The other day one of the personal trainers that I know at my gym walked up to me and said, “We were talking the other day and we wonder why you never wear your hair up.” Hmmm. OK. Is it me, or is that a strange thing to say to someone? A) who is “we”? B) why would this be a topic of conversation? I just laughed and replied that it’s a moot point because I spend more time putting my hair back into a ponytail and I don’t sweat so I don’t need to put it up. Both of those are true. Is there some super-secret method of ponytail making that I don’t know about? Also, I am some sort of freak of nature because I can work out intensely and not a drop of sweat do I produce.
But the biggest reason that I don’t like to wear a ponytail: my ears. They’re big and they stick out. Do you remember the stop-motion animation special from the early 1970s called Rudolph’s Shiny New Year? Quite unfortunately, I received the nickname Baby New Year. Those ears, THOSE EARS!
Yeah, pretty much like that. Luckily, I am a woman so I can always have hair that is long enough to cover those ears. (THOSE EARS!)
In retrospect, a lot of those old holiday specials were sort of disturbing. Does anyone else remember Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey?
It is the tale of a donkey with abnormally long ears named Nestor, who lived in the days of the Roman Empire. Every animal in the stable disliked Nestor because of his ears. One day the animals in the stable are celebrating the winter solstice. Nestor’s mother gives socks to Nestor to cover his ears.
That night when Nestor is asleep, soldiers come from the Roman Empire. They pick a bunch of donkeys, including Nestor, but not his mother. Nestor tries to get away and one of the soldiers grabs the socks on Nestor’s ears. They come off. The soldiers thought the owner of the stable was trying to trick them. The owner, Olaf, says he will give them Nestor for free, but the angry soldiers force him to give him all the donkeys for free and do not take Nestor. After the soldiers leave a furious Olaf throws Nestor out the door, saying that he doesn’t care if he freezes to death. Nestor’s mother escapes the stable and finds him. As a blizzard rages outside, and there is no indoor shelter to be had, Nestor’s mother finds a small cove out of the wind and uses her body to shield her son from the storm. Nestor wakes up in the morning only to find that his mother didn’t survive.
I cried so hard when his mother died that I missed most of the rest of the program.
It seems like a version of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl was on TV at Christmastime, too.
On a cold New Year’s Eve, a poor girl tries to sell matches in the street. She is already shivering from cold and early hypothermia. Still she is afraid to go home because her father will beat her for not selling any matches. She shelters in a nook and sits down.
The girl lights the matches to warm herself. In their glow, she sees several lovely visions including a Christmas tree and a holiday feast. The girl looks skyward and sees a shooting star; she then remembers her dead grandmother saying that such a falling star means someone is dying and is going to Heaven. As she lights the next match, she sees a vision of her grandmother, the only person to have treated her with love and kindness. She strikes one match after another to keep the vision of her grandmother alive for as long as she can.
Running out of matches, the child dies and her grandmother carries her soul to Heaven. The next morning, passers-by find the child dead in the nook and feel pity for her.
Even though I already knew the story from my book of fairy tales, I’d be sobbing by the time the little match girl died. I was really sensitive little kid and would be upset for days after watching these shows. Nothing like crying your eyes out to get you in the Christmas spirit, right? 😉
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