The Scent of Christmas

I've got three cookie sheets of wine biscuits cooling on the stove and the house smells like Christmas. There's only about 45 of them, but I'm the only one that likes them around here; they'll last a month and be a brief reminder of childhood holidays.

Mom and I baked cookies every year: not just wine biscuits, but almond bars and molasses cookies and butterballs (I think they call them Danish wedding cookies in the bakeries: flour, butter, a little vanilla, sugar, chopped nuts, rolled into little balls, coated in confectioners' sugar). Most would go in bowls on the stairway to be brought out for company or on Christmas afternoon, but she'd always arrange an assortment for friends and family who didn't already bake them (my godmother, Sherrye's parents, Cindy's parents) in a paper plate with red and green and silver-wrapped Hershey's kisses scattered among them.

If you went to my aunts' homes you saw the same thing, except on large platters, sometimes with wandis (which are fiendishly difficult to make) and jam-center cookies. Scattered with the Hershey's kisses would be the little boxes of torrone, with their bright scenes of the Italian countryside, and they would be all wrapped in cellphane with a big bow in the center.

I used Mom's baking bowl, which now has a hallowed place in the china cabinet, and thought of her as I kneaded. The recipe (top of page) is her own adaptation, I think of my Grandma Lanzi's. She cut down on the sugar, of course. To this day I don't like sugary things; I don't even like raisins because they're too sweet. They aren't quite the same without Papá Lanzi's homemade red wine; it was very strong and gave the cookies a vivid flavor. I use Gallo's hearty burgundy, but it's only a fair substitute.

Daddy used to dip them into coffee, and then cocoa after he quit drinking coffee. I just liked them straight, sitting cross-legged under the Christmas tree writing yet another story and watching something like Charlie Brown Christmas or Rudolph or The Homecoming. Those were nice times.

Reminder...

...if you needed it with all the publicity it usually garners:

La Salette Christmas going on now for all Christmas light display fans in the Providence/Boston/Fall River area.

Happy Christmas Evening

James attended his IPMS club Christmas party tonight so I had a favorite supper (chicken broth and rice) and watched Christmas programs.

I'd found a couple of links about The House Without a Christmas Tree today

Kimba66's Profile

A Christmas Tree "Convert"

so I watched that first of all. I received at least a half dozen e-mails about the Addie Mills stories this month alone; between those posts and the e-mails it looks like I'm not the only fan. Sensitive, thoughtful dramas like this seem too few and far between today (and when we do get them, they are interrupted by dozens of commercials, network "bugs," and popup ads for programs coming up. What a treat to see the entire television screen taken up with a story and nothing else—and excellent actors like Jason Robards and Mildred Natwick to boot.

Next I watched Holiday Inn, my first time. Yes, in 51 years I have never seen Holiday Inn, just the little clip where Crosby and Reynolds sing "White Christmas." I found it...okay. Astaire's dancing was spectacular but his character was so unlikeable it soured the movie for me. I do want to watch it with the commentary: there's archived commentary by Crosby, Astaire, and John Scott Trotter.

Seeking something lighter, I then watched both Lynn Johnston For Better or For Worse specials. The one where the kids are still young is the better story, I think. And I'm a bit partial to the "Snow" song, too.

Pidgie sang most of the night, and that was nice, too.

James didn't get home until 11:20—he had almost a two hour drive back (and a two hour drive there because of rush-hour traffic)!

Now It's Really Christmas

House photos:













The Santa in this chair is the Polar Express Santa.



You can see "Anne" and "Diana" caroling in the back at right.





The other was a better shot, but you couldn't see the deer's eyes, so I took this one:



This is the half-wall that divides the living room from the foyer:





This was our nativity set when I was growing up. The figures were bought one and two at a time from the five and ten, Woolworth's and probably Grant's. I remember bins of each figure in Grant's. The camels and one of the sheep (he's lying down next to the shepherd) are actually of rubber:





Click here for a badly stitched panorama of the village.

Good Neighbors/The Good Life: "Silly, But It's Fun..." is on the television:







Here's the ceppo and a small collection of old-world Santas:

CHRISTMAS BOOK REVIEW: An Irish Country Christmas

I found this lovely book at the library recently. It shares some similarity with Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales in that it speaks of customs that no longer exist.

For young Alice, growing up in rural Ireland in the early 1950s, thoughts of Christmas begin when Aunty Kate from America sends her annual, early Christmas card, the grocer stocks the special raisins and other baking supplies only used during Yuletide, and the geese are prepared for sale (and Christmas dinner). She describes the people around her—old Nell, who refuses to have her chimney swept, Black Ned the sweep and the other Ned, the town storekeeper, Johnny the Post, and various other friends and relatives—and the homely, old-fashioned Christmas preparations with vivid words. On Christmas Eve you are in the warm cottage smelling the roasting goose, setting the Christmas candle in the best turnip in the window, decorating with paper chains and holly branches and ivy. Warm and wonderful.

Chicken Soup Stories

"The Last Straw," a Christmas story.

Well Begun is Half Done

We had so much to do today! (I'll be glad to go to work tomorrow. It should be less strenuous!) We slept late because we had stayed up last night watching a special about a Christmas lights display contest in Richmond, Virginia. Wow. (I'm sure there are more appropriate words for these displays, but "wow" will do.) And partially because James seems to be coming down with a cold and he needed to sleep.

After breakfast we ran to JoAnn, because I had three 50 percent off coupons and needed some plastic storage boxes, and to Hobbytown, where James bought some little models for a couple of the guys at work. We then had to stop at B.J.'s for milk, orange juice, and other groceries for the week, and at Lowe's to get more birdseed for the feeder. So by the time we got home it was four-ish. James had to eat because he was crashing and then it was dinnertime. While he was cooking I did another load of clothes and tidied the speaker wires in the corner where the tree will be and vacuumed.

So we didn't start on the tree until about six. This is a new tree, so it had to be unboxed and assembled and then fluffed. Very boring procedure. At least there was the Christmas edition of America's Funniest Home Videos to amuse us. Then came the worst part of Christmas tree decorating, Those Damn Lights.

However, in the past we had only 100 lights on our 4 1/2 foot tree. This is six feet tall and we thought it deserved more. Last fall, we had bought the tree at Seasonal Concepts. They also had all their lights on sale. James took a fancy to some mini-lights that had large bulb size covers over them, seventy in total on two strings. So he put them on the tree in a spiral pattern like the red on a candy cane. Then with two strings of 100 lights each we circled the tree and filled in the gaps between the bigger lights.

And we put "Little Blaze," the star on.

By that time it was after ten so we have quit. James will bring up the ornament boxes tonight or tomorrow and I can decorate the tree and do the tinsel when I get home.

The Christmas Rush

Zowee, what a day!

• Post awful: Mailed one package and got air mail postage for a card/letter to England.
• Since I came up with a sudden "you need to use the bathroom now" "message," I went to the closest place: the library. On the way out I passed the Christmas book section and ended up coming out with three I hadn't read. Not bad for less than 15 minutes.
• Linens & Things: Table runner in Christmas theme (bordered in red; holly garlands against ecru with damask-pattern background, which at home replaced pale eggshell runner with autumn leaves and cutwork around the edges; only changed runner and put Christmas basket on table and entire mood of table has changed) and one of those Squid electrical plug things (for porch to straighten out Christmas lights).
• Borders: Using my Holiday Rewards points/E-rewards points and my personal shopping day (and a 25 percent off coupon on one book), got Taaschen's All-American Ads 1940s, two Christmas books on the remainder table for $4 each, and the December Yankee for...nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. And have $16.71 left over.
• Costco: Gasoline for car, multipack of Doublemint gum for the car. Also "ate lunch." Costco gives lots of samples. Good Costco!
• Michael's: bought silver picks at half price and a small wreath for 40 percent off. Also two blocks of styrofoam to make a hill (more below) with my 40 off coupons. Also go next door to Petsmart to buy Willow an new hedgehog toy and "cookies" for Christmas.
• Dollar Tree: Bought big red bow for $1.
• Food Depot: Bananas and yogurt.
• Dollar General: A few special Christmas cards and also an old-world Santa (I had an uneven number, which I didn't like).

Then I was pooped and went home, whereupon:

• Washed a load of clothes. Made bed.
• Fastened silver picks and big red bow on wreath with the wretched floral wire (at least I found it <g>) and hung it from the porch rails. Used Squid to make sense of all the cords on the porch. Small Christmas tree with blue LED lights is now where it belongs. I also use the floral wire to attach winter branches to the little sled I bought at A.C. Moore in Virginia. That is also on the porch and completes the Christmas decorations there.
• Used a knife to carve the styrofoam into a quasi-sledding hill for a couple of the figures for the Christmas village, which has been set up on the mantel. These figures of kids playing in the snow and their snowman weren't showing up because they were behind the bus. Definitely not a real hill, because the boys sledding would kill themselves coming down the slope, but with trees and some silver glitter, looks okay. Village is now almost finished except for a couple of flags. I put up two signs, one in front of the church that says "BINGO, Friday night, Proceeds go to the USO" and another in front of the WENN building that says "TONIGHT, Hilary Booth in A Christmas Carol."
• Put up the mistletoe. (Hey, I have my priorities here...LOL.)
• Played with Pidgie and "Girlfriend" for a half hour.
• Started sorting new ornaments together as prep for putting up the tree tomorrow, but didn't finish.

