Third Sunday of Advent

The color of Advent is purple. Purple is for repentance, which is taught how people should be preparing for Christmas. However, there is one exception: the third Sunday of Advent.

Each Sunday has a theme; the first Sunday is Hope, the Second is Peace, and the Fourth is Love. But the Third is Joy, and, because of that, the third candle is pink rather than purple.

Two days ago, the Feast of Santa Lucia occurred. Her feast is celebrated in such varied places as Sicily in Italy and in the Scandinavian nations. On "Lucia Day," it has been traditional for the eldest daughter in a household to arise early, and to serve her mother and father and other elder members of the household coffee and saffron buns called lussekatter for breakfast. The customary costume for this ritual is a white dress with a red sash, and the young woman would wear a crown of candles. These days, to keep down the risk of fire, battery-powered candle crowns are available for those who wish to continue the ritual. Lucia Day celebrates the days now slowly growing longer.

101 Tales...More Like It

Tales of Christmas, edited by Amy Newmark
I almost gave up on the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" annual Christmas volume a couple of years ago, as the stories had begun to get quite repetitive. I was mollified by this year's volume, which starts out at Thanksgiving and contains some humorous and touching "turkey tales."

The book gets off to a rollicking start with a section called "Tales of the Tree," which contains a very funny chapter called "Our Dancing Christmas Tree" (although it wasn't funny if you were the person with the tree). "Oh, But There Was a Creature Stirring" is pretty hilarious, too. There are family stories, Santa tales, uncommon Christmases, family mayhem, quiet miracles, even the story of the autistic boy who couldn't connect with humans but who could with a very special Christmas gift.

There are even two New Year stories to round out the holiday season.

Lots of feel-good tales leading up to the holiday: this would be a good bedtime book in the days leading up to Christmas (and remember that there are twelve days of it!).

Second Sunday of Advent

So the first three feast days have passed!

December 4 is the Feast of St. Barbara. She was born into a pagan household, but chose to become a Christian. For this she was tortured by her own father. Miracles delayed some of her torture; wounds from torture carried out healed instantly. Eventually her father had her beheaded, but he was struck by lightning on the way home from her execution.

From Wikipedia: "Saint Barbara is venerated by Catholics who face the danger of sudden and violent death at work. She is invoked against thunder and lightning and all accidents arising from explosions of gunpowder. She became the patron saint of artillerymen, armourers, military engineers, gunsmiths, and anyone else who worked with cannon and explosives.  Following the widespread adoption of gunpowder in mining in the 1600s, she was adopted as the patron of miners, tunnellers, and other underground workers. As the geology and mine engineering developed in association with mining, she became patron of these professions."

December 6, of course, is the feast of St. Nicholas. Those who see him as a jolly Santa Claus type, however, should know he started out as a Turkish bishop. His miracles included saving three students who had been killed and robbed by an evil innkeeper. The innkeeper had chopped up their bodies and brined them, but St. Nicholas returned them to life. The custom of hanging stockings before a fireplace came from the story of St. Nicholas saving three unmarried girls from a poor family from having to be sold into slavery (read: prostitution): supposedly St. Nicholas tossed a bag of gold for each girl into their poverty-stricken home and they ended up in stockings. In places like the Netherlands, where St. Nicholas is the gift bringer, he's usually accompanied by a helper, perhaps Black Peter or Belsnickel or Pelznichol. St. Nicholas rewards the good children while his help punishes the bad.

Today is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. This feast is often confused with the Annunciation and people wonder why Mary the mother of Jesus spent nearly a year pregnant. The Immaculate Conception actually refers to Mary, who was born without sin so she could become the mother of God's son.

From catholic.com: "The Immaculate Conception is a Catholic dogma that states that Mary, whose conception was brought about the normal way, was conceived without original sin or its stain. That’s what 'immaculate' means: without stain.

"When discussing the Immaculate Conception, an implicit reference may be found in the angel’s greeting to Mary. The angel Gabriel said, “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you” (Luke 1:28). The phrase 'full of grace' is a translation of the Greek word kecharitomene. It therefore expresses a characteristic quality of Mary."

