You would have loved your exclusive JG Giftmas ™ this year.  We had a handcrafted Christmas message full of cheer.  Very endearing!  Produced by fair wage diverse indigenous artisans and certified conflict-zone free.  The cost to you would have been minimal due to generous green energy subsidies investments provided by the administration, since the message was carbon neutral.  You would have loved the spontaneous encomiums to the Biden economy our artisans inserted at the end.

Unfortunately, our message shipment is stuck on a cargo vessel in the Red Sea, stranded for fear of Houthi missiles.

So instead we offer you this authentic 16th century carol.

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The Tree Son falls in love with the Starmaiden.

But the Father of Trees was angry, and cursed the Tree Son to become a tree.

The Father of Trees repented of what he had done, but when he undid the curse, the Tree Son was still mostly in the form of a tree.

To finish breaking the curse, he retrieves a key from an ogre’s den, a lock from dwarfs, and a door from his own father.  He becomes a man.

The Starmaiden leaves the changeless heavens behind and falls to earth.  Tree Son, Starmaiden, and all the creatures of the forest sing together.

The voices in the forest disturbed the ogre, and he awoke. His name was Ogredak, he as as big as a giant, and he hated the song he heard.

He climbed up out of his pit and roared like this:

Tree Son and Starmaiden I will slay

as sure as night is night and never day

Let them call and let them pray

God will not come out play

Tree Son and Starwife (as we must now call her) heard the roaring. Little creatures of the winter forest soon told them what was afoot. They fled. (more…)

The Tree Son falls in love with the Starmaiden.

But the Father of Trees was angry, and cursed the Tree Son to become a tree.

The Father of Trees repented of what he had done, but when he undid the curse, the Tree Son was still mostly in the form of a tree.

To finish breaking the curse, he retrieves a key from an ogre’s den, a lock from dwarfs, and a door from his own father.  He becomes a man.

The Starmaiden dwelt in the bright heavens. She shone. She sang one note in the harmony of the spheres. Her note was eternal. It blended with all the others in a perfect beauty. She danced the stately, unchanging measures of the eternal dance. (more…)

The Tree Son falls in love with the Starmaiden.

But the Father of Trees was angry, and cursed the Tree Son to become a tree.

The Father of Trees repented of what he had done, but when he undid the curse, the Tree Son was still mostly in the form of a tree.

The Tree Son must fulfill three quests to break the curse. In the first one, he retrieves a key from an ogre’s den by the strength of inner fire.

“Next you must find a lock,” the Tree Father said. “In ancient times the dwarfs forged one for me—I paid them dearly—but they were treacherous and malicious and would not give it. Your second quest is to retrieve it.”

“What can you give me to aid, father?”

The Father of Trees gave his son a carrot, two charcoals, and a curious tall hat made of the inner bark of a tree, woven and shaped, and black with age. “When you need aid,” he said, “throw them in the snow and aid will come.”

The Tree Son set off to where the forest gave way to icy waste and where tall frigid and barren mountains could be seen in the distance. There it was that the dwarfs had the entrance to their deep deep burrows.

He came to them in time and went down. But the deeper he went, the more lost he became. The knowledge of roots had taught him much about the earth and deep things, but here he was much deeper than the trees or the soil knew, and the power here was older than even he knew. When the dwarfs saw him they did not speak to him nor attack him, but instead went about their complicated business. They were venting lava or perhaps molten metal through tubes and channels, complicated machinery whirled and pivoted to move the channels from one connection to another, cauldrons poured into waiting pools below, and wherever he tried to go his way seemed to be blocked by these operations. Indeed, he caught hints that it was not all coincidence. He sensed malice behind some of the shifts in operation and in the occasional covert glance he caught from a distant dwarf.

At least, stymied, he fled back to the relief of the surface and looking longingly across the snow fields to the tree line.

He bethought himself of his father’s gifts and, throwing them into the air, chanted the words that accompanied all magic in that land.

Jingle jingle fa-la-la-la

When the objects landed in the snow, the snow took on the shape of man.  Standing, the man took the carrot for a nose, inserted the charcoals for eyes, and put the hat on his head. He then called—loudly at first like an avalanche and then softly and coaxingly like the flump of snow falling off a pine branch. After he called, with a shriek like a blizzard, a corncob pipe came flying through the air. He held it out to the Tree Son.

Wtih the benefit of his inner fire that he had found at the edge of the ogre’s pit, the Tree Son lit the pipe. The snow man then plucked out one charcoal and lit it on the pipe and put it back in his face, then the other.

