Ebenezer Scrooge: A Household Name for Nearly Two Centuries

A Christmas Carol and Its Adaptations: Dickens's Story on Screen and Television, Fred Guida

Last year I read Craig Wichman's book about radio drama adaptations of A Christmas Carol and in my review mentioned "[a]t least one book devotes itself to following all the film versions of the reformation of Ebenezer Scrooge, that "tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!" Well, this is that book!

My first exposure to this classic was seven days after I'd turned seven years old: Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. I don't remember watching it, but I must have enjoyed it, because the very next December I recall sitting on the sofa chanting "It's almost time for Mr. Magoo!" (and my mother telling me to quit kicking the sofa 😀 ). Over the years I've watched various older versions (Sim, Hicks, Owen) and dipped into new ones as they came along (Mickey Mouse, George C. Scott, Patrick Stewart, even the creepy three night British version from last year). My favorite version is still Magoo's, but my favorite Carol is still the book.

Anyway—anyone interested in how A Christmas Carol has been done on film over the years should really enjoy this book. Guida gives a very thorough treatment of all the films and television productions he could find records of up until the time of the publication of the book, which went to press before the Patrick Stewart version aired. He even covers a few student and amateur versions that were filmed by private filmmakers, and a Mexican version of the Carol that is filmed as a Victorian English drama that I'd never heard of. Also covered are Carol variations: television shows that used elements of the story in an Christmas episode, such as The Odd Couple and Bewitched (he left out the Quantum Leap version, though). And of course he talks about the versions he considers "superior," including the 1951 Sim version and ... surprise! ... Magoo's Carol. Such good taste. 😁

The book opens with a short history of Dickens' Christmas books, of the reasons he wrote the Carol, and the difficulties he had after it was published keeping book pirates from printing their own versions, including versions with treacly additions. There's also a chapter on Dickens' own readings of the book, stage versions, and even magic lantern slide narratives. At the back of the book is a list of every silent film, sound film, and television version Guida could track down.

(I'm not sure if Mr. Guida is still with us, but I'd love to see what he thought of the British version that was broadcast last year!)

Vintage Christmas Videos

These are Christmas stories from the 1950s done either as shorts for a Christian film company, Cathedral Films, or were shorts done on anthology television series. They are all heartwarming if a bit old-fashioned.

"Star of Bethlehem" (the story of the Nativity told with narration and silhouettes)

"Three Young Kings" (three young Hispanic boys re-enact the story of the journey of the Magi)

"Christmas is Magic" (a war widow and her son take in an amnesiac veteran at Christmas)

"Holy Night" (the first part of "The Living Christ" series, about the Nativity)

"God's Christmas Gift" (a little girl learns that Christmas is more than about gifts)

"Child of Bethlehem" (a live-action black-and-white Nativity story)

"The Christmas Spirit" Part 1 and Part 2 (the story of a boy who wants a pony for Christmas)

"The Guiding Star" Part 1 and Part 2 (Uncle Henry solves the family's Christmas problems in his own way)

The Second Sunday of Advent

BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
                                      Book of Common Prayer, collect for the second Sunday of Advent

It was a wet and clammy weekend that managed some semblance of pre-Christmas festivities. The rain literally put a damper on things, though: chill, merciless in the way it crept into your bones, drenching everything and then keeping on, hour after hour, the cold sneaking under your collar and up your sleeves. If it had snowed, it might have at least felt warmer.

We arose just in time Saturday to get dressed and for dog-walking duties before we had to leave the house. James couldn't take the power chair to his club meeting Christmas party due to the rain and because of the usual Saturday and the seasonal Christmas shopping was doubtful of finding a close parking space where he would not have to walk past his strength. So I agreed to drop him off and then do a few errands in the area. If I wanted, I could have gone home, but in the end I didn't. Instead I pulled down my hat, hiked up my hood, and splashed onward.

First I popped off to Costco for gasoline, at a jaw-dropping $1.94⁹, and then went through the store. We needed very prosaic things: trash bags, "plastic cheese" (Kraft slices), toilet paper. Of course ending up grabbing other things, including a new "Cooks Illustrated" as a surprise for James, but nothing else we couldn't use.

I usually buy discount toys throughout the year and save them for Toys for Tots, but everything's been at such sixes and sevenses this year I didn't get a chance. So I went to And That! (a.k.a. the local Christmas Tree Shoppe) to be immersed in warm Christmasy atmosphere. There were lights, decorations, and gifts everywhere, and Christmas music over the speakers, all which I enjoyed. I bought two small toys, all I could afford, and some pistachio nuts since I hadn't had breakfast. I could have gone to Panera, but instead I went to Publix and bought a small container of their chicken soup. Nowhere near as good and I had to eat it in the car, but half the price.

