"It's Fall!"

I kept forgetting to pull out my memory card and retrieve this: this wonderful little tree proclaiming "It's fall" in a field of mostly green trees. It was taken on the way to Ellijay on October 18.

Autumn Poetry

"Autumn Fires"
Robert Louis Stevenson

In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!

Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The grey smoke towers.

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!


"Come Ye Thankful People, Come"
Henry Alford

Come ye thankful people come,
Raise the song of harvest home!
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin;
God our Maker, doth provide
For our wants to be supplied:
Come to God's own temple, come,
Raise the song of harvest home.

All the world is God's own field
Fruit unto his praise to yield;
Wheat and tares together sown
Unto joy or sorrow grown;
First the blade, and then the ear,
Then the full corn shall appear;
Lord of the harvest! grant that we
Wholesome grain and pure may be.

For the Lord our God shall come,
And shall take his harvest home;
From his field shall in that day
All offenses purge away,
Give his angels charge at last
In the fire the tares to cast;
But the fruitful ears to store
In his garner evermore.

Even so, Lord, quickly come,
Bring thy final harvest home;
Gather thou thy people in,
Free from sorrow, free from sin,
There, forever purified,
In thy presence to abide;
Come, with all thine angels, come,
Raise the glorious harvest home.


"A Calendar of Sonnets: October"
Helen Hunt Jackson

The month of carnival of all the year,
When Nature lets the wild earth go its way,
And spend whole seasons on a single day.
The spring-time holds her white and purple dear;
October, lavish, flaunts them far and near;
The summer charily her reds doth lay
Like jewels on her costliest array;
October, scornful, burns them on a bier.
The winter hoards his pearls of frost in sign
Of kingdom: whiter pearls than winter knew,
Oar empress wore, in Egypt's ancient line,
October, feasting 'neath her dome of blue,
Drinks at a single draught, slow filtered through
Sunshiny air, as in a tingling wine!


"October's Bright Blue Weather"
Helen Hunt Jackson

O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;

When loud the bumblebee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And goldenrod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When gentians roll their fingers tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;

When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;

When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;

When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;

When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October's bright blue weather.

O sun and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October's bright blue weather.

Hallowe'en Treats!

Disney's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," narrated by Bing Crosby:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

The beloved Garfield's Halloween Adventure:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

And for real spooky camp, the 1980 telefilm The Worst Witch—watch "Mrs. Garrett" with pink hair, Tim Curry going psychedelic, and Diana Rigg at her evil best:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

These are all out on DVD, so if you like what you've sampled, go treat yourself!

Misty October Morning

It was actually nicer about fifteen minutes earlier, but I wanted to eat my oatmeal while it was hot!

Treats, No Tricks

I finished putting up the Hallowe'en decorations about 9:15 p.m..

No, I don't have that many Hallowe'en decorations! LOL.

The day began mundanely with a trip to Kroger. We went for my bread and bananas and milk. Many dollars later...and all that, we arrived home. The fall edition of the Smyrna Jonquil Festival was this weekend, but we really didn't need anything and to tell the truth, I felt kinda guilty about wandering the booths, sampling the dips and the jelly samples, and then not buying anything. So we didn't go. Instead I had lunch and read the paper, then cleaned the hall bathroom, washed the towels, and then put the fall decorations in the foyer aside and decorated the area for Hallowe'en: craggy tree and mini-decorations, pseudo-30s ornaments, big glass pumpkin, black cats, a wizard owl, the stacking pumpkins I bought at the Apple Festival, skeletons and others.

However, the porch was drenched in sunshine, so I didn't go out and put up the porch decorations until about 8:45, when it was dark and cool.

To complete the effect, I changed out the blue bulbs in the two candles that burn in the front windows for orange bulbs.

I really don't bother decorating the rest of the house anymore. Hallowe'en just doesn't "float my boat," and I'm not going to fight it. It's something to get through on the way to better things: Thanksgiving and Christmas. The porch looks neat and the foyer matches. Otherwise it's just delight-fall. :-)

Rudolph Day, October 2009

The purpose of Rudolph Day is to keep the Christmas spirit all year long. One can prepare Christmas gifts or crafts, watch a Christmas movie, play Christmas music, or read a Christmas book.

May a frosty October be yours! In six days it will be Hallowe'en, and then Thanksgiving preparations begin. But Christmas isn't far away—why not

...watch some Christmas videos to whet your appetite? 101 Classic Christmas Videos Online.

...start organizing now so you can have a fun holiday? Christmas Organizing has ideas, and even a blog.

...listen to some online Christmas music. Here's a link to Live365's collection of Christmas music. Warning: to listen to some of these you have to belong to Live365, but other stations are totally free! Pandora Radio also has Christmas music.

...read a Christmas-themed book? A new nonfiction offering I found recently was Tinsel by Hank Stuever. I can ordinarily take or leave humorous Christmas books; some are funny while others are just crass, so I was wary, as the description made it sound as if the author was going to make fun of the people he was involved with. Instead I found this an imperfect, but entertaining and slightly sad story of Stuever's visit with three families in heartland Texas: a young couple who put up a bravura light display, an earnest but garrulous woman who has developed a small business putting up decorations for wealthy people, and a single mom who is trying to keep the magic of Christmas alive during hard times.

I say "sad" because as a "Christmas nut" I found these folks well-meaning but having completely lost sight of the fun and joy of Christmas. The man with the light display, for instance, is so into it that he refuses to leave home during the holiday to visit his parents (a sign of deeper familial problems) because "people would miss his lights." The woman who does the home decorating is sweet-natured Christian, but avoids visiting a dying friend except for the day she puts up her decorations for her, and takes inordinate effort into convincing her kids that Santa Claus still exists, including hiring an insipid elf to come visit the home to present them with the news about a skiing trip to Colorado. Even the woman who's trying to make ends meet spends a lot of time searching for bargains on expensive items so she can give so-called "good" presents to the people she loves. Christmas is about family (whether by blood or by choice), friends, simple gatherings and token gifts, but most of all feeling good, whether a deeper religious meaning or just a time of the year to enjoy oneself, and so much of what these folks strive for is artificial or filled with conspicuous consumption, symbolic of the modern "spirit" of Christmas. If these folks had been complete jerks it might have been humorous, but because they were nice people, the result is a little melancholy instead.

Despite that, I enjoyed the telling of the participants' stories and the background info about the American Christmas industry. Just don't be surprised if some parts are more "hmmmm" than "ho-ho-ho."

Gingerbread Weather Indeed!

My favorite kind of day: cloudy, breezy, mid-fifties!

I finally finished decorating the porch for fall—yes, I'm late, I know! The main decorations have been out there: the fall banner, the basket of artificial leaves and gourds, and the autumn leaf wreath. But I had not put out the rest of the things. First it was too warm, then when it got cool I didn't have time, and then it got warm again.

But it was a perfect day for it. I put scarecrows in both rocking chairs and then garnished the chairs with a artificial pumpkin and leaf garlands, then put the signs along the rails.

The autumn basket was partially in bad shape. The leaves and berries were fine, but the Georgia sun had done a number on the pumpkins/gourds, which are just painted styrofoam. They had split so that big white gaps were showing in their "rinds." Michaels had their artificial pumpkins on sale 60 percent off, so I picked out four different colors (a plain orange, a reddish, and a brownish, plus an orange one with a curved stem). I then pulled out the cracked ones, which were fastened into the foam at the bottom of the baskets with sticks. I cut the sticks off, then used the sharp tip of a small scissors to make a hole in the bottom of each of the new pumpkins and put a stick in each one. Then I put the new pumpkins back in the old basket and rearranged the leaves and berries around them. I wasn't sure if I had the proper sizes, but it seems to have worked fine.

I also have the garland around the arch that goes to the hall and the bedrooms, and around the door to the deck. Just have to hang the leaf garland up.

From Lemonade Weather to Gingerbread Weather

All in one fell swoop, too!

Hard to believe that a couple of days ago we needed the air conditioner on, at least at night, because it was almost 70°F out.

Another rainy day today, but chill enough (at this point it hasn't even hit 58 yet) for me to make like Sook in "A Christmas Memory," but instead of fruitcake, I will declare it "gingerbread weather." At lunchtime I went to the Mistletoe Market at the Cobb County Civic Center, wearing a sweatshirt and with my jacket on, and wandered about sampling dips. Several dip and soup kit dealers, the latter welcome on a damp day such as this; much of the remainder seemed to be cute kids' clothing, soaps or lotions, jewelry, or gifts I couldn't afford. Did get a small gift, and some little china/resin things: a grazing reindeer, a cute "Hallowe'en house" that was only $2, a bowl decorated like a pumpkin, and a little Hallowe'en "statue" for James with a pumpkin and a candy corn rhyme (he loves candy corn, even though he can't eat it any more).