By this time James was due home from work (it was his monthly weekend work day), so I was ready and waiting at the door for him. We went back to Border's and I got the Taaschen All-American Ads 1930 with another 25 percent off coupon, the rest of the Holiday Rewards/personal shopping day, and two $5  Preferred Reader coupons. Total paid: $1.07. And I still have three $5 coupons left. Yay!

Then James treated me to my birthday dinner early: we went to Olive Garden. Yum.

CHRISTMAS BOOK REVIEW: Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot

It started in our elementary school library, which had a good collection of the popular books at the time: Beverly Cleary, the Danny Dunn and Miss Pickerel fantasy books, the standards like Little Women and Treasure Island. But my favorites were always the animal stories. I coveted them all, especially Charlotte Baker's The Green Poodles, but held a special fondness for Frances Frost's three books about the Clark family in Vermont and their pony, Windy Foot. (I didn't find out until I was an adult that there was a fourth Windy Foot book.)

Although Windy Foot is always in the titles, he's not the total focus of the series or some type of super-Lassie equine. The stories really revolve around the Clark family: Mom, Dad, the main character, elder son Toby, younger sister Betsy and little Johnny, who makes rhymes when he's happy, and their faithful farmhand Cliff. It's post World War II in the Clarks' world; they live on a dairy farm near the Crooked River and live with electricity in the home, but a wood stove for cooking and heating, and lanterns in the barn and stable. There's no television, just a radio, and they own a truck but often use a buggy (or in the winter a sleigh) to get to town; in short, like a lot of small farm families back in the late 1940s. When Toby and Betsy and even little Johnny aren't busy doing chores, they hike, ski, swim, gather nuts, have fun with their friends or shopping in town—all without the help of electronic conveniences.

In the Christmas edition of the Clarks' adventures, they are eagerly awaiting their friends the Burnhams, who will be visiting for the holidays. Toby awaits the gifts he's bought from the mail-order catalog and rebuilds a big sleigh into a smaller one for Windy Foot, Mom cooks up Christmas goodies, the kids hunt up evergreens and berries to deck the house, and Dad and Cliff keep their eye on a cow about to give birth. The family attends a carol sing in town and does Christmas shopping at the general store. But danger is looming, too: a bear is stalking the neighborhood and threatening the livestock.

The Clarks' lives sound hard, with the farm taking first attention. But after reading about their enjoyable Christmas preparations, you almost wish you were out there pitching hay with them. Much recommended for lovers of New England Christmases and just plain old-fashioned enjoyment, no matter what age you are.

Tree Trimming

Not yet for the big tree, but I put up the small tree with our Hallmark miniatures last night. Formerly these ornaments were on a small tree less than a foot high and that little tree set on top of our ceppo; the setup looked like this last year.

This year I bought the Hallmark miniatures tree for the ornaments since I had a coupon. The tree itself is twice the size of the other tree, so I was sure I'd have blank spaces. I had bought about eleven small ornaments (two sleds, four stockings, and five candy canes) at A.C. Moore, but knew if the tree turned up short there were more mini ornaments at Hobby Lobby.

Gad. I managed to fit the mini Rudolph ornament and the Santas from many lands set from this year, but even with the tree being larger I couldn't fit the Peanuts nativity set on the branches in front (I usually put plain lightbulb-shaped ornaments on the back of the tree since no one looks at it)! I guess I will just set them up in front of the tree like a real manger set.

First I cleaned all the fall things out of the foyer and put them into a Xerox box for storage in the garage until January. Then I dusted and polished the furniture down there to start with a clear pallet. I decorated the tree upstairs while watching White House Christmas 2006 (good heavens, it's red). After I put the ornaments on I put a red-and-green garland on the tree that Mom used to have on her little Christmas tree. I am not satisfied with the garland; I am terrible with garlands since I am a tinsel person. But the tree is too small for tinsel, I think, unless I trim it a little, and I had wanted to use Mom's garland. James suggests the garland, even though it's only 1/2 inch wide, is a bit heavy for the tree. I think he's right.

Maybe I'll trim the tinsel after all...

There are some pseudo-boxes underneath, and also the little toy airplane and the lion and the lamb underneath (the ones you see in the ceppo photo). I still need a cloth or doily to go under it.

I have put Christmas plaques up in the place where I hang seasonal plaques, and underneath that the caroling figures of "Anne Shirley" and "Diana Barry." Two angels sit on the tier table, right now with a Christmas cake between them.

The wooden reindeer I bought at Christmas in Lithia is at the foot of the divider where the bouquet of fall leaves usually is. He looks a bit bare. Above him sits a dangly-legged figure I saw at Michael's and just had to get. It is a woodland figure of a moose sitting down. He has a scarf around his neck and sitting on his left shoulder is a squirrel.

As a child of the 1960s, you can see why this called to me. <g>

It's not finished yet, so there's no pic.

The remainder of the ceppo is upstairs on the china cabinet, with the nativity set and the St. Nicholas in the woods figure in its usual place. I have placed a small collection of resin and wood old-world Santas around it.

The table is still in fall colors and I should get to it next, except I am really anxious to get the village on the mantelpiece after all that work!

(So did anyone catch the Mythbusters holiday edition last night? What a riot, especially Adam and Jamie's Rube Goldberg Christmas device triggered by Mentos and Diet Pepsi [those guys are really enamoured with that chemical reaction...]!)

St. Nicholas in the News in Europe

Saint Nicholas: The Bearded Legend

Christmas Backlash: Saving St. Nicholas from Santa Claus

On the other side of the coin:

Vienna Kindergartens Saying No to St. Nicholas and Santa's Evil Sidekick Gives Jolly Fright to Kids, about the Austrian St. Nicholas' companion Krampus.

Lil' Devils Take Over "Mikulas", about children dressing up on St. Nicholas Eve.

The Most Famous Christmas Poem of All

Pat Pflieger's essay on Clement Clarke Moore and "A Visit from St. Nicholas."

(Pat has a super site about 19th century children's reading. Please visit!)

Cards Ahoy!

I had signed all of them on Monday night and finished addressing and sealing and stamping them (literally; I found old-world Santa cards that matched the old-world Santa banner that is out in front of the house and they came with silver seals) last night and James has popped them into the mail this morning. I would have had them out this weekend except that I had not finished the letter to go into some of them—several folks told me they missed our annual Christmas letter, so I did one again this year—and that I had no Christmas labels (no labels period!) to print the addresses on. I stopped at Office Depot on the way home.

It was nice because I found out the only labels they had came in a kit with stationery, which I found odd because OD usually has at least a half dozen different label designs available. I asked an employee about it and he said that this was all he had. Well, we have a color laser printer and Christmas icons, so I asked him to direct me to the plain labels. While I was making my selection, he evidently kept looking for Christmas labels for me and came up with the prettiest silver snowflake labels! That was very nice of him.

And they match the stamps!

I still need to go to the post awful to mail one package and to get air mail postage for the card that is going to England, plus get two Hanukkah cards. I hope to hand out a few cards in person on Friday; if not they will just go in the mail.

Watched The Waltons: "The Best Christmas"—their best Christmas episode—and the two documentaries, British Christmas Past and History Channel's Christmas Unwrapped, which featured both Penne Restad and Stephen Nissenbaum (the only one they missed was Karal Ann Marling) while I was processing the cards. Nice way to spend an evening.

St. Nicholas Eve

Have you left out your shoes tonight and some hay for St. Nicholas' white horse?

Catholic Culture : Liturgical Year : St. Nicholas Eve and Catholic Culture : Liturgical Year : St. Nicholas Eve (Activity)

St. Nicholas Eve in the Netherlands

A Dutch Blog Talks About St. Nicholas Eve

Who Was St. Nicholas?

St. Nicholas and Krampus

British Airways Discusses St. Nicholas

Celebrating St. Nicholas in England

Always "Remembering WENN"

Over the years I have looked at "Christmas villages," those miniature worlds where all is merry and bright, with different levels of envy. My mother-in-law has a corker of a village setup in the corner of her living room, but I've been reluctant to get that elaborate and we really don't have the room (except perhaps by taking everything out of the foyer). On the other hand, a few homes on the mantelpiece wouldn't have been bad, except that there was really no room at the old house for that sort of thing. The fireplace was of fieldstone with a narrow, rough board for a mantel.

The new mantel is white and pristine and begging for a village.

I have observed over the years that the majority of Christmas villages tend to have a Victorian theme, with horses and carriages, men in top hats and women in long skirts. However, I noticed this year that several of the stores had 1940s-looking figures and vehicles with their Christmas villages, so I decided to make a 1940s village. I have a grocery store, tree lot (with period trailer), church, post office, and a house where a soldier is just arriving home and greeting his girl. Kids play in the recesses between the buildings, the grocer sweeps in front of his store, the man running the tree lot waves at the bus, loaded with old-fashioned valises and suitcases in its luggage rack and having just dropped off our soldier, passes by, and a family listens delightedly to two nuns singing Christmas carols while Father studies his Bible. (Right now this is all set up on the library floor.)

