Somewhere It's Snowing...But Not Here

Snowy Night 

Mary Oliver

Last night, an owl
in the blue dark
tossed
an indeterminate number
of carefully shaped sounds into
the world, in which,
a quarter of a mile away, I happened
to be standing.
I couldn’t tell
which one it was –
the barred or the great-horned
ship of the air –
it was that distant. But, anyway,
aren’t there moments
that are better than knowing something,
and sweeter? Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness. I suppose
if this were someone else’s story
they would have insisted on knowing
whatever is knowable – would have hurried
over the fields
to name it – the owl, I mean.
But it’s mine, this poem of the night,
and I just stood there, listening and holding out
my hands to the soft glitter
falling through the air. I love this world,
but not for its answers.
And I wish good luck to the owl,
whatever its name –
and I wish great welcome to the snow,
whatever its severe and comfortless
and beautiful meaning.

"Winter Night"

Pile high the hickory and the light
Log of chestnut struck by the blight.
Welcome-in the winter night.

The day has gone in hewing and felling,
Sawing and drawing wood to the dwelling
For the night of talk and story-telling.

These are the hours that give the edge
To the blunted axe and the bent wedge,
Straighten the saw and lighten the sledge.

Here are question and reply,
And the fire reflected in the thinking eye.
So peace, and let the bob-cat cry.

                                                           Edna St. Vincent Millay

"When Winter Came to Call"

Mildred L. Jarrell
from Ideals Christmas 2020

A silver world was all about
when I awoke this morn,
for overnight the silver frost
of winter came along.

An ermine robe was draped around
the stately evergreens,
and tatted lace of frost was placed
on deown pond and stream.

The little brook was silent,
locked in winter's clasp,
Hemmed in crystal stitchery
with icy blades of grass.

The meadow lay in silence,
while over all the snow,
wildlings tracked their calling cards
where'er they'd come and go.

A wondrous cloak of whiteness
the snow king laid o'er all,
fashioned from a leaden sky
when winter came to call.

Last of the Christmas Books (At Least Until Rudolph Day)

Ideals Christmas 2020, Ideals Publications

As Christmas got derailed, so did my reading. Since the 24th of December most nights I have tumbled into bed without reading what with being so exhausted or sad. I'd intended to get a few more volumes under my belt but never made it. (My digital reading is way behind, too; I still have autumn magazines I put aside for Christmas magazines I never got to, and the few hardcopy magazines I bought I am still reading through as well.) But just over the line, one night, on Distaff Day, I decided to fit this one in.

This year's issue had a lot more essays in it than usual, as always of the inspirational/nostalgic sort. Anne Kennedy Brady, daughter of Pamela Kennedy who has an annual essay, has one of her own this year about the family's plane trip to visit Grandma, where, Pamela reveals, they ended up crowded in one cabin instead of having two. David La France suggests a unique keepsake if you get a live tree each year. There are nine essays in all, plus the usual complement of Christmas poems—I was particularly fond of "Simple Joys" and "Christmas Song"—plus Tennyson's "Voices in the Mist," four pages of Biblical quotations and accompanying illustrations, two pages of recipes and another duo of quotations, the story of the hymn "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," and of course the softly nostalgic paintings and simple photographic still lifes (including a snug little den scene that I wanted to leap into) that give the "Ideals" books their distinct flavor.

My favorite piece was probably the winter poem by Mildred Jarrell, "When Winter Came to Call," with its lovely imagery, and the quote from Mary Oliver's "Snowy Night."

Along Sea and Over Land in Kent

A Kent Christmas, Sutton Books

I found the first of these Sutton Christmas anthologies (A Worcestershire Christmas, if you care) at a library book sale several years back, and another at a library sale a couple of years later. I think the coronavirus emergency made me a little crazy this year; every time I found a book from this series for less than five dollars with postage, I bought one and managed to accumulate nearly a half dozen, a portion which will either need to be saved for Rudolph Days or next Christmas, thanks to our perilous Christmas adventures. Anyway, 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.

