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A Christmas Greeting from Rick

For me, Christmas is more than a beautiful time of year.
It’s a powerful time of year.
We’re reminded of our humanity —
the hows and whys of our lives.
We’re reminded — whether we like it or not —
of the rich blessings of friends and family.
We’re reminded of triumphs and failures, gains and losses
in our families, communities, and world.
I think we’re blessed, thrilled, nagged, or annoyed
by the story of the first Christmas
and the presence of our maker in our lives.
For me, with the grey blanket of a Seattle winter solstice as a backdrop, I become more keenly aware of my blessings
and the importance of taking time to survey and appreciate the things that combine to make our reality.
While things get revved up at holiday time,
celebrate the silence, too.
When silence strikes, make it a gift.
Have a wonderful holiday.
I hope you can make it one you’ll long remember
warmly and happily.

Merry Christmas
May 2009 be looked upon as a springboard for a wonderful 2010

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I Got a Bad Case of Botticelli. And I’m Not Alone.

As we prepare to host our tour guides in early January, I was thinking about how deeply rooted our tour program’s passion for teaching culture is. It actually goes back to the only other job I’ve ever had…piano teacher. That was back in the day when I hand-drew coupons for a maple bar at the corner bakery as an incentive for a well-prepared lesson.

I’ve always taught what I loved. I spent my high school years as a piano teacher. I was known among parents in my community for taking boys with tear-stained cheeks to my piano bench, starting them out with boogies and pop songs, and eventually getting them turned on to Bach and Beethoven.

I had a piano studio with a recital hall. In 1980, while I was teaching a piano lesson, a truck dropped off 2,500 copies of my first guidebook — Europe Through the Back Door. I had no idea then that those 256 typewritten pages multiplied by 2,500 would provide the teaching foundation of everything we’ve done since.

During that year’s Christmas recital, some parents sat on boxes of travel guidebooks while their kids played their carols, boogies, and Bach. By the next Christmas, I had let my piano students go. People were still sitting on boxes of guidebooks, but now that recital hall was a travel lecture hall — and students were preparing not for their sonatas, but for their European adventures.

From that point on, I would be teaching European culture off the keyboard…to smart people who thought Toscanini was a pasta and Botticelli was an intestinal problem.

For 25 years, I led our tours while apprenticing our tour guides — sharing ways I had developed to help people who’d never considered writing a poem, to do just that (at least in their mind), while in the presence of Europe’s cultural wonders. We carry on that passion-for-teaching tradition to this day, and that’s one big reason why, on January 14, we’re flying fifty of our guides to our headquarters here in Edmonds, where — on the same street where I taught piano — we now teach travel. (See our website for details on the public dimensions of this festival.)

I know our tour guides teach an appreciation of European art and culture in the same fun and inspirational way I strove to. And that’s one reason why I know anyone hopping on a Rick Steves’ Europe bus tour this next season will enjoy glissandos of rich memories and trills of travel joy.

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Politicizing Christmas?

Here at ETBD, we enjoy putting on a fundraiser each Christmas. I always feel like there are gimmicky “buy this, and we’ll give hungry people a can of food” initiatives that are really marketing ploys that do little serious awareness- or fund-raising. So I like to try to inspire well-meaning businesses to do something a little gutsier.

I also like to help people stretch their charitable imaginations in the process. This year, my hope is to raise money to empower Bread for the World (a Christian lobby group in Washington DC that works with Christians and non-Christians of all stripes to speak up for hungry people), and at the same time: 1) help people learn the difference between charity and advocacy, and 2) point out that much American foreign aid is still a tool of our military and determined by Cold War-era priorities and needs.

This year I offered our three European Christmas products (the DVD of the show, the CD, and the book) for free including shipping to anyone willing to give Bread for the World $100.

We sent this offer to 200,000 people on our e-list. About 500 responded, sending Bread about $60,000. I don’t know if 1/400th is a good ratio. But that’s both a lot of people supporting Bread, and a lot of money for their work.

