As the Lights Dim and Flicker

We are ending up the Christmas season where we started, watching "Merry Gentlemen" and "Silly, But It's Fun..."



Christmas at Historic Houses, Patricia Hart McMillan & Katharine Kaye McMillan
I saw this at the Colonial Williamsburg gift shop, but the price of this, a Schiffer book, with those beautiful sleek, thick pages and glorious color photographs, gave me pause. I waited until I could buy it with credit points.

If  you love historical places and love Christmas, and equally love both together, this is a tremendous, lovely book addressing historic homes and the way the curators go about decorating them at Christmastime. Twenty-seven specific homes are addressed, from the simple greens at Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg to the high-Victorian artistry Blithewold and Biltmore House. The decorations, especially in the Victorian homes, are so complicated that I could really wish for larger photos to see the details, but that would make the book heavy and cumbersome.

I was a little irritated by the text—not that it wasn't informative; far from it. But in a book of this scholarship, the typos were startling: apostrophes included when they weren't needed and not included when they were, plus misspellings.

Still, the stunning photos and the contents of the text will please most. Opening chapters address the styles of decorating based on the era, decorating colors and materials, the changing style of the decorations at Williamsburg, Christmas wreaths, and lighting methods. Every page a gem.

A Surrey Christmas, compiled by John Hudson
Britain's Budding Books did a collection of these volumes for what looks like almost every shire in England, not to mention for historical eras (A Victorian Christmas, An Elizabethan Christmas, A Regency Christmas, etc.). I picked up A Worcestershire Christmas several years back and picked up this one last year at the library book sale. The selections are a bit weaker in this one, as there are a couple of entries that only briefly relate to Christmas, but once again it's a mixed bag of excerpts from diaries, newspapers, and novels, with 1989 next to first World War memoirs and 1960 cozying up to the 1930s, children's memories of Father Christmas cheek by jowl with critiques of the workhouse, accounts of blizzards, reports from the trenches, liberally sprinkled here and there with the traditional Christmas ghost story. There's even a fillip of poetry and a recipe or two from Mrs. Beeton. Plus there's a lovely cover showing "the waits." These books are worth picking up when found for a reasonable price.

* * * * *

I must comment about the other Christmas reading this year: the usual Christmas magazines! I left "Early American Life Christmas" for last, a jolly read, and also "Victorian Home," which wasn't as magical this year, although I can't tell why. One of my nicest finds I only picked up after Christmas: a British magazine called "LandScape," which is a nature/countryside magazine. I had picked up the November/December issue along with a nice December-y companion magazine, "LandLove," but didn't realize there was a Christmas issue until I wandered into Barnes & Noble last week. This was just oozing with holiday nature: robins (in England robins are Christmas symbols rather than the American robin which is a spring symbol), reindeer, mistletoe, holly, mince pies, Christmas markets and tree farms, even recipes for windowpane cookies, how to build a sled and make a brussels sprouts wreath, and stories about a woman who makes driftwood into Christmas trees and a man who knits nativity figures. Lots of lovely photographs. Glad I wandered in B&N that day.


Sigh. And now I think it's time for me to pull the lights. :-(

Epiphany Surprises

First up—sleeping for eight whole hours! Won't get to do this again until next Sunday.

And a final Christmas treat, toast with clotted cream.

Now it was time to get back to the routine, so we were off to Kroger to buy supplies for work lunches and ordinary supplies. On the way out we spotted what was left of the Christmas things: bags of bows and rolls of wrapping paper. I hadn't intended to buy any more of either, but these bows were different: there weren't any golds and silvers, and more other colors than red and green: blues, purples, magentas, plus white. I grabbed three bags at $1.20 each.

There's a type of chocolate milk James is able to drink at Walmart, so we stopped there to get it and came out with all sorts of other things: handheld breakfasts for him, meat ravioli (you don't usually see meat ravioli), an extension cord I needed, etc., and in a big bin of marked-down Blu-Rays we found Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. So that's what I watched this afternoon after getting my bag ready for work and putting up the groceries while James retreated to the "man cave" for a bit. Looks scrumdiddlyumptious in Blu-Ray, and, I found, even slightly appropriate for Epiphany, because Veruca sings about wanting "a bean feast," which, it is believed, derives from the bean that is put into the Twelfth Night cake!

And now I'm watching The House Without A Christmas Tree again, just because (and because the music has been going through my head for ages).

Oh, look, here's an article from 2011 that talks about the film and interviews Lisa Lucas.

Twelfth Night

So I did a little bit of cleaning each day, and in the end that worked out fine. Downstairs was easiest, of course, even though I washed the floors. Finally there was a place for everything, even in the refrigerator, and that led us to Friday night. We had supper at Ken's Grill, then went to Costco for party food: barbecue chicken wings, meatballs, mini egg rolls, and meat-and-cheese spirals. Glad we went Friday night, as I think I spent all day today vacuuming. :-) (And I'd already started the vacuuming earlier in the week.)

At one point James went out to get some sodas. I kept cleaning. But I was done by 2:30, having finally "done the frog" (vacuuming the stairs), and took a shower. Then it was time to put stuff out! We finished just as Anne and Clay arrived.

Had a great night, even if the Costco meatballs were a big disappointment (very highly spiced). Anne and Clay brought a delicious ham and John and Betty brought fruit and there were cupcakes. We had chatter and chow, and the Georgia football game for a while. Charles had not been here before, so he got the nickel tour. Willow finally quit barking and started schmoozing, only to disgrace herself on the carpet and get locked in her crate for a while. Schuyler didn't seem to be happy about having a "flock" tonight, so I took her to the spare room and put on the television, but she started with the calling chirp, which meant she wanted to go back to her place. So I took her back.

We were able to get everything cleared up, vacuumed (again...LOL), and tidied in time to relax and watch some HGTV. (Really, there was nothing else good on. 500 stations and still nothing to watch.)

And so another Twelfth Night party is over.

Other Christmas Books Read This Year

One was a "repeat," A Christmas Secret by Anne Perry, previously borrowed from the library, but I found an inexpensive copy at the library book sale. Domenic Corde and his new wife, Clarice, are assigned to a country parish during the Christmas holidays, to substitute for the vacationing cleric. Of course, a murder occurs. I have reviewed this previously.

Another was one of my annual Christmas reads, the Tuckers series book The Cottage Holiday. The Tuckers were a boisterous quintet of children, sixth grader Tina, fifth graders Terry and Merry (twins), second grader Penny, and kindergartener Tom, who lived in a big house in a town called Yorkville, with a stay-at-home mom and a dad who ran a variety store with his father. The kids play, quarrel, invent projects, and occasionally solve minor mysteries, as other juveniles from 1960s children's series in most of the books, but this one has a different slant: little Penny, the frail one of the family, is basically looking for her place in the scheme of things. She knows she's not as strong as the others, but she doesn't want to be forever sitting still and being careful. She comes up with the idea of the family spending Christmas at their lake cottage, where the kids prepare for the festivities, help some farm friends, and even participate in the adventure of an abandoned baby. But all through the story Penny also searches for her own strengths. It's warm, happy, and familiar, all perfect as a Christmas read.

Others:
• Decked With Folly, Kate Kingsbury
This is part of the Pennyfoot Hotel mysteries featuring hotel owner Cecily Baxter. Mysteries seem to find her, and this one hits particularly close to home: a man is found drowned in their duck pond. Except not only has the man in actuality been murdered, but he's known to the hotel staff as a rogue who married their head housemaid some time before without bothering to tell her he was already married. Gertie the maid thus becomes the police's prime suspect.