I also almost finished another Christmas gift, but won't mention it here, in case the intended recipients are reading.

Finally I just cut through the back streets and went to Barnes & Noble for a half hour, to check out the books and peruse the magazines until James called.

We spent the rest of Saturday evening at home, just noshing for supper, and had a double-feature on Christmas movies, first the modern Mercy Mission about the rescue of a small plane pilot by an Air New Zealand jet, and then the classic The Bishop's Wife. This is a delightful film as it is—I even love looking at the sets!—and a tribute to Cary Grant's acting chops, since he makes the Dudley character look effortless although he hated doing the film!

Today we tried to sleep late, but sleep was elusive. I washed the towels and some other things, but my main focus was getting the mail items done. I still hadn't written the Christmas letter, which seemed superfluous because only one person is now getting it (the person isn't online and hasn't followed the "adventures" of this year). Considering I have been re-telling James' medical saga for months, it was pretty much a doddle to write. It was harder to print, and I did half the labels upside down. Since they were still legible, I left them. So I finished writing out all the Christmas and Hanukkah cards (yeah, they'll be late) and sorted those that get mailed, and those that get mailed with gifts, and those that will get (hopefully) delivered in person, and since that got done, I hauled all the gift boxes out of the closet and turned the spare room into what looks like a gift shop behind held on a sofa. In this fashion I got the gifts wrapped that are going to be shipped and hopefully I can take them to the post awful tomorrow.

By the time I finished this task, it was suppertime. James warmed up the gravy and pork, cooked some fettucini, and I shoveled my way through supper (considering all I'd had today was a bowl of oatmeal, a cup of yogurt, some skim milk, a grilled cheese sandwich, and a PopTart, I was hungry for some real food).

Later it was time for the news, A Christmas Story, and Alaska: the Last Frontier.

Fourth Sunday of Advent: Dreaming of the Cold

An early December snowstorm raised our hopes for a completely chilly December after a very late fall. And indeed it was a bit of a miracles as we usually have snow one day and rain comes along, or high temps come along, to wipe 90 percent of it away the next day. This time the temps stayed low enough that we had some snow around for a week, even if on the last day it was just in the folds of the roofs of houses and in shady spots most of the day. But in the past few days we've had 60s, and sometimes high 60s, and almost all very stick 60s as it keeps raining.

So I've been fantasizing about Canada, somewhere I haven't been in a good many years. I went there several times in the late 60s and the 70s, including to what was left of Expo 67 in Montreal and several times to Quebec City (for some breathtaking views of the St. Lawrence River from the escarpments of the Citadel) and once near Toronto to Canada's Wonderland. (There were also a couple of trips to the Canadian side of the falls at Niagara, where I remember wonderful cherry orchards between Horseshoe Falls and the little city of Niagara on the Lake.)

I fondly remember Canadian programs, too, like Swiss Family Robinson with Chris Wiggins and Diana Leblanc, and Strange Paradise, with Colin Fox and Dawn Greenhalgh, but some of my best memories are of Canadian Christmas stories, including the unusual North Station/Station Nord, which I saw for the first time when we got HD television some years back. Sadly, North Station/Station Nord is not available anywhere I can find online, and you can't buy a DVD. You can find it in Italian in two places on YouTube as Miracolo di Natale, but the voices are chipmunk and at least one is "flopped" (mirror imaged).

But here are a couple of links to a few Canadian Christmas tales, including two episodes of The Forest Rangers, which was syndicated in the 1960s and turned up on early morning weekend television:

The Christmas Martian

The Christmas Raccoons

The Forest Rangers: "A Christmas Story"

The Forest Rangers: "Santa MacLeod"

Have Yourself a Silent Little Christmas!

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

Rudolph Day, February 2015: Lost Christmas Gems

A Dream for Christmas, 1950s African American family moves to Los Angeles to take over a failing church; written by Earl Hamner Jr

A Christmas Carol 1971 animated version which won an Oscar

The Carpenters: A Christmas Portrait musical special

Hollywood Palace (1968) with Bing and Kathryn Crosby

Bob Hope Christmas Special (1965; his first in color)

Some Christmas Cheer for the Interim Season

The Little Match Girl (1987) 

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever 

The Best of the Andy Williams Christmas Shows 

Bob Hope Christmas Special (1967)

Movies for Christmas

For the fourth Sunday of Advent, some different films:

Mercy Mission: The Rescue Of Flight 771

Scrooge  (Albert Finney)

An American Christmas Carol

Santa and Pete

A Little Christmas Spirit for the Upcoming Sneezy Ordeal of Spring

Everlasting Christmas Movie Montage - Happy Holidays!