Another Unique Sutton Christmas Book

A Staffordshire Christmas, edited by Robin Pearson
I found the first one of these Sutton Christmas anthologies (A Worcestershire Christmas) at a library book sale several years back. After finding A Surrey Christmas at the same book sale, every time I found a book from this series for less than five dollars with postage, I bought one and have managed to accumulate all the regional ones. These contain short excerpts of Christmas/Christmastide passages from various British novels, memoirs, and poetry books, with the action taking place in the shire or historical era denoted in the title.

This title repeats the oft-included "St. George and the Dragon" play cited in many of the other books, but includes some unique passages as well, including two short stories by Arnold Bennett about a frivolous woman named Vera; a long poem called "The First Christmas Eve"; an affecting excerpt from Vera Brittain's World War I classic Testament of Youth and an account of the 1914 "Christmas Truce" in the trenches; accounts of Christmas customs in the late 1800s and early 1900s in poor homes and in a country estate; stories of regional hymns; and more, and many, many pictures of snowy nostalgia from 1900 all the way to the 1980s.

I enjoyed this look at "snowy old England"!

First Sunday of Advent

I'll admit, it's hard this year. It's been difficult some other years, but 2024 has been a very cruel. We lost our friend Linda Butler in January. Our little budgie never did relax in our home, then became ill with some type of infection of his air sacs after boarding at our vet in March. By the time we found another avian vet, it was too late and we had to have him euthanized on August 1. In the meantime, James' kidneys failed at the end of June, after six years of us fending off dialysis. He also fell several times this year, leaving him with terrible back pain and leaving him no recourse except to use a walker in the house. We are still investigating options to relieve this pain, but he won't have a procedure until January.

And even in its closing days, 2024 couldn't leave well enough alone: our brother-in-law Bobby Thrift lost a battle with a quickly moving cancer a few days ago.

I was outside stringing up Christmas lights on the bushes out front, and it struck me that I was doing the same thing Bobby might have been doing this first weekend after Thanksgiving if Old Man Cancer hadn't stripped him down to the bone, stringing lights around their home to delight the eyes of his beloved grandchildren.

In the darkness, like St. Lucia whose feast we celebrate in twelve days, we must strive to be the light.

Keep us well. Keep us strong. Amen.

Ending With "Ideals"

Ideals Christmas 2023, from Ideals Publications
What more can I say about these pretty books containing poetry, essays, and artwork/photographs? They are definitely a cozy "go to" during the Christmas season: the nostalgic soft-focus vintage paintings, the still-life items of Christmas decorations, the annual narrative of the Nativity story with appropriate artwork, etc. This issue had an inordinate amount of verse that were Christmas carol words, but it didn't take away from my enjoyment.

One of my favorite poems, "Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913" by Robert Bridges (turned into a song for John Denver so long ago) appears in the volume. I also liked the short but joyful "Christmas" by Marchette Chute.

As always, Pamela Kennedy's essays are a joy; I remember back when she was writing these about her children, and now she's writing them about her grandchildren. The Dickens essay was thoughtful, and also Bennett's history of St. Nicholas.

This is an annual treat. And that's it for this year's Christmas books. I'm still working my way through Flame Tree Press' huge collection of "gothic" Christmas fantasy short stories, mixing vintage offerings like Dickens' "The Goblins Who Stole a Sexton" with modern ones.

On the Eve of Twelfth Night

Christmas in Puerto Rico, from World Book, Inc.

Well, this is it. With this volume, I've finished my collection of World Book's "Christmas Around the World" books, started way back when I came upon at least a dozen of them at the Cobb County Library Sale (and found most of them there later. This one, however, came via online.

It's a colorful volume packed with all the unique celebrations that come from Puerto Rico's mixed heritage of Native forebears, Spanish explorers, and being a commonwealth of the United States, so that Christmas trees, snowmen, and Santa cavort in the tropical sun along with poinsettias, palm trees, and cactus decorated with colored lights, not to mention roosters for the one who supposedly crowed at midnight when Jesus was born. Special foods, like lechon (roast pork) and pasteles, are served, music is heard everywhere played on the unique 10-stringed guitar and unique Puerto Rican carolers fill the streets.

There are pull-outs about Jose Feliciano and "Feliz Navidad," a portrait of a "santero," a carver of saints, and others, and a big section on the big celebration in the country, Three Kings Day on January 6, the feast of the Epiphany.