This book series seems to be well beloved for its British Edwardian setting and its Christmas and New Year's-themed special editions. Perhaps if I'd read them from the beginning I would have enjoyed the story more, although enough was explained about the characters that I was never mystified by their pasts. But no one ever quite came to life for me and Cecily and her husband seemed to be almost too good to be true as employers. The mystery was fine; I just would have preferred more depth to the characters.

• Four Centuries of Virginia Christmas, Mary Miley Theobald and Libbey Hodges Oliver
This was a book I picked up at the Colonial Williamsburg gift shop, a simple but enjoyable read about the history of Christmas celebrations in Virginia, beginning with the stark holiday at the starving colony in Jamestown to the more festive celebrations as the colony found its footing. Theobald and Oliver chronicle the Christmas customs, food, and decorations over the years as they change or are amended to fit new eras or times of want like the Civil War. (A running theme is how the decorations at Colonial Williamsburg have changed, from greens to the "Della Robbia" period—the authors are quite pointed when they mention that in colonial times no citrus or tropical fruit would have been used as a door decoration; they were too expensive!—to the simpler modern wreaths and garlands featuring apples and greens only.) There are color and black-and-white illustrations, and many diary excerpts used, and the authors do not shy away from addressing "Christmas in the Quarters" (among the enslaved), although IMHO it was a bit glossed over.

• The Dreaded Feast, edited by Michael Clarke and Taylor Plimpton
Another buy from the Colonial Williamsburg gift shop, a collection of writers "on enduring the holidays." Again, some of these essays appear to have been written because people feel they have to conform to holiday "standards": buy the best gifts, set the best table, etc. (George Plimpton's essay was particularly tied to this syndrome, buying useless gifts for rich people who don't need them.) That isn't what Christmas is all about; it's what society has made us think Christmas is all about. Sadly, there are certain people who force others (their children especially) to conform to these standards, and for them Christmas is miserable, overspending, forced to spend time with people they dislike, with selfishness welling all around them. No one should be forced into Christmas. So I didn't mind the wry commentaries about Christmas, like Calvin Trillin talking about fruitcake, or Corey Ford's essay about the office party (do these drunken Bacchanalia still exist with today's DUI laws?), others were just sad and painful, like Augusten Burroughs and Charles Buckowski and Hunter Thompson. One question: what on earth was Mark Twain's "Susie's Letter from Santa Claus" doing in here? Anyway, glad this one was half price.

• A Kosher Christmas: Tis the Season to Be Jewish, Joshua Eli Plaut
Not only was this the most interesting book I read this Christmas, but it was one of my favorite books of the year, a discussion of the Jewish experience with the Christmas season in the United States. I was quite intrigued by the opening chapter about Jewish immigrants' experience with the pervasive holiday in the late 19th and early 20th century. Apparently German Jews celebrated the secular trappings of Christmas (trees, parties, gifts) as it was part of the society they came from; the more persecuted Eastern European Jews wanted nothing to do with the holiday, as any member of their congregation who stepped out on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day in Europe was likely to be beaten up and possibly even killed by revengeful revelers who still blamed them for the death of Christ. Once here, many Jews picked up those secular customs to fit in, while others eschewed them. Another chapter addressed the "Chinese food on Christmas" trope. The most involving chapter is about how the minor festival of Hanukkah was remade to cope with Christmas: I knew that earlier it had been a minor festival only, but I didn't realize how extensively it had been "made over." Apparently the original gift-giving time at Purim was transferred to Hanukkah so that Jewish children would not feel left out when their Christian friends talked about Christmas gifts. The final chapters talk about Jewish people doing mitzvahs (good deeds) by helping out their Christian counterparts during the holiday season, and how "mixed holidays" like "Christmukkah" and secular holidays such as "Festivus" are appealing to modern interfaith and non-Christian families. Well-written with a lot of food for thought.

Left-Over Christmas

I did get some party prep done today by cleaning out the hall bathroom, tidying up more things, and giving Willow a bath. I really need to apply myself to this, but it's a bunch of tiny little bits that need cleaning up rather than just one big thing (well, except for the kitchen, and that's James' job). I was also slightly handicapped by waking up with terrible pain in my middle and ring finger of my right hand. I have no idea why, as when I went to bed the hand was fine; I woke up with it this way. I can barely bend the middle finger past a 90 degree angle. I can type relatively painlessly, but the finger feels odd and swollen. James says I was talking loudly in my sleep last night, but as far as he knew I wasn't thrashing around in a manner in which I would have hit it. I took three ibuprofin and went back to bed for a half hour, and that didn't help.

After breakfast and some tidying, I decided to go out for a little while. I wanted to check out the clearance at the Barnes & Noble at the Avenue at West Cobb. This store usually has the best clearance items, but the pickin's were slim today. I did find the Christmas issue of a British magazine called "LandScape," which I probably won't buy in spring because gardening bores me silly, but I did want this issue because it was all about Christmas plants and animals: reindeer, mistletoe, robins...and it also had articles about sledding and change ringing (as in Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mystery The Nine Tailors). It will be my last Christmas magazine unless I can find the December issue of "The Oldie," which is a British commentary/nostalgia magazine.

On the way back I stopped at Lowes, looking for an organizer I want to buy for the closet. Unfortunately it was too heavy for me to lift. I did get a new triple-tap for the plug behind James' recliner.

When I got home I should have been cleaning more, and, later, I did scrub the bath and then the dog, and got her bedding and towels washed. But I was scanning the DVR contents and came upon The March Sisters at Christmas, which I had recorded a month ago. This television movie, a modern-day take on Little Women, had garnered some virulent criticism, and I was almost afraid to watch it, but a Louisa May Alcott blog I read said it was not bad, so I turned it on.

Surprisingly, it was pretty good. This was a Lifetime movie, so the male casting was weak: Laurie, here known as Teddy, was a good-natured but sort of nondescript jock instead of the sensitive musician of the book, and John Brooke was a nebbish (but no worse than the Eric Stoltz version in the 1994 film). The actor playing Bhaer (here named Marcus and a book editor rather than a teacher) fared better and John Shea was an entertaining Mr. Lawrence (here Teddy's custodial uncle, not his grandfather).

The sisters were updated in the spirit of the 21st century: Meg, a law student, and John (her college classmate) were not chaste; Jo ghostwrites celebrity twitter feeds rather than penning blood-and-thunder tales; Beth is a superlative pianist who is shy of the goals her family wants her to achieve; and Amy is an updated version of the brat she is in the book, a girl who is familiar with partying and using a fake ID.

The pivot around which the story revolves is that their parents plan to sell the family home (called Orchard House like the real Alcott homestead, which is seen briefly at the beginning of the film) after Mr. March, a war correspondent, is hurt, and they cannot afford to have the decrepit home remodeled. The sisters decide to do the work themselves while their mother is off helping with the father's recovery, and Teddy and John endeavor to help them. Basic Little Women plot points are touched on: Amy does something stupid in revenge for Jo's criticism and she and Jo quarrel, Jo tells Teddy they are best friends and nothing more, Marcus tells Jo her real writing (she accidentally e-mails him her generational novel instead of a prospectus to ghostwrite a young singer's "autobiography") is better than the crap that is earning her money, etc. The only thing that doesn't happen is that Beth does not meet the same fate as in the book. So the prospect of Laurie being a hunk or Meg and John having sex might horrify you, but it is pretty well translated to 2012. I enjoyed it.


An Old-Fashioned Christmas, Rochelle and Nicholas Pennington
This is the "nostalgic book" I bought at Bronner's last year, a picture and text remembrance of Christmases past, from 1930 through 1960. Black-and-while photographs and color and black-and-white ads and other illustrations (including the inevitable Norman Rockwell) illustrate the warm memories of home-cooked meals, home-baked cookies, hard times softened by love, gatherings, and Christmas celebrations, going to church, assemblies at school, playing in the snow, listening to radio programs. A whole bunch of cozy wrapped up in hardcover. Comes with a CD of the "Billie the Brownie" radio program from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

And A Phone-y New Year...

