WEEK OF DECEMBER 20-26, 2018 www.FloridaWeekly.com Vol. IX, No. 8 • FREE THENORTON’SGREAT Holiday films 22 movies we think you’ll enjoy watching this season HOPE (in no particular order. B1X Style icon Iris Apfel will appear at Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens. B1X Behind the Wheel JACEK GANCARZ/COURTESY PHOTO The Hyundai Veloster is back for X Above: Hope Executive BY SCOTT SIMMONS its second act. A17 X Alswang will ssimmons@fl oridaweekly.com leave the director looks Norton HE CAME AND SHE BUILT. Museum back after And, come March, Hope Alswang will leave the Nor- of Art after ton Museum of Art after nearly nine years at the helm, nearly nine 9 transformative a time in which she led a $100 million-plus campaign years at the that has completely transformed the 77-year-old mu- helm. years at museum. S seum. 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In sloppy, strug- yet we have this consolation with us, that which was why he wrote “A Christmas gling fashion, commanders and a regiment the harder the conflict, the more glorious Carol.” roger WILLIAMS of experienced seamen from Marblehead, the triumph.” In any case, something has to be faced [email protected] Mass., with others, finally landed the force No doubt many would have settled for an and changed. And you have to face it and mostly intact at Trenton, on the east bank easier conflict and reduced rations of glory change it. Christmas is a time to do that, of the river. along with a hot meal, but they weren’t just as it was for Washington and the men, In the American cultural vernacular, There, things changed forever. That fact given the choice. women and children who faced his Dela- which may prove as confusing to you as it remains the nation’s most singular Christ- For all those Americans, including ware River. frequently does to me, the first Christmas mas gift to itself. women, children and the old people left to For somebody I never knew, here’s one did not occur 2,018 years ago. The Americans caught the winter manage farms and homes, Christmas Love more Delaware. Late on Dec. 24, 1976, I Instead, the first Christmas took place encamped Hessian troops (competent pro- required sacrifice and the recognition of drove out of the gates of Camp Lejeune, exactly 242 years ago on a frigid night a few fessional soldiers in the pay of the British imminent mortality. N.C., home of the Second Marine Division, miles north of Philadelphia. army) completely off guard and drunk. To all of them, everything must have bound toward Wilmington 50 or so miles to In this whimsical, transformative nation, Thus they won the first real victory in our seemed tenuous. the south. I was bent on attending midnight holidays that began as one thing inevitably history, at the end of what had been a very I’ve always thought of Christmas that Mass at an orthodox church. become another, and none more so than bad year. way, too — as a time when existence can The narrow two-lane blacktop ribboned Christmas. Had Washington been killed or captured become, paradoxically, both sumptuous and a North Carolina night so black in the flat During the evening of Dec. 25, 1776, — a distinct possibility since he was among desperate. piedmont that I could see nothing beyond Christmas Love (defined as the love of the first to land on the far shore — history In such a time, each of us must cross our my own headlights for miles, until a flash- Christ come, for Christians) must have would have gone barking up a different tree. own Delaware, which means that each of us ing of red and blue came distantly into view. seemed as remote as the North Pole to the It almost did, anyway. Previously, his must define Christmas Love as any force or I slowed, approached and passed. Two 2,400 men who crossed the Delaware River men had succeeded only in having their energy that allows us to make the crossing, cars had collided head on. The bodies of out of Pennsylvania. They moved out in rear ends kicked out of New York and no matter how tenuously or what shape it five dead lay under sheets near the devas- sleet and snow equipped with newly issued chased all over New Jersey by the British takes. tated wreckage. Midnight was 90 minutes flints for their weapons on George Washing- and their allies. If, for example, you haven’t spoken to a away. ton’s command, gathering on the riverfront But only six days before Christmas, relative or an old friend with whom you’ve At the church, a packed Christmas cel- from positions near McKonkey’s Ferry. Thomas Paine came out with a feisty pam- fallen out, you’re facing the river. ebration of such candlelit, incense-infused At that point the self-declared United phlet called “Common Sense,” in Phila- If you haven’t forgiven yourself for a magnificence occurred — with chanting, States of America — where you and I will delphia. It included the most famous lines mistake made in another time — which bells, the sprinkling of holy water and all eat to our heart’s content this Christmas he ever wrote. The language was so com- means confronting your own weakness or the sensuous ornamentation of celebratory — amounted to 174 days’ worth of upstart pelling that against all reason it boosted blindness, and moving on — you’re facing life — that I’ve never been able to forget nation. Brand new, the nation was also morale among the half-frozen, half-sick, the river. either the blood or the glory. under siege, wrapped in a winter storm, woefully undernourished Americans. If the echoes of the dead or the memo- And now it’s only Christmas Love I want and starving. “These are the times that try men’s ries of Christmases past become not the for them: for those nameless souls who Most of Washington’s men couldn’t souls,” Mr. Paine wrote. “The summer sol- voices of angels but a chorus of tyrants may still cherish the victims of that long swim, but they swallowed their fear. dier and the sunshine patriot will, in this beckoning you to surrender the joyous ago night. May they, with all of us, find it in Ice floes in the river presented a sig- crisis, shrink from the service of his coun- moment in order to suffer the once-upon-a- themselves to cross the other Delaware. ■ nificant danger to their heavily laden try; but he that stands it now, deserves time, you’re facing the river. — A version of this column first ran boats as they labored in frigid darkness the love and thanks of man and woman. 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Form D-467 September 2018 JANUARY COMMUNITY EVENTS & LECTURES FREE Community Chair Yoga Class Hands-Only CPR Class Class taught by Sara Chambers, RN, BSN, CYT Tuesday, January 15 @ 6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, January 2 or 16 @ 6 p.m. - 7 p.m. Palm Beach Gardens Fire Rescue // Station 1 Palm Beach Gardens Medical Center // Classroom 4 4425 Burns Road, Palm Beach Gardens We now off er a chair yoga class for the community.