Rudolph Day, May 2018

"Rudolph Day" is a way of keeping the Christmas spirit alive all year long. You can read a Christmas book, work on a Christmas craft project, listen to Christmas music or watch a Christmas movie.

At this time of year, with the temperature already having reached 90°F, my mind has drifted somewhere cold. Not cooler, as in New England or Minnesota, but really cold: Canada. We went to Canada on vacation several times when I was a child, before terrorists ruined the world for everyone and you could just drive over the border with an legal ID and an inspection on the way back. I remember the French signs in Quebec (and having to advise my dad what to do at a gas station, as you could still get leaded gasoline in those days; I remembered that sans was French for "without" and the scientific name for lead being "plumbium"—thank you, science class!—so it was safe to use "sans plumb" gasoline in our new unleaded gasoline car) and staring at the beautiful St. Lawrence River from the heights of the Citadel, having a great time at Canada's Wonderland amusement park, visiting the Canadian side of Niagara Falls and driving to Niagara-by-the-Lake (and eating luscious cherries direct from the orchard on the way). I fell in love with Canada quite early in my life and regret I don't live close enough any longer to make trips there. Some of my favorite television series have even come from Canada, like the spooky soap Strange Paradise, Doctor Simon Locke (filmed in Kleinberg, Ontario), the fun kids' series The Forest Rangers, Kevin Sullivan's Anne of Green Gables and its sequel, and of course the modern Murdoch Mysteries! (Plus the first two Addie Mills' specials were filmed with Ontario standing in for Nebraska.)

Since I already had a book to read for July, instead of celebrating Canada Day, I'm here celebrating Victoria Day (May 21) instead with some Canadian-style Christmas books.

 
Christmas in Canada, by the editors of World Book
This entry in the World Book Encyclopedia "Christmas in..." volumes will put you in a holiday mood immediately, with its cover of the glowing Citadel overlooking the old city of Quebec, and following with an introductory chapter on "Christmas Lights Across Canada," the first Thursday of December when each city in the country turns on its holiday displays with the capital of Ottawa leading the way. Since the first explorers of Canada were French, French customs, like réveillon and Pere Noёl are discussed first, then following in close order are British customs (which from the majority of Canada's national customs derive), German, First Nations tribes that were converted by the French, and Ukrainians who settled the Canadian plains, and who celebrate their Christmas and Twelfth Night in January, based on the Julian calendar. Of course, each province has its own customs: for instance Newfoundlanders still practice mumming, Ukrainian families' celebrations featured a sheaf of wheat called the didukh which represents the family, Inuits hold contests and snowmobile races, "belsnicklers" still roam in Nova Scotia, and everyone enjoys the Santa Claus Parade from Toronto, originated by the now-defunct Eatons Department Store.

Color photos and illustrations illustrate all these customs, and two crafts, recipes, and two traditional Canadian carols, including "The Huron Carol," are included in this volume.

A Pioneer Christmas: Celebrating in the Backwoods in 1841, Barbara Greenwood, illustrations by Heather Collins
This is a sequel to Greenwood's classic A Pioneer Story (A Pioneer Sampler in the U.S.) about the Robertson family, a family of Scots descent who live in the Canadian backwoods in the 1840s, in which the simple, liberally-illustrated family story is broken between chapters to provide projects for young readers and also facts about the historic events behind the story. Once again middle child Sarah (the family consists also of the Robertson parents, older siblings Meg and George, middle brother Willie, little Lizzie, and baby Tommy, plus Granny Robertson) is the focal character as she participates in simple Christmas preparations (helping stone the raisins for the plum pudding, knitting gifts, making pine branches into garlands and pomander balls, and also preparing for the visit of her cousins Andrew and Sophie, who are expecting a baby. But will the snow make the visit impossible? The family also participates in a school exhibition and a "Christmas frolic" where dancing and music are held.

A plum pudding recipe and also one for permanent cookie decorations, plus instructions for making a pomander apple and other typical pioneer gifts are included. A nice peek back into when Christmas was a simpler holiday! I also applaud the illustrator for putting little Tommy in a dress as all small children would have worn in those days!

Christmas With Anne and Other Holiday Stories, L.M. Montgomery
This is a sweet collection of seasonal short stories written by Montgomery for magazines between 1899 and 1910, plus two Christmas chapters from the Anne books: Anne's gift of the dress with puffed sleeves during her first Christmas at Green Gables, and Katharine Brooke's eventful stay at Green Gables from Anne of Windy Poplars. They are not "great art," just gentle, happy little stories about ordinary people overcoming obstacles and celebrating a merry Christmas (or New Year's, as in several stories) even if in just the simplest manner. Several stories are about families reuniting accidentally after years of feuding; others are about wealthy protagonists deciding to help less fortunate neighbors. In one tale an old-fashioned aunt deplored by her niece provides a merry Christmas when the unexpected happens, in another a group of wealthy children bored by Christmas instead do something nice for a struggling family, in a third travelers stopping by a farmhouse inadvertently provide a happy holiday.

Best read with a cup of hot tea or cocoa, with a pet snuggling on your lap whilst listening to Christmas music. (Afghans and fireplaces also work. 😊 )

Rudolph Day, April 2018

"Rudolph Day" is a way of keeping the Christmas spirit alive all year long. You can read a Christmas book, work on a Christmas craft project, listen to Christmas music or watch a Christmas movie.

Is spring the last period you would be thinking of Christmas? Yet the 2018 Hallmark Keepsake Ornament catalog is out already among the blooming flowers and the leafing trees. Since it is the season of blooming, for my Rudolph Day read I decided to stick with a greenery theme.


Pagan Christmas, Christian Rätsch and Claudia Müller-Ereling

Holly Fairy by Cicely Mary Barker

Fir trees, holly, ivy, apples, oranges, roses, poinsettias, mistletoe, incense, chocolate, cinnamon, nutmeg...just some of the plants, herbs, and spices associated with Advent and Christmastide. If you're looking for a less traditional and a bit offbeat look at Christmas, this "ethnobotany" of Yuletide plants may be your cup of (herbal) tea. Authors Rätsch and Müller-Ereling dig into the pagan past behind all the flora mentioned above and more. Ever notice those cute little red mushrooms included in European Christmas illustrations, the ones with the festive white spots? Those are fly agaric mushroom and, when used in small doses, were used by shamans to reach "higher planes" of consciousness. Holly represented male sexuality and ivy female sexuality, and "The Holly and the Ivy" was originally a song about the battle of the sexes, not how holly mimed the life of Jesus; holly was also the greenery associated with Frau Holle, the Germanic goddess who shook out her feather pillows to make it snow. Many Christmas plants were considered aphrodisiacs, especially the mistletoe, which was banned from Christian churches for years even though holly and ivy were allowed. In Germany, pipe-smoking carved Father Christmases and "smokers" are common decorations, but what these St. Nicholases are smoking isn't plain tobacco, but "baccy," which contains hemp and other intoxicating weeds. Chocolate—chocolatl—was part of Mayan religious ceremonies and sometimes associated with cannibalism; today we eat chocolate figures molded in the shape of Santa Claus. Poppyseed, coca (as in Coca-Cola), apples (appearing in Norse and Greek myths), rose hips, boxwood, laurel, wines, and many more are investigated in this intriguing look at the pagan past behind some common Christmas customs. Reading this will make you understand why greenery was banned from most Puritan churches for years.

Liberally illustrated with photographs, advertisements, and old ephemera.

Happy Easter!

 

Around the Seasons With the Clarks

Between 1947 and 1956, Vermonter Frances Frost wrote four "Windy Foot" books about a (presumably) Vermont farm family that saw them around the year, starting at the late summer/early fall county fair, continuing at Christmas and in the spring, and ending on Independence Day. They are not only fun to read, but give a picture of a bygone era: a family-run farm rather than a giant agrobusiness; living with only electricity and a telephone and a radio, with food cooked on a woodstove and winter heat provided by the stoves and a fireplace; one vehicle only, otherwise the family uses horses for transportation; lots of hard work but lots of fun times, too: community dances and carol sings, fairs, parties with dancing and games, sleigh rides, skiing, hikes in the woods, stargazing, fishing.

Modern-day children reading the books will also be surprised and perhaps aghast at the freedoms allowed in those days. Lead character Toby is twelve and can be entrusted with driving his little sister back and forth to school many miles each day as well as taking care of the titular pony, Windy Foot. He chops wood and helps his father milk cows, can be trusted to stay home and guard the animals with a small rifle when a bear prowls around, can properly tap maple trees and is learning to boil sap to make maple syrup. Even more amazing, he and his nine-year-old sister are allowed to snowshoe and hike in the woods alone, no one worries when they drive into town and back that they might be assaulted or the buggy might turn over. Toby is allowed to defend himself in a fight with a bully and his mother doesn't panic and immediately rush him to a hospital; neither does six-year-old Johnny get rushed to the doctor when he falls off the banister while sliding down the stair rails and gets a bump on his head.