Christmas As It Was

A Shropshire Christmas, compiled by Lyn Briggs

I found my first volume of the Sutton "Christmas anthologies" (A Worcestershire Christmas, if you care) at a library book sale many years back. When A Surrey Christmas turned up at a subsequent sale I realized this was a series. Every time I found a book from this series, I bought one and have now managed to accumulate all of the regional ones. These contain short excerpts of Christmas/Christmastide passages from various British novels, memoirs, and poetry books, with the action taking place in the shire or historical era denoted in the title.

Like A Hertfordshire Christmas previously reviewed, this one is a bumper issue of old Christmas lore, mostly of Christmas as it was celebrated from 1850 through the 1970s, and little repeated material as in a few of the other books. Shropshire is on the border of England and Wales, and contains such famous cities as Shrewsbury, Telford, Ludlow, and Ellesmere, and several famous writers and artists came from the area, including A.E. Housman, poet; Wilfred Owen, World War I author and poet; and Randolph Caldecott, artist. (The Shire in The Lord of the Rings is reportedly based on Shropshire and Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael mystery stories are set in Shrewsbury.) Housman, Caldecott, and Cadfael are all represented in this collection, and the famous Dick Whittington, "three times Mayor of London," supposedly was a "Salopian boy." ("Salop" is the ancient name for the Shropshire region.)

But the best bits in this book are just regular reminisces from "regular people": from creeping downstairs to find apples, nuts, an orange, and small toys in your stocking to the windows of the poulterers' shops filled with all sorts of geese, turkeys, and other game to carols born in the Shropshire hills to the story of a servant married (but not living with) a wealthy man obsessed with servants to homely Christmas celebrations in cottagers' huts and middle-class homes.

Is There a Santa Claus?

'Twas the Night Before, Jerry B. Jenkins

Tom Douton is a self-made journalist with a knack of writing cynical stories about the victimized "little people" in life. Noella Wright is an optimistic university journalism instructor. When these two opposites meet, they unexpectedly fall in love. Noella doesn't understand his cynicism, nor does Tom understand her happy outlook to life; they just know they're happy together.

But Tom doesn't know the complete story behind the round pendant Noella wears all the time, one with an incised Christmas tree shape and the words "Forever and..." The only time he asked, she merely said "Santa brought it to me." But the truth is much more complicated than Tom knows, and he doesn't know how to react to it.

He only knows it has made a rift between himself and Noella, so he makes a decision that will change his life.

This was a sweet little book with a twist at the end I didn't expect; it turns very suddenly from a love story between two dissimilar people and becomes something unexpected. However, I thought the writing was a bit...distant. Tom and Noella never really came alive for me, although Tom's adventure at the end was well-written.

Decades of Christmas

A Hertfordshire Christmas, compiled by Margaret Ashby

I found my first volume of the Sutton "Christmas anthologies" (A Worcestershire Christmas, if you care) at a library book sale many years back. When A Surrey Christmas turned up at a subsequent sale I realized this was a series. Every time I found a book from this series, I bought one and have now managed to accumulate all of the regional ones. These contain short excerpts of Christmas/Christmastide passages from various British novels, memoirs, and poetry books, with the action taking place in the shire or historical era denoted in the title.

Some of the books repeat certain things heavily, like the "St. George and the Dragon" skit done door-to-door by the Waits, or excerpts from Dickens, so it was refreshing to find this one, which is pretty much wall-to-wall memoirs from former Hertfordshire writers and residents, and they run the gamut from poulterers' shops in the late 1880s to memories of the cold, cold winter of 1962: from a story about an orphan put out for fostering by an old couple to a Christmas selection by Anthony Trollope, from wartime Christmases during both World Wars to celebrations in school, memories of composer Elizabeth Poston to one from Charles Dickens' great-granddaughter Monica, reports from department stores and ghost stories and bookmobiles, and more.

I really enjoyed this one because of the different decades of memories throughout, and, as always, the reminders of how little it took one hundred years ago to make a small child's Christmas.

