, began to fade like the promises he made. How could a love that seemed so right go so wrong? Still, I loved him with all my heart. What female could resist the promise of a man who feels the scent of roses when he holds you?

By the 70s, my album had become as wavy as a Pringle and sounded like Velcro being pulled apart. Dean's smoldering slur was becoming less intelligible as the needle raked over the undulating groove of that old record. "Holiday Cheer" was long out of print, and I went through tireless effort to find better copies in used record stores, thrift stores and libraries.

Christmas without Dean was beginning to deteriorate into just a spiritless holiday. I was only surviving the present because Dean had promised me brighter days ahead that included ski trips and romantic assignations, and I needed to hear his voice to believe.

For most of the 80s, I made do with a cassette I'd taped from the best of the warped albums. It was awful, but I had some hope. Compact discs had arrived and I suspected that it was only a matter of time before "Holiday Cheer" was remastered. And so it was - by Capital Records in 1989, thirty years after its original release.

These days, I have a CD of "Holiday Cheer" at work, at home and in my car. I throw myself at the holidays with a festive attitude and I expect to meet a charming stranger on a train as soon as I get the hang of dropping my skis instead of just hitting myself in the head with them. My biggest thrill was when, on Thanksgiving, my daughter said (completely unprompted), "Where's Dean? It's time, you know."

May your days and nights be filled with holiday cheer, too. And keep warm, 'cause baby... it's cold outside.

Previous column

Next column

Ingrid is currently living and respectably employed in Austin, Texas with a firm specializing in environmental law. She hopes to get back home to the San Juan Islands next spring to stay.
While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

news@sanjuanislander.com

ABOUT US | ADVERTISING INFO | CONTACT INFORMATION |