I read the first two of these books in elementary school and found the third some years later. I didn't even know the fourth existed until I saw it on the internet and hunted down a copy. A city kid, I lived vicariously through Toby and his friend Tish: horseback riding! gathering Christmas greens in the woods! carol singing around a big community tree! maple sugar parties! I was less enamored by the youngest Clark sibling, little Johnny who makes up rhymes when he's happy; sometimes I just wished he'd shut up, just like a real older sister.

While all the books describe some seasonal happiness—and the occasional seasonal drawback, like a broken leg from skiing—the most exciting and the saddest of the books, Maple Sugar for Windy Foot, takes place in the spring, from before St. Patrick's Day to Easter Sunday. It opens with busy times on the farm: the first sugar snow has fallen! Those unfamiliar with maple syrup production may not know this process happens in the early spring when the days start to get warm, but snow is still on the ground and nights are cold. The sap in the maple trees begins to run before the trees bud (once the tree buds the process is stopped so the tree may grow) and it is then when sugaring off begins.

Today the process has been simplified: clear plastic tubing runs from each of the "tapped" maple trees to a vat where the sap is collected; when enough sap is collected it is run through pipes to a facility that does so. There is less skimming and cleaning of the sap needed because it goes directly from tree to vat.

Maple Sugar For Windy Foot illustrates the old-fashioned way of sugaring off, when for several weeks in March the family with the "sugarbush" had little sleep. Everyone pitched in to tap the trees (you tried not to tap the same trees every year, to give a chance for the tapped trees to heal), hang tin buckets (early in the century the buckets would have been wooden) under the tap, and check the buckets several times a day, using an old-fashioned yoke and a team of horses pulling a small sledge (better for traveling in the woods than a vehicle) to transport the sap to a log sugarhouse near the maple grove. Twenty-four hours a day, the sap would be boiled at a very specific temperature so that the water evaporated and the sweet maple syrup remained. The person boiling the sap had to know his business. The sap had to be skimmed and then strained multiple times before it was fit for human consumption.

When "sugaring off" was over, then it was time to play. In the book, Toby and sister Betsy invite classmates and their schoolteachers over for a sugaring off party, where the kids poured hot maple syrup on snow to make delicious toffee-like candy, and also ate doughnuts and sour pickles to offset the sweet. (You will probably read these books amazed at all the food Toby eats; he already has a stereotypical teenage appetite. All the kids seem to eat a ton, and then they go outside and exercise it off. Overweight people are rare in this era's farm country!) After eating they play games and dance.

This happy opening gives no clue to what will happen once sugaring season is over and the snow begins to melt. Runoff and days of rain bring the river that passes through the Clark property to higher and higher levels. At first it only overflows its banks and wets a bit of the farm property. But it keeps raining...and raining. The fields are covered and now the water begins to creep up to the house, and the barn. The whole family works together to save their animals and themselves...but there may be no way to save their property.

When the crisis comes, both Toby and Windy Foot do their part in averting a total family disaster as well as helping their neighbors. Unlike the other books, which have minor crises as part of the plot (an exciting rescue after a skiing accident, a family member's injury, an attempt at sabotage in a sporting event, a lesson for Toby), this episode in the lives of the Clarks will touch your heart and make you cry. For a spring story with a difference, this one can't be beat.

Sugaring Off

Rudolph Day, March 2018

"Rudolph Day" is a way of keeping the Christmas spirit alive all year long. You can read a Christmas book, work on a Christmas craft project, listen to Christmas music or watch a Christmas movie.

I'm still in "read a book for Rudolph Day" mode, but got a little delayed by James' hospital stay, which started out in a frighteningly abrupt manner that brought him to the ICU and ended up somberly twelve days later, with new protocols and routines for both of us. However, since it was Women's History Month, I decided to read something on that subject, and came across this little volume, which I had read before, but apparently had never mentioned in this blog.


"May Your Days Be Merry and Bright": Christmas Stories by Women, edited by Susan Koppelman
There is a genre of literature called "occasional stories," which, many years ago, were written for magazines, whether for sensationalized pulps such as "Black Mask" or "The Shadow" or for staid newsstand favorites like "Redbook" and "The Saturday Evening Post." Many of these "occasionals" were written for women's magazines and of this subsection there was a smaller genre of Christmas stories that usually revolved around home or family. You've probably read many of these if you are an aficionado of Christmas literature.

These are, in general, more obscure tales from noted writers like Edna Ferber and Dorothy Canfield Fisher, bookended by the Christmas chapters from Little Women and the story "Christmas for Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo," who are the "little women" one hundred years later, three daughters of a traditional Gullah weaver who was widowed in wartime. In between are such treats as "Old Mother Goose," about a despised woman from the wrong side of the tracks who longs to see the famous singer Thamrè—who is keeping a secret of her own), the enjoyable "Mrs. Parkins's Christmas Eve" (a bit of a cross between "A Christmas Carol" and the Christmas tale "The Water Bus") in which a parsimonious woman has a telling lesson on the day before Christmas, the chilling "The Twelfth Guest" wherein a family accidentally sets an extra place at dinner only to have a lost child show up at the door to fill it, the Damon Runyon-ish "The Nth Commandment" about an exhausted shopgirl supporting a sick husband and a child and the raffish man pursuing her, and Edna Ferber's pointed "No Room at the Inn" which rewrites the Nativity story as a modern-day refugee tale. The rest of the stories are swell, too, especially Fisher's often amusing "As Ye Sow" about a woman who discovers her little boys are tone deaf.

A great collection of Christmas gems, but without the mawkish sentiments that often accompany Christmas stories.

Rudolph Day, February 2018

"Rudolph Day" is a way of keeping the Christmas spirit alive all year long. You can read a Christmas book, work on a Christmas craft project, listen to Christmas music or watch a Christmas movie.

Valentine's Day has come and gone. This year I had some time to take with dinner, and when James arrived from work, he discovered dinner nearly ready, a card and a gift, and a menu in French. (Let me say I know very little French. Le Menu was courtesy of Le Google Translate. 😁 ) We had lobster ravioli in a butter sauce I cobbled together from ghee, Kerrygold, and Smart Balance, with flavored vinegars and a little sweetener (it, amazingly, came out pretty well) with a cucumber salad. (It was supposed to have tomatoes as well, but I ran out of room in the bowl.) For dessert we had three selections each from a box of dark chocolate only Russell Stover candies. I gave James a book about a fighter pilot and a stand for his cell phone; he gave me Red, White, and Who: The Story of Doctor Who in America, which I dived into like a heated pool and didn't come out until I was finished.

Chocolates were the reason I chose the following book for this month's Rudolph Day reading:

 
Christmas in Belgium by the staff of World Book Encyclopedia
I started collecting these with the resolve that I was going to only pick them up at book sales and was not going to get any of the volumes about Christmas in hot places. But then I couldn't leave Australia out and when you start a collection you want to finish it. So I am trying to assemble the rest of the collection from inexpensive online sources.

I was particularly interested in Belgium because they combine two different cultures, the Dutch-speaking Protestant Flemish in the north and the French-speaking Catholic Walloons in the south (with a substantial German population as well). This is a really nice volume because it talks about how the two cultures enrich each other. Like the Dutch, they still celebrate St. Nicholas Day, like the French they include santons in their Nativity scenes, which, the book tells me, dot the Belgian cities and countrysides. As in all the World Book Christmas volumes, they tell you how Advent, Christmas, and Christmastide is celebrated with food, the growing popularity of Santa Claus and Christmas trees, Advent wreaths, and special cookies called speculoos, which you can buy here in the US as "Biscoff" cookies.

However, there are several unique aspects included as well: there is a piece on the Christmas Truce of 1914 during World War I, the famous lacemakers of Belgium (lace ornaments being popular on trees), Belgian chocolates (said to be the best in the world; Godiva is a Belgian brand), post-Christmas customs like "Lovers Day" and the National Horse Show, and the story of Begijnhofs, small towns of women in the post-Crusade era that supported themselves.

This is an excellent entry in the World Book Christmas series.

Before Ash Wednesday Comes...

The 40-day period before Easter is known as Lent, a time when Christians prepare for the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a time when you fast from all rich foods, and people who are participating in the fast usually eat last hearty treats like pastries, doughnuts, cake, and pie on the day before Ash Wednesday. That is why it's referred to in the US and in France as Mardi Gras, which means "Fat Tuesday." The most famous Mardi Gras celebration in the United States is held in New Orleans, where parades, social organizations called "krewes" who supply the floats for the parade, candy and beads glitter the day.