It's finally starting to brighten outside; we may see the 63° high by the end of the day.

Fall Pads in on Wet Feet

Two weeks...two weeks I keep intending to sit down and talk about how fall has inched its way in day by day...and the wet days soaking everything down, and the sudden hot spell that put an end to open windows for a week, and some more rain...and noticing little things.

Oh, not the dogwoods. They started to show signs of rusty leaves in August and have been rust-red and green for weeks. But the other trees have been touched, and some in such picturesque ways. Yesterday I was actually glad for a red light because it gave me a chance to gaze long and admiringly at a big maples whose dark leaves still burned deep green in the center, but whose entire side and tips of leaves on the other side were red shading to orange shading to yellow, as if it were on fire. Noticing that the trees that overhang the little bridge that spans a creek that I must cross are turning a delicate yellow, like lemonade in the pitcher.

There has been so much rain bracketing the cold spells and then the warm spells that there are more leaves on the ground than usual, some of them already turned old gold, or spotted with red and orange. Monday while coming out of Fuzziwig's I lined up a large scarlet leaf next to a smaller yellow leaf on one of the retaining walls around the shopping center trees. It seems as if the trees in our yard change every day. The ones next door, a sudden red-orange, waved a fall harbinger weeks ago, and now our own trees are following suit.

I am happy to see the birds looking so well as they chatter and quarrel over the seed in the feeder. They look shiny and plump now, feathers back in brilliant color, unlike during the summer when they were feeding their fledglings and run ragged, with no time to preen. We had one female cardinal who was bald all summer, evidently having sacrificed feathers to her nest. If birds could look desperately tired, these certainly did! Now they have time to chase each other, linger at the feeder. The occasional dove comes by, looking bewildered, but then doves always look bewildered. And with the windows open once more I can hear their little songs, even some songs I hadn't heard yet this season, and in the distance the long, lonesome cry of the train whistle. I've missed it.

Fantastic, Odd Christmas Ride

Christmas Decoration Showroom in Huddersfield, England, complete with trolls, fairy-tale characters, a singing lamppost and warbling pine trees, snowmen, and, of course, Santa Claus. (8 minute YouTube video; thanks to Donna on the CTTM mailing list!

A Breath of Fall

The cold front is suddenly here, after being fobbed off by tropical air and the awful rains which destroyed so many homes and roads, not to mention nine lives. I noticed quite suddenly the other day that the trees behind our neighbor's house had sprinklings of red and orange leaves. It was only evident from the mailbox and quite surprising, although one type of tree—the locust, according to the Forest Service website in North Georgia—has already had scattered yellow leaves for weeks.

This morning I had to pull up my windows on the way in to work, as the breeze was actually chilly. Tonight the low is supposed to go to 51°F, although it will not fall that far until just before dawn.

Rudolph Day, September 2009

The purpose of Rudolph Day is to keep the Christmas spirit all year long. One can prepare Christmas gifts or crafts, watch a Christmas movie, play Christmas music, or read a Christmas book.

If you're lucky, autumn has already arrived or fall is just around the corner. Christmas is just over the horizon! Today there are exactly three months until Christmas.

Here are three 19th century Christmas tales:

The Christmas Angel, Abbie Farwell Brown.

The Romance of a Christmas Card, Kate Douglas Wiggin

(Incidentally, this story takes place in Beulah, also the setting for Wiggins' Mother Carey's Chickens, which Disney made into the film Summer Magic.)

When the Yule Log Burns, Leona Dalrymple

There are many histories of Christmas out there, from the old-fashioned tomes of Dawson and Miles, to the newest volumes about Christmas in the United States by Nissenbaum and Restad. However, in her Merry Christmas! Karal Ann Marling does a fresh take on the vision of Christmas in America. In this delightful, quite readable volume, Marling traces the history of familiar Christmas things, beginning with wrapping paper and ending with classic Christmas films, with material taken from the magazines and newspapers of the day. We discover how the now ubiquitous Christmas villages go back to the German putz under the Christmas tree and the Italian presipio; how trends in concealing gifts came about, the history of department store window displays, nostalgia for "old-fashioned Christmases" that were sometimes created fictions, and more, all liberally illustrated with vintage magazine ads and illustrations. I have to admit, one of the reasons I love this book is that it references St. Nicholas so much!—but the whole book is a wonderful cornucopia of treats in print.

Autumn Just Around the Corner

I took the opportunity to put the fall decorations on the porch yesterday—well, part of them, anyway: the banner, the basket, the wreath. You can't walk into a store now and not see fall decorations, especially the craft stores or discount stores. We were in Big Lots today and I hugged an especially pretty autumn leaf garland. If only the rain would get out of the way to make way for a cold front. We had a nice rainy day today, only it isn't cold enough for a fire, or to even feel like making gingerbread.

Chilly fall days are perfect for this: turn on the gas, bake some gingerbread or light a gingerbread candle, find a book and enjoy, instead of gazing wistfully out at the blazing sun knowing it's 90 degrees in the shade.

It is unusual how many of the trees are starting to turn here. Usually the dogwoods start the earliest, some as early as the end of August. But there are dozens of groups of little maple trees who already have reddish leaves, or branches. One type of tree—I'm not sure what kind—already has a smattering of bright yellow leaves among the green.

I am truly homesick for fall!

Drink in the Wine of Autumn

Weather.com has this nice slideshow of autumn photos.

Enjoy the Fall!

Yesterday I took great joy in ripping down those summer flowers in my cubicle and taking down the summer bouquet and vase of flowers 4and all the summer pictures, and putting up fall photos (the photos and pictures are all from old calendars), the fall bouquet, the fall vase of leaves, and the leaf garland. The cubicle is so tranquil now (well, as tranquil as you can be with those wretched fluorescent lights shining in it). I played George Winston, "Autumn" and "Plains," as I worked.

Rejoice!

Although the fall equinox itself is some weeks away, it is now meteorological autumn. The trees seem to know it, as all the dogwood leaves are tinged with red, and the ones behind our building at work have the dogwood equivalent of rose hips (dogwood hips?) on their branches. Acorns are starting to fall, ones and twos, and sometimes threes, from the oak trees around the parking lot, and the tulip trees have been dotted with yellow leaves for some time now; already in August our back yard is scattered with a smattering of yellow and brown tulip tree leaves.

Yesterday it was cloudy most of the day, until late afternoon, and the temperature may not have even reached 80°F. It is cloudy again this morning, that "is it going to rain" iron-grey sky that looks so ominous and keeps it so nice and cool. I think it will be 79 or 80 today, too.

Summer is still hanging on with her teeth: it will be in the low 80s this weekend. I long for today's cloud cover and cooler temperatures then!

Rudolph Day, August 2009

The purpose of Rudolph Day is to keep the Christmas spirit all year long. One can prepare Christmas gifts or crafts, watch a Christmas movie, play Christmas music, or read a Christmas book.

Let's channel some Christmas chill to cool down in August:

Read the anthology The St. Nicholas Christmas Book.

Check out some vintage Christmas postcards courtesy of Google.

For many people, things may be a bit tight this year. Take some tips from Thrifty Living. Remember, Christmas is not about gifts!

They say Christmas is best viewed from the eyes of a child. As children, we may have had a beloved Christmas book, or books, like the Golden Books version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or a gift volume of a retelling of A Christmas Carol. Some series children's books did Christmas themed novels as well.

One of my favorites always was, and still is, The Cottage Holiday, one of the "Tuckers" series by Jo Mendel, published by Whitman Books in the 1960s. The five Tucker children, their mom and dad, and dad's parents are featured in these warm, leisurely-paced, old-fashioned tales of sibling adventure and occasionally sibling rivalry. Cottage Holiday is a little different: it centers on Penny, the next to youngest child and youngest girl, who usually spends most of the other books playing with her dolls, but who, in this story, is wondering about her place amongst her boisterous brothers and sisters: Tina is good at cooking and helping care for them; Merry is musical and her twin Terry clever with his hands; and even little Tom is practical and dependable. But where does she, often sickly Penny, stand? After Penny's idea to spend Christmas at their little lake cottage in the woods comes to fruition, the novel turns into a wonderful adventure: fun on the deserted beach with friends, the search for the perfect Christmas tree, a hunt for a lost woman, a marauding mountain lion, an abandoned baby—all infused with the spirit of Christmas and the wonder of Penny's search for self. If you love Christmas stories and ever see this volume at a used bookstore, do pick it up, even if you are not familiar with the series. It's a dose of Christmas spirit dressed up as a kids' book.