Epiphany Surprises

First up—sleeping for eight whole hours! Won't get to do this again until next Sunday.

And a final Christmas treat, toast with clotted cream.

Now it was time to get back to the routine, so we were off to Kroger to buy supplies for work lunches and ordinary supplies. On the way out we spotted what was left of the Christmas things: bags of bows and rolls of wrapping paper. I hadn't intended to buy any more of either, but these bows were different: there weren't any golds and silvers, and more other colors than red and green: blues, purples, magentas, plus white. I grabbed three bags at $1.20 each.

There's a type of chocolate milk James is able to drink at Walmart, so we stopped there to get it and came out with all sorts of other things: handheld breakfasts for him, meat ravioli (you don't usually see meat ravioli), an extension cord I needed, etc., and in a big bin of marked-down Blu-Rays we found Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. So that's what I watched this afternoon after getting my bag ready for work and putting up the groceries while James retreated to the "man cave" for a bit. Looks scrumdiddlyumptious in Blu-Ray, and, I found, even slightly appropriate for Epiphany, because Veruca sings about wanting "a bean feast," which, it is believed, derives from the bean that is put into the Twelfth Night cake!

And now I'm watching The House Without A Christmas Tree again, just because (and because the music has been going through my head for ages).

Oh, look, here's an article from 2011 that talks about the film and interviews Lisa Lucas.

A Kringly Weekend

Christmas is a comin'—which means extra mornings for sleeping late!

Hey! When you're my age, that's a gift.

I'd actually expected the lawn guys yesterday morning or this morning. Hmn. Whatever. The lawn hasn't grown an inch anyway. However, I did have to wait for UPS to pick up James' Amazon return; he ordered what was supposed to be a "complete" anime set, but what he got was only the first disk. While I was waiting, I started to dub off the Advent and Christmas episodes of Feasts and Seasons of the Church (and cleaning the bathrooms). This is a show hosted by Joanna Bogle, who is a conservative Catholic from England. This particular series has an episode from before Advent starts, all four Sundays of Advent, and then celebrating after Christmas through Epiphany. She talks about the various saints' days in the interim, practicing faith, and throws in a recipe each show. (There are also six shows for Lent and six shows for summer through Michaelmas in September.)

I had gotten through three of them when UPS arrived. I'd wanted to go up to JoAnn today, so I passed the package on, finished up with that episode, and then grabbed my coupons and went. The Michaels and JoAnn at Town Center are now only separated by a parking lot, so I hit Michaels first and bought some sale ribbon, then went to JoAnn. Had to make two circuits because three things I was going to use coupons on were already on sale. Luckily, I made that second circuit, because I found a perfect gift for two different people. I bought one for each of them. And at half price!

From there I was just headed for home, and it took me ten minutes just to find a way out. When I'd gotten to Town Center, traffic was just like any other Friday. An hour and a half later when I emerged, the crazy Christmas shoppers had come out of the woodwork. No matter which way I went I ran into a long line of cars heading either for another part of the shopping centers complex or turning left toward the mall. Finally, a dedicated right turn opened up where it had not been a few minutes earlier when an inconsiderate idiot getting into the left lane blocked the right lane with his car. I got out of there like a shot, had a nice drive home through the park, and, once there, finished dubbing off Feasts and Seasons.

Ate at home tonight and then headed out to the movies. Since it was opening weekend for The Hobbit, we figured we would have better luck trying to see Lincoln tonight and seeing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on the earliest show the theatre offered. Well, here we arrived at the movies, on a Friday night, and there were three people in line. We were flabbergasted. The Hobbit started in ten minutes, and we just walked in and found a seat; I don't think there were twenty other people in the theatre.

Anyway, we enjoyed the movie very much, although I thought they could have left out the Three Stooges trolls. Martin Freeman was adorable as always and I finally sorted through the dwarves, but my favorite part was Sylvester McCoy playing Radagast. No matter what role he plays, he never quite gets rid of that lovely Scots burr.