Then, with two glowing coals for eyes, he said, “What do you want?”

The Tree Son told the snow man his quest and how he had been stymied. The man nodded. “Because you have the inner fire,” he said, “they dared not touch you. Because you only have the inner fire, you were not able to overcome their machinations. You must also have a mind like ice—cold like frost, implacable like the glacier, as quick as the surface of a frozen lake breaking under foot.”

With his arms of snow he picked up yet more snow and placed in on the Tree Son’s head. The snow settled down between the cracks in the Tree Son’s head, and even some of the snow man’s arm drifted down into him.

The ice mingled with the fire inside him. His mind became sharp and hard and cold.

He went back down into the deeps. When he went beyond the depths where his experience helped him feel, his mind taught him to understand. When he came to the dwarfs, he saw their operations and their plans and coldly plotted how to navigate their traps and foils. When he saw the dwarfs’ frustration mount, the fire and ice inside him mounted and he gleefully smashed through their tricks. At last they fled before him, all the machinery in that part came silent, and he came to their treasury from which, only, he took the lock.

Then he returned it to his father. “Good,” his father said. “Now,” the Father of Trees said, “your last quest is a riddle.”

“To whom shall I go for the riddle, father?” the Tree Son asked.

“Me,” the Father said.

“What aid shall you give me?” the Son asked.

“I have already given it to you all your life. Here is the riddle. What is the gift that needs a giver but that the gift giver does not give?”

The Tree Son bowed his head before his father. “Father,” he said, “the answer is gratitude.”

When he gave that answer the power was loosed in the Father of Trees and came out of him, and one of the panels of his sleigh flew out until it stood on the ground and was revealed to be a door. In the door the Father of Trees placed the lock and in the lock the Tree Son put the key and the door opened. The Tree Son stepped through and came out a man.

His quest to become a man was completed. But his quest for the Starmaiden was not.

Thanks for reading.  My goal is to update these every day through Christmas until Twelfth Night.  I will try to include  links so you can follow, but if not please  use the Christmas Fairytale tag at the end of this post.  You can also use the Merry Christmas page on the header bar above to find other writing that celebrates Christmas

Our story so far:

The Tree Son falls in love with the Starmaiden.

But the Father of Trees was angry, and cursed the Tree Son to become a tree.

The Father of Trees repented of what he had done, but when he undid the curse, the Tree Son was still mostly in the form of a tree.

The Father of Trees had compassion on his son. He told the son that there were three quests that could fully free him. “First, you must retrieve a key. Many years ago a crow snatched it. When I shot him down with my bow, alas, he was over the pit and fell there, where I have not been able to go.”

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Our story so far:

The Tree Son falls in love with the Starmaiden and learns to sing to her.
But the Father of Trees hears, and is angry, and curses the Tree Son.

When he saw that his son had not become a pine or fir or spruce like all the other trees in those forests of the land of winter, the Father of Trees was struck with sorrow in his heart. He fled from that great young oak with bare branches between which one could see the sky.

But not matter how far he fled, the wind carried the sound of the whistle between those bare branches, which sounded like gasps and sobs.

He came back to the bare-branched oak that was his son and looked up through the branches at the stars and remembered his own youth. His heart was moved and with a great gesture he broke his spell. (more…)

You may like this story about the making of Mr. Krueger’s Christmas.  I did.

You may have heard the recent Pornhub allegations.  Most serious criminally is that the executives conspired to suppress evidence that trafficking was occurring.  But perhaps  more serious for the individual  user are allegations, based it seems on the executives’ own statements, that they deliberately led a campaign to insert gay and trans and other “exotic” themes into the diet of the ordinary user.

There definitely seems to be a phenomenon of porn users getting radicalized into more and more extreme activity, and although there are natural explanations for this, it may also partly deliberate.

If true, it reminds me of the preamble to the Word of Wisdom.

thus saith the Lord unto you: In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you, by giving unto you this word of wisdom by revelation

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[The Tree Son fell in love with a Starmaiden, and learned to sing so his voice could reach her in the sky.  But his father, the Father of Trees, heard the voice also, and the longing for something above and beyond the forest that was in the voice.]

The Father of Trees was angry with his son. He heard longing in the song of his son that carried on the winds. He called out his sleigh. Every part of it was made of the bones of trees, and highly polished. He threw a pinch of pollen into the air and chanted a call for the winds to aid him in his journey, and, reluctantly, they did.