From the internet I have found old war posters plus I have made a couple of signs, so the grocery has a poster advertising war bonds, a 48-star flag that James found, and a sign "Bring your fats here." The post office has a recruiting poster for the Army Air Corps and a Red Cross "give blood" sign, and of course our soldier's home has a blue star flag on the house.

But there was also something else I was determined to do if I found the right building: to convert one of them into the building where WENN, the Pittsburgh radio station from Remember WENN, had its studios. Finding a building was actually harder than I thought. I was looking for a tall office building type and what I was finding was toy shops, candy stores, restaurants and other "quaint-shoppe" edifices.

Finally I found the right building. James helped me and this is what we came up with (these are linked rather than posted directly in the blog because the photos I took are large).

I started with Lemax's 3rd Precinct Building. We also bought an oil derrick that would go with a model train setup and James placed a pointed aerial on it and painted it silver.

Then he removed the interior scene with the policeman at his desk. There wasn't much else we could do with it, but I turned the desk so it was in front of the window at the side and glued the policeman back down on the floor, which James painted a solid brown. He also painted the "jail door" a solid brown, and on the inside wall which you could see from the window, I put a miniscule menu. Finally I printed up some "gingham curtains" on the color printer and pasted them in the window. This became "The Buttery," the restaurant the folks from WENN patronized.

Then, with the printer, I replaced the signs that made it a police station and added a Red Cross poster in the window and a signboard for the Buttery. James glued the tower to the roof and I applied the call letters to the tower (these are lettering for scrapbooks).

This is now what the building looks like, except for the modern NO PARKING sign still on the lamppost:

WENN Building

Here's a (little darker) picture of the finished product, but with that pesky NO PARKING sign replaced.

Completed WENN Building

The darker pic shows the "gingham" a little better.

There's a funny story about the antenna at the very top. As I was taking that second picture, although I lifted it in place carefully, I snapped the hair-thin thing off. James shook his head, then disappeared back downstairs to his workroom and returned a few minutes later with a new antenna. "This one is flexible," he told me. "Oh, what did you use?" "It's a bristle from a hairbrush, spraypainted." That's my guy!

This took us most of Saturday night from concept to conclusion, but it was quite fun. I know why people with train sets get so involved with setting up the scenery!

Buon Natale

A page devoted to the VALENTE-DiRENZO family, originally from Gambatesa, Italy, features these two pages about Italian Christmases.

The Christmas Zampognaro

and its sister page, Christmas Eve and More Shepherds

This live365.com page plays only Italian Christmas music.

Sorry, to me, "Mob Christmas" isn't really "Italian Christmas music."

CHRISTMAS BOOK(S) REVIEW: A Louisa May Alcott Christmas and Louisa May Alcott's Christmas Treasury

Some years ago Stephen Hines found the Louisa May Alcott short story "Patty's Place" in an old children's magazine. Alcott was very much in the news at that point as one of her previously unknown adult "blood and thunder" stories had been found and recently published. "Patty's Place" was renamed "A Quiet Little Woman" and sold as a gift book with two other Christmas tales. A few years later, Hines published "Kate's Choice," another story with Christmas providing the pivotal scene (a story a bit akin to Eight Cousins) with two other Alcott Christmas stories.

In 2002, the aformentioned six stories as well as some others, for a total of nineteen stories and poems, were published as Louisa May Alcott's Christmas Treasury. Two years later, Harper Festival paperbacks published A Louisa May Alcott Christmas with twenty stories and poems.

The two books have some overlap: the same ten stories appear in both. One story is known as "What Love Can Do" in the Hines book and "How It All Happened" in the Harper paperback, and the wording is slightly different. The Harper paperback "cheats" a bit since the first two stories, "An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving" and "The Silver Party," are actually Thanksgiving stories. Also, there is a piece called "Cousin Tribulation's Story" that is basically the tale of the March girls giving away their breakfast in Little Women with different names to the characters (and the father character appearing).

The collection in the Hines' book is rather marred by his heavy-handed afterwards to several of the stories where he moralizes endlessly by explaining what Alcott was trying to get across and comparing the situations in her stories to her real-life. Very snooze-making and I don't think Alcott requires afterwards to explain herself! One of the stories in the Hines' volume is the Christmas chaper from Little Women and "Becky's Christmas Dream" is curious in that it's the same basic story as "Patty's Place/A Quiet Little Woman," but shorter and with fantasy dream elements where Patty's story is played straight. "Gwen's Adventure in the Snow" is also misplaced, as it is not a Christmas story, but simply a winter story.

However, if you are an Alcott fan, both these books are worth finding, although I advise you look for a used copy of the Hines book as it is quite pricy. I do wish some nice publisher would put out an omnibus volume of all Louisa May Alcott's short stories for children, from her contributions to Merry's Museum and St. Nicholas (including the "Spinning Wheel Stories") to the tales in her final books like the Aunt Jo's Scrap Bag volumes and Lulu's Library. I'd certainly be interested in purchasing something like that!

Incidentally, I rewatched the American Girls' movie Samantha: An American Girl Holiday last night and have read all the books, and I find it amusing to note the modern "rewriting" of history as regarding orphan children being adopted. Alcott's stories about orphans, especially "Becky's Christmas Dream" and "Patty's Place," more correctly show the children as being lucky enough to be taken into a household as a servant and kindly treated: given good clothing, schooling, and respected, but as a servant, not as a member of the family. Children from orphans' homes in the 1800s were rarely adopted as "children," they were adopted as help. Situations like Anne of Green Gables, where the child actually becomes a member of the household, were quite rare. Had the Samantha books been written in Alcott's time, Nellie O'Malley and her sisters probably would have received good treatment and schooling at Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia's home—but they wouldn't have been family members, they still would have been servants.

First Sunday of Advent Activites

Each year I try to find something Christmas-y to do each weekend of Advent. One of the things I have been hoping to do since we moved to Marietta was go on their yearly Pilgrimage of Historic Homes. Each year they pick out six homes which range from the mid-1800s to the late 1920s, the homes are decked out with Christmas decorations, and then tours are let in the first weekend of December. Other years I've either forgotten to get the tickets on time or just didn't feel like going, like last year.

Friday I managed to make it by the Marietta Welcome Center to pick up two tickets. Along with the six homes, all the public buildings associated with the historic society are open, including the Marlow House, which is now a bed and breakfast/functions site and the Root House, which we pass almost weekly going up to Barrett Parkway, circa the 1840s.

So today was the day: we parked the car and boarded our school bus shuttle that would take us up to the Cherokee and Church Streets neighborhood, which is fairly well-to-do, with homes in the $500,000+ range in general.

Our first stop was the Montgomery House, which was the oldest of the homes, built in 1847. It had been remodeled in the 1920s and a second story added (and then recently updated), so it no longer looked like any type of "frontier" house. At one time it was owned by the first female attorney in Cobb County. The house was remodeled within the last ten years, and the kitchen was completely redone (very much James' dream kitchen, with lots of room and an island). The unusual thing was that the house had two kitchens, the new remodeled one and an older kitchen in a separate room which reminded me very much of the kitchens in the triple-deckers some of my relatives had, beadboard cupboards and all. This was the least holiday-decorated because the house is for sale.

As we emerged from the house, there was a blue 1949 Chevrolet pickup truck just out the door. It had three owners and only 130,000 miles on it. The man who owned the house had not reconstructed it, but just reconditioned it a little. As we were standing there admiring it, a man bounced up and said eagerly, "Would you like to see the engine?" and popped open the hood; very plain and simple as these original engines were and clean as a whistle! Turned out it was the owner.

The next house was the Neel Reed-Brumby House (Reed was the architect). It had a side porch and also a garden that were reached by French doors that were made to look like windows. This also had a big remodeled kitchen. Christmas touches were everywhere in this house, and the Christmas tree on the sun porch had two different size LED light strings. The side garden was called the Charleston Garden and had stone paving with a fountain.

The third house we saw, the Latimer-Hill-Register House, was the one we both thought was the most comfortable-looking. They had some antique things, but nothing that was too pretentious. It had at one time been owned by the mother of Virginia Hill, who was gangster "Bugsy" Seigel's mistress; Hill paid $11,000 for the house in the 1930s, and paid for it in cash with $100 bills! The present owners had taken the back of the house off and a second story was added as well. This had a big open kitchen with a grill/stovetop and other neat things. The Christmas trees here had themes and the one in the guest room (and the guest room itself) were decorated with black and white Scotties (mostly belonging to the owner's mother), and another in the kitchen was just Christmas pickles. Upstairs there was a Grinch tree, which the docent said was a recent collection the family had started.