Signs of Hope

The fall issue of "Midwest Living" is out, and tonight I found the fall issue of "Country Sampler"! Hobby Lobby is filled with wonderful fall stuff, their Christmas trees and decorations are out, including ribbons and lawn signs. There's a big ceramic platter with a colorful turkey in its center, surrounded by fall leaves and motifs. Near the registers they had a tall pine tree decorated with nothing but fall garland, bits of fall leaves, big acorns, and other items!

Rudolph Day, July 2009

The purpose of Rudolph Day is to keep the Christmas spirit all year long. One can prepare Christmas gifts or crafts, watch a Christmas movie, play Christmas music, or read a Christmas book.

For our July edition, it's time for "Christmas in July"! Cool down with these:

Hey! Remember Glass Wax stencils? I used to do this every year with our front window, including reusing the reindeer stencil four times to get all eight tiny reindeer and the camel and wise man stencils to get all three of them. The stencils would get soaked and limp if you used them more than once, so you did one reindeer pair, then did other stencils, then another reindeer pair once the stencil had dried a little, and so on.

Read a 92-year-old book by George McKnight about St. Nicholas: His Legend and His Role in the Christmas Celebration and Other Popular Customs (here's a flip book version, too).

Remember the first animated Christmas special ever made for television? Nope, it wasn't A Charlie Brown Christmas, or even the stop-motion animation of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It was, in fact, the 1962 Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, which was scored by two Broadway veteran songwriters, and adapted directly from Dickens' tale, with a delightful framing sequence that has the nearsighted Magoo as an egotistical actor playing Ebenezer Scrooge in a Broadway play (with a great song about Broadway to boot). Now there's a book about the making of this special by Darrell Van Citters that's a delight as well, telling how the idea of the special came about, how it was made almost "in tandem" with UPA's Gay Purr-ee, and of the changes that were made to the story to fit it into a 52-minute timeslot. So if you've ever wondered if the scenes with Scrooge's nephew Fred, with Ignorance and Want, and with Belle and her husband were ever included in the original teleplay, you'll find out here. (The one mystery about the story that everyone asks about, why the Spirit of Christmas Present came first, is sadly not solved; in the original script the ghosts were in the proper order.) There are also nice tidbits about the actors—I didn't know Paul Frees' death was actually a suicide!—and the production (the original sponsor was Timex, and the minute the author mentioned the commercials I could remember them). If you are as big a fan of the story as I am, you will want to order it directly from the Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol site. If you are interested, but not fanatic, it is supposed to be available for general release, i.e. Amazon.com and the like, in the fall.

This site about producer Abe Levitow also has a page and some clips from the Carol.

A Favorite Chronicled

I have already ordered one. I remember watching the original broadcast on our old black and white television; didn't see it in color until the late 1970s.

Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol: A Book By Darrell Van Citters

Rudolph Day, June 2009

The purpose of Rudolph Day is to keep the Christmas spirit all year long. One can prepare Christmas gifts or crafts, watch a Christmas movie, play Christmas music, or read a Christmas book.

It's now six months until Christmas!

For our June edition, let's go back to the 1950s and some great black and white video from YouTube!

1950 movie theatre Christmas ads

More vintage movie theatre Christmas ads

Movie theatre Christmas films: Christmas 1955 and New Years 1952

Newsreel of London at Christmastime, 1953 (silent)

Santa Claus' Story, a tale about monkeys celebrating Christmas!

Santa Claus' quiz show, another odd movie short

"A Christmas Dream"

1950s Christmas photos done to "Baby, It's Cold Outside" (strange music choice!)

There are still those among us who were there Sunday afternoon, December 6, 1964, watching a new Christmas treat which we did not know would become a holiday classic. On that Sunday, in place of their weekly university competition, College Bowl, General Electric presented their "Fantasy Hour" featuring the stop-motion tale of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. If you are a Rudolph fan, Rick Goldschmidt's The Making of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a must, a slim volume chock-full of "Rudolphy" tidbits. Goldschmidt goes all the way back to the early days of the partnership of Arthur Rankin and Jules Bass and describes the production of the story, and the volume is filled with one-of-a-kind photos of the production staff, including the Japanese studio where the stop-motion animation was done. A big treat is the inclusion of Romeo Muller's original script, where you can see all sorts of things changed: Sam the snowman originally as a different type of character, a "maternity" seal, Donner being injured, and a different ending for the "Bumble" among them. Enjoy!

"What Do the Holidays Mean to You?" Quiz

Your Holidays Are Lively

For you, the holidays are about celebration. You enjoy all the fun and fellowship that the holidays bring. You celebrate the holidays in a offbeat style. You believe the holidays are for doing whatever you feel like - and some of your "traditions" are pretty wacky. During the holidays, you feel magical. You love all of the decorations and how happy people are. You like to sit back and take it all in. You think the holidays should be nostalgic and sweet. The holidays bring out your inner child. Your favorite holiday memories are complete and very visual. Past holiday events play out like a video in your mind.

What Do the Holidays Mean to You?

Rudolph Day, May 2009

The purpose of Rudolph Day is to keep the Christmas spirit all year long. One can prepare Christmas gifts or crafts, watch a Christmas movie, play Christmas music, or read a Christmas book.

For our May edition, Christmas comes in on little mice feet:

• Visit some Christmas stores online! Christmas Days • Bronners Christmas Wonderland • The Christmas Mouse

• Read the story of "The Christmas Mouse" (many other Christmas inspirational stories linked here)

• How mice helped a poor workingman in Beatrix Potter's classic "The Tailor of Gloucester" (her favorite of all her tales)

I am always on the lookout for Christmas stories I haven't read. Most newer books contain the usual selections: bits from A Christmas Carol, Capote's "Christmas Memory," Taylor Caldwell's Christmas tale, and also Pearl Buck's. That's why I was delighted to find a worn book from 1945 called The Fireside Book of Christmas Stories. I could just imagine some World War II veteran buying this volume, reading and re-reading it over the years.

Granted, some familiarity still remained: Dickens' edited version of A Christmas Carol, Henry Van Dyke's "The Other Wise Man," the "little women" and Wiggins' Carol Bird celebrating Christmas, Washington Irving's "Old Christmas" and the Christmas chapter from The Pickwick Papers. And, sadly, the "cute darky story," "How Come Christmas" and also "A Plantation Christmas," with its happy black characters including one ex-slave who was happier in slavery ::eyes roll::, were also included...sad remnants of the negative side of "the good old days." And one British story, "The Almond Tree," didn't even make sense in inclusion, as it merely took place in the winter, not at Christmas, although the holiday is briefly mentioned.

Despite that, I did get my wish. There were several touching Biblical efforts about the lives of Mary and Joseph, plus one about the Magi Caspar, Frances Hodgsen Burnett's tale of "The Little Hunchback Zia," stories of Santa Claus and one of St. Boniface and the first Christmas tree, a couple of British ghost stories as well as memoirs and stories of small towns and lonely children, and Langston Hughes' bleak "One Christmas Eve." If you like old-fashioned Christmas story collections, you will probably appreciate this selection.

Jingles From the Future

I have an incredible report that there is already a small amount of Christmas merchandise (mostly ribbon) out at a Hobby Lobby. Wow!

Rudolph Day, April 2009

The purpose of Rudolph Day is to keep the Christmas spirit all year long. One can prepare Christmas gifts or crafts, watch a Christmas movie, play Christmas music, or read a Christmas book.

For our April edition, you may read online A Little Book of Christmas, by Cyrus Townsend Brady (Project Gutenberg).

Here's a list of the five best Christmas stores in the United States.

Some quotations about Christmas.

Dickens' Finest Song
Everyone has his favorite film version of A Christmas Carol. Many prefer the Alistair Sim offering, while others favor George C. Scott or Reginald Owen. Still others go for the more offbeat versions: perhaps Mr. Magoo's or Mickey Mouse's, or The Muppet Christmas Carol or Bill Murray's Scrooged.

But how many of you out there have close acquaintance with the best version—Dickens' original novel?

Not Dickens! you groan. Dickens wrote by the word. Dickens wrote in the Victorian style, full of description and overly stuffed with exposition.

A Christmas Carol is none of these. Dickens' simple, to-the-point story is full of delightful imagery that is never captured in any of the versions. Here is his description of Scrooge himself:

"Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas."

Have any of the movies ever described the cold of that Christmas Eve any better than this?:

"Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture."

Here's a marvelous passage describing the marketplace at Christmas:

"...There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless excitement."

