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Here’s a holiday tip I learned over the weekend: A fruitcake can be used like a Duraflame log in the fireplace. Jay Leno

Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable to find a way to damage them. Dave Barry

Tis the season for fruitcake jokes.

I finally figured out a use for holiday fruitcakes--paint them white to keep people from parking on your lawn.

I found the ideal fruitcake recipe. Forget all the other ingredients and just use rum.

I happen to like fruitcakes myself. My mother made two or three every year. We ate one and the others were given as gifts. They were good. My wife makes a "bread" that really is a small fruitcake in a loafpan--one of my favorite Christmas treats. I grant that some of the store-bought fruitcakes aren't great, though some are, like the famous Corsicana, Texas, fruitcakes.

I suspect that most of the people who make fun of these Christmas confections of fruits, nuts, and spices in a thick cake batter have never tried one. They just go with the stereotype.

I am not innocent of going with the humor flow myself. For years I made fun of Spam, the canned meat. It is like I assumed that any sentence with the word Spam in it was the set-up for a joke.

Last month, in the grocery store with my wife, on a whim I picked up a can. I tried it, and I liked it. Now I know that the word "Spam" is not automatically funny.

C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters defined frivolity as the assumption that the joke has already been made. It is the only form of humor encouraged by demonic temptors, because it creates the frame of mind in which virtue can be derided. Frivolous people act as though truth-telling, honest behavior, chastity, loyalty, and such are somehow literally ridiculous.

The older I get, the less patience I have with frivolous people, or with frivolous comedy. I wish they would try virtue before they ridicule it.

22/12: Signs of Hope

The Party is Over, but, all things considered, of course, this development is for the best.

An Aside: the End of the Party should not be confused with the End of the World (which is still possible, but a different subject).

The End of the Party means releasing unreasonable expectations and assumptions about the nature and meaning of life. Earlier this week, Pope Benedict XVI pointed to the obvious silver lining contained within our long overdue reconciliation with reality:

The present economic crisis, causing so much suffering, can however help us to focus on the spiritual meaning of Christmas, and to welcome into our hearts the hope brought by God’s coming among us as man.

The Pontiff encouraged all of us to "rekindle our hope in God’s promises and, in humility and simplicity, welcome the light, joy and peace which the Saviour brings to us and to our world."

This is good advice.

Running the risk of mixing the sacred with the profane, allow me to point to another sign of hope in popular culture: the Country Music Top 40.

Last week the number one country song in the nation was "Chicken Fried" by the Zac Brown Band (you may view a live version here via YouTube).

It is a great song and a celebration of "simplicity and humility" and the "little things in life that mean the most."

This week, unfortunately for Zac and the boys, "Chicken Fried" dropped to number three. However, ascending to number one is another song about "slowing it down and looking around" and reconnecting with the more fundamental elements of human experience: "Roll With Me" by Montgomery Gentry (you may view the video here via CMT--if, ironically, you don't mind watching a commercial first).

Country folks will survive. If this is what is resonating in the heartland of America right now, we are going to be okay.

UPDATE: a hearty Texas welcome to Instapundit readers.
The recent trampling-to-death of a Wal-Mart employee on "Black Friday" has received a lot of press coverage. The coverage started by recounting the events and the resulting lawsuit, but quickly began moralizing and seeking cause.

ABC News blames the economy, in "Bad Economy, Dangerous Holiday Shopping."

The Moscow News Weekly blames human nature in general and Western consumerism in particular - "Black Friday."

Columnists and writers to the editor all across the country offer varying explanations, usually heavy in the use of the words "greed", "animalistic", and/or "heartless." Here, here, here, here, and here.

It's apparently very difficult to condemn the event without self-righteous generalizing.

Can we truthfully judge the core value of a culture by looking at where people get trampled? [We'll discard the events where people die escaping a fire, building collapse, shooter, etc. Avoiding sure death is a universal human value.] A quick search shows that hundreds die every year during the Hajj in Mecca. 93 died in 1989 at a soccer match in Britain. A combination of a rainstorm and a rock concert caused 54 people, mostly young girls, to be trampled to death in Belarus in 1999. Just this year, nearly 150 people were killed in a stampede in a Hindu Temple in India. A full list of modern "crowd-related deaths" can be found at http://www.crowddynamics.com/technical/ by clicking on the "Crowd Disasters" link at right. [This is an all-around interesting site - using scientific methods to analyze the dynamics of too many people in not enough space]

The wide diversity of event types and locations for trampling deaths seems to preclude any values-based analysis. In terms of physically damaging moral values, based on world-wide events, religious piety and attending soccer matches seem to be the worst. Yet we don't see round condemnation of the culture of soccer, or of religious pilgrimage.

It's easier to condemn a culture of consumerism. Don't get me wrong - I'm not a fan of consumerism myself. My wife and I bought our family's Christmas presents at a local craft fair, and I do most of my clothes shopping at a consignment shop. But I've benefited, too, from the consumer-based economy that's in part responsible for making our society the most prosperous in history. I'm also hurt, along with the rest of the country, by the current financial backlash to this type of culture/economy.

Condemning the greed of post-Thanksgiving shoppers necessitates drawing a line between ourselves and the tramplers. In reality, that greedy, heartless mob is composed of individuals who, I would venture to say, are not *really* that much different from the rest of us. "Ye who is without sin..."
Category: American Culture
Posted by: an okie gardener
WAER is the Syracuse University radio station. They have been compiling lists of the top jazz musicians for each instrument, including human voice. These lists are great--thoughtful, knowledgeable, and I pretty much agree with them. Each entry, in most cases, has a paragraph biography with it.

Trumpet

Saxophone

Piano

Guitar

Male Vocalists

Female Vocalists