"Fast away the old year passes....hail the new year lads and lasses..."

James did it all Sunday night: prepared his lunch for work, made his tea, got his clothes out. (I whiled away the end of the night watching the beginning of Jurassic Park: The Lost World, which was just as stupid as I remember. Yes, take the bleeding baby T-Rex back to base camp, so the parents can track you down and destroy everything. Then continue wearing a shirt with the baby T-Rex's blood spattered on it so the parents can continue to track you. And these are supposedly the smart people!)

The one thing he forgot was to turn the alarm clock back on.

So he woke with a start at 7:15 a.m. (his day starts at 7:30, but he needs fifteen minutes just to log on the computer), gave an almighty shout, and grabbed his phone to call in to tell his supervisor he'd be late. Well, they've been sending people home early because there's barely any work at Christmas, so his boss said he could come in, or he was free to take the day off.

So we went back to sleep.

Serendipity anyway, since we had some errands to run: he had prescriptions waiting at both Kaiser and Kroger.

And finally we were fed up enough to take our new phones back to Verizon and tell them they had to do something. James' phone was still rebooting pretty much every time he plugged it into the charger and has been rebooting in the middle of phone calls and when he tries to answer the phone or hang up. Mine locked up most of the time when plugged into the car charger (like when I was using the GPS, but once I had it plugged in, just charging, and it kept rebooting). Plus my nap timer had quit "alarming" and I couldn't use the stock clock alarm because it would ring all right, but the pop up to dismiss/snooze wouldn't come up, so you'd have to reboot the phone to get it to shut up. A lot of times the phones would get so messed up we would have to pull the battery.

Well, Verizon was sympathetic, but did mention that if they sent us replacements they might be used. We suspected our phones had come from a batch with connector problems; what if we got "new" ones with the same problem? The salesman told us we might have better luck if we called Customer Care directly. So we came home and chatted online with one rep, and then called another. The second rep said that since we bought the phones on Black Friday, we had a different guarantee; through January 15 we could return them for new units, and she would annotate our file to state so.

So back we went to Verizon and they tried again to get us a complete return. They finally had to do something complicated with refunds to get it to go through. However, we finally got home with replacement new phones just in time to fix a little something for a small dinner. We didn't want to eat a lot because we knew we'd be grazing at the party. I should have just left the phone in its present state—that it actually made phone calls—but I messed with it so long that I barely had time to take a few Ibuprofin to combat the headache that the oncoming storm was pushing my way and lie down if only for few minutes.

So we packed up our goodies about 8:30 and headed off to the party. We had a great time! Had conversations about meeting celebrities, this year's crop of movies, etc. Finally met the youngest member of the Baskin clan, little John, who was clad in knit trousers with a TARDIS on one leg and a Dalek on his backside. Sampled a little of each of the dishes, which included shrimp potstickers, sandwich fixings, baked ziti, sweet potatoes, and lots of different desserts. Peeked into the media room, where they were showing "The Snowmen" (moved on because we haven't seen it yet). At about 11:50 I snagged two cups of cranapple juice and met James in a doorway and we kissed in the new year together.

Stayed for over another hour and finally wended our way home. The streets were dark and quiet save for a few bars still celebrating the new year. Lots of Christmas lights still up and still on, so we could enjoy those. Wasn't tired when we left Bill and Caran's house, but was getting heavy-eyed by the time we walked back into the house. Nevertheless, started talking with Schuyler and messing with the phone, with the result that we didn't go to bed until about 3:30. Neither of us can take this sort of thing anymore. We woke up this morning at ten feeling hung over—and neither of us had anything alcoholic! So we made our apologies to Juanita and David—we'd been invited over to watch the Georgia game—and went back to bed for an hour or more. Thankfully, I had programmed the Tournament of Roses Parade into the DVR and the light rain had not smothered the satellite signal. James and I both got up feeling headachy and shellshocked.

Lots of gimmicks in the parade this year, most of them sweet. A couple got married on a float. Some teenybopper named Coco finished off the parade with a song. The HGTV float not only had a model of the new "Dream House" on it, but contained two penguins.

The capper was the Pedigree-sponsored float, which had a model of the monument that is to be built in Washington, DC, dedicated to war dogs. A soldier on the float was supposedly still in Afghanistan, and his wife and four-year-old son had been told they won a contest to come to the parade. They didn't know he was on the float, so when the wife and son came forward to get the "award," they were really surprised! The little boy charged forward and was tossed up in Dad's arms. ::sniffle::

Oh, and Jane Goodall was the Grand Marshal!

Afterwards put on Rudolph's Shiny New Year, and then the first episode of the 1975 Ellery Queen series, which takes place on New Year's Eve 1946. This was a great show, with Jim Hutton as an adorable, tousel-haired, absent-minded but sharp Ellery, and David Wayne as an acerbic and often grumpy Inspector Queen, with a super period setting. And, yeah, messed around more with the phone. It seems to be working better than the previous one. We'll see. I'm loading podcasts back on it. Again.

[Later: James went down to the "man cave" for a bit and I rewatched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. For supper we had some of our homemade turkey soup with whole-wheat gnocchi. And then it was time for our yearly New Year's Day viewing of Galaxy Quest. We have pretty much watched it every year since we saw it at the movies on New Year's Day 2000.]

Best Wishes for 2013!

A Weekend of Christmas and Toast

Despite the grey sky and the cold wind yesterday, it was a warm day: we drove down to Warner Robins to spend Christmas with the family. We grabbed breakfast from Chick-Fil-A—yay, oatmeal and fruit!—and had a uneventful ride. Traffic was brisk, but not backed-up; lots of Floridians heading home from Christmas festivities.

Had a great time at Mom's house. We sat and chatted, then went out to lunch at Cheddar's. We had a good time, but the server was rather sulky and I have to admit I didn't like the food. The "beef" I ate looked more like pork and was greasy; so were the tortilla chips. I was feeling queasy when we finished.

After lunch we exchanged gifts and then sat about having a nice chat until the sun started to lower in the sky. We literally did "ride off into the sunset." I tried to drive the whole way home, but had to give up by the time we got to the Tanger Outlets. Just after James took over, we ran into traffic. Gah. It was a "mystery jam," and cleared up completely just before the freeway split off into two parts.

We were home around nine o'clock, relieved at being off the freeway, as there was just as much traffic going north as south. Jen logged on to chat for a little while, but she had just gotten back to Norfolk and had duty the next day. Later Emma came on.

Despite wanting to be up early, we were both slugabeds this morning, I more than James. I was having low-level stomach cramps all morning and was pretty grumpy most of the day. We didn't go out until after noon. We were heading to Discover Mills to check out their annual calendar store.

Surprise! When we got there, we found out two things: the mall has been renamed Sugarloaf Mills (it's off Sugarloaf Parkway) and the Johnny Rockets we usually eat as is gone. (Has the chain gone out of business? All the others in the area are closed, too.) So we had to eat at one of the mall-quality restaurants. Eh.

The place has actually gotten dull. Just like the mall, lots more clothing and shoe places, fewer unique shops like the furniture places that used to be there. The Christian store is gone, too. We did go into Bass Pro Shops and get a few things, checked out the Lego store, bought a couple of things at the Disney Store, did find the calendar store only to find out they were out of the calendar James wanted (but I did cop the last small Susan Branch calendar) and finally ended up in Books-a-Million to check out the volumes and have a hot chocolate.

