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This is complicated as I usually get very pissed on Christmas. I very pissed that Christians have stolen my great holiday and attributed it to own religion.  I all my life celebrated last week of the year, it was wonderful holyday and I never attributed it with any religion, I do not observe any religion. Suddenly the Christians come to the scene and they name own God after my celebratory New Year Tree. Since then the world turned upside down and each meeting with official sad adult realty of Christians is a new and new blow into my unadulterated memories about Christmases. A Christmas in truth, the absolute truth, is a celebration of Santa Clause bringing the Christmas Tree and people welcoming a New Year. Why Christianity enslave my Christmas Tree and sticks own noise into the Santa Clause business I have no idea. The Santa Clause rides deer, heavily dressed for cold weather and brings Christmas Trees along with a lot of shit that people hang on the trees. Christ is from in Middle East, you saw a lot of deer and evergreen coniferous trees in Bethlehem, did you? Also, Christ was not able to be born on December 25 as everything was closed that day as usually. Hold on! The Chinese restaurants were open! Perhaps Christ was born in Beijing then? The socks with the gifts, the snows and white-bearded old man, the New Year resolutions – how the hell Christianity managed to initialized all of this. I remember that when I was 5 year old Santa Clause come our home and brought me a gift. I was so excited that I peed in my trousers – does it make me a Christian?

Well, whatever! As Albert Einstein once nailed a horseshoe above his door assuming that horseshoe might bring luck to somebody who does not believe to superstitions, I think I need to make my own Christmas List. In this country a Christmas list is very much the shopping list, as Lawrence Ferlinghetti so brilliantly mocked in his “Christ climbed down from His bare Tree…” So, what I would like to get on Christmas?  Ironically have no audio wishes – whatever I need I can get. What I would like to get in the  coming year would be just a quite house at a distance of just one speeding ticket from Boston, the one that that would have my 800 sq feet singe room with 25 feet ceiling (preferably cathedral ) and DO NOT have those needless 3.000 extra sq feet around my single room.  I would not need Christ’s help as I myself am perfectly capable to convert this quite new house into a wonderful Nerd Dwelling…

And of course the music. What I remember from the Christmas of my childhood that it was overwhelming Tchaikovsky, Russians played as it was no tomorrow, particularly the Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker’s second act.  I remember that there were countless cartoons with different animals dancing around Christmas Trees under that Waltzs. Where those rabbits, cats, bears, wolfs, hedgehogs, pig, chickens and the rest of animals all Christians? Anyhow, I still love the Waltz of the Flowers tremendously. I will probably play  later on the Rostropovich take on the Nutcracker with Berlin Philharmonic or Knappertsbusch with Vienna Philharmonic. BTW, if somebody are in Nutcracker then do not miss the Mravinsky own version of Nutcracker from 40s – it is very non-Christmasy and it is wonderfully dark and gloomy. It feels more like under-snow symphony then Christmas Balet.  But who said that Christmas must be cheerful? The American Thanksgiving is a cheerful day, but how about if you are a turkey?

And of course there is no Christmas without playing the magnificent 2-piano version of Nutcracker by Martha Argerich and Nicolas Economic. The first marche from the Danses Caracteristiques, that is hardly sound like marche, arranged for double piano is “something else”. Does anybody else recognize in the 2-piano version of the marche the Sholem Aleichem’s satire?

The Cat

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