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.

A Story for Every Night Before Christmas

Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Book of Christmas Virtues, edited by Jack Canfield & Mark Victor Hansen with Carol McAdoo Rehme
This is an older "Chicken Soup" book, which means the stories are a little bit more rugged than the modern versions that are offered. Arranged around the seven virtues of kindness, joy, love, gratitude, faith, simplicity, and wonder, each section opens with an introduction and ends with ideas for Christmas projects. In between you will meet people down on their lucky, selfless givers, cute kids, and those who learn what Christmas is really all about.

How To Make a Williamsburg Christmas

Christmas Decorations from Williamsburg, Susan Height Rountree
It was nearly brand new and only a dollar. This is the only way I can explain that I bought a book about how to make the same sort of Christmas decorations as they use at Williamsburg. This is definitely decorating for people who like to work with flowers and live fruit, and use metal frames, roofing nails, wet floral foam, and other support systems to put it together.

There are many nice photos, including close-ups of windows and different styles of wreaths (one interesting one is made of tobacco leaves with a long pipe across it), of the Williamsburg streets, but most of the text is instruction how to make the fruity arches over the doors and wreaths on the door, topiary shapes, and even towers of decorative food for the table.

The photos are even a bit nostalgic as they mentioned the last time we went to Williamsburg that they are decorating less with fruits than they used to, especially with oranges and pineapples, which were rare and costly during colonial times and would have not been wasted nailed up outside a home or shop, but saved for Christmas punch. But really, for purchase full price you must seriously want to make these decorations.

Elfs in Bondage, Keeping the Yule in Yuletide, and Other Thoughts Over the Holiday Season

Christmas Philosophy for Everyone: Better Than a Lump of Coal, edited by Scott C. Lowe
I confess, it has taken me literally years to finish this book, which I bought at Borders before it closed. It's a series of pretty much serious essays about Christmas: whether it's good or bad to tell your kids the Santa Claus myth, if there really could have been a virgin birth or is it something too unbelievable even to take on faith, is there really a "War on Christmas," where'd this Santa Claus dude come from anyway, and why is he wearing a Hawaiian shirt, etc.

Last time I only made it halfway through; this time I had changed enough to enjoy all the entries, even the one about Festivus (and I'm not a Seinfeld fan), although the wrestling business sounds intimidating. (I can see fights breaking out during the airing of the grievances, though.) I was heartened by the essays saying that telling your kids about Santa Claus is okay, because I've never figured out why some people have resented it so when they found out what their parents told them was a story. I mean, my parents also told me about Cinderella, unicorns, Robin Hood, and the Easter Bunny. When I was old enough, I realized they were all neat fairy stories, and that included Santa Claus (but it didn't include Jesus). You grow out of Santa Claus the way you grow out of your blankie or your favorite teddy; it's a natural progression into adulthood. Why resent it or your parents? Did you resent the fact they read to you about a spider talking to a pig, or about tesseracts? Odd.

One of the most interesting essays talks about how Santa's predecessor St. Nicholas, a real-life bishop, was no wimp. When he attended the Council of Nicaea, he decked someone for implying that Jesus was not divine! (The conflict about this goes on to this day.)

Other essays address Christmas consumerism—and it's been there a longer time than you think—and the working conditions at the North Pole (does Santa Claus run a sweatshop, and could Hermione Granger and SPEW find a good place to protest at Santa's workshop?), plus there are even essays on A Christmas Story (what does Ralphie learn from his BB gun gift?) and A Christmas Carol (what's Scrooge's problem, anyway?).

Definitely something different for Christmas reading, if you can keep an open mind and not get huffy if a belief is contradicted.

Almost Advent

Stir-up Sunday is an informal term in Anglican churches for the last Sunday before the season of Advent. It gets its name from the beginning of the collect for the day in the Book of Common Prayer, which begins with the words, "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people." But it has become associated with the custom of making the Christmas puddings on that day.