Outside the home where there had once been a front door (the steps are still there but they lead to nothing), there was a small pond. We counted one...two...three koi in the pond. Ohmygosh, "three little fishies in an itty-bitty pool"!

The Northcutt-Shilling-Fazzio House was decorated in a more eclectic style. For instance, on the porch they had the frame of an old sofa—no upholstery or stuffing, just the wood framework—wound with Christmas greens. There was a piano in the foyer and a tree in the big den off the kitchen decorated with old picture frames. A tiny little office was just off the stairs and just off that a tiny little laundry room where the owners had strung C-9 lights and then clothespinned old underwear to the "clothesline." The back porch had a big tree decorated with old toys and four huge artificial bells in red and white.

The Northcutt-Whitaker-Gillis House is on Church Street. When James and I come home from supper at Sweet Tomatoes/a trip to JoAnn/visit to the Borders at Kennesaw we usually drive by Church Street and there are several large houses that I love. Well, it turned out this home was the one that was my favorite, a big square house with a big front and side porch and a pool house in the back, painted grey with burgundy and hunter green trim.

It is just as lovely inside. The owners have enlarged and restored it. It has front and back stairs, beautiful hardwood floors, enclosed porches, and wonderful decorations. This had a tree in each room including a lovely feather tree as tall as me decorated with acorns and cross-stitch ornaments that a family friend has made over the years for the owners' children. A big glass curio cabinet contains little doll-like figures from Germany. On the wall upstairs after you climb the stairs, 25 years' worth of the children's pictures with Santa are displayed.

The funniest thing was in the remodeled kitchen, which is beautiful without being pretentious. There was a photo on the counter of the kitchen before it was remodeled; the owners had entered the room in a Good Housekeeping "ugliest kitchen in the United States" contest in which the prize was a remodeling and had thought they had won, but they only got a cash prize, which they used to start a remodel. Boy, was it ugly; as the docent commented, "I'd hate to see the kitchen that won!"

The last house, Red Door Cottage, took us the longest to get in. It was small, the line was long, and they only allowed about ten people at the time in. This was pocket-sized, with small lovely rooms with antiques, trees and bowls and wreaths of antique ornaments, paintings done by the owner's father (quite a watercolor artist!), and yet another butler's pantry (almost all of these houses had butler's pantries). A small room at the back of the house had been added in the 1940s and the owner uses this as her office; the bulletin board she uses is made of the original front door from the house!

Just slightly (LOL) footsore (we'd been walking for over two hours at this point), we rode the bus back to the Marlow House. This was originally a boarding house and now is a Bed & Breakfast and is also used for functions like showers, etc. You could see the rooms upstairs (long steep stairs!), but the third floor was closed off. Downstairs was open and they were serving sandwiches and drinks and selling gifts.

Finally we went to the Root House. Again, we have often passed the Root House on our way somewhere, as it is on the main road. It was built by the first pharmacist in Marietta, but not at the location it is now. It was "turned" once on its previous lot and then moved out to its present position in 1990. This house has been "brought back" to what it looked like in 1850 and is decorated for a simple Christmas with a small cedar tree with candles and homemade ornaments in the parlor "best room." The north room, across the hall, was the family chamber; they had furniture on casters so they could eat and even sleep in the room. There was a room in the back which had the history of the family and relics dug from the original site and also sold some books on cookery and history of the area. Upstairs was the family bedroom, and we do mean family: Mom, dad, and six kids slept upstairs all in one room (grandma slept downstairs with the new baby because it was warmer down there). The house has young ladies as docents in the different rooms and they give quite a different speal from the usual older guides in historic houses. The young lady in the bedroom was quite funny talking about keeping clean, discouraging bugs—apparently bedbugs don't like chinaberry berries or lavender—and getting dressed in 1850.

I thought something was quite funny: in the parlor and the north room, they had some of what I thought was hideous pink and blue on white, "60s-looking" flowered wallpaper. I wondered at the garish color scheme until the young lady in the north room showed us the wall where they show you how the wallpaper was put on. Boards were just hammered on the wall lengthwise, plain rough boards. This was covered by muslin tacked on. Then the wallpaper was applied to the muslin. She showed us a board of the original wallpaper and darned if, under all that yellowing and water staining, there was that bright pink-and-blue-on-white flower pattern!

The kitchen, as was common with most old Southern homes (I think old homes period to some extent, but particularly in the South, where you didn't have to tramp across snow during the winter to get to the kitchen), was a separate building, so if the kitchen caught fire from the cooking, the whole house didn't go up with it. They have a wood stove in there and bake in it, and we were able to sample gingerbread boys that were cooked in the wood stove, just like Polly Pepper might have baked in the old stove at the Little Brown House!

We also got to sample beaten biscuits, baked in the same stove, which I have read about in old books—they pop up a lot in St. Nicholas stories—but had never seen. They were only made for special visitors in the old days because after you mixed the biscuit dough, you had to beat it with a mallet 300 times! (500 times if the company was very special!) In the kitchen was a "labor-saving" gadget for making beaten biscuits; it looked like an old-fashioned washer wringer and you only had to run the dough through it one hundred times! Then you cut them out with a cutter or glass about the size of a quarter and baked them.

They were actually quite good, tasting like a biscuit but denser with a tiny crunch, although they look a lot like a Vermont common cracker, which are crunchy and not biscuity. (The docent told us that it's easy to make them today; you just toss the dough in a Cuisinart for two minutes! I bet those ladies of 1850 would have loved that!)

So we walked back to the truck, having intended to go to the museum, which was also included in the price of the tour, but it was 3:40 p.m. and the museum would close in 20 minutes. Oh, well. Great tour!

Read more about the tour and the homes at The Marietta Pilgrimage - A Christmas Home Tour.

"Glow of the Season"

One of the most beautiful and evocative symbols of the Advent season is the traditional Advent wreath. You can create your own unique Advent wreath along with your family by adding candles, bows, and other creative adornments to a real or artificial evergreen wreath.

The circular evergreen wreath symbolizes God's neverending love and grace. The candles—typically three purple and one rose—represent hope, peace, joy, and love. Real wreaths made from yew, pine, cedar, fir, laurel, and holly are especially fragrant and lovely. Once you have decorated your wreath, set aside a special time as a family to display it in a place of honor on your table, hearth or mantel.

Celebrate Christmas

"Glow of the Season"
An Advent Lighting Prayer
by Sharon Hudnell

Lord of this Holiest Season,
We ask Your blessing for those gathered here tonight as we light
   these candles for Advent.
As we illuminate this season with the glow of hope,
   Let us remember those who waited in father for a Messiah
   And our own hope of His return.
As we illuminate this season with the glow of peace,
   Let us remember the quiet strength of the Virgin
   And live the message of peace Her Son gave the world.
As we illuminate this season with the glow of joy,
   Let us remember the eleation of the shepherds one Holy Night
   And embrace the joy of sharing this moment with those dearest to us.
As we illuminate this season with the glow of love,
   Let us remember the Child, given in all His tenderness to the world
      as our light through every darkness
   And His simplest commandment: Love one another.
As we celebrate this Advent,
   Let the glow of hope, peace, joy, and love illuminate our hearts
   And shine through the world like a candle in the night.

Apart Again

These are the Christmas albums that comprised the set I bought for my mother two years ago and sadly had to bring home last summer. While the treatments of the songs are nothing special, they bring a bygone Christmas to life—and the old commercial contained herein are enjoyable as well (except several are from June and July and you can tell positively with at least one!).

I'll Be Home for Christmas

An American Christmas

Home for the Holidays

For more nostalgic holiday music, recommended is "A Vintage Christmas Cracker" containing both American and British Christmas songs from 1915 through 1949.

And also "Christmas at the Almanac Music Hall," which sounds as if it were played and recorded at an old VFW hall or grange meeting, recalling simpler but heartfelt celebration.

"The Meteorology of Love"

I saw this after I bought my Christmas card stamps today.

Every Christmas,
as my mailbox
is snowed in
with cards,
I shovel aside
the expected,
keep looking
for the friends
who don't write;
who've moved, don't
forward their mail,
or stop
sending cards;
somehow become lost.

My husband says
to think of the cards
I do receive;
Kodaks of plum-
cheeked babies,
long, long letters;
to think of the friendships
that last, skein back
through years, fit
like old sweaters.

But I still think
of the friends
that drift away
like snowflakes,
their loss
a wind-
chill factor:
the cast off stitches,
the unwound yarn.

...by Barbara Crooker

Welcome to December!

December Holidays - School of the Seasons

CHRISTMAS BOOK REVIEW: Classic Christmas: True Stories of Holiday Cheer and Goodwill

Edited by Helen Szymanski. These are short, true stories of people discovering the Christmas spirit, in the vein of the Chicken Soup for the Soul volumes. This volume includes the unique perk of profiling some of the small towns where the stories take place, from the area's founding to its heyday and what the town is like today.

If you enjoy the type of story described, this is the book for you. It has a delightful "old world" illustrated cover and is nicely bound; it would make a good gift book for someone who likes heartwarming Christmas stories. It's nothing out of the ordinary, however, so if you're looking for "something different," it may not be your cup of tea.

