Poetry and More

A West Country Christmas, edited by Chris Smith

This is another of Alan Sutton publishing's "Christmas Anthologies," which contain short excerpts of Christmas/Christmastide passages from various British novels, memoirs, and poetry books, with the action taking place in the shire or historical era denoted in the title.

Covering England's "West Country" (Cornwall and Somerset), known for their oft-parodied "z" accents, this particular volume is almost half-filled with poetry from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Herrick, Christina Rossetti, Charles Kingsley, and others. Contributors of prose include Conan Doyle with an excerpt from Hound of the Baskervilles (although it really had nothing to do with Christmas), Agatha Christie (Poirot celebrates the holidays), Daphne DuMaurier, Blackmore's Lorna Doone, and Thomas Hardy.

The Glastonbury Thorn, the legendary tree that supposedly blooms every year on "the real Christmas" (by the Julian calendar, now January 7), has its own chapter, as does the West Country tradition of mumming. Other memoirs tell of old-fashioned Christmases with simple toys and reveling, there is—of course—a ghost story or two, there's a long chapter with Christmas excerpts from West Country newspapers, and even the amazing story of a shepherd who saves 66 sheep from freezing on a snowy night by carrying them back two by two to a barn. Old engravings, photographs, and advertisements complete this interesting volume.

Everything That's Christmas: Memoirs, Memories, and Ghosts!

A Warwickshire Christmas, edited by David Green
This is another in Alan Sutton publishing's line of Christmas books, either from English shires (their equivalent of a county) or during a certain time or literary period. Having picked up one (Worcestershire Christmas) at a book sale, I've collected one or two at the time when I can find them inexpensively. I've collected all the regional ones now, and this is the third from the last.

The contents of these books are kind of a coin toss. Sometimes it's obvious that there aren't a lot of Christmas writings from the particular shire and they have tossed in winter observances like the weather or references to cold weather or they've included the "St. George and the Dragon" play in its entirety. This volume, however is crammed with memoirs of holiday celebrations from the POV from all walks in life, from Daisy England, a poor child whose father left the family and who eventually ended up in the workhouse, to the Christmases celebrated by Frances, Countess of Warwick. Three contributions are from Ursula Bloom, a prolific writer of 560 books, from childhood memories to ghost stories she was told by a family servant. Vivian Bird recalls a chill, cheerless Christmas in which he was serving in the Army during the Second World War. There are excerpts from Silas Marner, another George Eliot novel Brother Jacob, and two excerpts from Washington Irving's Old Christmas (a part of The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon), as well as a short account of Christmas at Aston Hall, the prototype for Irving's Bracebridge Hall. There are accounts of meager Christmases in poor homes and bountiful Yuletides at manor homes, and even a fascinating article talking about stagecoaches—you are used to seeing stagecoaches in Western movies with passengers riding inside and the driver and the person "riding shotgun" on the outside, but, on British stagecoaches at least, passengers who paid less actually rode outside.

Plus there are illustrations and many many nostalgic photos of snowy lanes and old-fashioned sights like poultry shops and horse-drawn vehicles. One of the best Sutton Christmas anthologies!

Not Nostalgic Enough

Christmas TV Memories: Nostalgic Holiday Favorites of the Small Screen, Herbie J. Pilato
I've been waiting on this book since I saw it promoted and learned that it had a chapter about The House Without a Christmas Tree, which is one of my very favorites, if not favorite (it changes by year) Christmas movie ever (it alternates with The Homecoming). Now that I've read it, I loved the House chapter and about half of the rest of the book.

I found the rest...kind of annoying. First, the book seems to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about television variety Christmas specials. I realize they're a rara avis these days, and certainly the biggest of them, hosted by Bob Hope, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, etc., were fabulous and bear examining; I loved it a few years back when MEtv showed a bunch of these gems, including Perry Como's Early American Christmas and Christmas in Paris. It's the one- or two-time specials that seemed out of place, and after the first few chapters they seem all jumbled together.

The remainder of the chapters address animated specials, Christmas television films, and Christmas episodes of series favorites. The quality wavers between detailed examinations of one item (like The House Without a Christmas Tree) to chapters like the one about The Simpsons which basically just lists all the Simpsons Christmas episodes. It would have been better to say there were 21 episodes and mention the first and a couple of notable ones.

Pilato also says, naturally, there wasn't time in 300 pages to mention every Christmas special and every Christmas episode of every series—I was particularly disappointed by the complete omission of all eight Lassie Christmas episodes—yet there is plenty of time, apparently, to mention Thanksgiving episodes and New Year's episodes!—not to mention numerous asides about what star was married to another star who went on to produce fill-in-the-blank famous movie with no connection to Christmas. Not only that, but the subtitle is "nostalgic holiday favorites." Everyone's nostalgic about Rudolph and Frosty and other 60s and 70s animated shows and episodes; who the dickens is nostalgic about some forgettable episode of Reba that's aired ten years ago?

Particularly irritating was the chapter about The Homecoming: A Christmas Story, in which several pages were wasted talking about the dreadful remake they did a couple of years ago which I turned off in disgust after ten minutes when Jason started berating John-Boy about his stupidity in wanting to be a writer! The set decoration looked like it came out of an issue of "Country Living" and makes the Walton family look prosperous instead of just getting by. Ugh! And the chapter about The Gathering devotes two of the four pages to another film the director did called Peege. Huh?

Pilato even gets part of the plot of the memorable episode of That Girl called "Christmas and the Hard Luck Kid" incorrect: Tommy, the little boy Ann Marie is keeping company at Christmas, isn't Jewish; his friend whom he eventually spends Christmas Day with is the one who's Jewish.

