Noses

I’m more than halfway through this calendar and though I missed one day, I think it’s been going well so far. I had a hard time thinking of what to write about today. By now anyone reading this has probably sussed out that I’ve been using the alphabet as a guide to what to write about. Today, I was thinking Noel, but that basically just means Xmas. Then I thought, Nutcracker, but that just seemed boring. Then I was thinking Naughty and Nice, but I was running out of time for research.

Then I thought about noses. And how they seem to be a highlighted body part at this time of year. Many songs mention them specifically. There’s “Jack Frost nipping at your nose” in The Christmas Song. And, of course, there’s Rudolph’s famous shiny nose. “Rudolph with your nose so bright, won’t you guide my sleigh tonight.”

But it doesn’t end there. There’s Frosty, too. “With a corn cob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal”. And the depiction of Santa from the classic ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas – “His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!”

The word appears in A Christmas Carol seven times, though that is common with descriptions.

Of course the most remarkable nose is Rudolph’s. I recent rewatched the Rankin-Bass special and I realized how awful the reindeer were, and Santa, too. Just because of a glowing nose. I would have thought it to be cool. I wonder what it is that caused such a light. It certainly wasn’t electric. Maybe some kind of sympathetic fungus? I suppose it will always remain a mystery.

I’m in a rush today, so I’m just going to include one quote, though it’s a good one from a masterful writer:

What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following one’s nose, taking shortcuts. – Italo Calvino

Until tomorrow…