North Pole, Alaska

Posted on August 9, 2021 by admin

Here’s a question I’ve never considered at all before, for any reason: Where is the world’s largest Santa Claus statue? Guinness World Records and other sources put it in Portugal, where the municipality of Águeda erected a 69-foot Claus made of aluminum and iron and LED lighting in time for Christmas 2016.

Yet other sources assert that the 42-foot-tall, 900-pound fiberglass Santa statue in North Pole, Alaska, deserves the honor, as a more permanent fixture. It is definitely older, having graced the Fairbanks suburb since 1983 after making its way up from the Lower 48 (Seattle, specifically) in a tale told by Roadside America.

I don’t have an opinion about the champion Santa statue. I did see the North Pole Santa, though, not long before I drove down to Denali NP.

Santa stands at the Santa Claus House in North Pole, pop. 2,090 or so. I couldn’t come to greater Fairbanks and not see that. The establishment dates from nearly 70 years ago in the early days of the town, which supposedly renamed itself North Pole to attract a toy factory that never materialized (“Made at North Pole” could be stamped on such toys.) One Con Miller and his wife Nellie capitalized on the name, however, by calling their trading post Santa Claus House.

These days the place isn’t particularly a trading post, but most definitely a tourist attraction, still owned by the Miller family. I came myself exactly because it is a tourist attraction.

Santa-themed murals decorate the exterior walls.

Inside, as you’d expect, is a large retail store devoted to Christmas decorations and other holiday paraphernalia.

Not as large as the Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland in Frankenmuth, Michigan, but pretty impressive all the same. In one corner, a Santa and an elf were standing by, waiting for children to visit. I understand that a Santa always stands by at the store, no matter what time of the year it is.

Santa Claus House might be the main tourist attraction in North Pole, but other parts of the city play to the theme. For instance, visible from the highway is Universal Welding, and its locally themed sign. Local street names include Santa Claus Lane (what else could that be?), Snowman Lane, Mistletoe Drive, Kris Kringle Drive and Donner and Blitzen drives.

Then there’s the North Pole post office.

I had lunch at a diner in North Pole, Country Cafe. A nice ham and cheese sandwich. The place didn’t have a Christmas theme, but rather model military airplanes. No surprise, really. Eielson Air Force Base isn’t far down the Richardson Highway (Alaska 2) from North Pole. Santa Claus House and its tourist draw is nice, but I’m sure it’s Eielson that supports the local economy.

The Devolution of Our 2020 Christmas Tree

Posted on January 10, 2021 by admin

Today was the last day for the Christmas tree. As usual, it’s been nice having it around, but its time had come.
Before long, I’d removed the ornaments. No one volunteered to help.
Including Eggplant. I think we bought that one at an impromptu crafts sale at an apartment building near where we lived the year Lilly was born. I expect she was there with us, strapped in a carrier.
The lord. Got him about the same time as Eggplant, though I can’t remember where. I like to think of him as one of the 10 Lords A-Leaping, resting between leaps.

Soon all the ornaments were off. Except the Star of Bethlehem. It’s always the last to go. I bought it at a garage sale years ago because it is a gold colored version of a silver star I put on our tree growing up. The exact same style.

After everything was off, I dragged the tree outside. The dog decided to investigate the mass of needles left behind in the living room. We will find needles in odd spots for months. Until next Christmas, probably.
Last stop (on our property, anyway): the curb.
That’s the tree well-illuminated by the nearby street lamp.

Debris Under the Tree

Posted on January 3, 2021 by admin

Another Christmas, come and gone. We opened presents in the morning that day, as usual.

Not as usual, we had a family Zoom in the afternoon. My brothers, and my nephews and their expanding families, Lilly, and Yuriko and Ann and I were all linked. A geographic diversity: Texas, New York, Washington state and Illinois. We had an enjoyable time, even if the connection was wonky occasionally.