Monday Madness

Let's talk about holidays... Depending on where you live and what religion you are, you may celebrate different holidays and at different times of the year than others. But most of us do celebrate at least one holiday a year. Let's share! =)

1. Which of the holidays that you celebrate, do you feel is the most important?

Most important? Thanksgiving, because it's important to stop and say thank you for whatever good or positive things happened to you during the year. You don't have to say it to a supreme being and it doesn't have to be a prayer. But just being alive is a reason for thanks.

2. Which holiday do you most enjoy?

Ah, now that's Christmas. I love the colors and the music and the lights and getting together with folks you love. Gifts are nice, but they aren't important.

3. Is there one holiday that your family tries to get together every year? If so, which one?

We get together with James' family on Christmas, just not always Christmas day, because it's such a hassle. James usually has to work the day after and we can't just sit and relax and talk because we have to drive the nearly two hours home early to get ready for work the next day and the traffic is crazy. (I'll never forget that head-on collision I so narrowly avoided several years ago on Christmas morning. The thought of it makes my skin crawl.) Any one of the twelve days of Christmas is appropriate!

4. Share one special memory from a past holiday.

Oh, golly, this is the one I always talk about. You're free to skip to the next question if you've heard this one more than once.

When I was a girl we always went to my Grandfather's (Papá, Dad's father) on Christmas Eve and later Christmas Day (occasionally for dinner on Christmas). This was always down in the cellar, which was partially belowground; you entered from a door in the back and stepped down two steps. This was a average-sized room with an old bedroom dresser used to keep table linens in (at Christmas it had candy dishes and plates of cookies on top), a big table that held at least a dozen people, a black old woodstove that had been converted to gas, a built-in china cabinet and a old deep sink. In an alcove under the stairs was my Grandma's old treadle sewing machine and on a tall shelf an old Bakelite radio. (This was only half the room; the other half was partitioned behind boards and was the boiler and clotheslines to dry clothes on wet days and the summer clothes and some shelves with tools and nails, and also an old icebox.) The stone walls were painted grey (the cabinets were a dark red and made of beadboard) and in one corner was the door to Papá's frigid-in-winter wine cellar (Papá made his own wine, including a rich deep burgundy that I miss every time I make wine biscuits). Probably anyone would have seen it as homely and even shabby, but I loved it. My Aunty Margaret would cook quantities of macaroni and dozens of Italian cookies and we'd all eat around the big table which was covered with a new oilcloth every year (but you could check underneath for previous year's patterns, like layers in a archeological dig).

We would save pennies for weeks and then bring a bag and everyone would play Po-ke-no, a pot each for center, corners, and "bingo." Then all the men would play poker while we kids sat and listened to the women talk.

At that point I would go upstairs, ostensibly to the bathroom on the second floor, but always because I wanted to see the house all quiet and glowing for Christmas. The upstairs hadn't been redecorated since the late 40s or something like that and it was like stepping into a time machine. The kitchen had metal cabinets and a big old Roper stove that had been bought for my grandmother before she died in the late 1950s, but she seldom got to use it because everyone ate downstairs. Aunty Margaret took care of the house and the kitchen table was always covered with a pretty checked cloth and had little decorative candy dishes on it: Christmas candy and torrone and these citrus candy slices in lemon, orange and tangerine. Next to the kitchen was a room called "the den" that had an old sleeper sofa and a green linoleum floor and not much else, but if you went through the glass door of the kitchen to the front of the house there was the dining room, with heavy brown Victorian-like table and chairs and sideboards and the front window where the Christmas tree always stood. Next to the dining room was the parlor with its old-fashioned reddish wallpaper and there was always an uncle who had come upstairs, ostensibly to check the football scores but in reality to get away from the racket, who had fallen asleep in the chair or on the sofa with the lights low and the television murmuring.

All the lights were off elsewhere except for the tree and the candles in the window. It was like some magical place where you might step through the gateway of time if you just knew the way and come out in another era. I always liked to sit on the floor and look up through the tree from the bottom. With the tinsel and the big C7 bulbs and the old ornaments it was in itself a glittering passage to Times-Gone-Past. It was a good place to sit and think about Christmas and the people below and the years they had seen: the rising fortunes of the Twenties, the Depression, the sacrifice of World War II, the schizophrenic Fifties.

Miss it. Hurts sometimes.

5. Name one holiday coming up, that you're really looking forward to, and why.

Well, Christmas, silly. :-) Our first in the new house. We can finally be in the same room with the Christmas tree, instead of it being upstairs and seeing it going up and downstairs and on Christmas Eve only. And a little Christmas village; always wanted a small one. And the Twelfth Night party.

Maybe someday I'll even do the cake with the bean in it. :-)

CHRISTMAS BOOK REVIEW: The Christmas Tree Book

Back in November of 2003, I reviewed this book by Phillip V. Snyder; I had first read it from the library.

I also had read the library's copy of The Christmas Tree Book some time ago, and when I discovered I could purchase it used—since it's out of print, used is the best you can do—for $1 online, I immediately snapped it up.

Snyder again uses magazines and newspapers of the era (when possible, since he goes back to the 15th century) to trace the history of the Christmas tree and its two important festoons, the ornaments and the lights. This includes a fascinating section on the Christmas cookies that were used to decorate the tree, the story of how the Germans' tabletop tree became the floor-to-ceiling American variety, and the trend from candles to "lighting outfits" (do you know that one of the things that caused the decline of the Christmas tree candle was the refusal of insurance companies to honor policies if the fire was caused by a "known danger," i.e. tipped candles on the tree?). Snyder even talks about the rather unsavory conditions under which those beautiful kugels and other German ornaments were created back when Frank Woolworth first encountered them to bring them to the U.S. If you are interested in the history of Christmas tree ornaments or decorating, this book is definitely worth hunting up. Comes with dozens of photos (both black and white and color) of vintage Christmas tree ornaments.

A Season of Light...and Smoke?

Saw more people putting up decorations today and bringing trees home. We've just been buying and planning. :-) The lietmotif of the entire weekend has been people burning leaves. Maybe where we lived before (only a few miles away!) no one did it because of laws or something. Everyone around here has been burning leaves or having a wood fire, despite how warm it's been during the day. At one point when we were driving home last night the smoke was so bad that our eyes were watering and we were coughing. There was literally a pall of smoke over everything. We saw at least a half dozen people burning leaves today within a mile or two of our house. They are excavating an old farm on Olive Springs Road to be a development and the smoke was hanging over the torn-up soil.

This wouldn't be so bad except we have the fans on in the bedroom because it's been so warm. Our bedroom reeks of burning leaves and woodsmoke.

Great Site to Read On "Stir Up Sunday"

The Christmas Archives by Countess Maria Hubert von Staufer

CHRISTMAS BOOK REVIEW: Christmas Dogs: A Literary Companion

What's more Christmasy than that ideal Christmas puppy sitting under the tree, his neck tied with a beautiful red bow, his gleaming large eyes gazing soulfully at you?

The ideal puppy is just that, idealized, since he's more likely to be knocking the ornaments off the tree, tearing open the presents, or leaving his own "present" on the rug. But that's a puppy and that's why we love them.

This book has the cute Christmas puppy in a Santa hat on its cover and I'd like to say the text lives up to the cover, but this book in general comes off as a bargain-basement version of a Chicken Soup for the Soul book (in fact, the first story is actually from a Chicken Soup volume).

Not that most of the stories aren't touching. Several stories, including "The Christmas After the Wildfires," deal with animal agencies helping both animals and people. There's a Christmas-themed chapter from My Dog Skip and the final story, the one bit of fiction in the volume, is the "Christmas Eve" chapter from One Hundred and One Dalmatians, which most people are probably more familiar with as a Disney film. The Shel Silverstein poem included is amusing.

But so many of the stories are odd or just dull. I couldn't make out heads or tails (pun intended) of "Nice Doggy," which begins "The other day my Welsh springer spaniel, Cooper, gave me a manicure," and just gets odder from there. "Christmas Memories," taken from Southern Fried Divorce, I guess was supposed to be funny. I thought it came off like a bad skit on Blue Collar TV. The one rock-hard reliable offering was the James Herriot piece about Tricki Woo, but that doesn't even take place at Christmastime. Neither does "Neighbors," from Dog is My Co-Pilot, which mentions a Christmas card, but that's about it.

I'd say this was a "buy off the bargain table" type book if the price is cheap enough, but that's just me. I got it for $3.45, which I guess was worth it.

The Wearin' O' the Black (Friday, That Is)

When the alarm rang at six, I wandered out to the living room and took the ad scraps I'd cut from the paper yesterday into the bathroom with me.

It convinced me there wasn't anything I wanted That Damn Bad. :-) So I went back to bed until James' alarm rang.

He went off to work (his phone rang once and it wasn't even a "real call") and I went to Lowe's, where they had various holiday containers on sale for $4.99. Since the cheapest I've seen those tall skinny giftwrap containers has been $8.96 (that was JoAnn—at half price!) I grabbed two, one for Christmas wrap and one for presents the rest of the year.