Mardi Gras New Orleans

In England the day is called Shrove Tuesday, because the faithful went to church on that day to be "shriven" (confessed) of their sins and then took the next 40 days to do their penance. To use up all the fat in the household, traditionally pancakes were made, so it's now referred to as "Pancake Day."

Shrove Tuesday: What is It?

The Origins of Pancake Day

Pancake Day: Why Shrove Tuesday is a Thing - BBC News

Happy Pancake Day 2018!

What's the Meaning Behind Shrove Tuesday?

For Love of Language and Christmas

A Book of Christmas, William Sansom
I found this book in a very funny way. I was just finishing the book Christmas in Pennsylvania and reading the bibliography. The author states that probably the best book he knows about Christmas was William Sansom's Book of Christmas, and I thought to myself that I should look it up sometime. A few days later I went by Atlanta Vintage Books on my way home from work. They only have their Christmas books out at Christmastime, and since December was upon us I hoped they had their small supply available. I was rewarded by a small stack of books on top of a small stool.

There on top was A Book of Christmas. It could have only been fate.

Oh, and Christmas in Pennsylvania was quite correct. This is a wonderful book. I have other histories (or "biographies") of Christmas, but Sansom's is told with delightful language—his opening paragraphs alone are poetic:

     What is the colour of Christmas?
     Red? The red of toyshops on a dark winter's afternoon, of Father Christmas and the robin's breast?
     Or green? Green of holly and spruce and mistletoe in the house, dark shadow of summer in leafless winter?
     One might plainly add a romance of white, fields of frost and snow; thus white, green, red—reducing the event to the level of a Chianti bottle.
     But many will say that the significant colour is gold, gold of fire and treasure, of light in the winter dark; and this gets closer.
     For the true colour of Christmas is black.
     Black of winter, black of night, black of frost and of the east wind, black dangerous shadows beyond the firelight.
     Darkness of the time of year hovers everywhere, there is no brightness of Christ Child, angel, holly, or toy without a dark surround somewhere about. The table yellow with electric light, the fire by which stories are told, the bright spangle of the tree—they all blaze out of shadow and out of a darkness of winter. The only exception is an expectation of Christmas morning, the optimistic image of sunlight on the snow of Christmas Day and a sparkling brisk walk through the white-breath frosty air. But it only lasts a short while, and has its own dark frame, made up of the night before and the early dark of a December afternoon.

The twelve chapters (with header drawings from "The 12 Days of Christmas") cover the spectrum of the celebrations: sacred celebrations, feasting, Christmas music, plays, literature, giftgivers, etc. in pages crammed with color and black and white illustrations, photographs, woodcuts, and engravings. Any Christmas lover should enjoy Sansom's tale-spinning of pantomimes, Krampuses, holly bushes, vintage decorations, "Merrie Olde England," sacred art, and all the trappings that herald Christmas.

"Old Christmas" from the Source

December 25th: The Joys of Christmas Past, Phillip Snyder
When Snyder set out to do a book on antique Christmas ornaments, he found himself reading nineteenth-century newspapers on microfilm, chiefly from New York City. He was so enchanted by the reports of Christmas celebrations that he continued reading and came up with this book, designed to take you "way back when" to see how the holidays (and they were called that, even back then, because the custom was originally to give gifts at New Year) were celebrated.

Incorporating the words and descriptions of the unnamed reporters of the day, supplemented by a five-page bibliography and a dozen magazine articles, we discover the sights, sounds, and smells of the Christmas food markets in Victorian-era New York City and discover what prodigious feasts those who could afford them had; read about the racket that used to greet Christmas day, whether it be small boys with horns or men pounding gunpowder on anvils; the sheer fatigue of the overworked store clerks, delivery boys, elevator operators and other sales employees in the days when stores stayed open through midnight on Christmas Eve; the experience of a sleigh ride one snowy Christmas; the unfortunate drunkenness that accompanied Christmas celebrations; the first department store Santa Claus (and where that jolly old persona came from); and more, from Christmas trees to live evergreen roping to sacred music to the delightful experience of an elderly man "taking a slide" one Yuletide night.

Snyder takes care that the experiences sound as first hand as possible, taking his narrative directly from the newspaper reports, which gives you a "first hand" appearance that most histories of Christmas do not. In addition, the book contains old illustrations and woodcuts from newspapers and the reference books to enhance the experience (the development of the "look" of Santa Claus, street scenes, market scenes, etc.). If you're at all interested in the history of American Christmas celebrations (or non-celebrations, as in Puritan-influenced New England), you will enjoy this book!

Not As Old As You Think

Christmas: A Biography, Judith Flanders
Flanders, who's previously described the Victorian home and the Victorian city in her immensely readable books, tackles the story of Christmas in this newest volume. She opens by reminding us that Christmas is a very different holiday depending on where you celebrate it, and everyone believes their Christmas customs are the authentic ones, when nothing could be further from the truth.

For instance, there is a notion that Christmas was "more religious" in the past, yet most of the writing about Christmas in the "goode olde dayes" is about eating and drinking. Texts from the year 389 and in the seventh century had clergy complaining about feasting, drunkenness, and gluttony. Indeed, for the first few hundred years, it was unthinkable to celebrate Christ's birth, as if he was "some pagan god." The date of Christmas was fixed on December 25 to coincide with existing celebrations (the Kalends, Saturnalia, Mithras's birth, Yule) and many pagan symbols were given Christian symbolism (Christmas trees from the "everlasting life" of the evergreen, holly standing in for the crown of thorns, etc.).

Flanders also discusses how "traditional" Christmas celebrations were said to come from the "days long ago" when some of them were only several decades old, how businesses were open on Christmas (so people could buy Christmas food and drink) until very recently, how those wonderful old country house celebrations you hear about (like Christmas at Downton Abbey) required a great deal of drudgery, dirt, and loss of sleep for the servants despite their being tales of revelry among the staff, and how Christmas advertising goes back to the 18th century and that people at the turn of the last century were already complaining about Christmas commercialization (and how wealthy young ladies already bemoaned the fact that their friends got more Christmas gifts than they did).

There are more detailed books about the "biography" of Christmas (which Flanders notes in her bibliography), but this is a great summary of all of the truths and the fallacies about the holiday season. Flanders even provides little icons in the margins to indicate which subjects she is discussing (a horn for music, a mask for revelry, a Santa face for the history of gift givers, etc.).

Of Icons and Airplanes

Ideals Christmas, Worthy Media
This 2017 edition of the yearly magazine contains the usual complement of artwork, cozy photographs, poetry and essays. I was surprised this year to see an essay by a man, as the "Ideals" essays usually tend to be written by women. The Robert Frost "Christmas Trees" is also included, and there's an essay and poem by Edgar Guest.  I really loved the illustration opposite the title page; very stylized, like a 1930s or 1940s card, and the beautiful photograph of Beacon Hill in Boston in the snow.

Spirit of Steamboat, Craig Johnson
This is a dandy novella in the Walt Longmire mystery series. Before Christmas, Walt is visited by a young woman of Japanese ancestry who says she has something to return to the man who preceded Walt as sheriff of Absaroka County, Lucian Connally, a former World War II bomber pilot. She claims to know both Walt and Lucian, but they don't recognize her. Until she mentions the word "Steamboat."

It was back in 1988 when Walt, fresh in his sheriff's uniform, is coordinating a lifeline flight of a little girl who was burned in an accident. It is Christmas Eve and Absaroka County is in the midst of a raging snowstorm. The lifeline helicopter pilot refuses to go on to Denver, and there are no facilities to help her nearby. None of the other airplanes at the local airport is powerful enough to get through—except a World War II-era B25 named "Steamboat." Determined to save the child, Walt ropes Connally into flying the B25 to Denver.

Although how the flight turns out is not in doubt, this was a page-turner as the pilots and Walt keep "Steamboat" running and Walt also helps the attending physician keep the small child alive with the help of her grandmother. Erratic navigation, ice buildup, low fuel and open bomb-bay doors plague the flight, and there's a hair-raising conclusion to their rescue mission. Enjoyed this one a lot.

(I was also amused to recognize the procedure the doctor performs on the little girl as the one Steve McGarrett had to do on Danny Williams in the penultimate episode of the latest season of Hawaii Five-0.)

Back to Monroeville for Christmas

Tru and Nelle: A Christmas Tale, G. Neri
Nelle Lee and her friend "Big Boy" Carter eagerly await their friend Truman Persons on a sweltering December day in Monroeville, Alabama. They haven't seen Tru for two years; he's been living with his self-absorbed mother and new stepfather. They expect Tru will jump at the chance to live back in Monroeville with his beloved cousin Sook and her family, but instead at a custody hearing between his mother and his father, Tru baffles them both by choosing to go with his mother and be adopted by his stepfather.