James had to work Saturday, so he left home about seven and I slept in until eight, then had breakfast. I was toying with going to Books-a-Million, but we have coupons there until the end of the year. So instead I went to the Avenue at West Cobb to see if I could find something to use one of two Barnes & Noble coupons on. Couldn't find anything I was looking for. I did drop in to the Yankee Candle for a minute and picked up a packet of their Balsam and Cedar scented icicles for the Christmas tree. Then I stopped by Hair Day for a few hours, just to see everyone. Brought Mel and Phyllis' Hanukkah gifts—Phyllis got a kick out of hers; a plaque that said "I'm still hot! It just comes in flashes"—and talked with Alex a while about finding a Charlie Brown tree and with Mel about Android apps.

I'd toyed with the idea of baking cookies this afternoon, but by the time I left Hair Day it was too late, especially since we had to leave the house posthaste when James got in. So I came home to finish a gift (sadly, it didn't turn out as nice as I wanted) and dub off Castle episodes. I got four of them done, which takes a little of the burden off the DVR. By then James was home, and Willow was walked, and we headed out for my belated birthday dinner, at the Colonnade, of course. It was a nice chilly night for a ride into town, and of course the restaurant was packed when we got there, but because there were only two of us, we had a seat in not too long. We had an excellent waitress and gave her a good tip!

Of course I had the turkey, and so did James! I had applesauce and cucumber salad to go with mine; their applesauce is outstanding and not overly sweetened. Unfortunately the vinegar in the salad dressing made me sick for the rest of the night.

From the Colonnade we went to the performance of An Atlanta Christmas at the Academy Theatre. This year ARTC was presenting all the humorous skits, including two new ones. I still think the pirate skit is dopey, but then I'm not a pirate fan. The Academy Theatre folks did two short plays, the funny A Cthulu Christmas and the touching Rosie the Retired Rockette about an elderly woman living in a rest home being visited by her daughter and two granddaughters at Christmas. I quite loved the latter.

Instead of going home through the freeway, we cut back through town and drove home as we used to so many years ago when the Phoenix Science Fiction Society met at the old Virginia-Highlands branch of the library on Saturday nights, up North Highland Road, and then turning down Morningside and going through "little" Lenox Road (as opposed to the larger end of Lenox Road with the mall and all the condos) back to Cheshire Bridge Road, to see all the pretty light displays in the old houses: mock Tudors and stone-fronted cottages and the occasional small apartment building. The guy on Morningside Drive still has his seven-foot spotlighted Grinch flat! (Sadly, the house next door wasn't lighted up to make it funnier.)

Home finally to the fids' relief.

Today was a bit quieter. It was a mucky day, dissolving into rain and chill, but we had Christmas carols on "Holiday Traditions" to keep us warm. We ran out to Kroger and got home just in time to make a run for the movie theatre one more time to catch Lincoln. There were, even on a rainy, bleak, clammy gray Sunday, even fewer people at the movies. This time there might have been half a dozen people in the theatre when we sat down.

This is a fabulous movie. It was costume drama done right, with homely scenes like Lincoln sitting in his bedroom with his stocking feet propped up talking to "Molly." Daniel Day-Lewis was an uncanny Lincoln and Sally Field captured the emotionally fragile Mary Todd to perfection. The film covers the last four months of Lincoln's life, mainly of his fight to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and the wheeling-dealing that went on behind that. Tommy Lee Jones was quite notable as Thaddeus Stevens as well. I didn't believe that was Joseph Gordon Levitt playing Robert Lincoln; he's come a long way from Third Rock from the Sun! I loved such touches as the rooms being dark to simulate gaslight; only rooms with large windows on sunny days were really bright.

If this movie doesn't get some major Oscar note, I will be very disappointed.

When the movie was finished we headed up to Barnes & Noble to spend the coupons. I hadn't been able to find A Kosher Christmas (Jewish commentary on Christmas) at West Cobb, but I knew the Akers Mill store had it. We weren't here long, since James couldn't find anything, and bought the book and drove up to the Town Center store, where I had seen a book mentioned on "The Splendid Table," Consider the Fork. James ended up getting that one, as well as a new Eat This, Not That and a potluck book, while I bought Paris to the Past, a book of essays about visiting historical sites in France via train from Paris. I wish someone would do a book like this about England!

On the way to the Akers Mill store, we stopped at the RaceTrac gas station to buy a newspaper. There was a big sign outside that said "Free coffee, any size, from December 16 through December 22." This a Christmas customer appreciation promotion. Pity we don't drink coffee! However, they also had hot chocolate, so we treated ourselves—and they treated us, even though it wasn't coffee! That was quite nice.