Last year, when Christmas was on a Sunday, the season of Advent was the longest it could be. This year, with Christmas on a Monday and Christmas Eve being the last Sunday of Advent, it is the shortest. So this final Sunday of November is the ending of the church liturgical year instead of the beginning of it.

The Christmas pudding never caught on as an American custom, but here it's presented in all its glory in Great Britain: The Ultimate Guide to Stir-Up Sunday.

When is Stir-Up Sunday 2017?

When is Stir-Up Sunday?

A History of The Christmas Pudding

"St. Martin on His White Horse..."

You might hear this charming saying in the Czech Republic or Poland or some other Balkan countries, commemorating St. Martin of Tours, the soldier who became famous for tearing his beautiful cloak in half to give the half to a beggar he found shivering on the road. Since then he's been a patron of the poor. If you see "St. Martin on his white horse" it means that it is snowing.

His saint's day falls on November and is also known as "Martinmas." Back in earlier centuries, Advent was celebrated in a similar fashion to Lent and was a fasting period except on Sunday, and it also lasted forty days and began on Martinmas. In honor of St. Martin's Day and the original start of Advent, here are a couple of Christmas books that span media styles (some horses involved, but no white ones):


The Triple Dog Dare, Joanna Wilson
Wilson, the nostalgic writer behind the blog "Christmas TV History," and with two books about the subject under her belt, was curious if anyone has ever sat through the entire TBS/TNT 24-hour marathon of 1980's marvelous masterpiece A Christmas Story, and what it would be like to do so. She found one blogger who had, but that person had just used the time to catcall the film. Wilson wondered if in watching she could figure out the answer to some questions: why is the movie so popular? Are there any movies that would make a better marathon? Why is Christmas Story so popular as a marathon movie anyway? (2017 makes the 20th year it will be shown in a marathon format.) Would she hate the movie after she saw it so many times? And she was going to watch it with commercials! Would they drive her crazy before Ralphie did?

With her boyfriend's help, Wilson set up her experiment for Valentine's Day weekend so her real Christmas plans would not be interrupted by her experiment. She put up a tree, played Christmas music, had Christmas cookies. She even managed to find a copy of a broadcast with commercials from the 1980s (her boyfriend pinpoints the date from sports scores mentioned during the broadcast), so her commentary on 1980s commercials and "must have" gadgets become part of the text. She notices bits she's missed over the years even after viewing the film so many times, discovers many parallel scenes, and even familiar faces from recent television shows. Along the way, she references several times a book I didn't realize anyone else remembered: the 1968 Seven Glorious Days, Seven Fun-Filled Nights by Charles Sopkin, who uses six televisions to watch a week's worth of network programming to comment about Newton Minow's "vast wasteland." (I can tell you without looking at the book what week he watched: April 23-29, 1967, because the Lassie episode he describes is "Goliath.") I love that on each run she notices something different: behind the scenes actors in one, the music in another, the scheming of the kids in a third, etc.

If you're a Christmas Story fan or just wonder who would do such a crazy thing, you'll probably enjoy this exploration of leg lamps, Christmas nostalgia, and "you'll shoot your eye out!"

A Christmas Carol Christmas Book, Tim Hallinan
This was only a buck at the library book sale and I keep looking at it every time it shows up, so this time I finally "done the deed." It's a thin, coffee-table size book put out by IBM to celebrate the release of 1984 television version of A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott. The first third of the book is a "photonovel" ('member those?) of the film and the last third is a complete version of the novel. In between are four sections about Charles Dickens and how the Carol came to be written and how the family celebrated, about Victorian crafts and traditions at Christmas, of typical Victorian holiday food and drink offerings, and about caroling.

Obviously, if you're a big fan of Scott's Carol, this will have the most draw for you, and you'll have a copy of the original book, too, which is a big plus as far as I'm concerned! The historical chapters are cool as well if you've never read anything about Victorian food and games. A nice primer to the Dickens' era.

(But everyone knows the best version of Christmas Carol is Mr. Magoo...[winks, ducks, and runs])

November Exactly!