On the way home we stopped at Aldi for a few groceries, and Publix for a few more. We were planning to nosh for supper, but we found some chicken legs in Aldi and cooked them up, a nice easy meal. While the chicken was cooking, we made toast.

I have to explain: ever since I read A Discovery of Witches last year, I've been jonesing on toast. I swear the book bewitched me. Aldi had wheat bread really cheap. I bought a loaf and we had toast before our chicken legs. :-)

The Christmas episode of Call the Midwife aired on GPB tonight as part of another endless fundraising segment; however, they didn't  interrupt it. It was a sweet story about two women who had lost children, as well as Chummy's efforts to direct a Nativity pageant.

Christmas After All

We had a very nice and quiet Christmas morning and early afternoon.

Since we'd been up late last night, we had a nice sleep-in, and then we had presents. I had given James some DVDs, a Jane and Michael Stern book, another book by Travis Taylor, and a cover for his Galaxy Tab. I had the CD "Colonial Christmas," three books (Farmer Boy Goes West, Hit by a Farm, and The Making of Call the Midwife), and the set of new Rick Steves episodes. Then James made biscuits and bacon for breakfast. I had mine with clotted cream, which is a British treat: like butter on steroids. We didn't have to be anywhere until after three, so we sat and relaxed, gave Schuyler some orange and Willow a giant dog biscuit, read a bit, and watched my other favorite Christmas movie The House Without a Christmas Tree, the story of young Addie Mills' effort to get her embittered father to buy her a tree. I love spunky Addie, who is the child of my heart: smart and proud, if a little bossy and opinionated. We also watched Rankin-Bass' classic The Little Drummer Boy, and the Cary Grant/Loretta Young/David Niven vehicle The Bishop's Wife, a neglected classic. I understand Grant hated the role, but he was perfect as an uncanny angel who teaches several people, including the titular bishop, about the important things in life.

It was clammy and raining all day, with damp that crept into your bones; while James made the final prep of the corn casserole and the green beans we were taking to the Christmas gathering at the Butlers, I retreated into the spare room to beat off a headache.

Then we went to dinner. Maybe it was sopping wet outside, but it was warm within, and full of light and laughter. We exchanged gifts, had a dandy dinner, and talked about divers things.

It was a good thing we had such a nice morning because when we got home it was raining so hard it knocked out the satellite signal. It hasn't done that in ages. This means we completely missed the Doctor Who Christmas special. Phooey.


Sleigh Bells for Windy Foot, Frances Frost
Series books about resourceful kids were a staple of libraries in the 1940s through the 1970s. This book was part of a limited series of four novels about Toby Clark, a 12-year-old boy growing up on a dairy farm in Vermont, and his dapple-grey pony Windy Foot. The books were written in the late 1940s and 1950s, and children and adults today might be startled at the independence and energy of rural children then: Toby shovels snow, helps with farm chores, rebuilds a sleigh, snowshoes and skis, gathers greens for Christmas with his little sister, and still has time—and energy!—left for artwork, supplying wood, sleighing with a special friend, Christmas shopping, and popping corn and cracking nuts, with little assistance from "helicopter parents." Indeed, it is Toby's courage that saves the farm animals from a threat on Christmas Eve.

While the pony is an integral part of the story, he's no wonder equine, just a beloved pet involved in the farm family's homely preparations for Christmas: decorating the house with greens and a hand-cut tree, baking treats, caroling and buying gifts in town. The farm chores continue even during the celebration and an unexpected birth provides a surprise. Yet Frost makes the workaday experiences and the small celebrations so joyful you will wish your work was as fulfilling and you could join the Clarks and friends at their annual Christmas night party.

"His Coursers They Flew..."

How Santa got his reindeer - CNN.com

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL
FROM
LINDA
JAMES
WILLOW
AND
SCHUYLER!

Then One Gloomy Christmas Eve...

James left for work at an ungodly hour, leaving me to snuggle back under the blankets. It was refreshing. I didn't get up until 8:30, which is a habit I could get into oh-so happily. :-)

I arose to a pewter grey sky and rain, with wet birds still making a rush at the feeder. I was toying with the idea of eating breakfast and going out to Michaels and World Market (I had coupons). But it was wet and damp and I've done so much shopping it's just become a bore.

I did decide to wash the towels, and cleaned out the bathroom a bit, later vacuumed some, but most of the day I was watching Christmas specials. James arrived home sometime after eleven—he said they were even less busy than they were on Friday—and pretty much disappeared into "the man cave" soon after, for a sortie with his airplanes. This suited me fine, since he doesn't like the first two specials I watched anyway: Christmas Is and The City That Forgot About Christmas. These were both produced by the Lutheran Church, featuring pre-teen Benji and his sheepdog Waldo. In the first story Benji chafes at his role of "second shepherd" until he goes back in time to an inn at Bethlehem. In the second, his grandfather tells him and a buddy the story of an unfeeling town that learns about the spirit of giving. Apparently the title song in the first special was so popular that it was featured on the radio.

Next I switched to some VHS tapes because DVDs just don't exist of this stuff. The Night Before Christmas is an animated cartoon from the early 1970s featuring the voice of Olan Soule, once a radio staple, as Professor Clement Clarke Moore. Before going to a conference, he promises his older daughter Charity "a book about Santa Claus" as a gift, but isn't able to find one. He arrives home to find her seriously ill and pleading for the story in her fever. So he sits down and writes it for her. The animation is limited, but it's notable for making a good attempt to portray the Moores' 1822 world: Gretchen the cook prepares food over a fireplace, Moore rides to the conference in a stagecoach and the characters all wear period clothing except for little Clement, who is shown in overalls, when a boy his age in 1822 would still be in skirts like a little girl. The songs are nice, and "A Visit from St. Nicholas" is the same Ken Darby arrangement used for years on the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show.

A change of pace was the animated special Simple Gifts, which aired on PBS in the 1970s. There is an introductory segment, plus six stories, each done in a different animated style. Some are funny, others are touching: a reminisce from Moss Hart, a comedic story of the "Toonerville Trolley," a short memory from 11-year-old Theodore Roosevelt, a retelling of the Christmas Truce of 1914, and finally R.O. Blechman's "No Room at the Inn," a satirical retelling of the first Christmas. The most remembered segment is a daintily animated version of a segment of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, where a young Englishman participating in a Frost Fair on the iced-over Thames River falls in love with a Russian girl.

My final VHS was Christmas Around the World, a compilation of Perry Como Christmas specials: Williamsburg, French Canada, Paris, Mexico, Vienna, and the Holy Land.

For supper we had the baked rigatoni dish we bought at the Farmer's Market, with a cucumber salad.

After the news we watched Mercy Mission, based on the true story of a small plane lost over the Pacific just before Christmas and the airline pilot who helped find him, and The Homecoming: A Christmas Story.

 
Christmas After All, Kathryn Lasky
This is my favorite of all the "Dear America" books I have read, because the characters seem so real to me, possibly because Lasky based them on her mother and aunts and uncle, and on the real house her grandparents lived in.

The Swift family is facing a grim Christmas. The Depression deepens weekly and Sam Swift is in danger of losing his job. The book's narrator, eleven-year-old Minnie, who idolizes Amelia Earhart, thinks that instead being of the time of plenty Christmas always is, the Christmas of 1933 will be a season of dwindling, with the family continually needing to close down rooms of their home to save on the coal bill and eating an endless succession of au gratin main courses and aspics to cover the fact that they can barely afford meat for the table.