The whole book is full of such delightful passages. The spirits are more mysterious, the villainous Old Joe and his compatriots more sinister, the Cratchits more affecting...characters appear often ignored by the films and more venues appear. Treat yourself this year to the original, Charles Dickens' "little Christmas book," A Christmas Carol.

Christmas in...April?

Yes, the Hallmark Dream Book came today!

I love it...there is a "Bolt" ornament!

Other cool ornaments I noted:

• The first in a series of "Mickey's Christmas Carol" ornaments (this one is Mickey as Bob Cratchit at his desk)

• A gingerbread Santa-and-reindeer set (as well as a gingerbread Noah's ark)

• A nice "full size" and also miniature train set

• A cute miniature Snoopy and Woodstock

• A "talking" Ralphy in the pink pajamas

• A Robby the Robot

• A wonderful Eeyore ornament with him and a Charlie Brown-type tree

• A new Marjolein Bastin ornament (a cardinal on a garden gate)

plus, of course, all sorts of Santas, snowmen, and Snoopys, superheroes and Barbies, angels and of course the Child in the Manger.

Happy Easter!

A Joyful Passover

Our friend Mel mentioned this special prayer in a recent e-mail: Jews Ready Blessing of the Sun for Passover

Holiday.net celebrates Passover

Today did some quiz questions about Passover this morning. I remember reading the story in my children's Bible. Everyone remembers the lamb's blood and the slaying of the firstborn, but do you remember all the ten plagues? They were:

1. Blood
2. Frogs
3. Lice (vermin)
4. Wild Beasts(flies)
5. Blight (Cattle Disease)
6. Boils
7. Hail
8. Locusts
9. Darkness
10. Slaying of the First Born

Pesach : History and Meaning of Freedom in Faith

Rudolph Day, March 2009

The purpose of Rudolph Day is to keep the Christmas spirit all year long. One can prepare Christmas gifts or crafts, watch a Christmas movie, play Christmas music, or read a Christmas book.

For our March edition, Earl Hamner Remembers A Nelson County, Virginia Christmas (this appeared in a slightly different form on the LP "The Waltons Christmas Album").

Did you know artificial Christmas trees are not new? They were originally conceived after the depletion of forests for Christmas trees. Here's the history of feather trees on a feather tree kit site, and also an article about them from the Victoriana online magazine.

This month's featured book is I'll Be Home for Christmas, a collection of personal memories from the magazine Good Old Days. This full color hardcover book is full of vintage illustrations (including some by Norman Rockwell) and reminisces from the turn of the century through the 1950s. The common denominator in all of them is not the fantastic expensive gifts that were received or the home's expensive decorations, but the happiness of family and friends being together again and receiving tokens of love from those they cared for, and giving those same tokens. Christmas was about happiness, not about money. Stories include memories of grandparents, wartime tales, and country fun. Great for a quiet read during Christmastide.

Celebrating St. Joseph's Day in the News

St. Joseph: A Humble Man of God

This is an interesting article about how St. Joseph's Day has become meaningful to African-American groups. (Funny how this refers to St. Joseph's Day as a "Sicilian" holiday; I just think of it as an "Italian" holiday.)

A look at creating a St. Joseph's Day altar in New Orleans.

Preparing a St. Joseph's feast with love in Texas.

Celebrating St. Joseph's Day With Bread, a story from Chicago. (Zeppoles filled with chocolate custard? Now those I could go for!)

A New York bakery shows us how to make zeppole.

In some places it's just easier to find an Italian bakery: a video of zeppoles being prepared at Schialo's Bakery in Providence, RI. (This is up in the Federal Hill neighborhood where my mom grew up; "the Hill" was primarily known as an Italian neighborhood for many decades.)

Rudolph Day, February 2009

The purpose of Rudolph Day is to keep the Christmas spirit all year long. One can prepare Christmas gifts or crafts, watch a Christmas movie, play Christmas music, or read a Christmas book.

For our February edition, play Reindeer Roundup

Read Temple Bailey's "A Candle in the Forest"

Like these newfangled MP3s? Download Christmas albums or individual songs at Amazon.com

Also noted are Ace Collins' two Christmas songs books, Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas and More Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas. These are short pieces about the history of favorite Christmas hymns, carols, and songs. Not everyone's taste is the same, and I have to admit that "The Christmas Shoes," "Blue Christmas," and "Pretty Paper," all covered in these books, are probably my least favorite Christmas songs, but they are best-loved by quite a few folks out there. :-) But I have never heard of "Thank God for Kids," "It Wasn't His Child," "Come and See What's Happening in the Barn," or "Christmas in the Country," nor heard them played anywhere, or seen them on Christmas CDs. Shouldn't "best-loved" songs mean just that, ones everyone knows rather than some obscure country and western songs like these seem to be? Otherwise these are readable, interesting pieces on each of the songs.

How Much Wood...

Bother. With the weather report the way it is, looks like "General Lee" will not see his shadow. Noooooo! Not spring! Not spring!

Groundhog Day 2009 at the Yellow River Game Ranch

The "official" groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil.

The groundhog tradition comes from beliefs centered on the Christian holiday Candlemas (40 days after Christmas, the day when all Christmas greens must be removed or it will bring bad luck; the name comes from the Church practice of blessing the candles that day for use in the remainder of the liturgical year) and the pagan celebration Imbolc. A Scottish poem says of this day:

"As the light grows longer
The cold grows stronger;
If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Winter will have another flight.
If Candlemas be cloud and snow,
Winter will be gone and not come again.
A farmer should on Candlemas day
Have half his corn and half his hay.
On Candlemas day if thorns hang a drop
You can be sure of a good pea crop."

Early American references to Groundhog Day go back as far as 1841 and state this as a German custom. The original German animal, however, was a badger; once in the United States, the behavior was changed to the groundhog (also known as the woodchuck).

Thanksgiving Flashbacks

Check out this New York Daily News site, with vintage Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade photos.

Rudolph Day, January 2009

The purpose of Rudolph Day is to keep the Christmas spirit all year long. One can prepare Christmas gifts or crafts, watch a Christmas movie, play Christmas music, or read a Christmas book.

For our January edition, here is purportedly the first sound version of A Christmas Carol, Sir Seymour Hicks as Scrooge, from 1935.

For your perusal, a site dedicated to the old paper Christmas village pieces you could find in Woolworths, Grants, Newberrys, Kresges, McCrory, and all the other wonderful "dime stores": Papa Ted's Place.

I have one Christmas project that is nearly completed; one more wooden cutout will do it.

Since I found wrapping paper for 39¢ per roll, I bought three, which fills up my wrapping paper container.

I also finished the book Christmas the World Over by Daniel J. Foley, originally published in 1963. This is a thin, readable volume of celebrations around the world, although it is skewed more to European and North American customs. However, Russia is included, despite the Soviet Union's restrictions upon worship at that time, and even China and Japan are touched upon. Australia abruptly ends with the index! However, since this was published in 1963, there are some fascinating details of customs that have disappeared since the book was published, with Christmas becoming more homogenized. Illustrations are in black and white. Worth getting at a reasonable price if you are interested in different ethnic Christmas celebrations.

Snow Good

One of the things I bought at one of the craft stores (Michaels, I think) on sale after Christmas was a tube of something called "Glistening Snow Writer." From the description, it sounded like it was something that put a three-dimensional snow coating, with a bit of glitter, on items to make them look snowy. So this afternoon when I had a minute I applied it to three different items: the Marjean Bastian wheelbarrow Hallmark ornament which I had with my winter display, a little gold box filled with "berries, pine and a pine cone," and a woven twig basket filled with artificial pine (three kinds), two different types of berries, and twigs. I am using them all as winter decorations, but they have never been snowy enough for me.

I loved the way this stuff went on, but sadly, the white has dried as clear as Elmer's glue, leaving only the glitter behind. I suppose it's a good thing I scattered an entire container of white glitter on all three items before the "Snow Writer" liquid dried or it wouldn't have been as white as it is. Wish I'd used the snowflake-like white glitter now!

Still, it does look frosted, at least.

Wintry Mix

Not the weather, more's the pity. It's raining out, but there's a cold front on the back of it.

Well, downstairs is swept, the upstairs and the stairs are vacuumed, and most of the winter decorations are up except for the things that go on the railing of the porch, like the silver wreath. Because of the rain, it's not really a good time to put them out. I did put the snowmen out there, and the snow garland, and the sled and the shovel.

Most of the Christmas gifts we got are still sitting on the hearth. Must find homes for them soon.

The autumn things that go back up after Christmas (the scarecrow on the landing and the things that go on the mantel) are still in boxes downstairs. All in good time, I suppose.