November has a contented glow about it. Not only from the autumn colours but fire and light bring a cheeriness and warmth to the now long, dark nights. Make time for your own golden hours during this peaceful month—festive preparations can wait—and indulge in slow cooking, appreciate the landscape or your neighborhood, simply enjoy reading or maybe drawing in a journal. Wherever your pleasures lie, be soothed and rested as this mellow season comes to a close. Calming comforts cannot be rushed, so light a fire, pull up a blanket and let the world get along without  you for a while. It will.

Lisa Sykes in the November "The Simple Things"

Rudolph Day, October 2017

"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.

Only two months until Christmas! Fall is flying by as usual, while stinky, soppy, sullen, searing summer takes its own sweet time slouching toward Hades to die a welcome death and bring us autumn.

I've been having a Dickens of an autumn: literally! Netgalley presented me with two different books about Dickens and Christmas, and I approached them both with anticipation. Well, one out of two wasn't bad.


 Dickens and Christmas, Lucinda Hawksley
"There is a strangely prevalent belief that the British did not celebrate Christmas in any memorable way until ... the arrival of Charles Dickens' Christmas Books. Contemporary accounts ... show this to be untrue."

There are several new media about Charles Dickens and Christmas out this year, this one and a fiction entrée, as well as a film called The Man Who Invented Christmas. I'm not certain why, as it doesn't appear to be a Dickens' anniversary of any kind, unless we are considering the 180th anniversary of Oliver Twist. But it's our gain. This book is the nonfiction entry of the two, and is literally what the title states: Christmas celebrations over the years during Charles Dickens' lifetime, starting with how Christmas would have been celebrated when Charles was a boy (greenery in the home, great feasting on a Christmas porridge, gifts—but more commonly gifts at New Year—and a big cake and an even larger celebration on Twelfth Night that included a cake which has now been transferred to the Christmas festivities). The writing of Dickens' "Christmas Books" (some not taking place at Christmas at all, but just called that because the books were intended as Christmas gifts) and his celebrations with his family follow, with festive food and plays put on by Dickens and his children.

As with any family, the Christmases were not always merry. One year the Dickens' oldest child was very ill. Later Dickens and his wife separated as he carried on an affair with young actress Ellen Ternan, and the plays and feasts came to an end. Dickens spent his last few years doing readings of his work and pretty much working himself to death.

I enjoyed reading about how the family celebrated Christmas and how Christmas celebrations changed over the years, but it was also sad how Dickens' bright youthfulness turned sour and his family life collapsed. The book is liberally illustrated with period etchings and woodcuts.

 Mr. Dickens and His Carol, Samantha Silva
I must be the only one who's read this book so far (having read some other reviews of it on Goodreads) who really wasn't charmed by it.

This is a fictionalized story about how Charles Dickens came to write A Christmas Carol. Things are not going well for Dickens as the year 1843 comes to a close. His novel Martin Chuzzlewit has not been well received, especially in the United States, since Dickens lampooned some of the "characters" he met on his American tours in the book. His publishers are asking for a Christmas book, but he has not one idea in his head about what to write. The family's extravagant spending has caught up with them; he still fears ending up in debtors' prison as his father did, and his improvident father is still charging his own expenses to his son's account, so the author begins lashing out at every expenditure made, even though weeks earlier he would have approved of them. And then Dickens compounds his problem by meeting up briefly with an old flame; when his wife hears about it, she packs up the children, Dickens' annual partners in the family's wonderful Christmas festivities, and leaves for Scotland.

A sober Dickens moves back to his old digs where he wrote The Pickwick Papers, and amazingly, finds a muse: a beautiful woman in a purple cloak who works at the theater where his friend performs. As he tries to track her down, he encounters situations that will later make its way into his writing—but can he write his Christmas book to pay his bills, and somehow make amends to wife Catherine in the meantime?