Kent, in the southeastern portion of England and one of the "home counties" around London, is famous for being the home of Canterbury Cathedral and also for the Romney Marsh coast where smugglers, enraged at the taxes the King imposed on luxury items, especially from France, flourished. With the latter, it is totally appropriate that the first entry is a Christmas tale from Russell Thorndyke's multi-book "Dr. Syn" series, which was made into Walt Disney's noted Scarecrow of Romney Marsh three-part story and later film. Due to Kent's Channel-side location, a Christmas shipwreck story is also in order.

Dickens' happiest childhood days were spent in Kent and The Pickwick Papers' Christmas scenes were set there, so there are two entries from that volume, Christmas Day itself and a Boxing Day spent skating. Nonfiction includes several memoirs from men and women who remember their childhoods in Kent, including a butcher's daughter, and a man who recalls a snowstorm which isolated his family for days over the holidays, and some of the unique customs, including the Hooden Horse, in which players went from house-to-house with a man dressed as a horse as part of their act.

Two Kentish historical events also figure in this volume: the return of Lord Nelson's body after his death at Trafalgar to England where he was interred over the Christmas holidays. Nelson's body was preserved in a barrel of brandy, and, when decanted, was found to be well preserved. The other death was of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury as appointed by Henry II, who then became the King's enemy by taking the church's side against the monarch. Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on December 29, 1170.

Other articles address Christmas at the Churchill country residence, Chartwell; unique Kent versions of Christmas songs; royal visits to Eltham; even a recipe for Christmas pudding and an old-fashioned Twelfth Night cake. A nice package of essays, especially the historical ones.

Who...is La Befana?

The story goes that as the Magi made their way west following the Star, they stopped one night at the home of a lone woman, living on her own or widowed we do not know, and asked a favor. Depending on the story, they asked to water the camels, or asked to stop for the night on her land, or perhaps asked to buy any fresh food she had to supplant what dried supplies they had brought with them. This elderly woman was famous in the area she lived for her cleanliness, and she indeed was once again cleaning her small cottage when the Magi stopped by. Legend has it that she was quite rude to them, and may have even refused their request, or given to them what they asked with bad grace.

 

Yet the Magi treated her respectfully and told her the story of the Child they were looking for. She was too busy scrubbing something to even look up at the Star. Some hours after the Magi left and she'd finished scrubbing, she thought about what they had said about the Child and felt ashamed. She dressed in traveling clothes and stout boots and found a big bag into which she put some toys (whether she bought them or they were her grown children's toys no one knows), looked up in the sky, and began following the Star, too.

 

Alas, she never caught up with the Magi, and felt so badly that now yearly she travels from home to home on the eve of the Epiphany still looking for the Christ Child. She looks carefully into the face of every child she sees, but since he or she is not the Child she is looking for, she leaves them a toy or a book or something else special instead.

In Italy this gift giver is known as "La Befana," "Befana" coming from the word "Epiphania," from the feast of the Epiphany on January 6. She's portrayed as a typical old Italian woman in a long skirt, cloak, and slippers or shoes, and she rides a broom like a stereotypical witch to get around to search all the children of the earth on Twelfth Night, so she is frequently referred to as "the Christmas witch." La Befana used to be the only gift giver in Italy until the advent of "Babbo Natale," Father Christmas or Santa Claus. So now some lucky Italian children get gifts both on Christmas and Epiphany, and should they live in northern Italy, they often get a visit from "Santo Nicolo," St. Nicholas, too!

This custom also exists one other place, in Russia. There our gift-giver is known as Baboushka.

 

"La Befana Vien Di Notte" Song 

 

Italian Rail's The Legend of La Befana 

 

La Befana: The Witch of Christmas 

 

The Befana Tradition 

The Legend of La Befana 

The Rise and Flourishment of the Christmas Card

The History of the Christmas Card, George Buday

Oh, I was a bad girl. Someone talked about this book so temptingly on a Christmas group I am on that I hunted down a copy even though I didn't intend to buy any more Christmas books this year. Luckily it was at a reasonable price! This book is a year older than myself, and is a charmingly vintage and scholarly look at the history of the first Christmas card and the "growing," as they say these days, of the custom of sending them. Today we so nonchalantly declare that the first Christmas card was sent by John Calcott Horsley in 1843 that we forget there was a time, as at the printing of this book, that this information had just been recently discovered by scholars. Previously people kept in touch with long Christmas letters, the forerunner of the "Christmas newsletter" some people tuck into their Christmas cards or packages, but busy Horsley was dismayed by the time it took to sit down and write all these missives. He had his friend Sir Henry Cole design the card for him, and then sent it to his friends in lieu of a letter. Others thought it a delightful idea and soon other printers and lithographers were designing these "Christmas cards" and they became fashionable.

