Holidays, carols, apples, maturity, tragic violins

[Tabouli]

Ahh, back from Adelaide!  Spent a week there, attending an Asia-Pacific Peace and Reconciliation Forum, about which I have (sadly) many cynical observations to make.  But I'll leave that for another time.  Those peaceniks seem to have infected me with the 'flu, but I have nobly soldiered on through the collected posts nonetheless...

I left my OT-Chatter digests on, but switched off my main list and Movie.  Even so I have a lot of ground to cover (and yes, I have now seen the movie twice!  I'll virtuously wait until I've cranked up the Movie list again to comment on the movie itself, but I can gain a certain childish satisfaction by saying that in *both* the cinemas where *I* watched it, the audiences were very quiet and reverent!  No screaming children, no popcorn throwing teenagers, no snide university students... the worst of it was the odd mobile phone novelty ring in the background.  Perhaps Australians are considerate and polite people after all!)

Ebony:
>What are your favorites?  (referring to "holiday" music)

I note that the substitution of "happy holidays" for "Merry Christmas" has progressed well in the US!  As I once mentioned, these days I circumvent the whole Ramadan (on now!)/Christmas/Hannukah issue by sending out religion-neutral Chinese New Year cards.  Has "happy holidays" spread to Canada and the UK?  I've never heard anyone use it here, but that could be because the Jewish community is much larger and more vocal in the US than it is here.  My non-Christian friends mostly seem to shrug off the Christmas cards and wishes they receive without any major objections (though a Canadian Jewish friend I once had would pointedly reply to "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Hannukah").  Any thoughts?

As for Christmas carols, my favorite has always been "Good King Wenceslaus", mostly because it tells a story.  I also like "Once in Royal David's City".  What's this Carol of the Bells?  (is it another name for 'Ding Dong Merrily on High'?)  My tastes in Christmas carol renditions are staunchly traditional, I fear.  I'd much rather sing 'em straight with harmony than grit my way through a department store blasting it customers with "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, bee ba baloo bop doodoodoodoo" sung by a jazzed up children's show presenter with guitar synth and drums.  Yik.

Frankis & Sons:
> I don't know whether applying a word meaning 'apple' to the forbidden 
fruit is widespread in Europe or whether it is restricted to 
countries (mainly northern?) in which the apple is generally thought
of as the commonest or most representative fruit.<

You know, I could never buy this apple as the Forbidden Fruit concept.  Sorry serpent, but an apple would not tempt me in the slightest.  Of all the boring fruit!  Apples, to me, are the sort of uninspired fruits you buy in the depths of winter when nothing else is available, and they have to be absolutely pristinely fresh and crunchy to be of any interest.  Now, if it were a mango, or a passionfruit, or a peach or something, then we might be in business...

Ali quoting Evelyn:
> >Slash themes also seem to be at odds with writing within the
>boundaries of the HP world as well.  None of the characters have
>exhibited any sort of sexual preference besides heterosexual in the
>>books.
>
>Actually, that's not really true.  I, for one, was veeeerrrrry interested in 
>the fact that Justin Fitch-Fletchly (so sorry if I spelled that wrong) was 
>the only male student to take a liking to Gilderoy Lockheart.  

I still think Karkarov might be gay, meself, but I've expounded this theory with evidence on the main list a couple of times with no chorus of agreement, so it could just be me.  I've also said many times that I doubt that JKR will raise the sexuality issue directly, but I wouldn't particularly condemn her for this, because after all, in a conservative, co-educational school like Hogwarts most non-heterosexual students and teachers would probably be falling over themselves to keep their sexuality quiet.  It's reasonably realistic.  There were quite a few students and teachers at my (conservative) secondary school who were gay or bi, but I had only vague suspicions about this until after I graduated, because they were all keeping a lowish profile about the issue.  As well they might have, in my school.  Sure, some teenagers come out in high school, but not many, and I can't see this happening at Hogwarts.