Author Silva actually apologizes in the afterward for creating a fictional situation around Dickens' writing of the book, saying that she loved Dickens so much she wanted to create an adventure around him. Honestly, I have to admire a lot of this novel. I love the way she uses Victorian language to describe situations: Dickens' hyperactive household (although she has the Dickens' kids playing with rubber bands in his study, two years before they were invented), the streets of London, the warrens of the poorest areas, the world of the theater. She also works into the story Dickens' habit of remembering unusual names and incorporating them into his tales. It's just that I figured out the secret behind Dickens' muse almost immediately and then became irritated as he tried endlessly to make contact with her. And then he writes another book before he even tackles the Carol? In the end it seemed overwrought and endless.

Here's a great BBC article about the actual writing of A Christmas Carol.

Of course, if Christmas preparations in August and Christmas carols in October incense you, you may enjoy this a bit more:

  Bah, Humbug! Grumping Through the Season, gathered by William Cole
This funny little gift book is for your favorite pre-Carol Scrooge, with witty sayings and essays about the excesses of the holiday season. From Hilaire Belloc's terse Christmas card verse, "May all my enemies go to hell, Noёl, Noёl, Noёl, Noёl," to sour essays by luminaries like Roald Dahl and George Bernard Shaw, down to James Thurber's dour version of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" as written by Ernest Hemingway, it's the perfect gift for anyone who objects to Christmas trees appearing in craft shops in July, endless Christmas carols at the mall the minute Hallowe'en is ended, and the arguments for and against Black Friday's screaming approval of excess.

Not Just Baking Cookies Anymore

Mrs. Claus: Not the Fairy Tale They Say, edited by Rhonda Parrish

Santa Claus' wife: she's the plump white lady who bakes cookies for the elves, right? Homebody. Mistress of the kitchen, the lady who spoils the reindeer.

Not in this book! In fourteen imaginative short stories, Mrs. Claus is a valkyrja, a goblin fighter, a being from another planet, a member of the Fae, a witch; she detects, can repel North Pole invaders, pilot an airship, visit alien worlds, stalk monsters who kill reindeer —and in one story she's even evil! I loved every one of the concepts except for one, and the whole idea of Mrs. Claus not conforming to the standard housekeeping stereotype and having a talent separate from Santa, who is also portrayed in various nontypical ways, including being a woman.

Some of my favorites in this volume: "Wight Christmas," the spooky "The Asylum Musicale," "Christmas Magic," "Unexpected Guests," "Shouldering the Burden," "Captain Lizzy and the Stranger in the Fog," and "Red to Hide the Blood."

If you love Christmas, fantasy tales, and strong female characters, this one's a triple threat of delight! You'll never see Mrs. Claus and her wooden spoon and frilly clothes in the same way again.

"October"

by Grace Strickler Dawson

("St. Nicholas," October 1929)

With an artist's eye

For color and line

And delicate grace

In a new design,

She fashions her gowns

With care, with care,

And saunters by

With a casual air--

Who but October

Would think to wear

Old bronze lace

On a pale jade sky?

Rudolph Day, September 2017

"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 fell in love with Susan Branch's wonderful watercolor art years ago, and two of my favorite books of hers are these (she also has a Christmas memory book which I have):

Susan Branch took much of her inspiration from Beatrix Potter, who too many people know only as "the author of those silly kiddie books where the animals are in clothes." While Potter's fame rested mainly on these "Little Books," as she referred to them, she is so much more; even in her illustrations for the "Little Books": the minute details of these juvenile pieces of artwork are stunning. Take any of these illustrations and look at them closely, especially those of hearthsides and countrysides. The little country store in "The Tale of Ginger and Pickles" was based on a shop in Potter's hometown of Sawrey and even today the drawing looks exactly like the restored shop.

