There Are Three Kings, And One Of Them Is Black.

Amahl and the Night Visitors. As a wily young fourth grader, I tried out for and got to play (and sing) as Caspar, one of the three kings who came to see Jesus after he was born in Bethlehem. “Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.” But it was a long journey from Persia (present day Iran) to Judea (in present day Israel) so they had to stop a lot to replenish their supplies and refresh themselves, and one of these nights they came across crippled Amahl and his mom and brought with them their gold, frankinscense, and myrrh. I recall being the only king who got to sing in the play – c'mon, if you want to know what happens, watch it yourselves – and got to show Amahl the precious stones that I carried with me in “The Box.”

“This is my box. This is my box. I never travel without my box.”

Christmas Miscellany. I just finished this book last night, and Jonathan Green's work (ISBN 9781602397576) tells me-slash-told me way more than I thought I would want to about that holiday occupying the twenty-fifth of December! Some I knew already – that Christmas is on December 25^th because it's overlapping a festival commemorating the Roman god of agriculture, that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer originated with a Montgomery Ward Christmas promotion – but my mind got blown by such items as “Xmas” not being a modern blow-off of Christians' beliefs (I kind of suspected this) but rather a result of fifteenth-century typesetting, why Brussels sprouts is served at Christmas dinner (what the heck?), and the origin of the expression “to drink a toast”.

And THAT one's so good I've gotta share it! The expression “to drink a toast” actually has its origins in the wassail. By the time the practice of wassailing had left the lord's manor, with bands of peasants taking their empty wassail bowl from house to house for it to be filled with drink, the wassailers were sometimes given pieces of toast – rather like croutons – to float on the top. Each wassailer in turn took a piece and wished his fellows good cheer before eating the toast and washing it down with a swig of the potent mixture in the bowl. Hence the phrase “to drink a toast”.

T.S. Eliot: The Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950. Okay, here I fudged; I did not read the plays because I have one life and it's short enough. Why waste it on things I don't want? (quoting Louis Brandeis) But the poetry collected in this volume (LOC 52-11346) is brilliant and well worth repeating, but I won't right now because I've heard the Eliot estate has a thing about direct quotations … don't worry, stay with me. And as the article I read in the mid-80s Dragon Magazine said, I should feel free to fudge, for in this context it's ultimately ME and not the books that are in control. Other rules – this was a role-playing game article, by the way) were “No, you can't polymorph a henchman into Odin” and “Do not allow thermonuclear devices” that I recall.

Alas, I do not control time so well. Due to the fact that our Wednesday night Lenten services got moved back to six forty-five at night and I get off work at seven, I haven't been able to get there before either the last hymn is sung or the service is just over! (No, correct that; I got there just before offering two weeks ago.) What bums me out is I don't get to see any of the well-praised Lenten dramas staged before the sermon, which to be honest I'd really like to act in, and for that matter participate in community theater a little more than I do (by, say, watching the occasional play, especially at Minot State University's Summer Theater). In many ways, the acting bug has never quite left me and the family will tell you it shows!

Apparently Balthasar and not Caspar was black, David