Two years later it is Truman who is running back to Monroeville, having been stuck in a military school by his mother. He's convinced he's cursed, but when he find the most beautiful Christmas tree ever, he thinks bringing it back to Sook and her family is the one way to break the curse. Instead it it's only the start of an incredible series of adventures.

Neri's text, as in Tru and Nelle, mixes real-life events (the trial Amasa Lee participated in that inspired To Kill a Mockingbird, the incident with a bully that prompted the short story "The Thanksgiving Visitor," plus touches of "A Christmas Memory" with Sook and the fruitcakes, Truman Capote's experience with his mother and stepfather, a fire that destroyed the home of Sook, Jenny, and Truman's other cousins) with fictionalized involvement of Nelle with a murder trial and events around a rare snowy Christmas. The interactions between the kids is great, and Neri does not softpedal the terms of the time nor the racism, but it also seems like an "everything but the kitchen sink" drama, with the murder of the river merchant and the events with the tree and Truman's feeling of being cursed and the events with the fire all jockeying for attention. I think I liked the parts best which dealt with Truman's conflicted feeling for his parents and Nelle's and Big Boy's attempts to help him.

As a whole, glad I read it!

Childermas Day

Childermas, or Holy Innocents Day, commemorates the slaughter of the children by the orders of Herod the Great after he was visited by the Magi following the star to the birthplace of the infant Jesus. Because of the horrific associations of the day, it is said to be bad luck to start on a project on this day.

Massacre of the Innocents - Wikipedia

Liturgical Year: Holy Innocents Day

Feasts and Festivals: Holy Innocents

A Depression Christmas

Christmas After All, Kathryn Lasky
In 2001, the "Dear America" books were still in the middle of their run. This one caught my eye because (a) it was a Christmas book that took place during the Great Depression, which my own parents had endured, and (b) it was written by Kathryn Lasky, who wrote the Calista Jacobs' mystery novels for adults and some great novels for kids like The Bone Wars and Prank, the latter which takes place in East Boston. I opened it and was immediately transported into the life of Minnie Swift, age eleven, at the end of 1932 as the Depression closes its relentless jaws around her family. They've already closed off rooms to save coal, hardly eat any meat at meals, and her father comes home a little earlier from work every day. Minnie correctly deduces that this will not be a season of bounty, but one of want.

And then a surprising thing happens: the daughter of one of Mrs. Swift's cousins is sent to live with them after the death of her mother in the dust-scourged tiny town of Heart's Bend, Texas. Willie Faye Darling arrives encrusted with dirt, carrying a basket with a kitten whose nose and mouth she must siphon out three times a day to keep it from suffocating, meager clothing, and not much else. Minnie is astonished when Willie Faye reveals she's never seen a movie, doesn't know who Buck Rogers is, has never used an indoor toilet, and is frankly amazed by the hyperactive Swifts, including Minnie's super-intelligent younger brother Ozzie and her "distractible" and artistic older sister Lady, so Minnie figures Willie Faye will have a lot to learn from them.

What she, nor the family, knows is how much they will learn from this undersized, quiet refugee from the Dust Bowl.

The story pretty much paints a bleak view of the era, with her father eventually losing his job, friends who have had fathers disappear, seeing friends in bread lines, their visiting a shantytown. But the Swifts also manage to have good times and their ingenuity works to help them. Like my parents did, they forego other treats to attend the movies, make their own Christmas gifts, and find inexpensive amusements.

Only the epilogue comes off as slightly too fanciful.

Otherwise this is a magical book.

Once Again, A Gift from Joe Wheeler

Christmas in My Heart, Book 12, Joe Wheeler
Wheeler has done almost thirty of these little books that combine old Christmas stories from magazines with an original Christmas story he writes for each volume. The later volume also started including more modern stories from "Reader's Digest" and what you might call "Chicken Soup for the Soul" type tales, but nevertheless, all the entries are heartwarmingly appropriate, from the pre-1927 stories like "Christmas Bread" (written by Kathleen Norris, who was my mother's favorite author, and which has a woman surgeon as a protagonist) to 2000's "Merry Christmas, Mr. Keene," about a wealthy man and a Christmas pageant. There was even a Temple Bailey (author of the lovely "Candle in the Forest") story I had never read. This volume concludes with Wheeler's "Christmas Sabbatical," about a Ph.D. who lost track of life in his pursuit of a degree, and a wonderful opening essay about Joseph, the "hidden man" of the Holy Family, which including an excerpt from one of the Pearl Buck stories I had just finished reading yesterday.

Grab these when you can! They are out of print now, but occasionally turn up in used bookstores. I liked the earlier ones better, when he just resurrected vintage magazine stories rather than using the "Chicken Soup-y" entries, but they're all worth the trouble, just for his stories.

Spend the Holidays With Pearl Buck

Once Upon a Christmas, Pearl S. Buck
I picked this up at a used book sale noticing it had the essay "Nineteen Stockings by the Chimneypiece," which was reprinted in "Reader's Digest" for so many years, and figured it would also have Buck's most famous Christmas story of all, "Christmas Day in the Morning," about the teenage boy who devises a novel gift for his father. To my surprise it is not in this volume, which is a combination of essays by Buck about various Christmases in her lifetime and short stories she wrote, including "Christmas Miniature," about a little boy who sneaks downstairs on Christmas morning, just to see if Santa has been, you understand, and ends up saving a very small life; "The New Christmas," in which a family of seven discovers a "new" kind of Christmas when it looks like they won't have any money for a big celebration; and "The Christmas Secret," about a couple who has adopted a Vietnamese child of mixed ancestry (this one annoyed me a little, as the couple appeared to be protecting a man who came off as a jerk, but which I believe was Buck's intent).

I loved both stories and essays, but found the latter fascinating learning more about Buck's life as the child of missionaries in China (missionaries who did not believe that the Chinese they were living among were "heathens" or not as good as white people). Her story about the Christmas they didn't celebrate because they were too busy keeping Chinese refugees from starving, or about the Chinese boy who turned up at their doorstep and whom they adopted, or about their almost being murdered when the Japanese invaded Nanking were quite affecting. My favorite essay was "Thoughts of a Woman at Christmas," which begins as an essay about Joseph and turns into one about feminism, and something I've been thinking for years, that the reason men want to entrap women behind veils or under burkas, or abuse them and abuse children, is that there are too many men who are really afraid of women, that a woman being as intelligent as they are or as strong as they are somehow demeans their manhood. Back in the 1950s, Buck was writing about issues that still trouble us today: equality between the sexes and equality between the races, and her anger about the injustices of mixed-race adoption are those I remember from Helen Doss' The Family Nobody Wanted.

As a bonus this volume contains pencil illustrations by Donald Lizzul. Worth your while.

Old-Fashioned Christmases

The Children's Book of Christmas Stories, edited by Asa Don Dickinson and Ada M. Skinner
I picked this up at the Northside Library in the fall, a jacketless volume from 1913 that I knew would at the least contain either a whole copy of A Christmas Carol (as these books were wont to do) or excerpts thereof, and I was correct. In fact. the Cratchits' Christmas dinner is excerpted twice, under two different titles, as if the editors didn't even notice. And certainly there were the usual reruns: Andersen's "The Fir Tree," Ruth Sawyer's "Voyage of the Wee Red Cap," "Why the Chimes Rang" (a reworking of the story of the Widow's Mite, "Little Wolff's Wooden Shoes," and "Little Gretchen and the Wooden Shoe" (the last two prime examples of the noble small children in 19th century stories who know the real meaning of Christmas).

But there were several new ones that I found enjoyable. About four were stories gleaned from a 1904 volume called Kristy's Queer Christmas. Apparently the Kristy of the title is a little girl who gets sick at Christmas, and instead of being able to celebrate must stay in bed, so various guests and her relatives cheer her up with stories (rather like Alcott's Spinning Wheel Stories). These include "The Telltale Tile," about a poor woman who does a fiscal favor for an even poorer neighbor and finds her contribution repaid tenfold, and a story about a snowed-in prairie family. Several other stories were taken from that venerable children's newspaper "Youth's Companion," including "The Little Sister's Vacation," which made me angry until the end (our heroine, Peggy, is the one child still at home, and when her married sister and her professional sister come to visit, the mother drops everything to socialize with them, leaving Peggy—"Peggy is so handy!"—to plan the dinners, help in the kitchen, and ride herd on the married sister's three year old daughter, plus study for a Latin exam during her Christmas vacation!). Another was about Betty, who had to stay at boarding school over the holidays because there was no money for a visit home, and how she made the others staying there happy, and the third about a philanthropist who refuses to meet the people he gives money to, until his lost dog draws him into a mystery. Another boarding school story involves a little boy who cannot go home for the holidays.