But not many people know that Potter was a talented nature artist and illustrated university-level botanical catalogs (the ones she was permitted to, that is, since the faculty usually blanched upon discovering that "HBP" was a woman, even as they admired her detailed illustrations). One of her watercolors of winter at her Hilltop Farm is one of my favorites:

Which is why I picked up the following:

 

A Peter Rabbit Christmas Collection, Beatrix Potter
If you don't remember "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" having anything to do with Christmas, don't worry. "Peter" and his sequels ("The Tale of Benjamin Bunny" and "The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies") are included here because "Peter" is her most famous work, and also because over her lifetime Potter used Peter and his cousin Benjamin as themes for her home-made Christmas cards which she sent to friends and especially children of friends. These rare cards and notes Potter wrote to the children are included in this volume, along with a Christmas chapter from Potter's The Fairy Caravan, a lesser-known novella written after she stopped writing her "Little Books" and devoted herself to farming full time—and preserving the wild landscape of the Lake District—with her husband William Heelis, plus the story "Wag-by-Wall" about a poor woman, which ends on Christmas Eve, and "The Tale of the Two Bad Mice." The gem in the collection is Potter's "The Tailor of Gloucester," her favorite of all the stories, the tale of a poor tailor, a selfish cat, and some very talented mice.

A great gift for your favorite child, even if that favorite child is yourself: a great book to pore over on a winter afternoon with a cup of tea and some gingersnaps.

A link to Potter's brilliant botanical art, which was featured in textbooks.

Rudolph Day, August 2017

"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.

Do you like mysteries? I do. Most of my favorites are within what is called "the cozy" realm, amateur sleuths solving crime. I cut my teeth on the early Bobbsey Twin rewrites, where they solved mysteries and were brought into the present time (the Twins debuted in 1904), and while not a reader of Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys, still love Trixie Belden.

The classic old Christmas ballad "The Mistletoe Bough" is at its heart a mystery story, and many classic writers have set short stories at Christmastime: Agatha Christie had at least two, "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" and "The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding" (in which some astute kids help the Belgian sleuth. One of my favorite mystery story heroes, Lord Peter Wimsey, solves a Christmas theft in "The Necklace of Pearls." Anne Perry publishes an annual novelette set at Christmastime and Victoria Thompson and Rhys Bowen have produced Christmas adventures with their regular characters. And of course Sherlock Holmes solves a Christmas mystery in "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle."

This month I had two mysterious Christmas treats:

 
Holmes for the Holidays, edited by Martin Greenberg, Carol-Lynn Rossel Waugh, and Jon L. Lellenberg
I've been waffling about buying this book for years, so when it turned up at a library booksale at a deep, deep discount, it was a sign. As you may have guessed from the title, this is a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories with a Yuletide theme. Several of my favorite authors—Anne Perry, Barbara Paul, Gillian Linscott (who writes the Liberty Lane mysteries under the name "Caro Peacock")—had stories in the volume as well. Sadly, I figured out the Perry story immediately, although her narrative was good. Paul's story, about a thief stealing from Christmas charities, was much better. I had read the Linscott before, in another volume of Christmas stories, but found it just as enjoyable as the previous time; it is narrated by a girl spending Christmas in Switzerland. Gwen Moffat's story also features a child who is affected in the murder of a countryman in a hiking accident—but part of the mystery is being covered up.

"The Adventure of the Three Ghosts" and "The Adventure of the Christmas Ghosts" both riff off Dickens' A Christmas Carol as if the events actually took place. Another story takes place at Twelfth Night and has Watson discovering what happened in an old case he helped Holmes investigate, while a dog figures in the tale of a man having dreadful dreams. Holmes' "Christmas Client" is a mathematician who is hiding a literary secret, while he must rescue a woman wrongly accused of murder in "The Adventure of the Angel's Trumpet."

All of the stories are of some interest, although I thought "The Italian Sherlock Holmes," while colorful, a bit boring. My favorite is the Linscott story.

If you enjoy this book, there is a second collection of Sherlock Holmes Christmas stories—and of course Doyle's classic "Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle."

Wagging Through the Snow, Laurien Berenson
I had an opportunity to read this new Melanie Travis mystery as an ARC on Netgalley, as I've always enjoyed her dog-show based mysteries. However, I was a bit irritated to discover that they want full price for this story when it's really only a novella.