I did wander into the garden center and saw that they had little tabletop-size Frasier firs with container for only $14.95. Boy, was I tempted; I love real Christmas trees. But it would have to live on the porch since I'm allergic. Sigh. Sorry, I don't want bronchitis for Christmas like I did the last time we had a real tree.

With some trepidation, I went to Target. By this time it was almost nine and I expected a mob. There were lots of cars, but absolutely no long lines. Most people were crowded in the electronics department. I was astonished. Anyway, I got sale copies of the special edition of Miracle on 34th Street (with commentary by Maureen O'Hara!), Ice Age 2, and for $5.95, a copy of National Treasure (I don't really like Nicolas Cage, but this movie was just goofy fun enough that I enjoyed it).

Oh, and I got the very last Shark stick vac they had for $10. If it doesn't last long, well, I didn't spend much. It's basically a hand vac with a "power head" and a stick handle that turns it into a little stick vac.

Stopped at Walgreen's to pick up a little "garnish" for a couple of presents and got a red sweatshirt to make Christmasy. Then drove to the elegantly named "the Avenue at West Cobb" (there's also an "Avenue at East Cobb" that has a Borders and a Bed, Bath and Beyond; this one has the Barnes & Noble and the Linens and Things). I assume the partner shopping center also has two big red Christmas ornaments flanking its entrance, too. :-)

Just checked out the magazines and bargain books in B&N, then pondered a high-dollar purchase in Linens, and checked out what the weekend specials were at Hallmark before I committed myself. Then I drove on to the Town Center area and hit Costco for gas before going to Borders.

Turned out the one Christmas CD I wanted from them was not at that Borders, but at all the others. Sigh. Just popped on the freeway and drove down to the Borders that is closest to our house. The CD was the newest Revels release, English and Scottish Christmas and celebratory music. I also got three books on the bargain table: Eloise at Christmastime (sold for $17.95 last year; I got it for $2.99), a book of Christmas stories, recipes and crafts, and a little book of Christmas prayers and poetry.

The newest of Jill Churchill's "Grace and Favor" mysteries was out, so I got that, too, and something called Carpe Demon, which sounded cute: soccer mom is also a demon hunter (think Buffy the vampire slayer grown up). And the November issue of the British version of "Country Living." I love the British version because the American one is cool, but it basically talks about decorating your house in country style and recipes. The British version is about really living in the country and features interviews with smallholders, people who run walking tours and construct buildings or gardens in the old manner, etc. Lots of pics of the countryside.

Came home, tidied the house (it was cleaned for Thanksgiving, so I was home free) and watched Miracle with the commentary on. I can't say that I learned all that much from it, but Maureen O'Hara told a little about how she got the role and how strict the studio was, complimented Natalie Wood's talent, mentioned her other two roles with John Payne, reminisced about Christmas in Ireland, and commented, of course, on the famous "Post Office" scene, which I guess is everyone's favorite scene in the movie--anyway, it is mine! :-) She sounds so well, voice very strong, and she was 86 this summer--bless her!

I watched the colorized version. It was okay. I usually hate colorized movies like poison, but when they said in the liner notes that they had looked at color photos of the actors and Macy's and New York to get the colors right, I decided to try it. Some things were quite good, but they still don't have white flesh yet (the African-American lady who appears briefly as Doris' maid looks as if she was on color film, but the white complexions are still pretty-fake looking). I noticed that in anyone who doesn't have lipstick on, the men and the children, the grey of the black and white comes through the lips and looks unnatural and teeth still look grey. On the other hand, the clothing, wallpapers, upholstery, Christmas trees, and scenery was not too bad. The gold lettering on some of the stores and the gold trim looked best of all.

Also listened to the Revels album and then a couple of other Christmas things while I looked through my books. However, I still hadn't looked through my embroidery threads before James came home. They're on sale 5/$1 at JoAnn and I need to look and see if any of my colors are getting low.

We went to JoAnn anyway. I'll look at the threads tomorrow and go back while he's at his club meeting.

"As Yellow as Gold"

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Here is a pumpkin, fluted, golden,
Written o'er with customs olden
Out of bygone days.
Cinderella's ancient glory,
Sung in song and told in story,
Suits its yellow blaze.

Tables at the first Thanksgiving,
When colonial dames where living,
Shewed its golden sheer.
Still it smiles a friendly greeting
At the happy family meeting
On the feast-day dear

Christmas rooms are gay with holly,
Christmas sees the merry folly
Of the mistletoe.
Easter lilies, pure and stately,
In the springtime bloom sedately,
When soft breezes blow.

Autumn dressed the woods in splendor;
But their colors, rich and tender,
All have passed away.
Now the pumpkin, ripe and mellow,
Keeps a tint of Autumn's yellow
For Thanksgiving Day.

Mary E. Knowlton (1904)

Eeeeek!

High Winds May Blow Out Parade Balloons

Hard to believe they used to release the balloons at the end of the parade for people to find!

Famous Thanksgiving Songs

One secular, one religious.

This is the long version of Lydia Maria Child's "A Boy's Thanksgiving Day," a.k.a. "Over the River and Through the Wood." Nope, they're not going to Grandmother's (or Grandfather's, rather) house for Christmas. A very Northern New England poem!

Over the river, and through the wood,
to Grandfather's house we go;
the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.

Over the river, and through the wood,
to Grandfather's house away!
We would not stop for doll or top,
for 'tis Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river, and through the wood-
oh, how the wind does blow!
It stings the toes and bites the nose,
as over the ground we go.

Over the river, and through the wood.
with a clear blue winter sky,
The dogs do bark and the children hark,
as we go jingling by.

Over the river, and through the wood,
to have a first-rate play.
Hear the bells ring, "Ting a ling ding!"
Hurray for Thanskgiving Day!

Over the river, and through the wood-
no matter for winds that blow;
Or if we get the sleigh upset
into a bank of snow.

Over the river, and through the wood,
to see little John and Ann;
We will kiss them all, and play snowball
and stay as long as we can.

Over the river, and through the wood,
trot fast my dapple gray!
Spring over the ground like a hunting-hound!
For 'tis Thanksgiving Day.

Over the river, and through the wood
and straight through the barnyard gate.
We seem to go extremely slow-
it is so hard to wait!

Over the river, and through the wood-
Old Jowler hears our bells;
He shakes his paw with a loud bow-wow,
and thus the news he tells.

Over the river, and through the wood-
when Grandmother sees us come,
She will say, "O, dear, the children are here,
bring pie for everyone."

Over the river, and through the wood-
now Grandmothers cap I spy!
Hurrah for the fun! Is the pudding done?
Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!

About Lydia Maria Child

We Gather Together

We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known;
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing,
Sing praises to His name: He forgets not his own.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining His kingdom divine
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, wast at our side, All glory be thine!

We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant,
And pray that thou still our defender wilt be.
Let thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!

A Hymn's Long Journey Home:
The Surprising Origins of "We Gather Together," a Thanksgiving Standard

This isn't the version I learned, incidentally. Apparently there is a Catholic version that contains the following verse:

We gather together to sing the Lord's praises,
To worship the Father through Jesus His son.
In this celebration all sing with jubilation;
We are His holy people whose freedom He won.

But I don't remember the rest. I was so very puzzled the first time I watched the America segment "Home From Home" and heard them singing "We Gather Together" with the three verses stated above.

And just for a bit of Thanksgiving jocularity (I can hear William Christopher doing Father Mulcahy now), here's Tom Lehrer's version of that venerable hymn:

We gather together to ask the lord's blessing
For turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce.
It was slightly distressing, but now we're convalescing,
So sing praises to his name and forget not to floss.

Our nearest and dearest we don't want confessing,
It's sort of depressing to have them so near.
Our feelings suppressing for lightly acquiescing,
And perfectly professing we're glad they were here.

We gathered together and got the lord's blessing
Of course we're just guessing 'cause how can you tell?
Our stomachs are bloating, our kidneys nearly floating,
Hellos are very nice, but goodbyes can be swell.

Excitement in the "Big Apple"

They're polishing up the trumpets and doing a last fitting for Santa Claus in New York for the Macy*s Thanksgiving Day Parade (warning: site requires Flash 7).

I still miss the old CBS parades. Originally (or at least when I first watched them in the early 60s) they were hosted by Captain Kangaroo. Then William Conrad took over. He sat on a warm plush "men's study" type set with a big fireplace sipping a toddy as he introduced the different segments, which switched to the guest announcers actually freezing out there in the cold, especially in Toronto (Eaton's Santa Claus Parade) and Detroit (Hudson's Department Store parade). I think the Santa parade is still held, but it's not sponsored by Eaton's anymore (I believe the store has gone out of business). I wonder if they still have the Storybook Land theme for the floats. It seems old hat for today's kids who play Nintendo and listen to I-Pods. I think I read the Detroit parade is still going on, but no longer sponsored by Hudson's. I'm not sure any of the Hudson's stores are still around, but their subsidiary, Target, is everywhere.