The book opens with the arrival of a telegram that will change their lives: their orphan cousin Willie Faye Darling is being sent to them via train from a little town in Texas. Even though she is another mouth to feed and body to clothe, Sam and Belle Swift welcome Willie Faye into the family. Minnie finds her extraordinary: she's never seen a movie, doesn't know who Buck Rogers is, and owns only two pairs of underwear and a cat, which she explains to the astounded Swift family, that she had to suck the dust out if its nostrils three times a day to keep it from smothering in the Dust Bowl conditions of her home town. Willie Faye knows so little, Minnie thinks, that she will have a lot to learn from the Swifts. She doesn't realize that the family will learn some precious truths from this undersized refugee as the two girls cope with making Christmas gifts when they have no money, dealing with a tragedy that happens to a classmate, and finally facing a startling event in their own home.

I think this is a magical book. It reminds me of some of the stories my mom told about the Depression, and I love some of the offbeat characters, like Minnie's older sister Lady, a creative rebel who can work magic with fashions, and her genius brother Ozzie, who builds radio sets and helps his older sisters with their science homework. The only thing that mars the book is a bit of a fairy-tale epilogue. A worthy tale to add to any Christmas library.

A Christmas Story Sunday

We did get up this morning and go to BJs. We didn't get there exactly when they opened, but there were still parking spaces up front—good enough! They still aren't carrying Brawny paper towels, but we did find the other items, and a nice container of Romano cheese, which we also needed, and James got Tom Clancy's newest book with a coupon. The Christmas air of the store is now greatly diminished and January magazines are already on the stands.

We packed all the things in the truck and then headed west, intending to go to the Books-a-Million in Acworth, as we had a 20 percent off total purchase coupon. I thought we might pick up a few future gifts. Instead of taking the freeway, we just continued on Highway 92; the businesses dwindled and soon we were in the country. Before we got to Lake Allatoona, we detoured and went through downtown Acworth, to emerge just south of the shopping center with Books-a-Million.

Sadly, I found only one item for someone else, and three books for me! (One was a bio of Judi Dench, plus there was Kenneth Davis' A Nation Rising, and also The Lexicon.) James also bought some gifts and only bought magazines for himself. By this time it was after noon, so we went across the parking lot and had lunch at Panera Bread.

Finally came home through a relatively-deserted Mars Hill Road, stopped at Kroger for milk and a newspaper, then went on home. Wow, a whole Sunday afternoon to relax—we don't know what to do with it.

Well, I had done something I'd been thinking about for a while, even though it cost me a few extra dollars. My Christmas DVD collection is getting a bit crowded, and I had noticed that someone has put almost all the Rankin-Bass Christmas specials (except for Little Drummer Boy, Book II, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, and The Story of the First Christmas Snow) on two DVD collections along with a few other Christmas specials. If I bought these two collections, it would take up less space and I would get some additional specials. They were pretty cheap at BJs (one was on a coupon), so I took the plunge.

I hadn't yet watched Santa Claus is Coming to Town this season, so I watched that off the first disk of "The Original Christmas Classics." This has a lively soundtrack, and I have always loved the closing words S.D. Kruger gives about Santa Claus: "…but what would happen if we all tried to be like Santa and learn to give as only he can give, of ourselves, our talents, our love, and our hearts? Maybe if we could all learn Santa’s beautiful lesson...maybe there would finally be peace on earth and goodwill toward man."

Sadly, I know the version of Little Drummer Boy that goes on this disk—it is missing parts of the soundtrack—so I didn't play it. (The videotape is complete, so I'll play that instead.) And we had watched Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol the other night. So I went to the second disk and skipped Rudolph, which we'd already watched as well, and put Frosty the Snowman on. I haven't watched this in years. It's really not one of my favorites, although Jackie Vernon is cute as the snowman who says "Happy birthday!" every time he comes alive. The disk also has Frosty Returns and The Cricket on the Hearth.

The other collection is"Classic Christmas Favorites."  This has the remastered version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which I'd been wanting, since we have the version where the Grinch is yellow for half the show. This also included three Rankin-Bass specials I hadn't seen in years: The Leprechauns' Christmas Gold, Pinocchio's Christmas, and The Stingiest Man in Town. The leprechaun special is rather pedestrian, with a passel of stereotypical Irish types on an island full of leprechauns and a banshee. I can only surmise that Rankin-Bass were running out of ideas for Christmas specials by then. :-)

Pinocchio's Christmas is interesting because, in a Christmas wrapping, it tries to use situations from the original Collodi novel that Disney excised: Gepetto's wig, the origin of the log that became the puppet, Pinocchio selling his schoolbooks and burying the money at the Fox and the Cat's connivance, Master FireEater being the one who has the puppet show. It even shows Pinocchio being rude to the Cricket (who, of course, is not named Jiminy!) and throwing a book at him, although of course he is not killed as in the book. It appears to be a "midquel," as when the Blue Fairy shows up (in the carriage drawn by mice, just as in the book), she hints at Pinocchio's future being turned into a donkey and being swallowed by the whale.

The Stingiest Man in Town has an interesting history. It was a musical Christmas Carol originally written in the 1950s for an Alcoa Hour broadcast which was about 90 minutes long, and Basil Rathbone played Scrooge. This has been one of television's "Holy Grail" performances for years and this year a copy of the original special was resurrected for DVD. But in 1978, Rankin-Bass did a 52-minute version with Walter Matthau as Scrooge. It kept most of the celebrated songs, if it did add a stupid bug ("B.A.H. Humbug," voiced by Tom Bosley) as the narrator. The music is quite good, if the special itself is rushed to cram so much material in a smaller time slot, and Matthau is surprisingly effective as Scrooge.

(The other disks have: The Year Without a Santa Claus, Rudolph's Shiny New Year [which I will watch next Monday], and Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey; Frosty's Winter Wonderland and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, the latter which I watched after Scrooge was redeemed yet again; and Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July [which is a dead bore and I would have preferred Life and Adventures of Santa Claus myself! but one can't have everything.])

Finally I put on A Christmas Story while we had supper: boneless pork ribs in a ginger sauce with rice. Ralphie and his family never fail to put a smile on my face.

 
A Very Magical Christmas!
Not really a book, but a magazine that I was delighted to find on the newsstand! It has "Norman Rockwell" emblazoned all over the cover, but is really a collection of many different artists' memorable "Saturday Evening Post" covers with commentary about each of them. Magical!

Surprise on Friday

Seventeen whole days of "weekend editions" start today. But first...some sleep!

My original idea was to bake cookies, but I also wanted to go to Richard's. Richard's Variety Store at Peachtree Battle shopping center is the closest place left to a five-and-ten left in the Atlanta area. The store goes back to the 1950s, and probably was a real five-and-ten way back when. It still has the old brown checked linoleum floor, and even has a 25 cent horse ride. You can't get clothes there any longer, but they have greeting cards (some rather naughty), books, toys, lots of stuffed animals. novelties, and even housewares where you can get bakeware and notions from mouse traps to light bulbs. They also have one whole aisle of seasonal stuff which, at this time of year, is Christmas.

I figured perhaps I could go when they opened and then get home in time to bake, but was disabused of that notion by a late breakfast and the traffic on West Paces Ferry Road (LOL...not to mention what happened on Saturday, but that's another story). I really shouldn't have gone down West Paces Ferry, as it is a main road into Buckhead and the shopping thereof, but I wanted to see the fine homes all dressed for Christmas: window wreaths and door wreaths in red and green or in gold and silver. Traffic was slow enough that I could see all the details!

Since I was late getting into town anyway, I stopped at the Buckhead Barnes & Noble, and this was a fortuitous thing: I had planned to get a certain book as a Christmas gift for Aubrey's friend Isabel, who wants to go into law enforcement and become a forensic pathologist, but I found an even better book about forensics there! Plus on the way out I found a cute kids' game. I bought both and then marched next door to Publix to put the game into the Toys for Tots collection box.