Thanksgiving has barely concluded when Melanie's brother Frank, once a bit of a sad sack, but now a successful business owner, husband, and father, arrives at the Driver home with exciting news: he has taken the profits from his business (a coffee shop called the Bean Counter) and invested in a new business, a Christmas tree farm. Trouble is, he hasn't told his partner (Melanie's ex-husband) he did so and wants Melanie to tell him. Understandably, Bob Travis is a bit irritated, so Melanie and her family (and redoubtable Aunt Peg) accompany Frank and Bob when they go to check out the property, which is run-down but promising. Unfortunately, they also find a body in the woods, an alcoholic homeless man named Pete. Everyone thinks it's an accident—until a friend of Pete's appears and says Pete had stopped drinking and there's no way he walked into that "accident." So once again Melanie is sleuthing as she tries to shop, bake, decorate, and listen to gift hints from her two sons.

This is a quick, festive read, with the reclamation of the Christmas tree farm almost more interesting than the mystery. I loved being with Melanie and her family for Christmas, but the mystery is almost too slight. Another subplot and a full book's worth of story would have helped.

Rudolph Day, July 2017

"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.

And now summer in all its sunshine, and, unfortunately, all its heat, is truly upon us. Even as a child I wasn't a summer fan, and it's when I most miss living near the ocean, although I got tired of "the beach thing" very early in my life. The noisy radios, the cigarette butts, the obnoxious crowds, the blazing sun, the creepy jellyfish all combined to make sunbathing at the beach an unpleasant activity (and this didn't count scrubbing sand off and cleaning the tub when you got home). I much preferred walking along a sea wall on a summer day, and then retreating to the nearest Del's Lemonade truck for a cool drink.

Later I became a devotèe of the seashore in winter. The crowds were gone, the heat was gone, it was the same beautiful sea, the same beautiful scenery in the distance, the same tangy smell of brine and seaweed and fish and low tide, the same beautiful sunset spreading across the western sky, the dormant plants and grass and the swell of the waves making a picturesque and natural backdrop to quiet thoughts and communion with nature rather than frustration with mankind.

After I left home I would always go back for Christmas, and it became our custom to go out to Newport on Christmas Eve. We would walk some at the Brick Walk Marketplace until the stores began to close, have lunch, and then spend a few hours at Brenton Point, walking on the sea wall, investigating the crumbling stables that once belonged to the imposing Budlong home that once graced the point, climbing the old water tower in the rear. One Christmas Eve it was so cold we didn't stay long; even the seagulls didn't want to go into the water and the sea foam was freezing on the edge of the beach, but we saw a spectacular sunset before heading home.


A Nantucket Christmas, Leslie Linsley, photographs by Jeffrey Allen
This was such a summer choice!

So you have to know that I have been wanting this beautiful book since it was published, but waited thirteen long years to find it at an affordable price. Not that the price wasn't justified! Two hundred photographs of Nantucket homes, scenes, and decorations are lavishly spread through this solid coffee-table book, and, fortuitously, it snowed the day they were doing the photos, which made the few outdoor shots and shots through windows more festive.

I'll admit that the decorations in some of the "swank" homes on the island weren't of much interest; they didn't look any different from the stagy, stiff, and soulless magazine spreads in the Christmas magazines. One can tell these are the work of designers, not of families decorating with love and creativity. Of more interest were the simple, lovely displays, some just using greens and berries and a little bit of burlap or ribbon, in old cottages, converted fishing shacks, and historical buildings, dotted with the mementos of the sea: glass floats, oars, shells, starfish, scrimshaw, and the exquisite actual and reproduction sailor's Valentines. Especially loved the Christmas trees decorated with vintage ornaments and bead garlands in homes with classic woodwork and wallpaper, bringing back memories of Christmas trees in the old homes owned by my relatives when I was a little girl.

If there's any regrets, it's that there aren't more outdoor shots.

Happy Independence Day!