I'm keeping this because of The House Without a Christmas Tree chapter, but, really, I wish I'd found it at the library booksale instead of forking over $20+ dollars on it.

Mysteries and Ghosts Make a Good Combination

Mystery for Christmas, edited by Richard Dalby
This is a collection of mystery stories...surprise...set around Christmas, with most of them having a supernatural twist. It begins with the ultimate in ghost story authors, Charles Dickens himself, with "The Black Veil." Several other classic authors are represented, including Thomas Hardy. Some of the stories feature murder, but there are other situations including a kidnapped child, a reluctant church attendee, a mysterious photograph, sudden deaths at a house party, even an unusual meal eaten in Persia and the adventures of a ghost, not to mention a locked-room mystery.

I loved almost every one of these stories; I think my least favorite was the one by Keating. Even the Sherlock Holmes pastiche and the story that's a takeoff on M.R. James and King's College.

There are several of these collections done by Dalby, including Ghosts for Christmas, which I've previously reviewed.

A Christmas at the Lake

The Tuckers: The Cottage Holiday, Jo Mendel
This is the Christmas entry in Mendel's Tuckers series, about a family of five children, stay-at-home-mom, and a dad who runs a variety store with his father. The stories are usually simple, but sometimes humorous, sometimes dramatic situations around family life.

Cottage Holiday revolves around seven-year-old Penny, who's the often-sick member of the family, who's tired of being pampered and longs to discover what she's good at like her talented brothers and sisters. She wishes the whole family could spend Christmas at the family's summer cottage on the lake—and what a surprise to discover that her doctor says she is well enough to go!

The rest of the story involves the kids' adventures on the lake, which includes hiking, hunting a lost calf with some young friends who live on a nearby farm, finding an abandoned baby, and coping with the fact that a renegade cougar is prowling the area.

The main charm of this story is nostalgia: the kids sometimes quarrel, but they love each other as well; their simple adventures encompass positive values without being preachy. This story is particularly charming because Penny, who's usually a background character, comes into her own here. Her baby steps into finding herself gives it an introspective undercurrent that the other books don't have.

A Depression Christmas

Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift, Kathryn Lasky
This is my knock-down favorite "Dear America" book (and believe me, there are good ones and bad ones). I love Kathryn Lasky writing anything, especially her Callista Jacobs mysteries and Prank, and, brought up on my parents' stories about the Depression, this story rings very true.

Minnie Swift, youngest girl and next-to-youngest child in the Swift family, tells the story of "a Christmas of dwindling." Her father, an accountant, is working fewer hours, and the family begins closing off rooms in their house in order to save coal. Then they receive a startling telegram: a young cousin they didn't know existed is coming to live with them: Willie Faye Darling, deep from the Dust Bowl. Willie Faye is the same age as Minnie, but has never seen a movie, doesn't know about comic strips, and is so small people think she is younger.

Yet Willie Faye is the glue that will hold the Swift family together on that "Christmas of dwindling" in which they eat meatless meals, work on home-made Christmas gifts, cope with a tragedy concerning a friend's family, discover some of the sobering things Willie Faye has lived through, and enjoy the antics of Minnie's older and creative sister, "Lady" (short for Adelaide) who loves fashion and Greta Garbo films.

Based on my mom's stories of Depression privations, Minnie's story seems very real. The only false note in the story is the epilog, which I find a bit fanciful.

Happy Christmas from the Clarks!

Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot, Frances Frost

Between 1947 and 1956, Frost, a native of Vermont, wrote a series of children's books about the Clark family, who have a small dairy farm in northern Vermont: parents, three children, Toby, age 12; Betsey, age 9; and Johnny, five and a precocious (and sometimes annoying) poet. In the first book of the series, Windy Foot at the County Fair, Toby, a budding artist, is given a Shetland pony named Windy Foot. He also meets Leticia "Tish" Burnham (who's planning to become a doctor), and the two children become fast friends. Now it's Christmas, Tish and her dad Jerry are coming to visit, and the whole family is full of anticipation.

Plus there's a renegade bear wandering the area and one of the Clark cows is about to birth a late-in-the-year calf.

This is hygge at its purest: simple family doings on a late 1940s independent farm, much hard work, but much fun as well, home-cooking, collecting greens for Christmas decorations, horse-and-buggy and horse-and-sleigh rides, carol singing on the town green, Christmas shopping in the general store...with a few hair-raising adventures thrown in for good measure.

The Clarks are fine folk to spend Christmas with! I do it every year.

The Windy Foot Books

Fourth Sunday of Advent

The gifts are wrapped. The lights are twinkling. The special Christmas treats have been purchased and are being eaten. (Mnnn. Candy-Cane Joe-Joe's from Trader Joe's. And peppermint puffs. And the other once-a-year foods.) I'm alternating watching Law & Order...in chronological order, finally, thanks to Hulu...and Christmas specials.

This evening we have indulged in Rick Steves' European Christmas, and then The Waltons' episode "The Best Christmas" and the Voyagers! episode "Merry Christmas, Bogg."

Tomorrow's cleaning day and towel washing day, but I hope we can do something Christmasy tomorrow, despite dialysis.

Reading one of my favorite Christmas re-reads, since I was in Stadium Elementary School, Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot.

Third Sunday of Advent

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

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

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

101 Tales...More Like It

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

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

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

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

Second Sunday of Advent

So the first three feast days have passed!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Unique Sutton Christmas Book

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

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

I enjoyed this look at "snowy old England"!

First Sunday of Advent

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

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

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

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

Keep us well. Keep us strong. Amen.

Ending With "Ideals"

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

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

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

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