James called me just as I was about to get in line: they had let him out early. I told him I was on my way to Richard's and why not meet me there, and then we could go to lunch together (he had a discount coupon for Olive Garden that's been burning a hole in his pocket)? Well, the traffic was so bad he never made it to Richard's; he just went directly home, while I spent a nice half-hour wandering around the little store. They put in some extra "novelty" type gift books in this year, some of them quite rude! Plus lots of little gadgets like flashers for when you walk in the dark, USB lights, etc. The Christmas aisle had a bin of hand-blown glass, boxes of ornaments, garland, tinsel, and even boxes of large and small Christmas crackers, and of course lots of multicolor wrapping and bows.

Then I headed home, and together James and I went to lunch at Olive Garden. Truth to tell, we were a little disappointed. We haven't been to Olive Garden in a while, at least a year, maybe even two, preferring to eat at Giovanni's. We first noted the lunch menu was rather limited as compared to the past, and the lunch prices were more like we remembered at dinner! We had the gnocchi soup with the beef short ribs and mushrooms. The soup was only lukewarm, and each of us only had three gnocchi in the bowl. The beef came with tortelloni and it was all good, but there was remarkably little beef. For dessert we had one of the chocolate mousse dolcini dishes, small and chocolatey and just the right size. Everything was good, but not really outstanding—except our waitress. We had a good waitress and tipped accordingly.

On the way home we stopped at Publix to check out the twofers. They have Hallmark items two for one so we also wanted to stock up on some cards.

Came home to check the mail and feed and walk Willow, and then around five o'clock turned around, with the back seat of my car stuffed with gifts, and went to the "Apocalypse Game Night" and gift exchange at the Lawsons. It's about time all this idiot furor about the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world came to an end!

It was a great night: we sent out for pizza and did gifts—Isabel did like hers!—and there was the greatest reaction out of Aubrey when she saw the two drawing pads and colored pencils that was our gift: "Look at this wondrous blank page! Do you not see the marvelous things that could be drawn here!" I was catapulted back to the days when I wandered the stationery aisles at Newberry's and at Thall's Drugs and at Douglas Drug looking at the composition books and imagining all the stories I could write in them! Later we did play some games: a game of Big Bang Theory Uno, a Big Bang trivia game, and a couple of games of Cranium, which ended up with Terry (a male friend of the girls) acting out all the charade cards. By the time we finished we were exhausted from laughing.

We were home very late and after giving Willow a last walk and a pat and kissing Schuyler, went off to bed to dream our Christmas dreams.

A Kringly Weekend

Christmas is a comin'—which means extra mornings for sleeping late!

Hey! When you're my age, that's a gift.

I'd actually expected the lawn guys yesterday morning or this morning. Hmn. Whatever. The lawn hasn't grown an inch anyway. However, I did have to wait for UPS to pick up James' Amazon return; he ordered what was supposed to be a "complete" anime set, but what he got was only the first disk. While I was waiting, I started to dub off the Advent and Christmas episodes of Feasts and Seasons of the Church (and cleaning the bathrooms). This is a show hosted by Joanna Bogle, who is a conservative Catholic from England. This particular series has an episode from before Advent starts, all four Sundays of Advent, and then celebrating after Christmas through Epiphany. She talks about the various saints' days in the interim, practicing faith, and throws in a recipe each show. (There are also six shows for Lent and six shows for summer through Michaelmas in September.)

I had gotten through three of them when UPS arrived. I'd wanted to go up to JoAnn today, so I passed the package on, finished up with that episode, and then grabbed my coupons and went. The Michaels and JoAnn at Town Center are now only separated by a parking lot, so I hit Michaels first and bought some sale ribbon, then went to JoAnn. Had to make two circuits because three things I was going to use coupons on were already on sale. Luckily, I made that second circuit, because I found a perfect gift for two different people. I bought one for each of them. And at half price!

From there I was just headed for home, and it took me ten minutes just to find a way out. When I'd gotten to Town Center, traffic was just like any other Friday. An hour and a half later when I emerged, the crazy Christmas shoppers had come out of the woodwork. No matter which way I went I ran into a long line of cars heading either for another part of the shopping centers complex or turning left toward the mall. Finally, a dedicated right turn opened up where it had not been a few minutes earlier when an inconsiderate idiot getting into the left lane blocked the right lane with his car. I got out of there like a shot, had a nice drive home through the park, and, once there, finished dubbing off Feasts and Seasons.

Ate at home tonight and then headed out to the movies. Since it was opening weekend for The Hobbit, we figured we would have better luck trying to see Lincoln tonight and seeing The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on the earliest show the theatre offered. Well, here we arrived at the movies, on a Friday night, and there were three people in line. We were flabbergasted. The Hobbit started in ten minutes, and we just walked in and found a seat; I don't think there were twenty other people in the theatre.

Anyway, we enjoyed the movie very much, although I thought they could have left out the Three Stooges trolls. Martin Freeman was adorable as always and I finally sorted through the dwarves, but my favorite part was Sylvester McCoy playing Radagast. No matter what role he plays, he never quite gets rid of that lovely Scots burr.

James had to work Saturday, so he left home about seven and I slept in until eight, then had breakfast. I was toying with going to Books-a-Million, but we have coupons there until the end of the year. So instead I went to the Avenue at West Cobb to see if I could find something to use one of two Barnes & Noble coupons on. Couldn't find anything I was looking for. I did drop in to the Yankee Candle for a minute and picked up a packet of their Balsam and Cedar scented icicles for the Christmas tree. Then I stopped by Hair Day for a few hours, just to see everyone. Brought Mel and Phyllis' Hanukkah gifts—Phyllis got a kick out of hers; a plaque that said "I'm still hot! It just comes in flashes"—and talked with Alex a while about finding a Charlie Brown tree and with Mel about Android apps.

I'd toyed with the idea of baking cookies this afternoon, but by the time I left Hair Day it was too late, especially since we had to leave the house posthaste when James got in. So I came home to finish a gift (sadly, it didn't turn out as nice as I wanted) and dub off Castle episodes. I got four of them done, which takes a little of the burden off the DVR. By then James was home, and Willow was walked, and we headed out for my belated birthday dinner, at the Colonnade, of course. It was a nice chilly night for a ride into town, and of course the restaurant was packed when we got there, but because there were only two of us, we had a seat in not too long. We had an excellent waitress and gave her a good tip!

Of course I had the turkey, and so did James! I had applesauce and cucumber salad to go with mine; their applesauce is outstanding and not overly sweetened. Unfortunately the vinegar in the salad dressing made me sick for the rest of the night.

From the Colonnade we went to the performance of An Atlanta Christmas at the Academy Theatre. This year ARTC was presenting all the humorous skits, including two new ones. I still think the pirate skit is dopey, but then I'm not a pirate fan. The Academy Theatre folks did two short plays, the funny A Cthulu Christmas and the touching Rosie the Retired Rockette about an elderly woman living in a rest home being visited by her daughter and two granddaughters at Christmas. I quite loved the latter.

Instead of going home through the freeway, we cut back through town and drove home as we used to so many years ago when the Phoenix Science Fiction Society met at the old Virginia-Highlands branch of the library on Saturday nights, up North Highland Road, and then turning down Morningside and going through "little" Lenox Road (as opposed to the larger end of Lenox Road with the mall and all the condos) back to Cheshire Bridge Road, to see all the pretty light displays in the old houses: mock Tudors and stone-fronted cottages and the occasional small apartment building. The guy on Morningside Drive still has his seven-foot spotlighted Grinch flat! (Sadly, the house next door wasn't lighted up to make it funnier.)