Burnt Out (Me)

With the help of James' brawn, all is now ensconced in the closet.

I won't put the rocker back in its corner until I vacuum, and I'm not doing that tonight. Everything needs to be vacuumed again, and the downstairs hall swept, then I can put things back in their places and can put the winter decorations up.

At this rate it feels like it will be spring before I can accomplish it.

All I want is a good night's sleep...

Burnt Out

It struck me that it might be prudent to save some of the bulbs from the discarded set, even though I found two replacement bulbs in the ornament box. I pulled the string from the trash. These are miniature white lights under colored caps. I unscrewed a cap to find the light burnt out. Upon inspection, most of them are burnt out. And the one or two I found that look sound, I can't figure out how to get them out of their socket. Usually there's an edge of a bulb you can get your fingernail under, but these bulbs are inset into the socket. If one bulb does blow out, I have no idea how you replace it!

I did save some of the caps in case one breaks going up and down the stairs to the closet.

O Christmas Tree

Or, "Undecking the Halls, Part 3."

I really wasn't in the mood for undecorating anything. I woke up with stomach cramps at 3 a.m. and was "unavoidably delayed" for about an hour. It must have been the popcorn. Sigh. But after breakfast at nine, I placed all the Christmas village pieces back into their box, with the cords in the empty places and the trees and the figures on top of the cord or around the houses. I have bubble wrap between the houses but will be a nervous wreck until James gets the container back downstairs into the closet.

Next I tackled the tree. Oh, I remember the days when I could re-use the tinsel! I haven't seen lead-foil tinsel since I was very small; I pretty much grew up on the newer mylar stuff they replaced the lead-foil with when the dangers of lead were exposed, but the old mylar icicles used to be twice as wide and you could place them neatly back on their little holder without much loss. These newest icicles are so thin they almost crackle with electricity; you can barely take them off the holder in small groups to drape the branches. So in the last few years since I have had to buy it, I just rip it off and toss it in the wastebasket. Seems so wasteful.

I just worked at my own pace and got on tolerably well. At first I put on some music: Lou Monte's Christmas album, and then David Lanz's "Christmas Eve." Then I watched a couple of DVDs, Christmas Is and The City That Forgot About Christmas, and I was done about ten or fifteen minutes after the last one ended.

I decided I was getting tired of all the small boxes in the ornament container. I'm not anal about keeping the Hallmark ornaments in their original boxes, but I've been keeping multiple ones in the boxes I've kept. This year I decided to put only the glass ornaments in boxes, and put the rest (mostly plastic, some cloth, a couple of metal ones) in gallon Ziploc bags laid flat. It worked out quite well.

When I finished stripping the tree, I dealt with the dead string of lights. We don't have any replacement bulbs for these two strings of lights and Seasonal Concepts, where we got the strings, is out of business. I don't think it's just a burnt-out bulb, seeing what happened: the lights flickered, got very bright, then went out. I think the string is fried. So I took the string off and put on one of the new GE strings I purchased after Christmas.

Now, putting lights on a Christmas tree is, on my tiny list of Christmas things I hate, is just about one of the worst (even worse than "The Christmas Shoes" and "Pretty Paper" <g>). But I managed it. Doesn't look too bad.

I also wrapped up the nativity set, but instead of putting it back into the old cardboard box it's been in since it came home from my mother's house, I now have it in one of those larger plastic shoeboxes.

By the time I was finished, I was starving, so I had lunch and put The House Without a Christmas Tree on. I had the incidental music going through my head last night.

I know everyone can't like everything, but it upsets me when people abuse this story. I don't even mind—well, not much!—people saying "it's boring," but making fun of it drives me crazy. It's a slice-of-life tale and I know everyone doesn't like those. But I feel a deep kinship to this story. I don't have Addie's chutzpah and was a lot shyer, but otherwise she reminds me a lot of myself at age ten, bespectacled, relishing in vocabulary words and reading, drawing things all the time. Her home is so familiar to me...most of my relatives lived in older homes or triple-deckers with the same homely old wallpaper, the beadboard cupboards, the vintage fridge, the kitchen stove with the warming shelf overhead and the stovepipe going out the wall (my grandfather and my godmother both had similar kitchen ranges into the 1960s), the wooden floors and the old linoleum, attic space under the eaves, the big floor-model radio, even the old wooden high-chair in the kitchen, being saved and used as a table because nothing still sturdy and useful was ever wasted. My godmother's mother was like Grandma; she even wore the same type of housedress and apron. (Most of my aunts did, too, like my Auntie Petrina.) I remember all those little things in the background being in use, like the "flit" gun on the windowsill.

Addie's father even shouted like mine did. One of the reviews of the DVD I read talked about James' "emotional outburst" possibly scaring younger viewers. Gosh, everybody's dad shouted like that when I was a kid. We were Italian; we did everything at the top of our voices. Dad got angry and yelled, and then it was over with. I preferred my dad being mad with me than my mom. He shouted and then it was over. Mom didn't speak with you for hours—that was scary!

I did read a review that said this was "a 1970s view of the 1940s." I'm not sure I agree. Certain 1970s sensibilities did creep in. I really can't see a 1940s teacher sitting on her desk, for example, and Addie and the boy who made fun of Grandma probably would have ended up in the principal's office for fighting, not being reasoned with! (Heck, back in those days some schools still struck kids on the hands with a ruler, or paddled them.) Also, if all the 1940s books I read are any indication, kids still had to stand up to talk when the teacher called on them, unless Miss Thompson, with her desk-perching and explanations, was one of those newfangled progressive teachers. :-) The only real anachronism I noticed was the artificial tree in the drugstore where the girls go to buy Miss Thompson's gift. Artificial trees are nothing new; they've existed since the feather trees of the 1800s. But the string of blinking lights on the tree are miniatures, like we have today. Not sure if blinking lights existed in 1946, but miniature lights were invented in Europe and weren't sold here until the 1960s. (I think my research said they were first sold here in 1960.) The tree should have had the old-style C7 nightlight bulbs.

Otherwise, the home, the old-fashioned classroom with its wooden trim and painting of George Washington, the snow-rutted streets and the neighborhood pharmacy, always looked and felt perfect to me, and my parents, who were adults in the 1940s, noted the authentic look.

Anyway, I've surveyed the house for "leftovers"—I always seem to leave something behind that doesn't get put away and I want to avoid that this year; the closet where everything is stored is getting much too crowded to have loose things hanging about. So all the boxes appear to be packed up, and labeled properly, waiting for James to lug them downstairs and put them in their proper places on the shelf, and all I have to put away are the Christmas things in the bathroom, which are still waiting on the snowman soap dispenser to drain before they can be tucked away in the rear of the cupboard under the sink.

The house was so nice and tidy for the party last week and now it's a wreck again...it will be nice to have everything placed in the closet and stored for another year, just waiting for the magic to return.

In the meantime, I'm going to sign off, since I've just put The Small One on and I know I'm going to be reduced to a sniffling mess by the time it finishes. :-)

Undeck the Halls, Part 2

I don't know why I am so frustrated that all of this is taking so long to take down. It took me three weeks to put it up! :-)

However, I do have the Rudolph tree down, with the little decorations for the bedrooms tucked in with those. The things for the porch are boxed with a little room left there. I may have to count on that box to put up the items on the room divider, and the Rudolph box is very crowded, and the dining room/kitchen box is pretty full (yes, I stripped the kitchen and dining room, too) and the foyer box is full.

I would have probably gotten the village down, too, but I couldn't work during lunch.

I am dreading the tree. Everything already looks so empty and it's so pretty and glittery...but as Mrs. Brown said in National Velvet, it's time to get on to the next thing.

Undeck the Halls

Well, downstairs is "undecked," as are the windows. It takes a shorter time to take things down, even if you are placing things in certain boxes, because when you put up the decorations, you need to arrange and fluff and unwrap. But it still takes a while...whew! I discovered that the airplane tree and ornaments, the Santa and tree in the bathroom, the things in the hall, and the woodland tree (just the tree, with the gingham table cover) would all fit in the library tree box without squishing. The woodland ornaments, Santa, and other decor I put in a big clear shoebox which should fit somewhere in the closet.

Oh, something funny happened early in the afternoon. If you recall, I said that the Dish Holiday Music channel was still on. It played in the background all morning. Then, at 1 p.m., just when I was thinking about lunch anyway, I noticed that the channel had change. I have the DVR set up to change channels when any new episodes of the "Animal Heroes" shows, like Animal Precinct and Animal Cops, come on, but they are usually broadcast at 10 p.m. weeknights—but sure enough, this was a new episode of Animal Cops South Africa.

