Author: Eric Nilsson

CHRISTMAS “BIDNESS”

DECEMBER 22, 2024 – I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the sights, odors and cacophony of the marketplace. On the one hand, I’ve been drawn to the bazaar of commerce; to the grand combination of consumption, industry and trade and all the ancillary activities, from finance to economics to management to legal issues to …

(MORE) CHRISTMAS GIFTS

DECEMBER 19, 2024 – If you hadn’t noticed, since December 4 my posts have embraced a Christmas theme in keeping with this festive season of the year which has evolved from its pagan roots to its Christian foundation to its steroidal commercial secularism and generic expression, “Happy Holiday!” With still six whole days remaining before …

CHRISTMAS GIFTS

DECEMBER 18, 2024 – My wife could easily find employment at Santa’s North Pole outpost. Within hours she’d likely be promoted to a supervisory role, and by the end of her first day on the job, she’d ascend to an executive vice president level. She has natural executive skills and exhibits good tastes and sensibilities …

THE CHRISTMAS CARD

DECEMBER 17, 2024 – Back in the day, the exchange of Christmas cards was one of my favorite aspects of the season. Even as a self-absorbed kid for whom Christmas presents were the biggest deal of all, I loved to be the one who got to check the mailbox and find it stuffed with newly …

HOW I SAVED MY SISTER FROM THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA

DECEMBER 16, 2024 – If you read last Saturday’s post, you know the TV situation in our house during my “growing up years.” Omitted was mention of notable exceptions: the quadrennial presidential nominating conventions, the Olympics and the first manned moon-landing. For these events, Dad rented a TV—from Joe’s Western Auto hardware store in downtown …

THE ENERGIZER RABBIT AND HIS CHRISTMAS SHOW

DECEMBER 15, 2024 – Yesterday evening we (my wife and I and our nine-year-old granddaughter) attended my showman brother-in-law’s Christmas show in front of a sell-out crowd at the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul. The full-on three-hour production of A Prairie Home Companion Christmas, with indefatigable veterans, sound effects man extraordinaire Fred Newman; Tim …

DAD’S CHRISTMAS TV MIRTH

DECEMBER 14, 2024 – For most of my growing-up years, our family lived without a television. I’m not sure if this was a conscious decision on the part of my parents or simply a “result by default” after the television that we did own had gone on the fritz. The default scenario alone is unlikely. …

LOTS OF NUTCRACKERS BUT NO CANDY CANES

DECEMBER 13, 2024 – Throughout her life, my oldest sister has been the consummate over-achiever. One manifestation of this attribute—and closely associated with Christmas—is that from the late 1970s to circa 2020, she performed in close to two thousand performances of The Nutcracker Ballet produced by the Boston Ballet Company. My second oldest sister, took …

CHRISTMYTH STORIES

DECEMBER 12, 2024 – Ever since Prometheus gave fire to humankind, our ancestors have sat around the campfire telling stories. It stands to reason: human speech preceded human writing—and presumably cave paintings—by a good number of millennia, and there’s no more powerful agent than a crackling fire in the pit and glowing embers off to …

THE CHRISTMAS PAGEANT (AND AN EASTER ONE TOO!)

DECEMBER 11, 2024 – Anyone who belongs to a mainstream church or even one of the confounding number of offstream churches is familiar with the “pageantry” of the annual Christmas pageant. Back in my churchy days, I thought of these de rigueur features of Sunday school as three-set Venn diagrams. One circle, of course, represented …

THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA CLAUS

DECEMBER 10, 2024 – The power of rationalization is often underestimated. Over my lifetime, I’ve observed people undergo the most extraordinary mental gymnastics to justify taking an easier but inferior path over the more difficult but superior one. Or simply to hide the truth, either from others or, more often, from themselves. Some rationalizations have …

MY IDEA OF CHRISTMAS CLASS

DECEMBER 9, 2024 – When I was a kid, outdoor Christmas lighting was a crude precursor of its infinite modern refinements and variations. The standard issue lighting back in the day consisted of strings of large slightly oblong bulbs (featuring the primary colors plus green) that ran usually along the gutters, occasionally along the gabled …

A CHRISTMAS STORY RIGHT ON TARGET

DECEMBER 8, 2024 – Amidst telling stories mostly about Christmas past, I must take a break to recount a hilarious story about Christmas present. My wife was having a rough go at decorating the house. The first problem arose when our nine-year-old granddaughter decided to opt-out of the “festivities.” This choice was a let-down for …

MORE ON CHRISTMAS

DECEMBER 7, 2024 – My Nilsson grandparents, who lived within easy walking distance of “Dinkytown” on the edge of the main campus of the University of Minnesota, never showed interest in decorating for Christmas. By the time I was in their lives, anyway, they’d dispensed with the whole business of buying a tree, decorating it with …

JINGLING THE BELLS OF CHRISTMAS

DECEMBER 6, 2024 – Every Yuletide (I love the old word), while working at my laptop, I play YouTube recordings of the timeless Christmas classics, Handel’s Messiah and Vivaldi’s Gloria. I alternate between the two, though with lopsided preference for the Venetian. My “go to” rendition of Gloria is a 12-year-old performance by the Armenian …

UNDER WRAPS

DECEMBER 5, 2024 – How can it be December 5 already? I remember when December lasted forever. No, a thousand years ago the earth wasn’t rotating any more slowly than it does today, but in my perception of each diurnal turn, our planet was definitely spinning at a more leisurely rate. As a kid I …

THE BIDEN PARDON: SMALL POTATOES

DECEMBER 3, 2024 – Judging by the colored blonde hair with dark roots, the long pink sparkly false nails, the oversized ring, the expensive blanket cape, the high black shoes . . . the middle-aged woman across the aisle and one row up on the flight back to Minnesota was definitely not from my zip …

TURNING THE SWAMP INTO A DESERT

DECEMBER 2, 2024 – If you’re a Democrat the paper version of The Times these days will make you crazy. Musk, Patel, RFK, Jr., a former security guard-turned-county sheriff as director of the D.E.A.; sheriff, RFK, Jr., Patel, Musk . . . Gaetz, Hegseth, Gabbards; Gabbards, Hegseth, Gaetz, in case you’ve forgotten about the roster …

MENTAL MEANDERING AT THE MET

DECEMBER 1, 2024 – Today we hiked across Central Park to the Met, where we wandered slowly through the special exhibition, Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350, featuring works of the very early Renaissance, Sienese artists Duccio (ca. 1250/60 – ca. 1318/19) (in the main), and Simone Martini, and brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti. After …

TURKEY DAY MENU: GOOD FOOD AND GOOD LAUGHS

NOVEMBER 30, 2024 – The crowd at our Thanksgiving Day dinner table were in unanimous agreement that the turkey our younger son had prepared in his Traeger smoker was probably the best ever served. The stories—told by the guests—were nearly as funny as the turkey was tasty and juicy. To protect the innocent and the …

TRUMPONOMICS

NOVEMBER 29, 2024 – Perhaps the soundest investment advice I’ve ever encountered was in an article in the Business Section of a Saturday edition of The Times—years ago when a paper copy was tossed somewhere in our yard, bushes or front basement window wells (the delivery system deteriorated to the point where we were forced …

2001: A WRITING ODYSSEY

NOVEMBER 28, 2024 – I remember when 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick, first hit the theaters. At the time I was a freshman at Sterling School, a small boarding school in Craftsbury Common, a hilltop hamlet tucked away in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. There was no theater in our little village, …