We had an easy supper: Hormel Beef Tips and gravy over spaetzle, with a cucumber salad and no-sugar-added ice cream bars for dessert, watching Christmas videos on America's Funniest Home Videos, and then recorded versions of Rocket City Rednecks.


Spirits of Christmas, edited by Kathryn Cramer and David Hartwell
This is one of six volumes edited by Hartwell that compiles otherworldly Christmas stories. Some volumes are chiefly science-fiction or fantasy, but this one is definitely a "spirited" volume in which all the stories involve a ghost or hauntings of some kind. Some are by new writers and others are vintage, the lynchpin being Charles Dickens' "The Haunted Man," the last of his Christmas stories. Another vintage story is by Frank Stockton, another sentimental tale of an old couple regretting not having children is by Hildegarde Hawthorne, and yet a third tale involves several college boys, a haunted family estate, and a prank gone wrong. One of my favorites of the newer stories was "Snow Ghosts," about a 90-year-old man whose sojourn to a busy pub turns into a date from the past, and another is "O Come Little Children," in which a boy recognizes a disreputable-looking Santa Claus for who he really is. I found the final two stories rather anticlimactic, but, really, there isn't a bad story in the bunch, and a variety of themes for everyone. Worth checking out!

(Note: if otherworldly Christmases are "your bag," you might try checking out Christmas Stars, which not only contains the story "The Greatest Gift," which is the genesis for the film It's a Wonderful Life, but includes Arthur C. Clarke's famous short story about the origin of the Christmas star.)

Tree Dreams

Getting the tree up yesterday was almost an anticlimax!

Monday night I got the glider rocker out of the way, moved James' end table over about three inches, and vacuumed the space. Why I'll never know, because once James toted the tree upstairs, there were artificial "needles" everywhere.

Yesterday was my birthday and I took the day off. After sleeping late until eight and having breakfast, Operation Tree commenced! I had been dismayed when I first plugged in the tree because, once again, part of a string of lights was out. However, as I ate breakfast, it came back on. Have no idea why.

Put on some of my Christmas cassettes and spent about an hour fluffing and refastening lights to branches. Then I unloaded the wooden box that used to be the stand for the tree when we had "Sara," who was a shorter tree. I put the boxed ornament sets on one side, the unique glass ornaments in the middle, and the plastic/cloth/resin ornaments (this includes the Hallmark and the Carleton ornaments) at the right. I started with the sets because most of them are the older ornaments. I put them to the back of the tree, facing the foyer. They glimmer as brightly, and it's hard to see from down there that they are faded. A few of the sets are new, like the four chickadee ornaments and the six bright silver holly balls, and those go at the front, along with the satin balls. Next I started putting on the larger glass ornaments, like the 1930s car with the wreath on it, the sailboat, the parrot, etc., then the medium-sized ones, like the pine cones. Each time I found a small one, I would put it aside as a filler ornament. Finally I placed the ones made of other materials than glass. Again, any small ones were set aside. The "wrapped gifts" were scattered mostly to one side, the pine cones one to either side, and others dotted around. Finally the small ornaments were fitted into small holes.

After about three cassettes I remembered that, hey, it is my birthday and I can break into the birthday gift I bought myself. On Black Friday, the Sullivan Entertainment site had the remastered, widescreen version of Anne of Green Gables and the remastered sequel on sale for half price (I wasn't interested in The Continuing Story, which Kevin Sullivan made up whole cloth—it was Anne and Gilbert's children who were young adults during World War I, not Anne and Gilbert!—nor the New Beginning, which turned Anne's backstory in the original book into a lie). Half of $30 each was certainly a good savings, although the postage nearly made my hair turn white. So I put Anne on and it was really splendid, especially the scenes of Prince Edward Island countryside! Cried in several places, stopped to eat, then girded my loins and began to tinsel. Once silver was spilling down the back of the tree, I pushed it inch by inch into the corner, then finished the front. It's like a lovely silver waterfall down the height of the tree.

I cleaned up as I went, so there was little to vacuum up, and then I set the manger down, lovingly piece by piece, between the V of branches I made at the bottom of the tree and lined with appropriate ornaments: the lion and the lamb, two different Hallmark shepherd boys, stable animals surrounding the baby, a lamb, and St. Nicholas. (St. Francis I left up near the bird ornaments.)