Later in the day, our Christmas movie was The Day the Earth Stood Still. The original version, of course. I hadn’t seen it in at least 30 years, but it was as good as I remember. The movie also inspired me to look up its source story, “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates, originally published in Astounding in 1940. No doubt a copy of that edition is somewhere in the house in San Antonio, among my father’s sizable collection of SF. I’d never read the story before, so I found in on line. I did know about its unnerving, surprise ending, however. I heard about it from a college friend years ago.

Another New Year’s Day has gone as well, featuring ice precipitation on top of an inch of two or snow that had fallen a few days earlier. Not enough to rise to the level of an ice storm, but enough to keep us within our walls, occasionally listening to the tap-tap-tap of ice hitting the ground or roof, but mostly paying attention to electronic entertainment, or lost in a book or two, for me including American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (Jon Meacham, 2009) that I put down this summer and which I’m finishing now, about half way through. Big things ahead: Old Hickory is going to destroy the Second Bank of the United States and go up against nullification, and win, along with a second term. He’s already set the Trail of Tears in motion.

Queen of Heaven Cemetery, Or Christmas at the Cemetery

Posted on December 21, 2020 by admin

The Great Conjunction was up there this winter solstice evening. For us, behind all the clouds.

As December days go, Sunday was above-freezing tolerable, and unlike today, mostly clear. A good day for being outdoors for a while, which is what I did at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

Queen of Heaven is the southernmost of a pair of large suburban Catholic cemeteries, adjacent to each other, with a major east-west thoroughfare, Roosevelt Road, separating them. To the north is Mount Carmel Cemetery, permanent home to bishops, gangsters, Boer sympathizers and many others.

Queen of Heaven is newer, post-WWII, and more understated of the two, but with its own charms.

Including a handful of stately mausoleums.
Pretty soon I began to notice the Christmas decorations. A lot of them. I was inordinately pleased by the sight. I ought to visit more cemeteries in December.

I also noticed that the cemetery was busy. Not urban center busy, but busy for a cemetery. Even at the largest and most picturesque cemeteries, I’m very often the only person in sight, or one of two, including groundskeepers sometimes.

On Sunday at Queen of Heaven, I saw a dozen people or more by themselves or in couples, along with three or four small knots of people. Those gatherings didn’t have the look of funerals. I got close enough to one of the groups, driving by slowly, that I could see the people gathered around a new grave, maybe a few months old. Must have been their first Christmas without the deceased, and there were there to pay their respects. Talk about life-affirming.

The Evolution of Our 2020 Christmas Tree

Posted on December 17, 2020 by admin

Decorating the Christmas tree was a multi-day process this year. I remember earlier years with younger girls around, when there was no suggestion of delay. Those days are over.

The first day, no ornamentation.
The next day, I added lights.
Two days later, Ann and I got around to hanging ornaments and tossing icicles. Note the dog under the tree. She’s been parking herself there sometimes, unlike in pervious years when she’s mostly ignored this sudden and probably inexplicable (to dogs) plant presence.
Even now, the Star of Bethlehem — the last thing to go on the tree and the last to come off, because personal tradition demands it — isn’t up yet. That’s because that would mean getting the lopper out of the garage and using it to remove part of the long top of the tree. I’ll get around to that task soon.

NW Suburban Xmas Tree Lot

Posted on December 13, 2020 by admin

Beginning late in the day on Friday, rain starting falling and continued through much of Saturday. Not particularly heavy, and temps were warm enough, barely, to prevent ice formation. But all the wet did delay our planned Christmas tree acquisition until today.

Fairly cold today, but dry, so there were no issues with a wet tree in the back seat. That’s how we carry it home, bottom of the trunk pointed toward to floor of the back seat, the thin top pointed out the opposite window, which is rolled down a bit. This year the top of the tree stuck out about a foot, and the window was rolled down about that much.

The modest NW suburban lot we patronized. Cash only.
Xmas Tree Lot I took that picture last year. This year I didn’t bother. But it looked almost exactly the same today, and the tree-buying was the same. Find a tree at or under what I wanted to spend, exchange a few words with the proprietors (a middle-aged couple), watch as the one of them, the man as it happened, cut a few inches off the bottom with a chain saw and then run the tree through the netting gizmo. I carried the netted tree to the car and loaded it myself.