So I had my lunch and watched it, but after it was finished, just went back to work without changing the channel. In a few minutes I became aware that the next program on Animal Planet featured...ugh...snakes. Well, I'd just put the Holiday Music channel back on!

Except...it was gone! Like that, flat in the middle of the day! How extraordinary! I would have thought they would have waited until the day's end to cut it off.

I am watching a cheap DVD I bought on Amazon, "Christmas at Home." It's a dog's breakfast of different cartoons, pretty badly transferred. Some of them are fairly well-known, like the Fleischer Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a "Little Audrey" short, and a Sylvester and Tweety cartoon. One is a British cartoon called Santa's Pocket Watch, where Santa has a collection of funny elves named after their physical attributes and one reindeer named Garibaldi (why the reindeer is named after a cookie is beyond me). Apparently this is the original British version (however badly transferred) rather than an American-dubbed version which some viewers found "terrible." Also included on the disk is Santa and the Three Bears, The Little Christmas Burro, and the unrestored version of Rankin-Bass' Jack Frost, which actually isn't a Christmas offering, but is hosted by a groundhog and is a winter story.

Christmas After All

My new calendar says today is Eastern Orthodox Christmas, so I have turned the tree lights on, and plugged in the village. :-) Dish Network's "Holiday Music" channel is still going, so I have lit a Yankee Candle cafè au lait tea light and am availing myself of both as I work. Outside it is finally cold again after several miserable days of temps in the high 60s. How the wind does blow! I can hear the winter banner rattling on its flagpole and turn to look down on the flag bellying out every so often as a gust takes it.

However, I have taken the candles out of the windows upstairs and have the boxes down (thanks, sweetie) and ready for this year's "hibernation." I am also making notes of things that are needed for next year, like proper extension cords outside and most probably a new five-candle candolier as one of them that I inherited from Mom no longer lights one of the bulbs anymore (the bulbs are fine; it's the socket).

Lest you think now that the holidays are over the crafts are as well, I say nay! I bought four inexpensive items from the dollar store last week, mostly to use on the porch. One, a Santa face, is fine, but the freestanding "Noël" with the Santa figure was dented a bit on top, and the three-panel "Tis the Season" is a bit plain. I will fill in the scraped paint of the dent with a similar color then "sprinkle" the already "snow spattered" Santa with white paint so it all matches. On the "Tis the Season" panels I will put some Christmas-y wooden cutouts.

The fourth item is a snowman with a tall hat that says "Let it snow" and "Welcome" with a cardinal and a snowflake on it. It is wintry rather than Christmas-y, except for the red band on his hat trimmed with a holly cutout. I will pry the holly cutout off, paint the band blue, and glue a wooden snowflake cutout (also in blue) on it instead. Voilà! Winter decoration!

Incidentally, I was so frazzled yesterday when I was removing Christmas decorations from my cubicle. I have winter decorations that include winter, snowy calendar pictures, a winter bouquet of evergreens with pine cones and snow glitter, and a bouquet of holly leaves covered in white flocking and snow glitter. Previously I have had a plain green garland with silver shot through it, like a pine tree after an ice storm. To me that is "winter," not "Christmas," but people still come by and say "Why are your Christmas decorations still up?" So this year I bought an extra white snowflake garland and put that up instead. Wouldn't you know someone came by and asked, "Are you still putting up Christmas decorations?"

What? It only snows at Christmas??? ARRRRRRGH! ::sigh::

Making Up for Lost Time

My constant complaint this year has been that time has simply gone by too quickly! After Thanksgiving, someone might have just as well hit an accelerator pedal under the calendar and sent it streaking away. I didn't even watch some of my usual favorites during the holiday season and made up for some of them today: The Waltons "Best Christmas" for one. I love this episode, but there's a scene I've always found curious: this takes place a couple of episodes after Ike and Corabeth have adopted Aimee, and Corabeth and her new daughter have put up a beautiful homemade Christmas display at the back of the store, with a tabletop tree and a Sicilian cart filled with fruit. Elizabeth says to Aimee, "I bet you're getting everything you asked for," and Aimee responds in a very unsure voice, "I guess so." Never understood the tone of her voice or the wistful look in her eyes. I suspect it's because Aimee is still unsure of her new parents' love, but it somehow leaves you up in the air, with the feeling there was something missed.

Also watched the 1968 animated The Night Before Christmas. This isn't the Rankin-Bass story with the mice, but a fictionalized tale of how Clement C. Moore wrote "A Visit from St. Nicholas." The music and songs are by Norman Luboff and the story uses the musical arrangement of "The Night Before Christmas" originally written by Ken Darby for the Fibber McGee and Molly radio series. Radio veteran Olan Soulé is Moore.

If you've never seen this cartoon, here it is on YouTube:

The Night Before Christmas, part 1

The Night Before Christmas, part 2

The Night Before Christmas, part 3

It used to be a syndication classic before Christmas, along with Lutheran Television's Christmas Is and The City That Forgot About Christmas.

As a chaser, Rankin-Bass' The Little Drummer Boy (my old tape since the DVD is not complete) and a videotape I found in Dollar Tree, Animaniacs "Hellooooooo, Holidays!" It was pretty cute, but nothing special.

Epiphany

Christmastide has always been a time for gift-giving. While most think this references the gifts of the Magi to the infant Jesus, gift-giving at New Year's was already an established custom started by the Romans. "Strenae," sweet cakes and small trinkets like thimbles and needles, were the usual gifts.

In some of the northern countries, St. Nicholas was the gift giver and arrived on the eve of his saint's day, December 6. Due to the gifts received by Jesus and connected with his birth, the most common gift day is December 25.

But in many of the warm countries, the gift-giving day is the feast of the Epiphany, when Biblical record tells us the Magi found Jesus, His mother Mary, and His foster father Joseph. The nativity story is actually in two parts. The one which Linus quotes in A Charlie Brown Christmas is from Luke, which tells of the journey to Bethlehem, the angels announcing the birth to the shepherds, and the visit of the shepherds themselves.

The visit of the Magi, or Wise Men (or "kings," although the Bible never says they are royal), occurs in Matthew, and does not happen concurrently with the birth/shepherd story (as has been presented in many stories, including Rankin-Bass' iconic Little Drummer Boy). Matthew, in fact, states that Jesus and his family are not in a stable, but in a house, and that Jesus is a small child, not an infant. The number of Magi is not mentioned either; they are usually numbered at three because of the three gifts mentioned. There could have been more gifts: the gold, frankincense and myrrh were symbolic of Jesus' kingship, priesthood, and death.

The gift givers vary by country. Most Spanish-speaking countries are given gifts by the three "kings." In Syria, the gift-bringer is actually the smallest camel in the kings' caravan.

Both Italy and Russia have a twist on this story. Italy's traditional gift-giver is La Befana, although most modern Italian kids ask for gifts from "Babbo Natale," their version of Santa Claus. "Befana" is a corruption of "Epifania." The Russian version is named "Babouscka." She is usually portrayed as looking a bit like a kindly Hallowe'en witch, with tattered clothing and old shoes because she has been traveling for so long.

So the story goes, elderly Befana, like most traditional Italian women, was cleaning her house. The three kings stopped at her house for directions. After offhandedly pointing the way out to them, Befana is in a hurry to get back to her cleaning. They ask her if she does not want to come with them to see the infant King. No, no, she says, I have to finish my cleaning.

The kings leave (in some versions of the story, she misleads them, but the star shows them the true route) and Befana finishes her cleaning. She now feels guilty, gathers up gifts for the new little King, and hurries after them. But she never catches up with them. Instead she visits every home where there could be a child, and, not knowing if this is the correct one, leaves a gift. (Sounds a bit like the Flying Dutchman...)

The feast of the Epiphany officially ends Christmastide. Some legends say all greens and decorations should be out of the house by this date. However, Candlemas (February 2) is known as the last day for the burning of the Christmas greens.

In Norway, the official ending of the Christmas season is January 13, St. Knut's Day.

"On the Twelfth Day of Christmas..."

...it's time to watch the holidays come to a close. As I drove through downtown Smyrna this morning, all the decorations were down except for the tree, and I knew it would be gone, or mostly gone, by this evening. Sure enough, by five o'clock all traces of the Christmas tree were gone.

They should have a counter-song to Andy Williams' "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year"—maybe "It's the Most Sorrowful Time of the Year," watching the tinsel and the glitter fade away to be replaced by plainness.

Of course if we had the tinsel and the glitter all year long, at Christmas it wouldn't be special, just as in the William Dean Howells' story "Christmas Every Day." Still, maybe this song from Rudolph's Shiny New Year is the most appropriate:

The moving finger writes,
And having writ, moves on.
You can't hold back the clock;
It just ticks on and on.