I was already hurting anyway, so before and after James coming home and eating supper, I finally vacuumed the rest of the main floor, since it wasn't worth vacuuming until James got the tree upstairs, and then those everlasting stairs. I also swept the downstairs hall, put the stools back in place, vacuumed out the "Christmas closet," and put the last few boxes put back, and vacuumed out the laundry room.

Before bed, to make sure Willow didn't go near the tree, I brought out all the presents and surrounded it.

Let's say my back wasn't happy when I finished, and, boy, when I had a chance for a nap today, despite it being in the 40s out, I fell asleep happily under my blanket until the alarm went off (heck, I went immediately into REM sleep, dreaming about a blackout at the house, and my rear-view mirror falling off).

Not Raining but No Parade

New Year's Day mornings on Sundays are always odd.

It's been a tradition since its inception that the Tournament of Roses Parade is transferred to Monday, January 2, when the New Year is on a Sunday. So it seems a particularly empty morning for the first day of January.

We'd planned to go to the movies this afternoon, but we had coupons at BJs that would run out on Tuesday, and several of the coupons were for things we wanted for our Twelfth Night party. So we drove up to Woodstock while listening to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," under a gradually lowering sky. (It rained while we were in BJs, but otherwise the predicted precipitation was a washout. [Yeah, that pun was intended.]) We stocked up on a few things (including some Q-Tips it turns out we didn't need) along with party supplies, then came home. We had a late lunch while watching a Shaun the Sheep DVD and then HGTV's RV Show 2012 (which was evidently filmed much earlier, as it was high summer in the Hershey, Pennsylvania, setting!). We also watched a Burt Wolf special about New Year's traditions—an unusual program, as you usually see specials at this time of year about Christmas traditions, but never about New Year.

I realized I hadn't watched one of my favorite Christmas stories this season, the Little House on the Prairie episode "Christmas at Plum Creek," so I put that on, followed by Rudolph's Shiny New Year. By then it was time for dinner. We had yummy pork roast with four-color rice on the side, and a pumpkin souffle for dessert. On the fly we decided to go to the movies anyhow...since we had free tickets, it didn't matter if we went to the matinee or more expensive evening performance. So we arrived in good time to get nice center seats for The Adventures of Tintin.

This yarn is pure roller coaster adventure. There's minimal character development and very little explanation, but super CGI and almost nonstop action from beginning to end. Tintin's little dog Snowy is both intelligent and super agile, but most of the time he just acts like a dog, providing several amusing scenes. There's no time to catch your breath until the last scene takes place (conveniently setting up a sequel) and while there's no real redeeming social value, it's also a brilliantly colored, seat-of-your-pants odyssey. Listen hard: there are several throwaway "adults only" jokes that will go completely over kids' heads.

Back home to relax. We discovered we have a necessary errand tomorrow: James has a headlight out. So we'll have to go to Wally World or an auto supply store to get a new one tomorrow.

"...Fast Away the Old Year Passes..."

Goodness! How two weeks has flown by!

In the past two days I've been absorbing as much Christmas as possible, to armor myself against the constant horror of the coming summer. It's been cold and brisk, although a bit warmer today, alternately sunny and overcast. With Christmas music in the background, I've amused myself by listening to BBC radio—oh, such a blessing as the Internet to give me the gift of the BBC without having to buy a costly shortwave radio and listen to at odd hours and miss all the best things! They had a special featuring James Galway and his wife on BBC Radio Ulster, and all sorts of good things, like treats crammed into a stocking, better than all the Kardashians and rap singers and BieberGaga clones put together.

Today I have been watching Christmassy things saved to DVD: a Lassie episode, "The Little Christmas Tree"; Christmas: Behind the Traditions; The City Mouse and the Country Mouse, The Best of the Andy Williams Christmas Shows, The Little Match Girl with Keshia Knight-Pulliam, and now A Pops Holiday Special. I didn't even see a broadcast of this year's Boston Pops concert—was there one? (If there was, GPB and WPBA probably didn't pick it up in favor of showing the fourteen thousandth showing of Suze Orman and Wayne Dyer.

I've also been able to help James set up his new computer some. We've had some tough sledging against Windows 7's peculiarities. For instance, we loaded Eudora e-mail after copying his mailbox files and their tables of contents. By loading these old files and "toc" files into the Eudora folder, he would just pick up where he left off.

Except Win7 doesn't load the mailbox folders into the Eudora folder. Instead it creates them in a special user "roaming" folder...which is a hidden file. So first we had to find the folders, then find how to access the hidden files, while all the time Windows argued with James about that being an administrator job. You git, he is the administrator. Really, Microsoft's reasoning just gets stupider with each version.