After some re-arrangement of the debris in the living room, the 7-foot or so balsam now awaits decoration. We’ll get to it when Ann feels like helping. Doing most of it, actually.

Winterlude ’20

Posted on February 19, 2020 by admin

Though it hasn’t been a harsh winter, it has been winter, so time for a short hiatus. Back posting around March 1.

It turned out to be a good idea to know as little as possible about Parasite before seeing that movie, which we did last weekend, weeks after we’d originally considered going. All that time, I did my best not to read about it. Not knowing the arc of the story helped maintain the suspense, which was as riveting as anything Hitchcock did, especially after the midway twist.

I did know that the movie came highly recommended, and by sources I respect more than the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Could it, I wondered, be better than 1917? It was. That’s a remarkable achievement all by itself. One of those rare movies that is as good as people say.

I’ve updated my vanity North American map again.
The key to the colors is here. The color scheme is wholly idiosyncratic, so I do have certain ideas about certain places. For instance, if I spent some time in following places, I’d color the respective states blue: the Northwoods of Minnesota; Norfolk and vicinity in Virginia; Mobile, Alabama; and Tuscon, Arizona. If I spent a night in West Virginia or Delaware or Rhode Island or Manitoba, they’d be orange. Just means I need to get out more.

Though cold today, the sun was out. Time to take my new garden gnome outside.

Gnomish Stalin was a Christmas president from my brother Jay, shipped to me from the UK. Cornwall, specifically. For all I know, Cornwall might be the world hub of eccentric garden gnomes.
This year, I got Jay a Russian nesting doll — a political matryoshka doll, made in Russia. He sent me a picture. Nice set, though you’d think there would be room for Khrushchev at least, whom I’d pick for inclusion over Yeltsin.
Coincidence that we both sent Russian gifts — political Russian-themed gifts, no less? Or synchronicity? Who knows, I’m just glad to have a new conversation piece for my summertime visitors.

Watch the Reindeer Melt! Days of Fun

Posted on January 22, 2020 by admin

Ann brought this to my attention earlier this month, at a crafts superstore I rarely go to, but from which she wanted something. On display was an item that seemed to be sold for Christmas, but which by January was at a deep discount.

One of the stranger holiday items I saw this season, or any holiday season, really. A reindeer figure. Build it! Watch it melt! Watch it melt? Watch it melt?

Walmart’s marketing text about the item is positively demented, which I guess is fitting: “Build the reindeer and watch it melt magically! Fun for days. Completely reusable. Keep building and watch it melt over and over! Perfect stocking stuffer! Miracle Melters! Reindeer! Build it and Watch it Melt!”

Sure enough, someone has made a video about this — toy. I can’t say that I watched all of it, skipping around some, but the point of the item still eludes me. Do reindeer melt in dark Sámi folktales?

I Hope the Danes Appreciated the Show

Posted on December 18, 2019 by admin

A lot of musicians have recorded “Children, Go Where I Send Thee,” such as the Weavers, where I first probably heard it, or Odetta, just to name two.

But for joy and sheer verve, I haven’t heard a rendition to match this one.

Johnny Cash, members of the Carter family, Carl Perkins, the Statler Brothers and the Tennessee Three, in 1971 in Denmark and in their prime. Solid camera work, too. Somehow or other I never saw this wonderful clip until the other day.

Christmas Cake

Posted on December 17, 2019 by admin

Christmas cake isn’t much of a holiday custom in the U.S., though it is more so in Japan, in as much as Christmas gets attention there beyond a modest amount of decoration and KFC. Actually, I don’t remember any to-do about KFC on Christmas in the early ’90s in Japan. Maybe it’s really a Tokyo thing — that’s often enough mistaken for the entirely of Japan by gaijin observers. Or maybe I wasn’t paying attention.

I digress. Yuriko made a Christmas cake this year.

Much chocolate, a healthy serving of cherries, and, you’ll see, a few dashes of edible gold. It’s so good it’ll hardly last until Christmas.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: Christmas