Home finally to the fids' relief.

Today was a bit quieter. It was a mucky day, dissolving into rain and chill, but we had Christmas carols on "Holiday Traditions" to keep us warm. We ran out to Kroger and got home just in time to make a run for the movie theatre one more time to catch Lincoln. There were, even on a rainy, bleak, clammy gray Sunday, even fewer people at the movies. This time there might have been half a dozen people in the theatre when we sat down.

This is a fabulous movie. It was costume drama done right, with homely scenes like Lincoln sitting in his bedroom with his stocking feet propped up talking to "Molly." Daniel Day-Lewis was an uncanny Lincoln and Sally Field captured the emotionally fragile Mary Todd to perfection. The film covers the last four months of Lincoln's life, mainly of his fight to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and the wheeling-dealing that went on behind that. Tommy Lee Jones was quite notable as Thaddeus Stevens as well. I didn't believe that was Joseph Gordon Levitt playing Robert Lincoln; he's come a long way from Third Rock from the Sun! I loved such touches as the rooms being dark to simulate gaslight; only rooms with large windows on sunny days were really bright.

If this movie doesn't get some major Oscar note, I will be very disappointed.

When the movie was finished we headed up to Barnes & Noble to spend the coupons. I hadn't been able to find A Kosher Christmas (Jewish commentary on Christmas) at West Cobb, but I knew the Akers Mill store had it. We weren't here long, since James couldn't find anything, and bought the book and drove up to the Town Center store, where I had seen a book mentioned on "The Splendid Table," Consider the Fork. James ended up getting that one, as well as a new Eat This, Not That and a potluck book, while I bought Paris to the Past, a book of essays about visiting historical sites in France via train from Paris. I wish someone would do a book like this about England!

On the way to the Akers Mill store, we stopped at the RaceTrac gas station to buy a newspaper. There was a big sign outside that said "Free coffee, any size, from December 16 through December 22." This a Christmas customer appreciation promotion. Pity we don't drink coffee! However, they also had hot chocolate, so we treated ourselves—and they treated us, even though it wasn't coffee! That was quite nice.

We had an easy supper: Hormel Beef Tips and gravy over spaetzle, with a cucumber salad and no-sugar-added ice cream bars for dessert, watching Christmas videos on America's Funniest Home Videos, and then recorded versions of Rocket City Rednecks.


Spirits of Christmas, edited by Kathryn Cramer and David Hartwell
This is one of six volumes edited by Hartwell that compiles otherworldly Christmas stories. Some volumes are chiefly science-fiction or fantasy, but this one is definitely a "spirited" volume in which all the stories involve a ghost or hauntings of some kind. Some are by new writers and others are vintage, the lynchpin being Charles Dickens' "The Haunted Man," the last of his Christmas stories. Another vintage story is by Frank Stockton, another sentimental tale of an old couple regretting not having children is by Hildegarde Hawthorne, and yet a third tale involves several college boys, a haunted family estate, and a prank gone wrong. One of my favorites of the newer stories was "Snow Ghosts," about a 90-year-old man whose sojourn to a busy pub turns into a date from the past, and another is "O Come Little Children," in which a boy recognizes a disreputable-looking Santa Claus for who he really is. I found the final two stories rather anticlimactic, but, really, there isn't a bad story in the bunch, and a variety of themes for everyone. Worth checking out!

(Note: if otherworldly Christmases are "your bag," you might try checking out Christmas Stars, which not only contains the story "The Greatest Gift," which is the genesis for the film It's a Wonderful Life, but includes Arthur C. Clarke's famous short story about the origin of the Christmas star.)

Working to Carols

And that's what I did today, did my work to Christmas carols. And ended up traveling in time.

A lot of my Christmas music is still on cassette, having been collected one by one, most of them not in print anymore and not on CD, from places that no longer exist: MediaPlay and Oxford Books. James has had, for many years, a dual tape deck which we have used to play cassettes in the living room. Several years ago the uptake spoke on the left-hand side quit working so since then I have been playing Christmas tapes on the right-hand deck. This morning the uptake spoke on the right deck quit working as well.

I could have played the tapes on the deck in my craft room, but instead I pulled out the Panasonic tape recorder I bought back in 1980 to copy off the episodes of Star Blazers that I was audio recording off WSBK TV-38 every morning (yeah, I really do like the series that much). I haven't played poor "Calvin"—it has lots of red buttons on the front; I thought immediately of Calvin O'Keefe in A Wrinkle in Time—in ages. I have to wiggle the volume button to get the sound to play properly, but it still runs pretty well. Just a bit of old-fashioned hiss in the background. Very nostalgic indeed.

St. Lucy's Day in the News

The History of Santa Lucia

Christmas - Santa Lucia Sweden - YouTube

Local Scandinavian Children’s Club to Present Santa Lucia Pageant

Holiday Traditions: Santa Lucia Lights Up Season for Swedes

The Feast of St. Lucy and Violence Against Women

Tree Dreams

Getting the tree up yesterday was almost an anticlimax!

Monday night I got the glider rocker out of the way, moved James' end table over about three inches, and vacuumed the space. Why I'll never know, because once James toted the tree upstairs, there were artificial "needles" everywhere.

Yesterday was my birthday and I took the day off. After sleeping late until eight and having breakfast, Operation Tree commenced! I had been dismayed when I first plugged in the tree because, once again, part of a string of lights was out. However, as I ate breakfast, it came back on. Have no idea why.

Put on some of my Christmas cassettes and spent about an hour fluffing and refastening lights to branches. Then I unloaded the wooden box that used to be the stand for the tree when we had "Sara," who was a shorter tree. I put the boxed ornament sets on one side, the unique glass ornaments in the middle, and the plastic/cloth/resin ornaments (this includes the Hallmark and the Carleton ornaments) at the right. I started with the sets because most of them are the older ornaments. I put them to the back of the tree, facing the foyer. They glimmer as brightly, and it's hard to see from down there that they are faded. A few of the sets are new, like the four chickadee ornaments and the six bright silver holly balls, and those go at the front, along with the satin balls. Next I started putting on the larger glass ornaments, like the 1930s car with the wreath on it, the sailboat, the parrot, etc., then the medium-sized ones, like the pine cones. Each time I found a small one, I would put it aside as a filler ornament. Finally I placed the ones made of other materials than glass. Again, any small ones were set aside. The "wrapped gifts" were scattered mostly to one side, the pine cones one to either side, and others dotted around. Finally the small ornaments were fitted into small holes.

After about three cassettes I remembered that, hey, it is my birthday and I can break into the birthday gift I bought myself. On Black Friday, the Sullivan Entertainment site had the remastered, widescreen version of Anne of Green Gables and the remastered sequel on sale for half price (I wasn't interested in The Continuing Story, which Kevin Sullivan made up whole cloth—it was Anne and Gilbert's children who were young adults during World War I, not Anne and Gilbert!—nor the New Beginning, which turned Anne's backstory in the original book into a lie). Half of $30 each was certainly a good savings, although the postage nearly made my hair turn white. So I put Anne on and it was really splendid, especially the scenes of Prince Edward Island countryside! Cried in several places, stopped to eat, then girded my loins and began to tinsel. Once silver was spilling down the back of the tree, I pushed it inch by inch into the corner, then finished the front. It's like a lovely silver waterfall down the height of the tree.

I cleaned up as I went, so there was little to vacuum up, and then I set the manger down, lovingly piece by piece, between the V of branches I made at the bottom of the tree and lined with appropriate ornaments: the lion and the lamb, two different Hallmark shepherd boys, stable animals surrounding the baby, a lamb, and St. Nicholas. (St. Francis I left up near the bird ornaments.)