The moving finger writes
And having writ, moves on,
So treasure memories,
For what is gone, is gone.

And, oh, you may
Sweat and strive—
Don't you know it's great
Just to be alive?

So...make every moment count,
Rejoice with every dawn,
The moving finger writes
And having writ, moves on.

After I arrived home and took Willow for her "airing," I settled down to watch The History of Christmas DVD that I purchased at Borders. This is a compilation of four documentaries, the first being Christmas Unwrapped, originally appearing on the History Channel. This is a brief history of the holiday, featuring writers Stephen Nissenbaum and Penne Restad, authors of two of the definitive Christmas histories, The Battle for Christmas and Christmas in America. Jean Shepherd (A Christmas Story) also appears.

The second piece is the "Santa Claus" biography that was originally shown on A&E's Biography series hosted and narrated by Jack Perkins (before Biography begat its own channel). I saw this when it was originally broadcast, but haven't seen it for years. Lovely to hear Jack Perkins' voice again! I see he is now retired and a nature photographer.

As I watch, I keep glancing over my shoulder at the Christmas tree. It will look very blank there in a few days. We'll also have to find places for the gifts! One will go in the car—we were given a second Entertainment Book! Very cool, since later in the year there is an Abraham Lincoln exhibition at the Atlanta History Center. This also means we have another Mountasia coupon, too! Let's hear it for mini-golf...PUTT!:-)

"On the Eleventh Day of Christmas..."

...we cleaned up from the tenth day of Christmas. :-) We had a late sleep-in first, though.

As we had put all the perishable food away last night, we just needed to clean off the table, vacuum again, wash the serving dishes, and then put everything away and tidy the kitchen. This actually didn't take very long as a whole, but it seemed to take forever since we are in our usual post-Christmas depression. Betty Roberts declares in "Christmas in the Airwaves" that "December without Christmas is like...January."

Well, darnit, it's January.

If it was cold it would help, but it's dark, gloomy and warm. I'm in shorts and a sleeveless shirt. Tuesday it's supposed to be 70! Another 85°F day in my cubicle, I see.

We also went to Kroger to get a few things...which grew into a few more things...and we still forgot to get juice!

When everything was tidy again we settled down to watch What's My Line? and To Tell the Truth. These were back starting from New Year's Eve, and they showed the New Year's Eve 1950 What's My Line?. The show was brand-new then and the only one of the remembered panel on the panel at this time was Arlene Francis. The mystery guest, appropriately, was Guy Lombardo. After finishing all those in the queue, we watched something on National Geographic Channel: Dogs in the Womb. Following was a similar special about cats.

I keep looking wistfully at the Christmas tree. Seems like just yesterday I wrestled with putting it up, and now it's time for it to go in hibernation for another year.

And of course the weather forecast is for rain Tuesday night, so all the outdoor decorations will be wet when it's time to take them down! Typical of life...

"On the Tenth Day of Christmas..." (Evening Edition)

The last guest has just left and I'm about to help James put the things away. We had a big crowd and still had food left over. I told Alice we need to have a game night soon! LOL.

We spent the afternoon getting ready; the first guests arrived about quarter to five—it was Ann and Clay, which is lucky because they have three dachshunds and are used to the Ritual Barking of the Dog—and it soon became busy. One of James' work friends came and also his friend Rusty from the hobby shop with his wife Cindy and son John. John has to use crutches to walk and I was afraid he might have trouble with the stairs, but he navigated them deftly.

Part of the crowd was watching the end of the Falcons game, and the rest sat around the table chatting. After everyone ate, we exchanged gifts. Mel tried to help me solve a computer problem that I have responding with my domain e-mail in Eudora via Earthlink. I think he may have found a solution, but I'll have to try it and see.

Aubrey (13) and her friend Isabel (12) kept the place hopping. They retreated in the spare room to play Jenga and draw. I gave Aubrey a waterproof case with a drawing pad, colored pencils, an eraser and a pencil sharpener as she is always carrying her drawing things with her. Isabel actually found the pickle ornament on the Christmas tree but I gave the prize (a pickle ornament) to Aubrey since Isabel accidentally messed up the little slinky-bracelet I gave to Aubrey.

We all had a great time, but boy, are we bushed!

[Later: we have the food cleaned up and will tackle the dishes and the vacuuming tomorrow. Feet and back hurt. Nice time, though...]

"On the Tenth Day of Christmas..."

...more party prep. We were up until two and ended up sleeping past eleven, so we had to run to Kroger for the bacon bits to top the cheese bake. While there, got things for lunches at work.

James went to the hobby shop for about 90 minutes, while I put things up and then shot part of a "movie" on my camera. It's just of the house all dressed up for Christmas.

We have all the snack/nibbly type things out (Chex mix, M&Ms, cheese cubes, mint candies, crackers, candy cane Jo-Jos, pumpkin cake, etc.) and I have mixed the cheese spreads and they are chilling in the fridge. James is now warming up all the hots: chicken wings, taquitoes, mini egg rolls, cocktail weiners, and Bagel Bites.

Twenty minutes to go. I wonder who will come first, as they will experience the Ritual Barking of the Dog. (After about five guests, she gives up.)

"On the Ninth Day of Christmas..." (Evening Edition)

The floors are washed, the carpet and stairs are vacuumed, the sofa is clear, Willow's had a bath...I think we're ready. (Well, after I clean off the dang coffee table, anyway. it's like a magnet that attracts stuff.) :-)

We went out for supper at Golden Corral, which, surprisingly, was not crowded, and stopped at Staples on the way back to get a mailing tube. They had some pretty wintry (not Christmas) stationery and labels at half price, which I bought, and also two great gift items at half price. More things for the box!

The bad news: the friend we were expecting for the weekend cannot come. :-( She caught a bad cold from her nephew and needs to get it under control by Monday for work. As Podkayne says, "Snellfrocky! Hangnails! Dirty socks!"

The good news: a friend of ours got in a car accident this afternoon, but is okay except for a few bruises. The car, however, is totaled. Whew. Thank God it was only the car.

"On the Ninth Day of Christmas..."

We're getting ready to party.

Well, I'm getting ready to party. James is back at work, where I'll be on Monday. Bit by bit the magic is going away and it will just be the workday world again.

It's gloomy and chilly and damp out, and I was looking forward to getting the floors washed early when I realized I was out of what I needed to wash them with. I thought I had bought more cleaner, but there was none in the closet or downstairs. Well, phooey.

Ran out to Food Depot, but they didn't have what I use. Actually, I couldn't find anything but PineSol! But I did find it next door at Dollar General. Looked through the half-price Christmas things and found a few things I can decorate for the porch for next year. Then I did all the floors and got clothes together for a last load of laundry, and had the rest of the little pizzas from the other night for lunch.

To go with my lunch, I put on The Gathering. This is a 1977 television movie with Edward Asner and Maureen Stapleton, and why it isn't out on an official DVD is anybody's guess. It won all sorts of awards and is a brilliant, touching but not mawkish, Christmas film. Asner's character, Adam Thornton, a hard-nosed businessman in a small New England town, is separated from his wife after an argument (the film implies the fight was over their youngest son going to Canada instead of Vietnam, but the novelization says it was because Adam, with all the children gone, wanted to abandon the family home, and wife Kate refused) and estranged from all of his children except his younger daughter.

Then Thornton discovers from his doctor (and close friend) that he has only a few months to live. With Kate's help, he arranges a family reunion (without telling the children the bad news so it won't be a "pity party") at the house, as much to straighten out things between himself and the kids as to see them once more before he dies.

The supporting cast includes Lawrence Pressman, Veronica Hamel, Gail Strickland, Bruce Davison, Rebecca Balding (who later co-starred for a few episodes with Asner in Lou Grant), Gregory Harrison, Stephanie Zimbalist, Edward Winter, and John Randolph. Truly wonderful film—with a beautiful score by John Barry to boot.

(Bit of trivia: this film was produced by Hanna-Barbera and Yogi Bear makes a brief cameo—it's a puppet that the grandchildren have.)

"On the Eighth Day of Christmas..." (Evening Edition)

It's been a nice quiet day. I've tidied up the guest room and washed the linens, and read some of Mark of the Lion (the first Jade del Cameron mystery) and watched "Merry Gentlemen" once again. We had a nice slice of Smithfield ham for supper, which James had soaked for two days in pineapple juice and honey with pineapple bits and craisins. It was superbly tender. We had it with boiled potatoes and I even ate a couple of spoonfuls of Hoppin' John for the new year, although I usually avoid black-eyed peas. (I probably should have, too. My stomach is sour again. But it's supposed to be good luck to eat Hoppin' John...or at least plain old black-eyed peas...on New Year's Day.