Heartwarming Essays and Short Stories

Fifty Years of Christmas. edited by Ruth M. Elmquist

This is a charming vintage book of poetry, short stories, and essays from the "Christian Herald" from 1901 to 1950. Sounds preachy, you think? Well, although many of the essays and some of the stories involved the Nativity, this collection is no didactic, gloomy collection. In fact, one of them is the sweetest love story ("There Was a Star") about a man who has loved a woman all his life, but believes she is in love with his brother.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher talks about traditions in "This Must We Keep." Men in a World War II prisoner of war camp, enemies and friends, come together in "The Hour of Stars." An embittered newspaper owner finds Christmas in "A Good-Willer." Edgar A. Guest's touching poem "On Going Home for Christmas" is followed by his essay "I'm at My Best at Christmas!" which tells how he wrote the verse. "Christmas on Beacon Hill" talks about a candle-lighting custom in Boston which I wonder if is still done. And there are so many more heartwarming ones!

It's nice to go back to time when essays and stories were thoughtfully written for adults, and not just "sound bites" in juvenile-vocabulary-ridden tales from the internet in between intrusive advertisements. I like being treated like an adult.

The Famous History of the Famous Poem

Twas The Night: The Art and History of the Classic Christmas Poem, written and compiled by Pamela McColl
This is a big, beautiful "coffee-table book" published on the 200th anniversary of the writing/publishing of the classic "A Visit from St. Nicholas." It talks at first of the history of the Christmas celebration as well as the history of St. Nicholas, then switches to the history of Santa Claus in New York, a tale that pivots upon Washington Irving, who in his farcial history of the city, declared that St. Nicholas was the patron saint of the city formerly known as New Amsterdam.

Nor was Clement C. Moore the first person who talked about "Santa Claus" or his flying about in the sky. Indeed, there is still contention by the family of Henry Livingston, Jr., that he is the actual author of the poem, but the proof was lost in a house fire. (Author McColl talks about these theories, but believes the author is Moore.)

This is a neat book with a lot of historical information, but the author wanders far afield of the poem itself, quoting historical figures about Christmas celebrations but not necessarily citing Moore's poem. Still, the illustrations, of Santa Claus and of Christmas in general, are gorgeous, with many full page and half page color illustrations of paintings, advertisements, and magazine illustrations. I bought it at fifty percent off; you might want to find a bargain copy.

Poetry for Christmas: "Christmas Eve"

by Faith Baldwin

The snow is full of silver light
Spilled from the heavens' tilted cup
And, on this holy, tranquil night,
The eyes of men are lifted up
To see the promise written fair,
The hope of peace for all on earth,
And hear the singing bells declare
The marvel of the dear Christ's birth.
The way from year to year is long
And though the road be dark so far,
Bright is the manger, sweet is the song,
The steeple rises to the Star.

Romance for Christmas

Lovelight Farms, B.K. Borison

Stella Bloom had a bleak childhood; daughter of a philandering husband, her mother never recovered from being abandoned by her lover; subsequently she grew up learning not to count on people who might abandon you. When her mother died, she accidentally met Luka Peters, a statistician. Luka becomes her best friend, supporting her dreams when she bought a local Christmas tree farm, the one place where she was truly happy. But due to recent setbacks, she's afraid she might lose the farm and is afraid to tell her employees. Instead, she concocts a plan to win a prize with an internet influencer to fund the farm further.

Unfortunately, she told the influencer she and her boyfriend ran the farm. So she asks Luka to be her "temporary boyfriend."

You guessed it, these two "best friends" have been in love all during their ten-year friendship. Luka seems amenable to admitting it, but due to her trust issues Stella thinks its better to leave the status at quo.

This is a sweet Hallmark-type romance taking place in a very accepting small town (no one cares, for example, that the sheriff is hoping to be in a same-sex relationship) and Luka is a very appealing lead male character—he even cooks, and his Italian mom, who appears all too briefly, is a hoot. Stella, however seems to be a perpetual child, frightened of any commitment fearing her life will end up like her mother's (one actually wants to bonk her mom for basically allowing Stella's deadbeat dad to ruin her life). Basically the story is 300 pages of their yearning for each other.

Some good things: the farm manager, Beckett, is a hoot: a tough guy who's a sucker for kittens. Lovelight Farms' Christmas sounds like a dream. No one likes Stella's deadbeat dad. Some bad things: there's yet another best-friend-is-a-dreamy-baker (both in her looks and her baking). The yearning goes on so, so, so long.

The sex scenes are pretty good. A nice Christmas story if you don't expect much.

Poetry for Christmas: "The Shortest Day"

Happy Winter Solstice!

by Susan Cooper

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us—listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome, Yule!