I was already hurting anyway, so before and after James coming home and eating supper, I finally vacuumed the rest of the main floor, since it wasn't worth vacuuming until James got the tree upstairs, and then those everlasting stairs. I also swept the downstairs hall, put the stools back in place, vacuumed out the "Christmas closet," and put the last few boxes put back, and vacuumed out the laundry room.

Before bed, to make sure Willow didn't go near the tree, I brought out all the presents and surrounded it.

Let's say my back wasn't happy when I finished, and, boy, when I had a chance for a nap today, despite it being in the 40s out, I fell asleep happily under my blanket until the alarm went off (heck, I went immediately into REM sleep, dreaming about a blackout at the house, and my rear-view mirror falling off).

Kringle, Kringle, Kringle

Woke up with aching shoulders and arms from trying to keep warm last night without flipping the comforter over me. Couldn't stop for that nonsense; had things to do and places to go. Ate breakfast, then was off to the house of "the Prim Lady," who is retiring from the business and selling off everything this weekend. There was quite a little clot of ladies there, all telling her how much they will miss her. Her husband was outside talking to some of the customers and showing off their backyard, which overlooks the Indian Hills Country Club golf course. They have a swell house: the part where she sells out of is a covered, outdoor patio and a little downstairs room with a bath, and also the garage. She was also selling off some antique furniture. Nowhere to put it, and what I wanted most was the old icebox like my grandpa had in his cellar, but that wasn't for sale anyway.

I got a few things for me, and a few things for gifts, and told her I'd miss her and showed her the picture of the little tree I got out of her bargain bin a few years ago which I have decorated with pipe-cleaner wreaths and circles, and discount ornaments, and it looks really cute at work.

Next I needed to post my Christmas cards and half of my packages (the others weren't packaged yet), but I also needed a "pit stop." Cobb County public building across the street to the rescue! Gee, if I had to go to the tag office [license plates], I'd come here. There were two people in line, instead of the line out the door at the office on South Cobb Drive.

Got through the post office pretty painlessly, although it hacks me off that you can't buy stamps in any quantity less than twenty anymore. I wanted to buy just four Hanukkah stamps, but they wouldn't let me.

Checked out a [mumble] store for a gift, then stopped by Trader Joe's to replenish chicken salad and chicken sausage, and also bought a variety of Christmas treats for desserts that should last us through December. No more almond bark, though! And no pumpkin tarts! {Tried just one of the honey mints tonight; three ingredients: mint-flavored honey centers covered in dark chocolate. Oh...my! Very subtle mint taste at first, with no grainy sugary mint feel, and a nice mint aftertaste.)

Was going to stop at a hardware store or a Walmart on the way home for replacement Christmas light bulbs, but the roads were choked with Christmas shoppers, so I ended up just stopping at Walgreens and buying a new string. The library tree has at least seven lights out, most of them blue for some strange reason!

I got home and had a bit of something for lunch, then went downstairs. In just a little while I had the silver airplane tree up and decorated, placing the heavier, larger planes on the top of the bookcase next to the tree. Then I attacked the problem of the new tree. Yes, we have a new tree. It's four feet tall, black and prelighted with white bulbs and is what we are supposed to use for our new "space" tree (fiction and fact). Except there's no space for the space tree. I toyed with putting it in the spare room, but...no.

What I did think of was doing it as a wall tree (or espalier tree, whatever). So I decanted it and moved the all the branches to one side and...you know, I could do this. I took down the Ken Jenkins print in front of the laundry room and hoisted the black tree up using two sets of tinsel cord, using the mounts for the print. Then I decorated it with all our spacecraft and space-related ornaments, the larger ones like Freedom 7 and the moon buggy first, and then the smaller ones like Spock and Robby the Robot, and finally the small ones like the spaceship miniatures that used to be on the foyer tree. Then I added the silver star "drops" I bought at Garden Ridge, added the tinsel star that is usually hung over the airplane tree (replaced the star with the small wreath that was on the laundry room door, replacing that one with an even smaller red-and-green wreath I'd bought at Garden Ridge) at the top, and then took a wide strip of some gold wrapping paper and cut icicle-like triangles at the bottom edge. This I wound around the big plastic lump at the base of the tree where the tree-stand feet would have gone, to simulate flames. I finished just as James came home and told him to come in through the garage.

I think he likes it. And he got the "flames" right away, so I did it right. :-)

China Palace had stuck a delivery menu in our mailbox, so we tried them for supper. Rather bland, I thought.

Then, with determination and the new string of lights in hand, I went downstairs and denuded the library tree of lights and applied the new. Now, on my list of things I love to do, putting lights on a Christmas tree is right down there with watching baseball and scrubbing out the shower compartment. But this pretty much went on correctly the first time. By the time James came down to keep me company, I was on my way to overloading the poor tree with all our literary-related ornaments, from the specific Hallmark (and other) ornaments like Bonnie Blue and Rhett Butler and Dorothy Gale and Harry Potter to animals and people representing books taken from bins of figures at Michaels or Richard's Variety Store: Robin Hood and Long John Silver and Merlin and Black Beauty and Lassie and Pongo, and more. Even Hazel from Watership Down. :-) Last went on the bead garlands.

Then I vacuumed up the library and came upstairs. I'm going to put the woodland tree in the spare room.

But meantime I wrapped the other three gifts that needed to go out. I was remiss this year and forgot to save Amazon boxes, with the result that one of my gifts will need to be shipped in two parts. What fun. But that's all ready to go to the post awful tomorrow.

It wasn't until eleven o'clock that I sat down to do my annual December 7 viewing of The Waltons' Pearl Harbor episode, "Day of Infamy." When Grandma hears that first radio report about the attack, the hair on my arms still stands up.

We Interrupt This Decorating...

I was at work all day yesterday, so nothing much Kringly happened during the day. However, James and I brought the box with the village  upstairs last night, and I had a good time placing the houses and businesses, and then the trees and little figures.

I have some new lights this year. Previously I had four single light strings tied together on one side, and three on the other. It made quite a wad of cord behind the houses, which is why I have so many trees, to cover the cords. This year, as I bought a replacement single cord from one of the fall houses I keep on the mantelpiece the rest of the year, I noticed they had strings of three lights and of six lights using one cord, and ordered them as well.

The clips don't work as well as the plastic ones that came with the houses; I had to fiddle with them to get them to stay in the light holes. But, oh, so much better having just one cord back there! I had also planned to replace the white bulbs with the yellow ones I had bought. But to my surprise, the "white" bulbs actually have a tinge of yellow in them, so when they light up they look just like incandescent light bulbs as they would have had in buildings of the 1940s. All-in-all, very satisfactory.

Today I teleworked and was pretty busy, finalizing plans for the vaccine storage order and starting four new orders. At lunch time I did open the box with the Rudolph tree and put up the little decorations that go on the CD bookshelf: Jim Shore angels, sheep, two "new house" ornaments from 2006, and other odds and ends ornaments. Cleaned off the secretary next to Schuyler's cage (when she eats fruit she tends to toss bits of it everywhere) and put up the musical ornaments.Also decanted the box with the stuffed Rudolph toys (CVS put out a dozen of them one year and my best friend bought them all for me), which go on the hearth, and joined the new Linus piece up with the "Peanuts" wireless band, which goes in front of the television. Also put decorations up in the spare room and our Italian and Scottish decorations in our bedroom.

Started to put up the Rudolph tree itself after supper, but instead had a prolonged bathroom sojourn. Did finally have a chance to put up the bathroom decorations, though.