Matt Yglesias

Happy Solstace

I was going to write up a description of my high school’s weird “Candlelighting” ceremony that was always performed on the last day before winter break as a secular alternative to a Christmas pageant for a school whose students were mostly Jewish. But it seems Tony Sachs did it last year at the Huffington Post:

The ceremony started with the headmaster, who in my day was a bespectacled fellow with a demeanor not unlike that of a younger Ronald Reagan, striding onstage holding a long lit candle. Behind him, the stage was filled with more candles, most of them unlit, mounted on weird geometrically-shaped stands that made the whole thing feel even more like a particularly elegant Satanic mass. “In the season of the sun’s rebirth,” he would solemnly intone, “on the eve of the winter solstice, I consecrate this house … with LIGHT.” Then he’d walk over to one of the unlit candles and light that baby up. The only thing missing was a hooded robe and an altar on which to sacrifice one of the pre-K kids.

If that wasn’t enough, one lucky “pagan” from every grade would march on up, candle in hand, for his or her own little bit of consecration. Starting with the sixth grader, each student would read a line from a poem which was either written by a student decades earlier or by some guy named Ffyglygthl in the 6th century, I’m not sure. “Build your house upon the hill of truth,” it began, and went on to include such doozies as “May the Roof of your Dwelling be Love; the wing of the Archangel; the Great Fire.” [...]

I’m still amazed that, to the best of my knowledge, none of our parents ever complained that the school was trying to turn their children into godless, fire-worshiping heathens. These are people who would threaten lawsuits if their kids were given an A-minus on their chemistry midterms instead of an A. I suppose bowing down to the gods of flame one day a year didn’t adversely affect a Harvard application.

You can read the whole candlelighting poem here. The school started in kindergarten, but I didn’t start going there until ninth grade. Consequently, I was fully aware of how bizarre this was from the get-go. Still, I always thought it was a neat ceremony. And, honestly, there would be a lot to be said for changing things up and holding a big, non-sectarian, gift/tree/family oriented Holiday on December 21 that would be followed on December 25 by a low-key church-oriented celebration for practicing Christians.

Out of Town News

Speaking of smoking, the confidence in the economy of America’s elite is sure to be shattered by the news that Out of Town News, the newstand smack in the middle of Harvard Square, is shutting down. The internet had basically made its core business model obsolete some time ago. The general idea, as witnessed by the name, was that you could buy all kinds of “out of town” publications there, thus serving the news needs of the university’s geographically diverse community. But people still buy other stuff — I used to buy cigarettes there, and sometimes Diet Coke (but soda’s cheaper at the university vending machine), but I think cigarette retailing is a declining industry as well.

Note that the closing of Out of Town News is part of the dystopian vision of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Creating Magical Enjoyment You Feel Good About

Travel to Europe’s small countries always offers one an intriguing glimpse of the world’s linguistic future — English spoken universally, but not quite right (admittedly, it’s an unfortunate coincidence that the world’s lingua franca is also the language that features the greatest proliferation of irregularities and so forth). Nestlé headquarters was full of promotional copy that didn’t scan right to a native speaker. Sometimes, they seemed to be working of a very literal translation from French. But then there was this:

I think I’d like to make that this blog’s new slogan. Creating magical enjoyment you feel good about since 2002.

Andrew Sullivan

People keep asking me why Andrew Sullivan hasn’t had any posts up today. I have no special insight into this, but note that none of the Atlantic’s blogs seem to have been updated since around 8AM this morning. Thus, I conclude that whatever’s keeping Andrew from posting is a system-wide problem and not anything that’s gone wrong with him or his site in particular.

UPDATE: Hm, no, that’s not right. Marc Ambinder writes:

Lots of e-mails asking about Andrew’s whereabouts. I checked in with him; he’s fine. He’s taking a few days off. Worry not, fans.

There you have it.