Holiday Special Review: The Thanksgiving Treasure

Everyone of a certain age remembers the 1972 "little special that could," the low-key The House Without a Christmas Tree. It remains a fond Christmas memory along with the other Yuletide offerings of the 1970s, especially The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (which ended up being the pilot film for The Waltons), and was even parodied on a Saturday Night Live skit. Fewer people, however, remember that there were three sequels, set at Thanksgiving, Easter, and Valentine's Day, respectively.

The most memorable of these was probably the first sequel, The Thanksgiving Treasure, originally broadcast in 1973. It is now eleven months since the events of House Without a Christmas Tree, and on a excursion with her father, eleven-year-old Addie Mills meets her father's bete noire, a cranky elderly farmer named Walter Rhenquist. Earlier, Addie's father had dug a pond for Rhenquist, although James Mills advised him the pond was not in the right place. When the pond leaked, Rhenquist didn't pay James the remainder of his fee.  The two have been feuding ever since, and they have a lively quarrel at the gas station where Mills has stopped for fuel and Addie for air for her bike tires. Later, on an expedition with her best friend Cora Sue to find plants for a winter bouquet, Addie checks out Rhenquist's farm and discovers the old fellow owns a pinto mare. Addie is horse-crazy—the story opens with her ecstatic upon receiving a picture from Hollywood of Roy Rogers and Trigger—and immediately befriends the horse. But how can she visit it again if Rhenquist hates her family so much?

On the next day of school, the children are studying about Thanksgiving, and Addie takes to heart a lesson her teacher gives about making friends of ones' enemies (and of course, she can visit the horse to boot)! Since she can't get her father to invite his old enemy to dinner, she talks Cora Sue into helping her take leftovers from the Mills' Thanksgiving dinner out to Rhenquist.

This is a delightful and touching special in so many ways. People find it (as they did in the earlier special) disconcerting that the story was filmed on videotape and has that "soap opera" look. On the other hand, the fact that it was filmed in that manner almost makes it look as if you were watching a reality series and peeking into a window at 1947. The period look is so well done: the shabby but homey Mills house, with its faded wallpaper, linoleum floor, painted kitchen table and chairs, quaint parlor furniture; the school with its wooden desks and big wall of windows; the radio play that the children put on, which is so packed with the rote facts children were told then, with the children hamming it up as turkeys at the end; the sere fields of a farm town in Canada standing in for 1947 Nebraska, with Rhenquist's lonely farmhouse and an old-fashioned general store and gas pumps.

I've always loved that Addie herself is not one of those cute little moppets that so frequently appeared on television in that era (and still appear today), with cute faces, freckles, and precocious smart remarks. She is a prickly, imperfect heroine who can be unsympathetic to her best friend—"dodo" is a familiar criticism—but who underneath is a good-hearted, intelligent child whose slightly deceptive reason for befriending Rhenquist (to then befriend his horse) blossoms into a near-granddaughter relationship with the crusty codger, played with curmudgeonly perfection by character actor Barnard Hughes. There are also humorous situations, but they're not deliberately cutesy; instead it flows from the personalities of the characters (in one sequence, for instance, when Addie states to her dad that her teacher Miss Thompson has said they should make friends of their enemies, James snaps back, "Well, tell Miss Thompson to have him for dinner—boiled!" which is such a classic James Mills line), not to mention the devil's bargain Addie has to make with her pesty cousin Henry and its so-right conclusion.

Gentle stories like these don't seem to hold the attention of modern audiences much, except for a few favorites like A Charlie Brown Christmas, and it's a pity this is not a television tradition (as well as its predecessor) alongside perennial favorites like the Grinch and Rudolph. There's a videotape of this story sold under the title The Holiday Treasure, and if you happen upon one, do pick it up. If you like slice-of-life stories that can be sentimental without being sloppy, this little gem is definitely for you.

News for Thanksgiving...and Thanksgivukkah

Not only is the first full day of Hanukkah on Thanksgiving Day for the first time since 1888, but it's the sesquicentennial of Thanksgiving being a national holiday.

Thanksgiving Sesquicentennial

Menorah Lighting Planned for Plymouth Rock

Give Thanks for Old Plymouth Rock (or Plymouth "pebble")

Five Myths About the Pilgrims

Will The Balloons Fly This Year?

10 Thanksgiving Day Facts

 The True Meaning of Thanksgiving Day (and it's not shopping)

A Recipe for Thanksgivukkah

Thanksgivukkah Spawning Menurkeys

May the Light of Peace Be With You

 

Happy Hanukkah to all those who celebrate!

Happy Remembrance Day to all in Canada and the United Kingdom.

"Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few." ... Winston Churchill

Martinmas

St. Martin of Tours is most famous for the story of his cloak: seeing a shivering beggar in the cold, he used his sword to split his riding cloak in half so the poor man might have some relief. Only afterwards did he find out that the man was Jesus in disguise. Later Martin converted to Christianity and became a monk.

The St. Martin Song

There are several symbols of Martinmas besides the cloak: St. Martin's white horse (if it snows during Martinmas it is said that his white horse is riding through), lanterns (paper lanterns are a traditional decoration, or one can make them out of glass jar, and geese, which are a traditional dinner entree on St. Martin's Day.

A Martinmas Circle - Seasons of Joy

Advent, like Lent, was once a 40-day period of fasting and prayer (Sundays were excluded), and it began on Martinmas.

Wikipedia St. Martin's Day Entry

Fish Eaters.com: St. Martin's Day

Photos of St. Martin's Day Lanterns

Celebrating St. Martin's Day in Germany

What's All Saints Day...

...and what does it have to do with Hallowe'en?

All Saints Day - Solemnity of All Saints Day

Vintage Hallowe'en Things

The Vintage Halloween Website

Vintage Halloween Photographs

Vintage Halloween Collector Blog

20 Cute and Creepy Vintage Halloween Cards

19 Deeply Horrifying Vintage Halloween Costumes

Crow & Cauldron: Mostly Vintage Halloween Blog

Vintage Halloween Poetry

"Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Reilly

Autumn At Last!

Isn't that September 22, you ask?

It's the first day of meterological fall, and I can't take summer one more minute, even if it was relatively cool.

This is New Hampshire. I would trade every single day of summer for one day here:

"There's a Place for Each Small One..."

I was guest blogger today on Christmas TV History's "Animation Celebration" for Christmas in July:

The Small One

Happy Christmas in July!

I still can't believe it was time for the Hallmark ornament premiere already...the days go by so slowly, but the weeks go by so quickly.

We arrived at the store just after they opened; a man and woman were just exiting the store with a big bag, and the guy said to James, "You're late!" No, we were very, very early, as this is probably the first Hallmark ornament premiere ever that James was more eager to get to than me! The airplane this year was a GeeBee, of the color markings that Cliff "The Rocketeer" Secord flies at the beginning of the movie, and they also had an ornament of Santa Claus testing out a rocket launching kit. He also bought the Kelvin from the Star Trek reboot and the little airplane "Dusty" from Disney's upcoming sequel to Cars (called Planes, of course). And Marvin the Martian...just because. But the store was completely out of the cute little "Captain Nello's ray gun," a darling item with fins that made all sorts of retro ray gun sounds. Since we were the second people in the store, we figure the guy and the gal coming out of the store as we came in had copped every one of them.

I only bought four ornaments, but two of them were big: I got the "Steamboat Springs" "ornament" (in quotes because, really, it's too big for the tree) that plays a country version of "Good King Wenceslas" as a little train circles a mountain on one side and a steamboat paddles about in a lake on the other, and the Mickey Mouse "Band Concert." I'm not a Mickey collector, but it was a zoetrope, and I'm crazy about old motion picture machine toys. I also bought the "French hen" ornament and the Rudolph ornament. They also had a big rack of previous years' ornaments marked way down; I got a set of six miniature "International children" (although if I add any more ornaments to the miniature tree, it's probably going to collapse), the Where the Wild Things Are ornament for the library tree, and, since it was buy two half price and get the third off, another ornament as a gift.

(Maybe it was because it was early, but this was really a rather lackluster ornament premiere on the store's part. Usually they have several goodies and big pitchers of drinks or punch. Today was a cookie "cake" and two small containers of tea and lemonade.)

This wasn't getting James a ray gun, though, so after we finished at Trader Joe's, we took the most direct route to the Hallmark store at Town Center. There were lots of ray guns there, and James also decided to get a "KITT" from Knight Rider, especially as it does have William Daniels' voice. I didn't buy any more ornaments, but did get hooks and adapters, so perhaps this year our space ornaments will make sounds again (they don't work with our present string of lights), and found Hanukkah cards on discount.

Matched with an overcast sky and a breeze, it was probably the nicest July ornament premiere in years.

H A P P Y I N D E P E N D E N C E D A Y !

Midsummer's Day

I'm in my usual hibernation for the summer, but still a word about Midsummer's Day.

Despite the name, Midsummer's Day is celebrated a few days after the summer solstice. It's especially popular in northern countries that experience long winters. Shakespeare's play A Midsummer's Night Dream references the celebratory practices of Midsummer Eve and Day.

Midsummer Day in Sweden

Midsummer's Day

Midsummer Day in Lithuania

Midsummer Day and the Summer Solstice

Midsummer Day Images

Midsummer Day takes place on the Feast of John the Baptist.

The history of St. John.

NewAdvent.org history of St. John.