One story I'd read before and liked seeing here was "A Christmas Matinee," about a wealthy girl who runs about with a fashionable crowd who does a good deed for a trolley driver in 1890s Boston. The familiar streets and trolley stops always make me smile.

A worthwhile purchase, even with the duplicate stories!

Christmas in the Air

As I mentioned, James volunteered to work today so he wouldn't get drafted, especially on New Year's Day. Plus it was double time and would make up a little for his three doctor's appointments last week. So this Christmas morning James was up at seven to work. I got to sleep in a bit.

James was twiddling his thumbs when I got up and had breakfast. I was changing channels looking for something Christmasy, and stumbled over Come to the Stable on FXM. I wish I'd known it was on. I hadn't seen it in years. It's not really a Christmas movie, but begins in winter when two nuns arrive in New England to try to found a children's hospital. I'd forgotten how funny bits of it was, especially Sister Margaret driving the jeep.

Tucker was very patient and waited for me to finish with the movie to go out. It was very cold out, in the high 20s with a sharp wind snapping the St. Nicholas banner and the flag. It felt good! There were high clouds and bits of sky showing as we strolled the neighborhood. Someone down the street was having company for dinner. The cars filled their long driveway and spilled out to the street.

James took a break before lunch and then we had presents! O, what a haul! Four books and two DVDs, the books all from my Amazon wish list: World War II in Rhode Island, Rhode Island Radio (with a photo of Jack Comley, my favorite radio talk show host ever), Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and Britcom FAQ.  The DVDs were both Rick Steves: his new episodes for 2017-2018, and all his specials (even the Easter special). I gave James two military nonfiction books, Andy Weir's new book Artemis, the second season of WKRP in Cincinnati, and a Jethro Tull concert DVD. And of course the chair he was sitting in! (We discovered Tucker sleeping in it last night, and it looked so sweet, the little dog curled up in the big red chair next to the Christmas tree.

Put on The House Without a Christmas Tree while we had lunch: our turkey leftovers from West Cobb Diner on Friday night, a clementine, and Terry's dark chocolate orange slices. Tried not to snack too much so we could save the calories for the feast at the Butlers!

While James waited for someone to call, I also washed some towels and unloaded and loaded the dishwasher and made the bed.

Spent the later afternoon watching The Homecoming and feeling very drowsy, so took a 45-minute nap (well, I tried to; I really didn't sleep much), then took Tucker for a walk, fixed him a special Christmas dinner with a little chicken broth and beef and carrot dog-food puree, got dressed and washed my face, brought James his shoes (otherwise he was ready to go) and a hairbrush, and put the gifts together.

At five o'clock James signed off having had nary a call, and we loaded up the car with presents and chocolate cake and were off to the Butlers to enjoy three hours of friends, food and fun. People had just sat down to dinner and we availed ourselves of apple cider basted turkey, spiral-sliced ham, pot roast, mashed potatoes, noodle kugel, sprouts, and carrots. Dessert was two homemade pies, fruitcake cookies, our chocolate cake and a coconut cake, and some Andes mints we also brought. Once the feasting was complete, we gathered in the living room for gifts. We got many lovely things, too numerous to list.

Journeyed home about eight, stopping at a housing plat along the way to see their decorations. One end definitely had a "glitter gulch"! Yet another lawn was covered with inflatables: two Mickey Mouses, a Minnie Mouse, a Minion, Olaf the snowman, Santa in an airplane, Santa with his sleigh, and about a dozen more.

Once home we watched the Call the Midwife Christmas special—very interesting story based around "the Big Freeze," the cold winter of 1962-1963. Will the actress who played Barbara not be in the new season? They have sent her and her husband the curate to another church for six months. I've always loved Barbara and will miss her.

Books and Christmas Lights in Our Hearts

It's almost as hard to sleep on Christmas Eve as it is to sleep on Christmas morning, which explains why we were up at eight o'clock this morning. James thought about making biscuits, but I scotched the idea. If you're going to be stuffing yourself on carbs soon, better save them for the one-time-a-year yummies, and that last word definitely describes Lin's pies and Ron's mashed potatoes!

But we were intending to go out and have a good time anyway.

First we had to start with the adult mundane stuff: that 32 percent off coupon at CVS (and a CVS gift card) made buying stuff we needed, like Band-Aids, Neosporin, and the like a good bargain. Once that was all taken care of, it was off to Acworth, enjoying Christmas displays in front of people's homes, as we go a back way through country roads. I needed one more gift, and there it was at Books-a-Million. James got a few magazines and a game, then we had hot peppermint cocoa to make the trip really worthwhile. 😉

We took a few minutes off to get James' truck some gasoline—why is gas 14¢ a gallon cheaper in Acworth?—and then had lunch at Panera. It wasn't raining, but it was a grey and damp day, so hot soup hit the spot!

Then it was on to Barnes & Noble. Perhaps everyone at the mall doing their last-minute Christmas shopping were in bad tempers, but at both bookstores everyone was full of good cheer. Used my second 20 percent off newstand purchase for a Christmas "Landscape" and a cross-stitch magazine and the "Writer's Digest" yearbook and bought James an aviation magazine.

Headed home in the gloom to find the television still playing Christmas music for Snowy. We sat and relaxed for a while, then when it started getting dark went out to look at Christmas lights. We used to do this after we ate dinner, and it would be like by the time we went out (around 7:30) half the houses would have their lights turned off already. Timers, people, timers! Even if you have to be out, your lights will be on! They don't cost that much!

We were listening to Christmas music from one of the local stations through most of the ride and had the windows down (we were bundled up and it was only 45). We just stayed in Smyrna; went up toward downtown and drove around there looking at the lights, then checked out some side streets. Went down Bank Street with all their delicious new Craftsman-style homes, and crossed Atlanta Road to check out the "Craftsman" units on "old" Spring Road and opposite the railroad tracks. Our final stop was the unusual development near the end of Old Concord Road: the homes are quite close to each other and all have double glass front doors.

Some people still didn't have all their lights on, as late as seven o'clock! Some lights came on just as we were driving by at 7:15! One of our favorite things wasn't there: one of the houses near downtown Smyrna has this swoopy star that looks like a comet, but it didn't seem to be up, let alone on. But we saw two pairs of the same figures: Yoda and Darth Vader next to each other. One set was made of lights and the other set was inflatable, on a tiny lawn filled with inflatables: they also had a Dory, the M&M guys, Santa in a helicopter, a snowman, and more.

Dinner was kinda small. We picked out some shrimp to have as shrimp scampi, with linguini, but we should have bought more shrimp. We were trying to keep costs down, so basically James had nine shrimp and I had eight. This would have been fine if they were jumbo shrimp, but they weren't. I was hoping we had some clam chowder left in the larder, but almost all the clam chowder went away in the Great Sodium Purge, and the one can we did have amazingly seemed to have come from the old house! Neither of us wanted to eat that! We did find some vegetable orzo soup and shared that, and had gingerbread sticks for dessert.

During dinner we watched the Christmas episode of Remember WENN ("Christmas in the Airwaves"). Noticed the costume designer seemed to work it out that when Scott and Betty are next to each other they are mostly in red and green. :-)

For the last story of the night, I played The Little Drummer Boy. I still have my VHS version because the DVD is missing bits of the soundtrack, and it looks terrible to boot ("restored" version my foot). But as always the story is luminous.

"Christmas" by John Betjeman

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says 'Merry Christmas to you all'.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

Fourth Sunday of Advent: Dreaming of the Cold

An early December snowstorm raised our hopes for a completely chilly December after a very late fall. And indeed it was a bit of a miracles as we usually have snow one day and rain comes along, or high temps come along, to wipe 90 percent of it away the next day. This time the temps stayed low enough that we had some snow around for a week, even if on the last day it was just in the folds of the roofs of houses and in shady spots most of the day. But in the past few days we've had 60s, and sometimes high 60s, and almost all very stick 60s as it keeps raining.

So I've been fantasizing about Canada, somewhere I haven't been in a good many years. I went there several times in the late 60s and the 70s, including to what was left of Expo 67 in Montreal and several times to Quebec City (for some breathtaking views of the St. Lawrence River from the escarpments of the Citadel) and once near Toronto to Canada's Wonderland. (There were also a couple of trips to the Canadian side of the falls at Niagara, where I remember wonderful cherry orchards between Horseshoe Falls and the little city of Niagara on the Lake.)

I fondly remember Canadian programs, too, like Swiss Family Robinson with Chris Wiggins and Diana Leblanc, and Strange Paradise, with Colin Fox and Dawn Greenhalgh, but some of my best memories are of Canadian Christmas stories, including the unusual North Station/Station Nord, which I saw for the first time when we got HD television some years back. Sadly, North Station/Station Nord is not available anywhere I can find online, and you can't buy a DVD. You can find it in Italian in two places on YouTube as Miracolo di Natale, but the voices are chipmunk and at least one is "flopped" (mirror imaged).