Nothing on television tonight besides bowl games and marathons, so I put on The Last Detective.

Christmas Comfort Reading

I have certain books I go back to every year, as they are as much a part of Christmas as the tree and A Christmas Carol. One I read first at my own home, another from the Stadium School library, and the third is a recent acquisition.

Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot was written in 1948 by Frances Frost. In the 1960s, the "Windy Foot" books about the Clark family and their Vermont farm were standard issue in children's rooms and school libraries. In the first novel, Windy Foot at the County Fair, Toby Clark is given a pony he names Windy Foot for his birthday. He meets Letitia "Tish" Burnham at the fair where he is planning to race Windy in the annual races. In this second offering of the series, Tish and her horse-trainer dad Jerry (her mother is deceased) visit the Clark farm for Christmas. What follows are nostalgic preparations for the holiday: converting a sleigh for Windy to pull, Christmas shopping, carol singing in the town square, popping corn by the fire, awaiting the birth of a calf that will be a gift for Toby's little sister Betsy.

But a marauding bear poses a danger to the livestock and Toby's plan for skiing with Tish, if another hidden danger doesn't strike first.

All the Windy Foot books are great snapshots of small farms in the late 1940s/early 1950s, but this is my favorite: I love going snowshoeing with Toby and Betsy for Christmas greens, singing carols in the town square and shopping in the country store, sleighing under the stars. The Clarks don't live an easy life, but it's a happy one.

Whitman Books published a series of books in the 1960s about the Tucker family: five kids and mom and dad, with the obligatory big shaggy dog and also a cat living in a big old house in the small town of Yorkville where dad works with his father in running a variety store. The books were written by at least two authors and continuity is a mess, but the stories are fun.

The Cottage Holiday, however, breaks from the routine a bit by emphasizing the story of 7-year-old Penny. The youngest girl and the next to youngest child, Penny is plagued by constant colds and bad health, and worries about her place in the world and even within the family group. When she envisions a Christmas celebration at their lake cottage and is allowed to go by her pediatrician, Penny begins to learn more about her hidden strengths. In the meantime, the kids not only play snow games on the beach and prepare for Christmas, but are involved in the mystery of a supposedly abandoned baby and the hunting of a cougar killing livestock at the local farms.

Again, it's one of those books where you want to be there, having fun with the family and their holiday preparations, but the subplot of Penny searching for her place in the order of things is also very appealing and the sort of story that was ordinarily not featured in a series book of this type. The end of the story requires a tissue. :-)

A newer book that has become de rigueur in my reading queue at Christmas is Christmas After All by Kathryn Lasky. This book is part of the "Dear America" series and is based on Lasky's own family. The Swift family, including 12-year-old narrator Minnie, are enduring the privations of the Depression at Christmastime of 1932, closing down room after room to save coal, surviving on endless meals of bits of meat stretched by bread, rice and cheese, and wondering why their father comes home a little earlier each day. Then a telegram requests that they pick up Willie Faye Darling at the train station. Willie is the daughter of Belle's cousins and both her parents have died in the Dust Bowl town of Heart's Bend, Texas.

When Willie Faye arrives, stunted by malnutrition and carrying only two pairs of underwear and the clothes she is wearing (and a kitten she saved from a dust storm), not having ever seen a movie, an indoor bathroom, and the comics, Minnie thinks her cousin will have a lot to learn from them. She doesn't dream what the little girl from Heart's Bend will teach her and her family.

Lasky makes everyone in the story so real—probably because they are based on actual family members—from Minnie's only brother, an electronics prodigy, to her unconventional sister Lady, to her practical older sisters Gwen and Clem, to her warm parents, to Jackie, the family housekeeper, not to mention a snotty classmate, her sisters' boyfriends (including one based on her father), and the victims of the Depression living in a "Hooverville." The story mixes humor, family experience, and even anxiety after Minnie's classmate's father commits suicide.

Lasky writes great books anyway; I have loved her Prank, set in East Boston, and the Cambridge-based Callista Jacobs mysteries, which, sadly, there were only a handful of.

"On the Eighth Day of Christmas..."

...we are resting and watching the Rose Parade. (I said to James yesterday, "You know what I want to do tomorrow? Nothing!") The New Mexico Coyote/Road Runner float has just gone by. So beautiful in HD. Look at the details!!! We're watching on HGTV, and, where their coverage has improved over the years—I remember their first broadcast only had wide-angle cameras and we got no close-ups at all—the hosts are starting to yap too much (like their network counterparts) over announcements and occasionally interviewing hosts of their series instead of concentrating on the parade. At least we don't have to watch commercials and this year's featured celebrities being interviewed to plug their NBC series.)

Cloris Leachman is the Grand Marshal this year. Gosh, she looks great for 80 years old!

Many beautiful floats, including the African veldt theme, and those lovely horses. The western groups have changed over time—I remember when "Monty" Montana and the Sons of the Pioneers were fixtures—but are always beautiful.

I can tell you one major way the Rose Parade has changed in 40 years: when I was a kid, New Year's was still considered part of the Christmas season and you did hear Christmas songs, like "Frosty" and "Winter Wonderland" (usually the wintry things, although I remember "Deck the Halls" since it mentions the New Year), played by the bands. You don't hear them anymore.

{Bother..."Holly" is gone already, too; used to last through New Year's Day. Stupid merger.)

Anyway, we had a lovely time at Bill and Caran's last night: good food to nosh and lots of people to chat with. The crowd seemed to be thinner this year, however, and we were a creaky crowd hanging out in the library except when Aubrey was there. Fiona and Geoffrey's baby daughter Zada (almost 11 months) was the hit of the party.

Sadly, about ten minutes to midnight, I developed stomach cramps. I was able to slip downstairs for a few minutes to join in the end of the countdown and wish everyone a happy New Year, then was stuck in the bathroom for the next 40 minutes. So we had to leave rather abruptly. Came home to wrap in a fleece and wish Rodney, Mike, Jen and Jen's sister Meggan a happy new year online, to the accompaniment of TCM's marathon of That's Entertainment movies. We would have gone to bed earlier, but the segment on Busby Berkeley routines in That's Dancing had us mesmerized.

[2:46 p.m.: Watching the Rose Parade rebroadcast on the Travel Channel. Hosts Stephanie Edwards and Bob Eubanks are a bit ditzy, and we have commercials, but at least they are talking what the floats are made of...and we got to see several floats that HGTV either "forgot," or ignored so they could plug their own programming.]

"On the Seventh Day of Christmas..."

...we went a'roving.

Not far. We'd dreamed about going to Gatlinburg this week, even if overnight, to see the Winterfest lights, but we really couldn't afford it. But James was looking for a calendar with aircraft artwork and hadn't found one in the local bookstores. So we decided to go up to Discover Mills, which has a calendar store.

The cold front had come through last night and the shades were flapping in the breeze when we got up, but the sky was bright blue and it wasn't all that cold. James had to right "Woody" the reindeer and the cross-draft on the freeway was pretty strong, but we made it up to Discover Mills without incident. This mall is built like a big oval track with the food court cutting through the middle and we saw many couples "doing the mall" for exercise. We did an entire circuit, too, finally found the calendar store, but he didn't find any aviation art. He got a black and white calendar of battleships instead.

The mini-calendar findings were meager. All the small calendars are larger (7"x7") than I need (5.5"x5.5"). They had dogs (breeds I wasn't interested in), horses, psalms, and something else that was so forgettable that I forgot it. What I got was a John Deere calendar. While I'm not into tractors, the pictures are seasonal and had the vaguely country flavor that the house does.

We came home by a new gaming shop that James wanted to try. We could barely edge through it since they were having an all day (and night) Pokemon championship tournament. Lots of kids playing and even some adults.

I'd been worried about rush-hour traffic, but we made it to Cobb County without incident—it was getting past Cumberland Mall that was the problem! We had a two-fer coupon for Fresh 2 Order, so we picked up our dinners and came home until it was time to leave for Bill and Caran's party. Ate, watched the news and Jeopardy!, set the DVR to record (all the That's Entertainment films are on TCM tonight).

Finally James baked his contribution to the party and I put on Rudolph's Shiny New Year. This is practically a Paul Frees festival...he does something like every other voice. I wish they'd been able to use the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer models. Not anywhere as good as the original, but I do like the "Moving Finger Writes" and Big Ben the whale, voiced by "the Great Gildersleeve" himself, Hal Peary.

Goodness! You can see the texture on everything!

Anyway, it's time to go. Happy New Year to all!