The old Gimbels parade, of course, in Philadelphia, is long gone. Macy's (ooops, Macy*s), overcame their old rival years ago and then managed to eat up Atlanta's Davidson's and Rich's stores, Boston's venerable Jordan Marsh and Filenes, and dozens of others. The more famous Philadelphia parade has always been the Mummers' Parade at New Year's, but I'm not sure it's broadcast nationally any longer.

The kiss of death at CBS for me was when they began broadcasting the Hawaiian parade. Yawn. Who wants to look at dopey flowers before Christmas?

CHRISTMAS BOOK REVIEW: Christmas After All

Quite possibly the best Christmas book I've ever read.

I've been reading them since the 1960s, when my favorite was Frances Frost's Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot from the school library. The story doesn't necessarily need to involve magic, like The Legend of Holly Claus; even more I like stories of regular families having a warm holiday season: The Tuckers: Cottage Holiday is a prime example. The new Callahan Cousins book is pretty good in that department, but it can't compare to the three examples above, or A Christmas Carol, or Christmas After All.

The "Dear America" books are something I can take or leave. I got a couple with good coupons and the rest on the remainder shelf. My Secret War was pretty good, as was When Christmas Comes Again (not really a Christmas book, but about the "Hello girls" in World War I), and the story of the Italian girl crossing the great plains. The Titanic book was average and the Pearl Harbor book was pretty bad. I've heard some pretty scathing criticisms about the two books involving Native American characters.

But in Christmas After All, Kathryn Lasky has created a masterpiece within the diary format of the books.

It is the story of Minnie Swift, youngest of four sisters, her precocious genius younger brother Ozzie, and her parents during the days of the Great Depression. Dad's job is going badly and the family is reduced to shutting down rooms in their home to cut down on coal bills. They rarely have meat for supper, but eat a succession of aspics and "O'Grotons," as Minnie calls them.

Then, as December begins, Willie Faye Darling comes into their life. Willie Faye is the only daughter of cousins of Minnie's mother. Her parents, from a small town called Heart's Bend, Texas, have died after losing a battle with life in the Dust Bowl. Willie Faye is Minnie's age (11), but looks two years younger due to malnutrition and hardships. She arrives at the Swift home covered in dust and with a kitten named Tumbleweed whose nose she had to suction out morning, noon and night to keep him from smothering. Willie Faye has never seen an indoor bathroom, gone to a movie, read a Buck Rogers comic, or listened to the radio, so Minnie thinks that Willie Faye will have a lot to learn from them.

She never dreams what she—and the entire family—will learn from the fragile-looking but tough little girl from the Dust Bowl when the ravages of the Depression begin leaching away the family's security.

I have many of Lasky's other books and love them as well (the only series of hers I couldn't get into was the Starbuck family books), including Prank, which takes place in East Boston, and her adult mysteries starring Calista Jacobs. But Christmas After All has a special magic to it, perhaps because it is based on Lasky's mother's experiences as well as her own and the characters ring true.

Christmas After All is highly recommended.

The "First" Thanksgiving Actually Comes at the End

Here's Caleb Johnson's MayflowerHistory.com site, which includes a review of last night's Desperate Crossing, the three-hour (with commercials) documentary re-inactment of the Pilgrims, beginning with their move to Leyden in the Netherlands to escape the wrath of the King of England and ending with "the first Thanksgiving," which, as has been pointed out on many sites, really has nothing to do with what the Pilgrims would have considered a "thanksgiving," which was a day of prayer and fasting. The scene we re-inact today is what the Pilgrims would have known as a harvest festival or "Harvest Home."

Plymouth Rock? No one even remembered it until 1841 when an elderly man claimed that the big rock the citizens of Plymouth were about to build a wharf over was, according to his grandfather, who heard it from his grandfather, where the Pilgrims had stepped off the Mayflower in 1620 (actually, they came ashore in small boats). The Rock actually remained in the wharf until Victorian-era Americans, venerating the Pilgrim forefathers, extracted it (and broke it in half). Most of the cute little myths we believe about Thanksgiving were actually created by the Victorians, including the black Pilgrim hat that still serves as a symbol for the Massachusetts Turnpike and the big-buckle shoes and the legend of how popcorn was first eaten at the feast attended by the surviving Pilgrims and Massasoit's Wampanoug tribe.

I recorded the whole thing which is a good thing because I missed a lot fussing over that frelling gas log with James. I did enjoy what I saw, although I wonder if the real Pilgrims (and "Strangers") actually did use the very formal forms of speech you often heard in the program. Johnson comments about several scenes sounding stage-y.

(Music Listening To: Windham Hill, "Thanksgiving," specifically that very American hymn, "Simple Gifts.")

CHRISTMAS BOOK REVIEW: Callahan Cousins: Together Again

Well, I might as well review the fourth Callahan Cousins book here, since I've hit all the others.

We've been through Hillary being insecure about her parents' divorce (The Summer Begins), Neeve being insecure about a family secret (Home Sweet Home), and Kate being insecure about not being cool (Keeping Cool). Now it's bookworm Phoebe's turn to be insecure—about Christmas celebrations and faith.

In this fourth book summer is over, but the girls have once again gathered at Grandmother Gee's big house on Gull Island to celebrate the holidays. Phoebe, who's from Florida and the voracious reader in the bunch, has one big wish: to celebrate the kind of Christmas she's always read about in her beloved books. Not a snowless, cheerless (at least to Phoebe) Christmas where her dad and sisters decorate with tacky garish plastic ornaments and sing kareoke carols, but one full of sleigh rides, and home-made gifts, ornaments, and treats, and snow, snow, snow. She comes to Gull Island complete with her own "wish book" (a notebook of magazine and newspaper clippings) about just how "it should be" and ends up roping her cousins into helping her achieve this goal through helping her with the things they do best (creative Kate will help them do crafts and baking, sporty Hillary will arrange sledding and other winter athletics, friendly Neeve will be social director for parties).

Of course Phoebe goes overboard—it's a lietmotif of the series—but her desire is so charming that I really enjoyed the story. Come on, who among you that is a Christmas lover has not wished for the grand and glorious holiday you've read about in books and seen in the movies? Who hasn't wanted to have a grand party with friends gathered around a magnificent old-fashioned tree (perhaps with candles, however dangerous) and then go out caroling house to house, filled with the spirit of bonhomie? To celebrate a deep, meaningful Christmas like the Ingalls family or Anne Shirley or the March girls and eschewing the canned music, buy-buy-buy commercials and adverts, and the plastic sentiments? I know the idea appeals to me tremendously (although not the tree with the candles!); I spent my childhood wishing I could go to one of those parties like on Petticoat Junction where everyone ends the night singing old songs—or Christmas carols!—around the piano.

The generosity of her cousins (except for Neeve's occasional protests) and finally her grandmother enables Phoebe to have the Christmas she wants, but there are a few bobbles along that way including a warm front—Phoebe, for all her reading, seems to have missed the fact that shorelines and islands don't usually get the type of Vermont-like snow she's pining for and it melts faster when it does snow—and interference from snotty Sloan Bicket. There is a more serious thread woven through this outing: Phoebe's reluctance to show emotion and also her need for something spiritual to believe in for the future (hence the heavily angel-centric theme that comes into play soon after the book begins).

It's a fun Christmas outing with some thought behind it and a good way to finish out the tetralogy.

Splendor and Spectacle

If not England, this is where I'd like to go someday: German Christmas Markets. I've read and seen photos of these wonderful places for years. Probably couldn't afford a thing after travelling there, but just being among all those lovely ornaments and the smell of gingerbread and spices...heaven!

Christmas DVD Wish List

#1: The House Without a Christmas Tree
#2: The Gathering

Also, all those great Perry Como Christmas shows.

A couple of obscure ones: Simple Gifts, which was a collection of animated shorts that appeared on PBS in the late 70s. One of them was about the Christmas truce, another was about "The Great Frost," a third was taken from a letter written by Theodore Roosevelt as a boy, etc. This is a much-requested item on TV Party. Also, from the same era, PBS did a special based on Norman Corwin's radio play in rhyme, "The Plot to Overthrow Christmas." The gimmick to this one was that the first half hour showed how a radio show was produced, and then the story was presented as part of the second half hour. The show featured radio veterans such as Ezra Stone, plus Edward Asner as Santa Claus.

The half-hour animated version of A Christmas Carol featuring Sir Michael Redgrave. This was done in the style of Victorian drawings and won an Oscar for best animated short.

REVIEW: "Christmas Classics," Volume 1 DVD

This is the title of an el cheapo DVD I picked up at Fred's (sort of a poor man's Woolworth's) in a paper sleeve; only cost me 50¢ as I recall. It has three 1950s Christmas presentations on it, including the one featured on the cover, the Christmas episode of Date With the Angels starring Betty White and Bill Williams.

