Revisiting "A Christmas Carol" in the 21st Century

I recently received this email from #1 who lives & works in Moscow. He frequently travels to Germany, France, Britain. 

Dear Mother,

Let’s revisit "A Christmas Carol," shall we????

A person most ambivalent and ambiguous will open the Christmas conversation, to kill time between meetings and business discussions, or during a boring train ride in Germany. Germans know so well how best to kill time and remain perfectly subdued and à propos. The monotony of life which they themselves created bears the consequences to moan, mope and complain. Such is their linear and yet predicable life; alas, it is indeed, in a Kantian way, hence they will ask: “So, what were you doing at Christmas Time? 

Dare they ask this russified Franco-American citizen? He is still estranged to the perfectly organised and synchronised Teutonic background that momentarily surrounds him. Yet through some miracle of memory cells, he is still capable, despite a decade of intense brainwashing in Soviet lands, to express himself in high German. 

“Well…there was not much too eat…; that is to say; I was on a diet imposed by a demanding Russian swimming aerobics  trainer....so eager was he to tone my belly down. Then there was not much sleep because of a business submission deadline,...a synonym for clients’ endless barking at work... that would need to be completed before the New Year. Then, those much despised Jingle Bells Christmas computer viruses that haunt your PC to Kingdom Come. I could not count on sleep to recuperate some of my faculties. Anyway, there was not much to see with my tired eyes because the sky in Moscow, even under the brilliant strides of politically correct Putinia, is dark and murky from 4:00 p.m. to 10:30 a. m. And then, unlike the Coca Cola jingle of the early '80’s which hoped for a world in perfect harmony if only one drank Coke, there is not much to hope for because of complex global macro-economics....So, what’s left?—Was bleibt übrig?... 

Well, the consolation prize, after much practice in poorly lit neon rooms with no ventilation and the smell of rancid armpits, lousy acoustics, and an impossibly moody choir director it is.....Handel's Messiah! From such modest elements the meaning of life springs from divine singing & great hope for the future in biblical terms, in a world where most of the ‘old’ continent has forgotten the meaning of God and Christianity altogether. The feeling of believing is so intense, so earnest, so as not to perish.

There is much friendship and love from fellow human beings of so many different social milieus, choir-mates, male or female, forgotten Russian souls, who just have a voice (the whos in Norton hears a who?), a glimmer of hope outside the routine box, but not much more. There are rents to pay, kids to feed, and uncertainty at the workplace. Is it another model of Dicken's Christmas Carol, just in the 21st century? Notes and lyrics date from a time when electricity, typewriters, and email were still  undiscovered! A mesmerizing time when people still believed in the beauty of Divine Creation…Yes, this must have been many years ago….(sigh!).

Well, then there was the Performance….and that was the best Christmas present ever!!! Singing with a choir of so many wonderful, motivated, talented singers from the most modest of Russian profiles. No, there was no time to dress up right for another business cocktail party. These people got up, as I did, after countless rehearsals in dimly-lit, putrid smelling rehearsal rooms, and at the crack of dawn they smartened up, white tops & black bottoms, to sing Handel’s illustrious masterpiece. It was a hit and the singers especially felt it.

Take it easy. No, this was not on WRR with Robin Matthews and some warped CD. This was real….in Moscow, in one of the many concert halls, with a live baroque orchestra, who, like the singers, rubbed a lot of elbow grease to pull the performance together.

Sit back and enjoy the few excerpts Katrina was able to take with her i-phone, as a witness to the scene. 

Merrry Christmas…..from the Moscow Grinch….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyAFEO1Pj9c&feature=youtu.be