Dada Christmas

NOTE: This post is my Christmas card to my fellow members of the Knox Martin Fan Club. Cheers!

My young daughter has installed her own Christmas tree in her room this year. I find it a disturbing trend, a transformation of a family tradition into an individual ritual of Christmastime madness. My feelings, I imagine, are similar to that of Leo X when he learned of that blasted note nailed to the door at Wittenberg. The impudence of our little imp!

Furthermore, she has rigged her individual tree with a Santa trap, which consists of a variety of wires, lights and bells, arranged in such a way so that when Santa carefully places his elf-built presents under said tree, the trap will wake Margaret and allow her to catch Santa in the act! What happens next? I’m not sure she’s thought that far ahead. Perhaps a shared cookie. Some friendly banter. Maybe even a opportunity to search Santa’s bag for a couple of extra presents?

All this begs the question, will Santa actually visit her tree? Is he obligated to visit all trees in a given location? If he does, will we as a family be forced to have two Christmas mornings, one under each tree? Or will the tree schism lead Margaret to have her own individual Christmas morning minus the rest of us? Etc, etc, etc. You see the descent into madness that potential lies ahead for us.

But I digress.

Margaret having her own Christmas tree requires that this tree be decorated with its own lights and ornaments, which she has provided by stealing them from the tree in the living room. We had turned a blind eye to such thievery, Jenny drawing the line at certain choice ornaments which she refused to have pilfered. But then it happened. Our little Borrower, while scurrying back to her lair, dropped one of the shiny Christmas balls, which shattered on our hard tile floor

I shoo-ed the little imp towards barefoot safety, but before sweeping up the sharp little shards of glass, I thought of similarly shattered egg and the cry of “Dada!” that must have rang out during a certain time and place in art history. So I grabbed my camera and recorded the random splendor.

It wasn’t until a few days later, while checking the result on my computer, that I noticed the true force and wonder of Dada. Inside the random shards of Christmas were images of Knox Martin! It seems that the shattering took place adjacent to where our Knox piece is hanging, and the concavity of the inner silvered pieces of glass picked up and reflected the image on to my camera’s sensor. Dada authenticity living within my Dada nostalgia. Unexpected creation with the unexpected creation. A true Dada Christmas miracle!