Work has been slow, so I've also had the gift of James for the last two afternoons. He wasn't feeling well yesterday and contented himself with some chicken soup and working on the computer. Today he's figuring out how to get some music files off the old computer.

[Later: We had a twofer coupon for my birthday at Fresh2Order, so we went there for supper. I had the chicken vegetable; delicious and filling as always. We stopped briefly at MicroCenter to price some hardware, then took this year's drive through Life University for their annual "Lights of Life" display. Nearly all of their lights seem to have been replaced by LEDs; the effect is brilliant on particular characters, like the Santa-hat wearing dragon in the middle of the pond and "Santa's Flying School" (the reindeer climb a ramp and then parachute down), but the nativity and some of the Victorian figures really need a softer light. Perhaps they can make LEDs like that someday.]

Rudolph Day, June 2011

"Rudolph Day" is a way of keeping the Christmas spirit alive all year long. You can read a Christmas book, work on a Christmas craft project, listen to Christmas music or watch a Christmas movie.

Another time machine post. Our subject: Vintage Video: Christmas in the 1950s

Newsreel of Christmas 1950 Around the World

1950s Christmas Photos Set to Music

Queen Elizabeth II's 1957 Christmas Message

Color Home Movie Footage of a 1950s Christmas Parade in Quincy, MA

The Feast of Epiphany

Well, officially Christmas is over. It is the Feast of the Epiphany, when it is said that the Magi/Wise Men (not the three Wise Men, since the Bible never specifies how many there were; three has become traditional due to the three gifts named, gold, frankincense, and myrrh—some cultures say there were twelve Wise Men) reached the child Jesus to present gifts to him. (Again, the Bible does not state the Wise Men arrived at the stable in Bethlehem. In fact, it mentions that they found the child, not necessarily still a baby, in a house.)

Since we got the bad news about BJs yesterday, I was there first thing this morning—in fact, even before they opened, gathered with a bunch of people mourning the store—to make sure that I did get things for the party. I had been told, and so did some of the others waiting at the door, that the merchandise would be on discount. That didn't happen, but I did get the party stuff, and also some extra items, like tea and mushrooms, then came home.

So I've been tidying up for the event, mostly washing the floors upstairs and in the foyer, and also sweeping downstairs. Before Christmas, I used the vacuum cleaner, which is supposed to be rated for both floors and carpet, on the foyer to get it as clean as possible. The wretched wheels left streaks on the foyer floor, and I was hoping scrubbing it again would help. It didn't. I am really annoyed.

This afternoon I sat down to watch a film called The Perfect Gift. Apparently this is one of a string of Christian films about a stranger who helps lead people back to God. In this one, a spoiled girl, Max, obsessed with the fact that no one remembers her birthday because it's on Christmas, and her overstressed executive mother, are expecting a sad holiday: earlier in the year Dad walked off with some chippie from his health club and they have had to sell Max's horse and move into a small apartment away from her school. Max and her mom live next door to Tony, who is a minister at a small church where the head pastor has lost his way. Tony is trying to rebuild the church's nativity stable when an itinerant man (who bears a remarkable resemblance to Jesus) offers to help him with it.

I think you can guess what happens next, but I rather enjoyed the whole thing. These small Christian films are sometimes very didactic, or, even worse, sanctimonious. Sometimes they even resemble elementary school plays, with stilted lines and unbelieveable characters. This was all very natural. The little girl and her mom didn't go through clichè histrionic revelations, and the handyman spoke in a soft, but ordinary voice and didn't have a figurative halo over his head. (Okay, they did make him glow a little at the end, which I thought was overkill. We get it.)

After that, I watched A Wind at My Back Christmas, a sequel to the Canadian series which is running on the Inspirational Channel. I know about this series from my late friend Dana, who used to talk about it all the time. The series is the Depression-era story of Honey Bailey and her three children, who return to her late husband's home town after his death because she can't care for them on her own. Unfortunately her mother-in-law hates her, mostly because she's Catholic, and has the two older boys live with her and the little sister fostered by a childless couple to spite Honey. However, things work out: Honey marries a teacher and gets her children back, and the series follows their adventures in the small mining town of New Bedford, Ontario.