How the cards looked also had an interesting history. The first Christmas cards were the size of visiting cards (a slightly larger version of the business card people still used today) that one dropped off in a friend's front hall if you stopped by and that friend was not at home, like postcards. It was only later that they opened and had a sentiment inside. The card was invented, in fact, before the creation of the envelope, so that many times they were technically postcards, with an address scribbled on the reverse side. Eventually these cards became so elaborate, made of not just paper but silks and satins, false "jewels," metallic colored cardboard, metal, feathers, etc. and decorated with elaborate cut-outs and sometimes made to unfold, that they actually substituted as gifts, and people kept them in scrapbooks. Most of Buday's examples, for instance, came from the copious Christmas card scrapbooks kept by Queen Mary, the wife of King George V of Great Britain. So this book has a mainly-British focus, although the Louis Prang company, the original creator of Christmas cards in the United States, and Rust Craft cards, also in the U.S., are mentioned briefly (as is "Hall Brothers," the company that later became the 8000-pound gorilla of cardmakers, Hallmark).

As I said, this is a scholarly book, and Buday goes into minute details of the cards, which include elaborate animated and "mechanical" cards, some of what we would today call "pop-up" cards. The craftsmanship on the latter cards sounds incredible in the detailing included in these works of art, produced on 19th century printing presses and then hand-crafted. Buday also discusses subjects portrayed on cards (he doesn't even try to explain, though, the bizarre Victorian convention of having dead birds, usually robins, on their cards!) and the surprising revelation that, even though Christian groups will try to persuade you that "people were more religious back then," the Nativity is portrayed fewer times on Christmas cards even back in the 19th century, less than sleighs, stagecoaches, holly and ivy, Christmas trees, children, etc.! Included in the cards shown are hand-drawn or hand-embellished cards by "Bertie" (later King George VI) and his daughter as a child, now Queen Elizabeth II. He also traces the style of the Christmas card in correlation with the Valentine cards of the day.

A really "nifty" (excuse the "Addieism") look at Christmas card development over the years if you can deal with the scholarly prose.

A Snowy Christmas Eve in the Blue Ridge

Re-read: The Homecoming, Earl Hamner Jr.

In 1961, Hamner published his novel Spencer's Mountain, about Clay and Olivia Spencer and their nine children, living a hardscrabble life in Appalachia (specifically the Blue Ridge in Virginia), where Clay works in a soapstone factory. They long to better their children, and most of the story revolves around Clay Spencer Junior, called "Clay-Boy," his growing up and budding teenage feelings, resentment at being the eldest and "babysitter" for the younger children, and feeling the first pangs of romance, while his parents work to raise enough money to send him to college to become a writer as he desires. The book was made into a film in 1963 by Warner Brothers. In 1970, Hamner published this book, a novella about the Spencer family at Christmas, and it was turned into a Christmas movie in 1971, with the names of most of the principals changed because Warner Brothers now "owned" the Spencer family's names.

As The Waltons was a slightly softened version of the television film of this book, the film was a softened-down version of the novel. Although the basic story remains the same—the family father is late returning home from his job thirty miles away (a drive we now make in no more than an hour) and the family anxiously awaiting his arrival—certain details differ. In the book instead of the father's parents, we meet Olivia's parents; the Baldwin sisters are Miss Etta and Miss Emma Staples; Ike Godsey runs the combination pool hall/restaurant, not a store; Clay-Boy only briefly meets Hawthorne Dooley, and Hawthorne does not work for the sisters; Claudie doesn't tell the family about the missionary woman, Birdshot Sprouse does (Birdshot is kind of a Huck Finn character); Clay-Boy goes out to get the Christmas tree alone and has an adventure with a deer (he also smokes); Charlie Sneed isn't a "Robin Hood," he's a poacher hunting out of season to give the food to deserving families; a few other minor things. It's much grittier than the television film, giving one a good sense of just how tough life was for the Virginia working man during the Depression.

 

If you're a fan of the Christmas film, you owe it to yourself to read the original.