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Once upon a time in the land of winter, the son of the father of trees roamed his father’s forests in delight. He learned the nature of roots and stones and snow and cold.

But with time everything he knew took his mind upward. The stones piled up in mountains made him look to the sky. After he learned the ways of roots in the earth he learned the ways of trees to rise high and spread their pine or fir or spruce needles against the sky. He saw the sky was from where the snow fell.

So one night the Tree Son raised his eyes to the dark sky and between the needles of the tallest pine he saw very far off, high and remote and twinkling, the Starmaiden.

He longed to speak to her as he spoke to the trees and the stones and the earth. He shouted, but all that came out was rough like bark and did not reach the sky.  He longed for the sky like the trees long for it, but like them the Tree Son could not reach. Then he wept for love of the Starmaiden and because he could not speak to her, with tears like a tree weeping resin.

The North Wind heard and took pity on him. The North Wind blew through the trees like the note of a whistle, and made the icicles ring like bells. The Tree Son heard it from afar off long before the icy blast of the wind reached him, and he understood the message that was carried on the  voice of the North Wind. The Tree Son understood he should sing like the wind did.  The Tree Son sang in the starry night like a bell ringing, like a wind blowing, and the Starmaiden heard.

But the Father of Trees heard it also and was angry.

(Next episode here)

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Friends, its that time of year when you have a million happy bustling things to do and so, in fear that you might have a free moment, we post our Christmas page.  Please see above in the header bar.  May we suggest that you particularly check out Holiest Madness?

Merry Christmas!

I personally am grateful for any time you spend here with me this season, and don’t begrudge it at all if the time you have to spare for your JG friends is not as much as you would like.

For those who stick around, I am going to try a little experiment, starting tomorrow.  It’s going to be an episodic Christmas fairy tale, I’ll be posting one small episode per day from tomorrow until Christmas, and then 12 more for the 12 days of Christmas.  God willing.

I already have some concepts.  The plot will involve the Tree Son and the Star Maiden and, I think, the God Child.  Probably an ogre named Big Black Dack.  No guarantees.  Any suggestions or ideas?  Comment below.

The Daughterperson No. 1 had an interesting conversation with me about peace.

What vice distorts peace, she wanted to know. It was a fun chat.

The likely answer is complacency, stagnation, apathy . . . and that led in some interesting directions. Because the opposite of that vice is ambition or striving for excellence which is an aspect of glory

PEACE : Complacency/stagnation

Reckless ambition : GLORY

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Let’s talk about Christmas and Easter and how they work as holidays. For lack of a better term, maybe we’ll call it vibe engineering.

Yes, Christmas is a bigger deal than Easter as a holiday and there are extremely good reasons for that. If you want to make Easter a bigger deal for you (as per the Brethren in April conference), you need to understand something about holidays and apply your knowledge. You can’t just willpower your way into feeling more celebratory.

Each holiday has certain holiday flavors to it. Thanksgiving for instance has Family, Heritage, and Gratitude. Those all organically flow from the nature of the holiday and the time of year it is at.

Christmas has a lot. There is a strong Family element, both for traditional reasons, because it is celebrating something that happens overnight so a morning celebration is appropriate which is when you are more likely to be with family, and mostly because the holiday is celebrating the formation of the Holy Family.

It has Gifts, both because of tradition, the wise men, and also because its a birthday and we associate gifts with birthdays. And because Christbaby is a gift. (more…)

The church announced that Patrick Kearon was ordained an apostle yesterday. He was baptized on Christmas Eve 1987 at age 26, so I went looking for the last time someone baptized as an adult was later ordained an apostle. I had to look back farther than I had guessed.

Ulisses Soares was a child when his parents were baptized, and he was baptized at age 8.
Dieter Uchtdorf likewise.
John Widstoe was baptized in April 1884 at age 12.
Charles Penrose was baptized on May 14, 1850 at age 18 and ordained apostle July 7, 1904.
Anthon Lund was baptized about 1856 at age 12.
Marriner Merrill was baptized April 1852 at age 19 and ordained apostle October 7, 1889.
Albert Carrington was baptized July 18, 1841 at age 28 and ordained apostle July 3, 1870.

So, the last apostle prior to Elder Kearon to be baptized at age 20 or older was someone born in 1813, when Joseph Smith was seven.

When you cuss in your prayers, God gets irked.

It turns out.