Sofie:
> in the fourth book (first major romance 
overtones) Harry and co are aged fourteen/fifteen. They aren't 
children, they are young adults.<

Ahaa, now this brings us back to a topic I raised a couple of months ago which never got anyone going: at what age do people become "adults" or "mature", and why?  At risk of offending younger listmembers (though judging from e.g. Calypso's comments about younger HP lists, they may even agree with me!), I think at 14-15 there's a big range of maturity.  Sure, some mid-teen people are mature, but some are still kids.  Part of the issue is that middle class Western society limits the range of life experience 14-15 year olds can have by locking them up in school until their mid to late teens, where they tend to get treated as children (depending on the school, of course, but largely) and forced to interact with large numbers of people of their own chronological age, whether this suits them or not.  Some will be exposed to more varied life experiences through other sources (or even their school, depending on where it is and what it's like), but a lot won't.  When I visited my school after leaving it I marvelled at the degree to which the school students' world was defined by the school environment.  And how much mine had been as well, though I didn't realise it when I was actually there (and would have been insulted if someone had told me so).

Perhaps you could differentiate "cognitive" maturity (ability to reason intelligently, etc.), from "experiential" maturity.  The law is obviously making this kind of distinction, what with the different ages at which people are supposedly mature enough to drive, have sex, vote, drink and so on.  All very interesting.  At what age does the State decide that the majority of people are mature enough to make a good judgment about these things?  Are they saying that driving take maturity of reflexes and cognitive judgment which is accessible at 15-16, but that people do not have the experiential maturity to judge who should rule the country until they turn 18?

Age of consent (to revive another old topic) is particularly interesting, as it's presumably trying to juggle the age of onset of sexual maturity (onset 10-14ish) with the age at which someone could reliably be assumed capable of making a good judgment about their choice of partner, their readiness to consent to sexual activity, and so on.  I know that the legal age limit has been decreed our guide in this area, but I was still a bit perplexed when people on the Movie list seemed to treat this as something divinely instituted, with any tampering with it considered blasphemous and shocking.  It's just the State's arbitrary Best Guess!  The age 16, or 18 or whatever is based on social norms and opinions and the age at which almost all people can be *assumed* to be sexually mature and of reasonably sound judgment, not something carved in stone!  As I think John mentioned, a lot of people are sexually active well before the age of consent, at least partly because the age of consent is several years later than the onset of sexual desire.  As for the naivete/mature judgment factor, being over 18 isn't some magical spell which protects people from being abused and exploited by their sexual partners: some 20 year olds are much more naive and vulnerable than some 16 year olds.  I know some examples of both myself.  I once tutored a 17 year old schoolgirl who had 4 years' sexual experience and was far more streetwise than some of the shy, vulnerable 25 year olds I knew (who wouldn't be protected nearly as well under the law)!  Obviously we have to draw the line somewhere, to stop disgusting manipulative adults preying on children, but I don't think the issue is as clear cut as "any sexual activity involving under 18s is filthy pedophilia" in real life.

More Ali:
> I have no problem with people's taste differing from mine, but it 
really tweaks me when they form such a concrete and 
unfavourable opinion of something they know nothing about.  
Like friends *koff* of mine who would lay into me about reading 
Harry Potter just because it was popular and supposedly written 
for children.<

Yes, this infuriates me as well.  For me, the immense popularity of Harry Potter is one of its most entertaining characteristics.  Whenever I read yet another article about how well all things HP are selling, and how rich JKR is becoming (an author, no less!), I positively cheer them on.

storm:
> Tabouli told very sad story about meeting Antonia Forest (...) who sounds like she
was unable/unwilling to contribute anything to her side of the
conversation.  Hell's bells Tabuli, she was the grown up, she could have helped
you out! You poor bugger! well deserved the tragic violins.<

Thanks for the sympathy, storm, though in all fairness I *was* 26 at the time...!  (mind you she was 83 or so)  I think it was more a matter of both of us feeling shy and awkward, making us behave in ways that made us feel more shy and awkward.  Over the years I'd trained myself to go into a kind of loud manic vivacity when feeling shy (I've tried to untrain this reaction in the last three years, because it tends to backfire on me), and I think this intimidated her.  Which intimidated me, and made me still more strainingly hyper, and so on.  Ick.  I think she's secretly quite a shy, reclusive old lady.

What do other people do in moments of shyness/insecurity?

Tabouli.


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