CHRISTMAS BOOK REVIEW: Christmas on the Home Front

by Mike Brown

This is a fabulous book I found in the Hamilton Books catalog; even more fab because the homefront they are speaking of is the British one, not the American. This easy-read of a history book portrays each Christmas from 1939 through 1944, with a postscript for 1945, with personal remembrances, recipes and advert excerpts, and even reports of what pantomimes, BBC Christmas Day programming, and sports were conducted during each Christmas season. As the years progress, you can see the decline in foods for feasting and goods for giving due to wartime rationing. The super bonus about this book are the photos and especially the period adverts and cartoons from newspapers and even the famous "Beano" peppering the text: everything from companies reminding people that their product will be back after the war to recipes for "mock goose" and "wartime mincemeat pies," dinners colored with colorful veg instead of fruits and instructions for home-made gifts like pin-on mascots made of knitting yarn. Super look at wartime Britain!

How It All Began

Behind the Scenes: NORAD's Santa Tracker

NORAD Tracks Santa 50th Anniversary

NORAD's been tracking the big guy since just after I was born.

Here they tell you how it started and then how they do it. I didn't know Rudolph's nose gave off an infrared signature. Too cool!

Here are the test announcements from earlier this year when Santa participated in the famous Hollywood Santa Claus Lane parade.

Stay tuned.

In a Pickle

I don't know how old I was when I first heard the story about the Christmas pickle, but it was well into adulthood.

This site explains where the custom of the pickle came from.

And here are two sales sites, Catholic Supply and Christmas Decorations & Gifts, that also tell the story of the legendary Christmas pickle.

I thought it was a charming custom, and several years ago, while wandering in a gift shop in Helen, GA, James and I found a small pickle ornament. We have no children, but I hide the ornament on the tree nevertheless and when we have our Twelfth Night party, I allow the children attending the party to search for it and give a small gift to whomever finds it.

But is the Christmas pickle really a German tradition? About.com's section on German myths says it ain't so!

And here's a discussion about "the controversial Christmas pickle."

Looks like that old German tradition may not be so old or so German after all.

It's still a fun treat in a fun season.

"...And That's What Christmas Is All About"

Tonight is the 40th anniversary broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas. While it's traditional today, it was really quite novel when it premiered in 1965: Children did the voices of the characters instead of voice artists and Schultz touched on some of the real feelings about Christmas rather than going for slapstick humor and wildly exaggerated characters.

And of course there is the famous Bible passage that unnerved the executives at CBS.

The Vince Guaraldi score was inspired; it made the story timeless and is as much a part of it as the characters and the situation. Can you imagine the story done to a Hanna-Barbera-—or worse yet, Filmation-—type score?

Did you know you can buy a "Charlie Brown tree" this year? I saw it in last Sunday's newspaper. You get a scrawny, bent-over pine tree and a single red ornament. Here's the link at Urban Outfitters. (They seem to be sold out.)

You know, I've always wanted a sound clip of Violet saying "Oh, no, we're doomed." What a great comment to accompany opening Windows every morning! (Or at least Microslop Word—or even worse, Microslop Access...)

A Short History of St. Nicholas/Santa Claus

From St. Nicholas Center and linked at the bottom, from The Christmas Archives.

In fact, check out the entire site of The Christmas Archives.

There is something about saying, "We always do this," which helps keep the years together. Time is such an elusive thing that if we keep on meaning to do something interesting, but never do it, year would follow year with no special thoughtfulness being expressed in making gifts, surprises, charming table settings, and familiar, favorite food. Tradition is a good gift intended to guard the best gifts.
                                                                         . . . . . . . . . . . Edith Schaeffer

St. Clement's Day

"Once reckoned the first day of winter in England. It marks apparently one of the stages in the progress of the winter feasts towards its present solstitial date...[i]n Staffordshire children used to go round to the village houses begging for gifts...[h]ere is one of the Staffordshire "clemencing" songs:—