In the Christmas movie the oldest boy, Hubert "Hub," is attending college where he has become involved with Anna Schiller, a refugee girl from Austria whom he helps with anti-fascist meetings. He takes Anna home with him for Christmas when he discovers she is Jewish and has come into Canada illegally (Canada did not accept Jewish immigrants), and is being hunted by the Mounties. His mercurial younger brother Henry ("Fat"), who wants to become a Mountie despite his family not taking him seriously, assumes antagonism the moment Hub gets home, and his old pal Maisie, who has a crush on him despite the fact she knows he wants to go into the priesthood, of course is dismayed to see Anna in his company. In the meantime his mother is urging her husband to get back to his writing. When the RCMP comes to New Bedford looking for Anna, Hub knows what he has to do. This was a great period piece taking place in 1938, and I enjoyed all the character interactions despite not having seen all the backstories.

91 Days Until Christmas

Here's a blast from the past! Castle Films used to make movies for you to show on your home projector. Back when Dad had his Bell and Howell movie camera, projector, and screen, we had a "Deputy Dawg" cartoon in black and white that I loved to see. This has music added to it; our home movies were silent and normally this would have been, too.

"The Night Before Christmas" - Castle Films - 1946 (8mm)

Here's the 16mm version, which has narration:

"The Night Before Christmas" sound version

But you wouldn't have seen this in your home unless you could afford a sound projector.

96 Days Till Christmas

Everything has apparently figured this out except the weather. 90 degrees through the end of the week.

Odd because everything else in nature has been pretty much operating on schedule. Some weeks ago the cicadas quit screaming from the trees in the office park complex. The oak trees are shedding their acorns all over the tarmac to crunch out their lives under tires and soles, and the squirrels' tails are plumping nicely. (I'd wondered if they were sick this year; I've never seen squirrels with such skinny tails as this summer.) Odd leaves are turning yellow, especially on the big tulip trees, and the dogwood trees already have leaves tipped and dipped red, sometimes only one and two to a tree, some with a whole tip of a branch showing scarlet. There's usually a breeze, and it sends leaves spattering down.

We are chatting on one of my Christmas groups about favorite holiday movies, including Hallowe'en films. I'm not a horror film person. "It's a Good Life" on Twilight Zone was about as creepy as I get. Even with Sam Neill in it, I couldn't finish watching Event Horizon. But I do like a few traditional things:

• It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
• The delightfully kitschy The Worst Witch
• Following Fairuza Balk, Fairuza Balk: Return to Oz, deliciously creepy and with Nicol Williamson to boot
• The Haunted History of Halloween from the History Channel
• The even more delightfully kitschy Midnight Offerings, with Mary Beth McDonough (Erin Walton) as a good witch and Melissa Sue Anderson (chewing the scenery) as Vivian Sutherland, a really, really bad witch
• And always the For Better or For Worse cartoon special, "The Good-for-Nothing," in which Farley disappears on Hallowe'en night

She Made It Christmas

Patricia Neal has died.

This noted character actress, known for her smoky voice and often gritty roles, played in many famous theatrical films, including Hud, The Subject Was Roses, and A Face in the Crowd, and her private struggles were almost as famous as her roles: in the 1960s she suffered a severe stroke and had to learn to do the simplest things again.

For me, Neal will always be remembered as Olivia Walton in The Homecoming. While Michael Learned made the character famous, it was Neal’s arresting performance that first defined her. True, Neal not only was older than the Olivia character, who should have been about thirty-six or –seven, but the after-effects of the stroke made her seem older than her forty-five years. However, she personified not only the strict but caring Depression-era mother who knew what it was like to struggle to keep her family clothed and fed, hiding her sorrow that “Santa Claus” could not deliver the gifts she wanted to give her children. However "tough" that Michael Learned played the role of Olivia in the television series (and Learned was noticably more strict in the early seasons), she never quite captured the bleakness that Neal’s Olivia must face each day with a husband away all week earning a meager living, scraping together food to feed her growing, hungry children, losing sleep to knit scarves into the evening so that each of those children would have some sort of Christmas gift under the tree. But then The Homecoming was always more gritty than the series (the novel grittier still) and Neal fit into that aspect with perfection, like Dorothea Lange’s 1930s "migrant mother" photo come to life.

Good night, Miss Neal.

British Christmas Films

"Santa Claus" from 1898

"Scrooge, or Marley's Ghost" from 1901

"Dreams of Toyland" from 1908

"Making Christmas Crackers" from 1910

"Christmas Under Fire" from 1941

"Christmas 1946" theatre greeting

"Christmas is Coming," a short film in silhouettes from 1951

Lagninappe (not Christmas, but fascinating just the same): "Old London Street Scenes" from 1903

Lots more old British films here.