But here are a couple of links to a few Canadian Christmas tales, including two episodes of The Forest Rangers, which was syndicated in the 1960s and turned up on early morning weekend television:

The Christmas Martian

The Christmas Raccoons

The Forest Rangers: "A Christmas Story"

The Forest Rangers: "Santa MacLeod"

Rainy, With a Chance of Kringly

The forecast of rain precluded us going to Chattanooga today, so we had an alternate idea: we'd go up to Books-a-Million for a hot cocoa and a look at the calendars, and come back by MicroCenter to return something we'd bought that we didn't need. Well, the weather report seemed to indicate the rain would start at noon and end right after three, and we didn't want to rush, so we put off the book trip. Since we don't have to cook for Christmas Eve (much), we can go up there tomorrow.

Instead, after breakfast we returned the item to MicroCenter, then, because we were halfway there, made a quick trip to Trader Joe's for a tea James liked, got a little more peppermint bark (the Peppermint JoJos were completely gone), and then headed for Ollie's Bargain Outlet, as James was looking for new bungee cords to hold the tarp on the power chair. We picked up a gadget that is supposed to air fry in the oven (and if it doesn't it's only $10 wasted) and I found the same three-calendar set as I did last year, so I can have a small calendar near the computer. It has become so hard to find calendars smaller than 7x7 anymore. There used to be several sources: Michaels, Kmart... We got home right as a few specks of rain tapped the truck window.

Had lunch to M*A*S*H Christmas episodes, then did a spate of vacuuming while James was making more breakfast burritos. This will get him past Twelfth Night before he has to do any more. Once he finished, did two more M*A*S*H episodes, and finally The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, after which we left for supper, timing it just as the mailman arrived, with another Christmas card from a friend, and two Christmas packages from two different friends. And the rain? The few specks of rain went away until about one, we had about a half hour of hard rain, and then, whoosh, it was gone. We even saw a brief gleam of sun until the clouds closed up again.

Oh, well, I can't say I wanted to drive up to Chattanooga two days before Christmas...

Supper was at Fried Tomato Buffet (it's barbecue rib night) and we came home by Kennesaw Avenue to see the decorations on all the big old houses, and then went past our old neighborhood to see if they still do luminaria in Dunleith. If they do, it wasn't tonight. We did go past one of my favorite houses; among all those modern designs, there is a house that looks like a colonial saltbox, complete with a period door, etc. They still just use plain white candles and plain green wreaths and red bows, although the white electric lights on the big pine tree out front kinda ruins the period effect. 😃

More Christmas specials tonight: Father Christmas, The Snowman, The Night Before Christmas, "Christmas at Plum Creek" from Little House on the Prairie, and finally The Best of the Andy Williams Christmas Specials. Snowy sang blithely to all of them!

The only sobering part of today is waiting to hear about James' mom. She and his sister went to visit his sister's daughter and husband and their little boy up in New Jersey, and Mom was not feeling good, so they went to the emergency room. She is not critically ill, but she's stuck in the hospital while they are doing tests to see what is causing her shortness of breath, and who wants to be in the hospital at Christmas, even if it's the best hospital in the world?

Miracles for Christmas

A Book of Christmas Miracles, edited by Amy Newmark
I was a little dismayed when I read that the stories here had been taken from other volumes of the "Chicken Soup" series, but it turned out very few stories were from previous Christmas editions, but were from books I didn't read, including a couple of Canadian editions. So most of the stories were new to me. There were a few from Thanksgiving, and several from Hanukkah (including a miraculous story about a stolen menorah), and even New Year tossed in. Strangers unaware, animal angels, new starts in life, needed money arriving in the nick of time, family reunions, unexpected gifts, emotional revelations—they're all here.

I was especially taken by the penultimate story, "The Secret of the Cedar Chest." In this memory, a woman named Gail is talking about her lifelong book obsession, from when she was a girl asking her mom "did you bring me a book?" Her mom always bought her books for Christmas and hid them in a cedar chest in her bedroom, and Gail talks about having discovered the hiding place and sneaking into her parents' room when they were watching TV and reading the books ahead of time.

I had to laugh, because Mom always bought me a book for a good report card and eventually I discovered where she hid them until report card time. She would go to sewing class every Tuesday and I would go in her bedroom and dig under the stockings in the right corner of the bottom drawer of the dresser and carefully take out the book, read it a little, then put it back exactly how I found it. I remember having almost finished Green Grass of Wyoming by the time report cards came out.

(Green Grass of Wyoming had been a little miracle anyway because we took a wrong turn one Sunday going to Diamond Hill [a skiing area in winter] for the concerts they used to have there, and stopped by this drugstore for some reason [we could never find that store again, either]. I found Green Grass of Wyoming on the spinner rack and was surprised because I never knew My Friend Flicka and Thunderhead were part of a trilogy. So I talked Mom into buying it for my next report card and then read most of it on Tuesday afternoons, because I couldn't wait to see what happened to Ken and Carey—and of course Thunderhead!)

It was a very personal memory in a very enjoyed series.

Third Sunday of Advent: Hygge and Hard Drives

Our original plan for today: go to McKay's in Chattanooga and then eat at City Café. I love going up to McKay's before Christmas; they have the Christmas CDs and Christmas books right out and easy to find. And City Café has a brilliant chicken soup that they put broken-up spaghetti in instead of noodles. Every Italian kid remembers his mother doing this for a quick supper. It's like suddenly going back in time: to grandparents and great-aunts and -uncles speaking Italian (I miss people speaking Italian), and torrone squares in with the Christmas cookies, which weren't sugar cookies with thick colored frosting or gingerbread boys, but almond bars and molasses bars and wine biscuits and pizelle, and even hard fruit-flavored Italian candies in the candy dishes, and always a dish of nuts in the shell.

But it was supposed to start raining in Chattanooga by 10 a.m. and in Atlanta by two. The power chair isn't supposed to travel in the rain, and you can't carry cardboard Xerox paper boxes in a pickup truck's truck bed in the rain. Life happens and rain happens. I've driven home from Chattanooga in the rain, chair or no chair. It's not pretty.

We spent part of the morning swearing because yesterday we'd pretty much had to wedge the new hard drive into James' old computer (everything is riveted in) and since it didn't work, we now had to take the new hard drive out, and the old hard drive, too, to get the files off it. It took James about a half hour, and I had to use a wrench to bang part of the strip of housing that was holding the enclosure with the hard drives in it so it would come out (and he still had trouble). But he got the old drive out, put it into the enclosure, and prepared to copy the files off.

The old disk was completely blank. The update hadn't corrupted Windows, it had wiped everything!

James had done a backup of his main drive to a portable disk in June, so we were able to extract his Eudora mailboxes from that. I turned on the Christmas tree and the Christmas village and put more Christmas cassettes on and we had Christmas hygge as he loaded Eudora and WordPerfect and Paint Shop Pro and other necessary programs, and we restored his mailboxes. We even cleaned out the spinner full of program discs on the top shelf of his computer desk. We found some relics up there, including some disc that could be booted in DOS and a WindowsXP operating disc! He threw out old stuff, kept discs of images, e-books, and manuscripts, and kept any games he was still interested in. The next step will be to see if all the games (mostly military, a few fantasy and some arcade) still open in Win10, and if they don't, if compatibility mode will make them work.

For supper we had half of the four-pound pork loin I found at Kroger, slow cooked in barbecue sauce, with a cucumber salad chaser. It was delicious, and there's leftovers for lunch for both of us.

To finish out the night, we watched the live performance of the Broadway play version of A Christmas Story. It was super, especially the little boy—Andy Walken—who played Ralphie. What a voice on that child! He made it all real. Interesting bits added to the story, like about Schwartz being Jewish (he isn't in the movie and apparently the Hanukkah scene was written for the television production), Miss Shields having OCD, etc. I loved how they worked adult Ralphie, played by Matthew Broderick, and his narration into the action, and really adored the songs "Counting Down to Christmas" and "Just Like That" (also nodded vigorously to "What a Mother Does"!). But what brought down the house for me was the ending narration provided by Broderick, about how sometimes parents didn't say they loved you, but they worked for you and nagged you and kept you safe, which was the same thing. It made me cry. Thinking about it still makes me cry.

And the Bumpus hounds were played by rescue dogs to boot!

From the Bluegrass to the Mountains

A Kentucky Christmas, edited by George Ella Lyon
This is a big book of short stories and poetry by Kentucky authors mostly taking place in Kentucky. The first few stories trace the history of Christmas celebrations in early Kentucky, including the story of a slave named Cato who is able to gain his greatest wish on Christmas Day. Some of the stories are memoirs, others are fiction.