The first offering is "A String of Blue Beads," taken from the classic Fulton Oursler story about a storekeeper named Pete, who, embittered after the death of his fiancé, finds life again on Christmas Eve thanks to a little girl. This is a very short story that has been embellished mercilessly for its 26-minute timeslot; some of the embellishments, such as showing him with Marilyn, the girl he loves, are fine additions, but had they stuck to Oursler's original dialog it would have been a lot better. The whole cast is very stiff and Louis Jourdan is just not my idea of Pete. The "acts" of the story are introduced and closed by marionettes and the passing of time is, interestingly, illustrated by seasonal paintings from a Manhattan art gallery.

It is also filmed in some rudimentary version of color which has altered and faded so that the only two colors seem to be red and green (with the occasional flash of beige). It was so ennerving that I finally turned the color down and watched it in good old-fashioned black and white.

The second cut is from a religious series called Crossroads, which is, the titles and the credits tell us stenoriously, vetted by a military Protestant chaplain, a Catholic priest, and a rabbi. The story, "Our First Christmas Tree," concerned a German minister who planned to introduce a Christmas tree into the service and was roundly cheered by the local children and condemned by the children's parents, who think the minister is taking their children away from "the Bible, the Psalms, and hymns" and leading them to worship a pagan idol. These neighborhood busybodies never give the well-meaning reverend a chance to explain and are about to tear down the tree when the minister's brother, also a man of the cloth, explains to them how the tree fits into the ceremony. I have heard several stories of the origin of the Christmas tree, the two most popular being the story of Martin Luther coming home in the snow one night and seeing the moon sparkling on the snow-covered branches of the fir trees, which led him to create a similar scene in his home with candles on a small cut tabletop tree, and the story of St. Boniface, who, seeing Druids about to make a human sacrifice, chops down the Holy Oak and a small pine tree springs up in its place.

But I had never heard the story the pastor tells his brother's congregation, about all the animals and plants going to Bethlehem to worship the Christ Child and of the struggling little cedar that almost gives its life to do so, and is rewarded by God with everlasting life and has stars rained down upon its branches.

Of course the congregation is abashed and the pastor and the happy children have the Christmas tree. (One of the boys is played by Todd Ferrell, who played Timmy's buddy Boomer for a year on Lassie.) Again, done in a rather stiff style, but with a charm of its own.

The Date With the Angels "Christmas Show" probably would come as a revelation to devotees of today's sitcoms. While there are two-tart tongued characters in the story—Vicki Angel's (Betty White) friend Connie, played by Nancy Kulp, who later went on to fame as Jane Hathaway in The Beverly Hillbillies, and Richard Deacon—Gus and Vicki Angel are our sweet-tempered protagonists (not an insult is passed between them) who help an elderly neighbor (the father of Richard Deacon's character) get a Santa Claus job at the department store where Connie works for a Mr. Scrooge-ish manager and also assist a lost child at the store. It's very sweet and nostalgic, and all three are interesting representations of 1950s Christmas programming.

I haven't seen Volume 2, if one actually exists, but it would be interesting to see what was on it.

XM Holiday on the Air!

Whoa! I was cooling my heels waiting for the train and paging through the XM stations and found their Christmas channel, "Holly." What a surprise, then, to find that they actually have five Christmas channels, but the others don't start until Thanksgiving.

It doesn't show up on this page, but there's also "Radio Hanukkah" on from December 15 to 25.

Checked to see if Sirius had their music channel up, but I don't find it. Dish Network's Christmas music channel isn't on yet, either. Perhaps on the 15th.

(Coda, November 20: Sirius' holiday music starts on Thanksgiving. They are again taking over the Starlite channel for popular music, one of the country channels for country music, and the Pops channel for classical Christmas music.)

"Remember, Remember, The Fifth of November..."

If your only experience with the name "Fawkes" is reading Harry Potter novels, here's the skinny on Guy Fawkes, whose Gunpowder Plot and its defeat have provided the British with an annual holiday devoted to fireworks and bonfires.

Lesser known is that Guy Fawkes Day was celebrated in "the colonies" at one time, although its name was changed and some definite Catholic bashing went on.

"17th and 18th-century Bostonians celebrated the anniversary of the English Gunpowder Plot as Pope's Day. To mark the occasion, residents of the North and South Ends held separate parades, carrying effigies of the Pope with them. Both parades led to the center of town, near the Old State House. When the two groups met, a riot typically ensued; each group fought to secure the other's effigy of the Pope. The group that succeeded in doing so was declared the winner."

From Boston History.org

More on Guy Fawkes Day:

Fawksian Society Website

Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night

Wikipedia Entry

Scrap Album's Guy Fawkes Victorian Images

Woodlands Junior School's Bonfire Night Site

Holiday Spot's Guy Fawkes Day Site

CHRISTMAS BOOK REVIEW: Christmas in New England

This slim book by Amy Whorf McGuiggan, published by Commonwealth Press, is a delightful compendium of short takes about notable Yuletide events from the New England states, with a little Christmas history tossed in. Since many people's idealized Christmas is that of a New England Christmas, with sleigh rides, fresh balsam trees, etc., it's always hard to realize that for a long time, due to Puritan influence, the very word "Christmas" was anathema in the far Northeast, unlike the South which celebrated with guns and bonfires and the middle states with their settlers of German and Dutch ancestry, who had Christmas trees and the custom of St. Nicholas.

McGuiggan's text, enlivened by black and white photos and a color insert, talks about the various memorable parts of a New England Christmas: fresh balsam trees from Maine, Nova Scotia's annual tree gift to Boston in memory of that city's assistance after the deadly explosion in Halifax Harbor in 1916, the "Flying Santa" who for years dropped gifts to the isolated lighthouse keepers' families, a bell factory that made the original sleigh bells (far from being just "something pretty" to listen to when you went sleighing, bells were actually required by law, so pedestrians could hear the silent sleighs coming), Boston's "Christmas for the Horses," charity events, etc. Some very touching personal stories are included.

I'm hoping McGuiggan is aiming for a sequel, because it beats me how she's done a book about notable New England Christmas traditions and not once mentioned Edaville Railroad! Now Edaville USA (it's still open), this is a small steam train setup in South Carver, Massachusetts, that is especially popular in the fall and winter. It was closed in 1991 but was resurrected in 1999. Before the cranberry harvests, Edaville would offer a ride through the cranberry bogs and then take riders to a pumpkin patch with refreshments of hot cider and other goodies. But Christmas is when Edaville really "shines." They have a seven-million-strong holiday light display and other events.

I also didn't see the fact that the first department store Santa Claus originated in New England. In 1841, a Philadelphia storekeeper named Parkinson had a man dress as "Crisscringle" and enter his store through the chimney as a publicity stunt (a pivotal scene in Jeff Guinn's just-published Great Santa Search), but the masqued Santa didn't remain at the store and talk to children. Fifty years later, the Boston Store in Brockton, Massachusetts, featured a Santa who sat among the toys and listened to children's wishes for Christmas, the first real "department store Santa."

Since New Year's is part of the Christmas season, I also expected to see some events in that area mentioned, especially "First Night," which originated in Boston.

However, I give the contents of this volume a solid B+ and hope Ms. McGuiggan brings us another volume in the future.

Hallowtide

The name "Hallowe'en" is a a corruption of "All Hallow's Eve," which is the night before All Saint's Day, November 1. The following day, today, is All Souls' Day, where prayers are said for those who have died. The entire period is called "Hallowtide."

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: All Souls' Day

123Holiday.net's All Souls' Day Page

During the 19th and 20th centuries children would go "souling"—rather like carol singing—requesting alms or soul cakes:

A soul, a soul, a soul cake.
Please good missus a soul cake.
An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry,
Any good thing to make us merry.
Up with your kettles and down with your pans,
Give us an answer and we'll be gone.
Little Jack, Jack sat on his gate,
Crying for butter to butter his cake.
One for St. Peter, two for St. Paul,
Three for the man who made us all.

The "Soulers" would go around the houses singing this song. Soul-caking has survived throughout the west Midlands, from Coventry to Manchester to Sheffield.

From Woodlands Junior School's Facts About November.

"Souling" is thought to be one of the origins of "trick or treating" on Hallowe'en.

Additional lyrics:

God Bless the master of this house, the mistress also,
And all the little children who around your table grow.
Likewise your men and maidens, your cattle and your store,
And all that dwells within your gates we wish you ten times more.

The lanes are very dirty and my shoes are very thin.
I've got a little pocket I can put a penny in.
If you haven't got a penny, a ha' penny will do;
If you haven't got a ha' penny, then God bless you.

You can see that it shares some similar lyrics with the round "Christmas Is Coming (The Goose Is Getting Fat)."

Here's a soul cake recipe:

Ingredients

3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup caster/superfine sugar
4 cups plain flour, sifted
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1 teaspoon allspice
3 tablespoons currants
a little milk

Method

- Cream the butter and sugar together until pale in colour and fluffy in texture.
- Beat in the egg yolks.
- Fold in the sifted flour and spices.
- Stir in the currants.
- Add enough milk to make a soft dough.
- Form into flat cakes and mark each top with a cross.
- Bake on a well-greased baking tray in a hot oven until golden."

Peter, Paul and Mary sing "A Soalin'" (sic) on their "Holiday Celebration" CD.