'Clemany! Clemany! Clemany mine!
A good red apple and a pint of wine,
Some of your mutton and some of your veal,
If it is good, pray give me a deal;
If it is not, pray give me some salt.
Butler, butler, fill your bowl;
If thou fill'st it of the best,
The Lord'll send your soul to rest;
If thou fill'st it of the small,
Down goes butler, bowl and all.
Pray, good mistress, send to me
One for Peter, one for Paul,
One for Him who made us all;
Apple, pear, plum, or cherry,
Any good thing to make us merry;
A bouncing buck and a velvet chair,
Clement comes but once a year;
Off with the pot and on with the pan,
A good red apple and I'll be gone.'"
                    . . . . . Clement Miles, Christmas Customs and Traditions

Stir-Up Sunday

Traditionally, the British plum pudding should be made on this date and then stored away until Christmas. The sobriquet came not only from stirring up the batter for the plum pudding that will then be steamed in a cloth bag—and everyone in the family must give the pudding a stir, and stir in the correct direction, or there will be bad luck!—but from the Collect (opening prayer) once traditionally used in the Anglican church.

A term often used for the day referred to as "the Sunday next before Advent" by a rubric in the 1662 BCP. This phrase was then used in the 1892 and 1928 American Prayer Books as a title for the day which had previously been designated simply as "The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity," which was the last Sunday before the season of Advent. The term comes from the opening words of the collect of the day in the 1549 and later Prayer Books, "Stir-up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

"The Christmas Pudding"
Into the basin
put the plums,
Stir-about, stir-about,
     stir-about!

Next the good
white flour comes,
Stir-about, stir-about,
     stir-about!

Sugar and peel
and eggs and spice,
Stir-about, stir-about,
     stir-about!

Mix them and fix them
and cook them twice,
Stir-about, stir-about,
     stir-about!

. . . . . from A Treasury of Christmas

Some Stir-Up Sunday links:

BBC's Food Website

Woodlands Junior School's Stir-Up Sunday page

From the Library of Congress

Today in History: November 11

I remember school exercises each November 11, which was by then Veterans Day and had been since after World War II, but my parents still called it "Armistice Day." Each of the grades would present something, the younger children often singing all the service songs as well as "You're a Grand Old Flag," "God Bless America," and "America." One of the older children would always recite "In Flanders Fields," being careful to instruct them not to lapse into sing-song and thus separate "we throw" and "the torch" into two unnatural units, that sad verse being proclaimed in a childish treble. If you were performing you would come to school in your best clothing: suits on the boys, Sunday dresses on the girls. The rest of us sat in corderoys or heavy plaid skirts, long sleeved shirts and raglan-sleeved sweaters, trying not to wiggle in the hard auditorium chairs. The piano would be wheeled onstage and we would rise, the music teacher would play "The Star Spangled Banner" and then we would say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag and the exercises would begin.

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

I remember buying poppies when I was a child; poppy sellers appeared on the streets of downtown Providence, but I haven't seen a lot of them in years. A few years ago I saw a poppy seller and bought one, but haven't seen any since.

Remembrance

Today is All Souls Day

It was the custom many centuries ago for people, especially children, to go from house to house on All Saints Day or All Souls Day singing "souling songs" and receiving for their efforts "soul cakes."

Reading of these customs makes it sound as if it was an old version of "trick or treating," and indeed many historians trace the origins of trick or treat back to children going a'souling.

It was also once a holy day of obligation, like All Saints Day before it.

The Turnip King?

When you're watching your jack o'lantern glow on the porch or table this year, you might remember that the original "jack" was actually a turnip! The legend of the jack o'lantern comes from an old Irish story in which a man named Jack thrice tricked the Devil who had come to claim his soul. When Jack finally died the Devil got his due and sentenced Jack to wander the earth forever with a lantern made from a turnip. This is supposedly why you would often see eerie green light on a moon-dark night flickering in a swamp (it was actually caused by fungi which glow in the dark).

When the Irish came to America, the light in the jack o'lantern was transferred to the pumpkin. But in Great Britain turnips are still used and the classic scarecrow, like Worzel Gummidge of book and television fame, still has a head made from a large turnip.