The night we sent out the offer (a week ago), we had a huge response, but there was a glitch in the electronic order form. Hundreds of people donated, and their orders were lost. I was really sad about what to do. While we hate to pester people needlessly with our e-list, we decided we had to re-send the offer to explain the problem, apologize, and ask people to re-submit their order. I don’t know how many people we lost, but nearly 300 logged back on to re-do their orders. We were relieved.

Anyway, today we are mailing out nearly 600 packages. This is my Christmas present to myself this year. If you’d like to learn about the initiative, click here.

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Goodbuy Mr. Steves

I just received an email I thought you might enjoy:

Dear Mr. Steves, I have spent thousands of dollars on Rick Steves tours through the years and was planning a major Eastern European tour with my entire family for our 50th anniversary in 2010…until I read the Boston Globe article about how Mr Steves is a pothead and a proponent of drug use. I will never use your company again and will do everything in my power to discourage anyone from using your tours. I have already told at least five people and will continue to do so. With the drug problem in this country Mr. Steves should be ashamed of himsel…if he want to be a drug addict that’s his business but he doesn’t have to promote the use of drugs. Enogh said…goodbuy Mr. Steves!!!!

Ouch! There goes a lot of business. We’ll have to find a way to enjoy Europe without that man from Boston.

There’s a lot of movement in the decriminalize-marijuana movement these days. I get a lot of emails like this, and they cause me to think of the people who led the movement to decriminalize alcohol back in the 1930s. When our society finally decided to end the Prohibition on alcohol, I wonder if people who advocated regulating and taxing alcohol, taking the crime out of the equation, and treating its abuse as a health problem got similar feedback.

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Hedonist Versus “Pleasure Activist”

I just interviewed Fred Plotkin for my radio show. While I write a guidebook that uses physical sights as racks upon which to hang an understanding and appreciation of history and culture, Fred writes a guide to Italy that uses food for that rack. He (and his book, Italy for the Gourmet Traveler, www.fredplotkin.com) is an inspiration to me. Fundamental to Fred’s thinking is his philosophy of the “pleasure activist.” I had to share it with you:

Whenever I am asked what is a pleasure activist, I respond, “A pleasure activist is what you think it is.” This is not meant to be coy or evasive. Each one of us has a strong impression of what pleasure is, though it seems not to be something we discuss or share. I know what mine is, and I will describe it presently.

 Pleasure activism is not about hedonism. There is something mindless and selfish about hedonism that is not in keeping with the spirit of pleasure activism. Similarly, shopping, consuming, and acquisition are not what this is about. In fact, anyone who derives a sense of self from money and possessions will never be truly happy.

Each one of us humans has been given the gift of five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. For those who might have one sense that is impaired, they develop their other senses more powerfully. I believe that most people scarcely use their senses and, as such, miss out on a great deal of pleasure. They see but do not observe. They hear but do not listen. They smell and taste but do not savor. They touch but do not feel.

I believe that the best way to use the senses is to not analyze what is being perceived while we are doing the perceiving. What we take in becomes part of our bank of information, knowledge and experience. When presented, say, with a piece of chocolate, a glass of wine, a new landscape, or music we have not yet heard, we can open our senses more fully and actively to discover the pleasures and complexities that await us. This means putting other thoughts out of our head and focusing our senses on what we are perceiving.

Pleasure activism is also the recognition of the value of things and experiences. One bite of chocolate or one sip of wine is immensely rewarding. The second bite or sip can tell us more if we let it. Otherwise, it is a repetition of the first experience. A box of chocolates or a bottle of wine might prove less meaningful. Fresh air, clean water, and silence only seem meaningful when they are absent — yet few people savor them when they are within reach.

If we meet a new, interesting person and open all of our senses to him or her, we have a much stronger experience of why that person is so compelling. In the media and in our social training, our minds are filled with so many strategies for happiness and success, but they all involve calculated behavior that may be counter to our nature and instinct, which form the sixth sense. When we are alive to all that we see, hear, smell, savor and feel, we refine what we call taste and, moreover, add to that mysterious but essential human characteristic we call instinct.

I would never say that the fullest use of our senses is the secret to happiness and fulfillment. Such an assertion is too pat and general. But any behavior that can contribute to our becoming more fully human and insightful is one that should be prized. And that, to me, is pleasure activism.

What does it mean to you?