To tell your own tale
Is really quite swell
Cultural production in your own home is one of the joys of life. And absolutely essential to anything like the creation of a lasting family identity. For deep and ineradicable reasons of the basic anthropological architecture, no group that does not partly make what it consumes will feel like a primal and defining unit. This is especially true for cultural production.
You must tell jokes, play games with house rules, tell tales, create songs.
This is particularly easy to do at Christmas.
In the 1950s there was a wave of novelty ethnic Christmas songs. Such notorious non-classics as Christmas in Killarney and I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas, That Yolly Holiday or even that supreme horror Dominic the Donkey.
Yesterday the children decided to create a Mongolian one. Modeled on this paean to Genghis Khan.
Sample lyrics
Santa’s sweeping across the steppe with his horde
Putting naughty boys and girls to the sword
Christmas is coming
horse hooves are drumming
Santa is Khan!
Nonsense like this binds us together as if with a cord.