As a whole I liked this book, although a few stories had little to do with Christmas, and a couple of others were just depressing, like the story about the mountain woman who hopes to make Christmas merry for the abused daughters of her young, callous cousin. Another story, "No Time Like Now," was very coarse and seemed to have no purpose, especially in a Christmas book. On the other hand, "Bread" was a sad, but heartwarming piece, and "Christmas Comes to Lord Calvert" had a surprise ending that made my eyebrows rise. "Letters from the Karst" chronicles the return of an addicted young woman to her family, and a secret kept. "Alene" and "When She Came to Mercy" are both heartwarmers about women who learn to live again. Another favorite was "Christmas, Down Home," about a man in a hurry to get to his family Christmas gathering due to a snowstorm, ignoring the wishes of his wife and daughter to do so.

In the end, more pluses than minuses. I suppose I don't get the full effect since I'm not from Kentucky.

Feast of Lights

Light the Lights!, Margaret Moorman
This is a charming little picture book about a little girl whose family celebrates both Hanukkah and Christmas. The illustrations show her celebrating Hanukkah with her father initiating the celebration, and then Christmas with her mother doing so. The story emphasizes the commonalities of the two celebrations: special food, lights, family visiting, but doesn't really explain a lot about either of them, just simply showing the happy celebrations in the home. It's a sweet little book showing how a religously mixed family handles the two separate holidays, but if you wish to learn about Hanukkah's origins (or Christmas's, for that matter), this isn't the book.

Second Sunday of Advent: A Christmas Miscellaney

This snow storm unexpectedly delivered to us on Friday has been novel in many ways. It pretty much almost set a record for Atlanta snows, depending on where you were. The record is 8.3 inches from 1940, and if it hadn't rained I think we would have made it or gone over. We had 7 inches on our deck on Sunday morning. Furthermore, today we still have snow on the ground—not some small bits of white stuff in perpetually shady places, but snow still on lawns and bushes. It commonly snows one day and then goes up to 60℉ the next.

So it's been a nice Christmas-y coda to the weekend (except for the poor folks who are still without electrical power). It sure was beautiful on Friday. I'll not soon forget crunching on the new fallen snow, watching the streetlights and the Christmas lights come on, the unearthly silence that a mantle of snow throws over the landscape, the beauty of the clearing sky the next morning with the stark white against brilliant blue.

James started the day in lovely fashion by making biscuits. This cleaned out our Bisquik. Since apparently we can't go to the grocery store without forgetting something—this time it was onions—there was another item for our grocery list.

Our most pressing need was getting James a new hard drive. So our first stop today was MicroCenter. He got a hard drive and a hard drive enclosure so he could get his files and his Eudora mailboxes off the old hard drive (then perhaps he can reformat it and use it as a second drive). They had Fitbits on sale, so for Christmas I bought him a Fitbit Alta with a heart monitor. When he does cardio rehab he has a certain heart rate he is not supposed to go over; I want him to find out what that is so he can do exercises at home during bad weather or other times he can't attend. The doctor gave him stretching exercises to do at home, and he has weights he lifts. He can use the Fitbit to monitor his heartbeat.

So we stopped by Publix to get onions and Bisquik and a little more yogurt, and picked up a few more things like always. We had a fun time in dairy: they always put my yogurt on the top shelf and being a shrimp I can only reach so far. This time they were so far back I couldn't even get them with James' cane. So a lady with a schoolage son helped us, and he was quite chuffed about the whole thing. And then we went by Mink's, where I had to once again go on a search through the dark corners of the store to find a bottle of hearty burgundy (all I ever find is Gallo Brothers, so it's not like I even have a choice) so I can make cookies.

And now for the fun portion of the afternoon, it was our annual attendance at "An Atlanta Christmas." Last year they did all our favorites; this year they did mostly new scripts. My favorite this year was "The Role of a Lifetime," a previously-performed story written by Brad Strickland about a down-on-his-luck actor playing Santa Claus at a 1950 department store who is stunned by a little girl's Christmas request and what he does about it. It's very sweet and very reminiscent of stories written by Thomas Fuller, who wrote the original "Atlanta Christmas" sequence of tales. Kelley Ceccato did a new story this year, "The Sleigh of Unbroken Dreams" (or it may have been a typo in the program book and it's "Unspoken"), about a trio of elves at the North Pole who dream about giving a different type of toy to children rather than the commercial standards, just like another elf did long ago. With the help of a retired reindeer, they work on making their own dreams come true. I really, really enjoyed this one, and think it would make a fantastic children's book! I was listening to it envisioning the characters as illustrations and wishing I could draw the way I saw the pictures in my head! "Rory Rammer" was "A Visit from St. Rex," a perennial favorite.

We picked up Chinese food on the way home and ate by the light of the Christmas tree. Watched Alaska: the Last Frontier, which ended on a tragic note with Shane having fallen off the roof of their new house (it was finished a week earlier) and broken his back.

The Christmas Tree Distraction

Well, it certainly was an interesting day. Not in the Chinese sense, just...different.

The original plan for today was that James would go off to his club meeting Christmas party, and I would have my annual orgy decorating the tree. Well, Atlanta had about eight inches (at least) of snow yesterday. This is nothing in New England and Michigan and Minnesota and up in the "great white north" over the border in Canada. But the folks up there have snow tires, snow plows, snow shovels, snow blowers, plentiful sand trucks, and enough snow yearly that they know how to drive in it. (Well, judging by the accidents on the news, at least they should!) Your average Atlantan has no experience with snow. He may have all-weather tires but no snow experience. Plus the ground always starts as warm, so there is always ice under the snow. I don't know about you, but my car is not Sonia Heine or Michelle Kwan, and neither is any other vehicle in the metro area.

So we had been snowed in yesterday and it snowed more during the night, and we woke up to a beautiful white world. It had snowed so much the bird feeders were blocked with snow and there were 7 1/2 inches of snow on the deck. James' party was canceled. Instead he continued working on his computer, which died in the middle of a Windows update. It's just...stuck. So I set up an account for him on my computer, in case he needed it.

My project began when James and I cleared the rocking chair and other things out of the corner, I vacuumed, and then I commenced bringing the four parts of the Christmas tree upstairs. After a brief gaffe when I put the wrong part into the stand assembly, I got the tree together and plugged it in.

Arggh! Half the string in the center section was out! Now what would I do? This is our practically brand new tree, the one we got at Kmart in 2014. It didn't look terribly awful, but there was a dark spot around the "waist" of the tree, and this has never been an overly bright tree. I supposed I could have tried putting light colored ornaments (the white and pink satin balls, for example, the snowman ornament, the unicorn in a stocking, etc.) on that dark section, but I was pretty upset.

In the meantime James noticed he was down to six of his homemade burritos. He had meat and beans, but needed wraps and cheese.

By this time it was noon, the sky had cleared and turned a brilliant blue, and the snow was melting rapidly in the streets and was falling in blobs from tree branches and other tall structures. People were out walking. We called Hobby Lobby to see if they had a gadget called a Lightkeeper Pro; they did, and we had them hold it for us. Then we got in the truck and drove there via the main roads, which were pretty clear. There wasn't a ton of traffic, but what there was was brisk.

We picked it up and then went to Publix, where we did the shopping, including ingredients for the burritos and the twofers. We were starving by the time we got home because it was wayyyy after two, but I only cut off a little of the loaf of French bread before I girded my courage and tried the Lightkeeper Pro.

I've been hearing about this gadget for years in various Christmas groups, and most of the time it's positive. It looks like a plastic gun with several parts, runs on included batteries, and has a couple of different ways of correcting Christmas light string (only miniature lights) problems, the most common being the "quick fix trigger method." There is a socket connector at the front of the LP. You pick out any light socket in the part of a light string that does not work, pull out the light bulb, and plug the LP into that empty socket, then you press the trigger. It works by overriding a burned-out filament and fixing the shunt that make electricity flow through the string. If it doesn't work after thirty presses, there is an alternative method called an audible voltage detector, which reads like voodoo to me.

And it worked! It needed only about three pulls of the trigger to fix the string. There were also two burned-out bulbs which I moved to the back of the tree.

I spent the rest of late afternoon decorating the tree, interrupted by some supper between the ornaments and the tinsel. I watched Christmas Is, The City That Forgot About Christmas, For Better or For Worse: the Bestest Present, For Better or For Worse:The Christmas Angel, It's a Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special, and finally, Raggedy Ann and Andy in the Great Santa Claus Caper. And then about four or five episodes of Rehab Addict during the tinseling.

The tinsel took forever. I hope I never have to put icicles on a tree at night again. Even with the lamps on it was hard to see to layer the branches and the static electricity was appalling. It's bad enough that these modern icicles are so thin. They kept whipping around and attaching themselves to everything but the tree.

But finally it was time for the final touch: the manger scene under the tree.

