Angels and Santa Claus

Not getting a lot of Christmas things done in my effort to get a small drop-leaf table finished in time for next weekend so I can place our ceppo with its small Christmas tree atop it (there's no room near the door anymore, as in this pic, and it was in the way there; it looks terrible up on the bookcase, where it's ended up the past two years). The table is painted in shades of blue and right now only needs some touch up to be finished before a concluding clear coat of Krylon on the top.

Cheered myself during the bulk of the painting watching The Little Match Girl. It's odd I enjoy this movie so much because I hated it when I first saw it. History buff that I am, I found it very unrealistic that a little African-American girl would be taken in so readily by various members of a rich white family in a 1920s big city (always suspected "Port City" was actually Philadelphia). I've read too many books of the time and knew how black characters were usually treated.

But I got to the point where I could go with the flow. The 1920s atmosphere is perfect, William Daniels gives a bravura performance, they have Irish servants who don't go all "sure and begorra" on us, and Keshia Knight-Pulliam gives Molly a roguishness that's quite charming even as she lights her magic candles and turns the situation from hopeless to holy.

I've also fallen in love with the German pyramid that's a motif at the end of the movie and regret that I don't have the money to buy one. We stopped by a light display last night on the way home from supper and they had a tent with a vendor selling Christmas ornaments and foods. The man traveled to different parts of the world to purchase these ornaments: he had been to Thuringia and other parts of Germany and returned with marzipan and stollen, blown glass ornaments and many different sizes of German pyramids, from one level to four levels. Most were Nativity scenes, but one small one-level pyramid had the Nutcracker characters instead. The cheapest (like the Nutcracker one) were $60.

James did buy me something sweet: One of the glass ornaments they had was hyacinths in a pot. He remembers me, in reference to buying books, always quoting the verse of the Gulistan of Moslih Eddin Saadi, which goes

"If of thy Mortal Goods thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left,
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul."

I've also finished reading Jeff Guinn's The Autobiography of Santa Claus, which is a charming little book telling Santa's story in his own words, from when he began giving gifts even before becoming Bishop of Myra, to when he became ageless and began to pick up friends and followers, some from real life, to be his helpers (you can guess some of Santa's helpers: Charles Dickens, Clement C. Moore, Washington Irving, but there is at least one very odd one). Santa tells Mr. Guinn a good story: I admire Leonardo daVinci even more now since he was the one who devised how to make Santa's reindeer and sleigh fly! Layla, which is the real name of Santa's wife, seems to be a charming person who's not above ribbing her husband about his weight--how natural is that?