It became immediately apparent that we were going to have no more luck keeping Tucker's tail away from the tinsel than in previous years, so the baby gate is back up in front of the tree.

As a reward for creating colorful sparkle, there was gingerbread with whipped cream for dessert and a viewing of Mercy Mission: the Rescue of Flight 771, followed by a John Denver and the Muppets chaser.

A Simpler Time, A Wonderful Place

Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot, Frances Frost
Frost wrote four of these novels about the Clark family of Vermont and the titular pony in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Windy Foot is a Shetland pony owned by 12-year-old Toby Clark, but he is just one part of the action and doesn't do miraculous equine tricks. As the book opens, the Clarks are awaiting not only Christmas, but a visit from their new friends, Jerry Burnham, a horse trainer, and his daughter Tish, who has become Toby's especial friend after Windy Foot beat her pony Jigs in the Webster County fair some months earlier.

This is a warm and nostalgic book, with simple preparations for a holiday composed of simple gifts given to those who are loved, homemade and homegrown farm food, a small village with occupants of many nationalities who gather for happy events like a village carol sing and Christmas shopping at the general store, and children and adults working hard and reaping rewards from it (and learning some small lessons about life and consideration of others).

One of the things I notice each time I read this book is how much the children, especially Toby, eat. Christmas Day is particularly astonishing: they have a big breakfast, the kids snack on cookies, then there's a big Christmas dinner, Tish and Toby go into the village and have two hot fudge sundaes at the drugstore, and then there's a buffet party at night! Yet no one is overweight because they are always doing some kind of work: in Toby's case during the week chronicled by the book he has done daily chores like taking care of the horses and helping milk the cows, patrolled the farm for a bear, rebuilt and painted a sleigh and restored some sleigh bells, run errands for his parents, shoveled snow, filled and refilled the woodbox (presumably having chopped some of the wood), gone skiing twice, gone snowshoeing with his sister to gather greens to decorate the house, made a base for the Christmas tree, and other stuff I've forgotten. It's amazing reading how many chores everyone in the family had to do just to keep warm and fed.

This is an annual read and a nostalgic one, going back to when the book was in my elementary school library. It never fails to make me feel loved and cozy and happy and home, whether it's imagining the cold air in a buggy ride home from school, gathering Christmas greens and spying a beautiful fox in the woods, dreaming yourself participating in the Christmas sing or the Clarks' Christmas party, or just wanting to own a lovable pony like Windy Foot.

Christmas Animation

In honor of St. Nicholas Day:

The Wind in the Willows: Mole's Christmas

The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends: The Tailor of Gloucester

The Forgotten Toys 

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Good King Wenceslas 

The First Snow of Winter

A New Take on Santa Claus

The Immortal Nicholas, Glenn Beck
I confess, I picked this up because it was only $2. It reads a little like Henry Van Dyke's The Fourth Wise Man. Agios, a frankincense hunter, loses everything after his wife, stillborn son, and ten-year-old son die. He burns their cabin and becomes a wanderer, working for his food and shelter, until he is captured by men named Melchior, Caspar, and Balthasar in a huge caravan who wish him to find frankincense for a baby who is about to be born, a child who will be king. Later Agios will find himself a foster son, a simple, misshapen giant of a boy named Krampus who loves the little figures Agios carves. And finally, he will follow the Christ child as he grows into a man

Beck attempts to square the story of Jesus with the story of Santa Claus. I had to admit Agios' story made me keep turning the pages, but it seemed he wanted to throw everything but the kitchen sink into the story. Krampus, for instance, in legend is a monster who accompanies St. Nicholas in some countries. Since the good saint is supposed to be gentle and kind, it is Krampus who punishes the bad children by beating them with his stick and then stuffing him into a sack. Krampus in the book is just a disabled young man who frightens people with his looks. Later Agios meets the real St. Nicholas, but the story is twisted again.

I thought the book was worth reading, but I thought Beck tried too hard to make everything gel with the legends.

Aliens, Nativities, and Other Festive Subjects

A Lot Like Christmas, Connie Willis
This is an expanded version of Willis' Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, with one story ("The Pony") removed and five new stories added, including the inventive "All Seated on the Ground," about alien visitors who respond only to certain verses in Christmas carols. (The protagonists in this one are named Calvin and Meg, a neat touch.) I'm a particular favorite of "Miracle," as it's a humorous story about a young woman who favors Miracle on 34th Street over It's a Wonderful Life. In a completely different vein is the thriller "In Coppelius' Toyshop," about a selfish man who gets his just desserts. The other carryovers are "Inn" (a woman involved with her church's Christmas program helps two strangers who show up unexpectedly), "Adaptation," "Cat's Paw" (a Poirot-like mystery tale with a twist), "Newsletter," and "Epiphany."

Besides "All Seated," the new stories are "All About Emily" (where an aging actress meets a very unusual rival), "deck.halls@boughs/holly" (a Christmas decorator meets an unusual client), "Now Showing" (what's going on in that multiplex, anyway?), and "Just Like the Ones We Used to Know" (involving an uncanny snowstorm).

Connie Willis writes a heck of a story, and her Christmas stories are no exception. Old films, faith, Christmas carols, church pageants, country house Yuletide mysteries, and snowstorms all receive new twists in this collection. A great choice if you want something different in Christmas tales.

First Sunday of Advent: Never Enough Time

I've loved Christmas seemingly forever, from the days when I made my own ornaments out of cardboard and the foil saved from chocolate Easter eggs and gum wrappers, and painstakingly broke apart walnuts and glued the empty shells back together, gilding them with Testor's gold and silver enamel paint and sprinkling them with different colors of glitter. (All of these ornaments are still on my feather tree.) I still look forward to decorating with anticipation, although it seems each year the boxes get heavier!

What makes me sad is that each year it's a race to get everything done. There are cards to be sent and gifts to be mailed and decorations to go up, and no matter how early I begin, I never catch up. I want to do everything. It's not a chore, but that clock keeps chasing me. This year I am behind because of a ridiculous cold.

I think what bothers me most is that I also like to do "Christmas-y" things at Christmastime: visit the stores in downtown Marietta, go to see "An Atlanta Christmas" as done by the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company, drive up to Chattanooga to see what's going on at McKay's Books (and to have some yummy chicken soup from City Cafe), attend the Apple Annie Craft Show at the Catholic Church of Saint Anne. I keep wanting to do other things, too: perhaps go to the Botanical Garden, or back to the History Center, or drive through Madison, GA, which is a picture-perfect antebellum town that puts on the dog for the holidays. But, like the decorating and the mailing and the cards, all these things have to be done before Christmas. Well, okay, a craft show pretty much has to be held before Christmas...but it frets me that I can no longer do some of the things, like the Christmas walk around the city, or the McKay's trip, or going to Madison or the monastery, in the week between Christmas and New Year's. I know that no one's done the Twelve Days of Christmas properly for years, but I remember things being slower to turn around "way back when."  Sure, there were sales galore on December 26, but all the Christmas decorations stayed up until New Year's, with black-and-silver and black-and-gold New Year's Eve decorations dotting the still festive streets and store aisles. There was still one week left to enjoy the Christmas season, another week to savor the leftovers and enjoy the presents and admire the outdoor decorations and the colorful lights.

Now by the time afternoon comes on December 26, everything's ripped up, put in a corner and marked "clearance," and everything has turned pink, heart-shaped, and chocolate. (Next thing we know there are "if you love her you will buy her expensive jewelry" commercials.) We're chivvied, rushed, and left bereft as Christmas just clicks off like a light switch at midnight. Good grief, can't we at least get past New Year's Day without hearing from Valentine's Day? I miss the Aste Spumonte ads and the displays of party hats and noisemakers and paper horns and blowouts, and the reports on the news about resolutions.

It's one place where the "slow movement" and "mindfulness" should come back. Till then I'll have to retreat into my leftover Christmas magazines and reread my Christmas books and enjoy my own lights—everything here stays up until Epiphany!

The Lights of Christmas

Maybe that's what I fell in love with first.

I was a color junkie as a kid. Rainbows. 64-count boxes of Crayola crayons, where my mom just couldn't understand why a 48-count just wasn't enough. But the best thing of all was Christmas lights. Back when I was small the bulbs were fat and bright, red, yellow-orange, blue, green, white, and the miniature ones came later. I might have gotten it from my parents; I remember their delight in a miniature set which had bulbs of two different colors, covered with a clear plastic crystal icicle-type cover.

Who invented Christmas lights?

The Father of Electric Christmas Tree Lights

Untangling the History of Christmas Tree Lights

A Brief History of Christmas Lights

From Edison to LED

The Curious Evolution of Holiday Lights

Might Christmas Tree Candles Make a Comeback?

And we can't talk about Christmas tree lights without this lovingly reconstructed site, Old Christmas Tree Lights.