Best of all, tomorrow makes six months until Christmas. I could never understand why they have "Christmas in July" when the end of June is the halfway mark. :-)

Christmas Carol Redux

A couple of weeks ago I went to Barnes & Noble at Town Center, and, as I usually do, slipped into CD Warehouse to see what they had in used DVDs...not that we need anymore. I came upon the Blu-Ray version of Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. Now, I already have a copy of this on DVD, plus I bought the collected version of Christmas specials which also contains this story. But I've been in love with MMCC since its first broadcast (I don't actually remember the first broadcast; what I remember is the repeat the next year—I can clearly remember sitting on the burgundy plush sofa we had then, watching the clock, swinging my legs back and forth, and chanting "It's almost time for Mr. Magoo!" I was eight at the time.) and by the time of that second broadcast I practically had the songs memorized. (BTW, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, not Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or A Charlie Brown Christmas, as people think, was the very first made-for-television animated special.)

Besides, it was only $10 and came with all the extras: a little commemorative booklet and an "autographed" still.

It's been sitting at the back of the sofa rather taunting me since then, and, although I really should be doing other things today, I couldn't resist putting it on. Last night I volunteered to write something for Joanna Wilson's Christmas in July 2013, and although I offered to do Mr. Magoo, it was already taken (I'm doing The Small One instead), and the combination of the two were irresistible.

The restoration is...wow. There are still a few bits of dirt on the print, but it's 99 percent pristine and the color is brilliant; in fact I had to turn the television from standard picture brightness to cinema because the colors are just so pure and bright. One of the things I've always loved about it is that, except for the framing sequence and the songs, the dialog is pretty much 98 percent directly from Dickens, and I always find myself chanting along with the best lines, including Scrooge's damning "If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population," and Marley's “Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed!" I watched it with the commentary and they talked to several of the animators and the voice artists, including Marie Matthews (who sings Young Scrooge's lovely "Alone in the World"), Jane Kean (Belle's singing voice), and Laura Olsher (Mrs. Cratchit).

(Aside: as a kid I considered "Alone in the World" "my" song. I was an only child and raised by older parents—Mom and Dad were 38 and 41 when I was born—and I never did like things my classmates did: I was more into Perry Como and Bing Crosby and Big Band than I was to contemporary music from the Beatles and Herman's Hermits; 60s fashions were anathema to me since what I really wanted was a skirt that swirled just like Loretta Young's. Miniskirts. Yuck! I felt myself not in synch with my generation a lot and "All Alone in the World" pretty much defined that loneliness.)

Sadly, there are very few extras besides the cool commentary: a couple of storyboard sequences against the final print, and Jule Styne and Bob Merrill singing the demo of "Ringle, Ringle" in accompaniment to the animation sequence, but the last is a peach, "From Pencil to Paint," showing the conception drawings and then the final cell, because it's accompanied by the lost overture music, which is absolutely fabulous. Styne and Merrill were seasoned Broadway composers (they later did Funny Girl) and each song is a gem: the opening night excitement of "Back on Broadway," the aching sadness of "Alone in the World," the menacing humor of "We're Despicable," the bright hope of "The Lord's Bright Blessing," the strong rhythm and rhyme of "Ringle, Ringle," and the plaintive song of lost love, "Winter was Warm." Even the incidentally music, often minor-key versions of the songs, is memorable. The creepy music accompaniment to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come is as chilling in 2013 as it was in 1963.

Serendipity is defined as "the art of happy accident" and this Blu-Ray version has been the best kind of serendipitous find.

It's That Time Again!

Since it's less than nine months until Christmas, could this have been far behind?

2013 Dream Book | Keepsake Ornament Club | Hallmark Cards

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

We think of it here as Willow's birthday*, so there isn't much "wearin' o' the green," especially since James is mostly Scottish and I'm Italian. :-) Been watching clips of St. Paddy's Day parades this morning, and reading Facebook posts, including nostalgic photos from the Providence Journal.

I've never been much on St. Patrick's Day as an adult, though, due to the emphasis on drinking to excess, but do remember with much nostalgia the programs at school, where we danced Irish jigs and cut out shamrocks to decorate the classroom, and, in junior high school, bought and wore green carnations. And, of course, you always wore green, even if it was just a pin or an armband. Surprisingly, the Atlanta PBS stations, which were overflowing with Irish specials last year, are devoid of anything similar this year except for an upteenth Celtic Thunder rerun and a series on Catholicism. (Yo! When do we get series two of Call the Midwife?)

Kinda blank in here since Epiphany, but frankly I haven't felt much like celebrating. Been going through an emotionally difficult time at work due to the reorganization, and, tiresomely, caught the flu over Valentine's Day week, so no celebration, no decorations, and no Valentine posts. Sleeping late seems to be the chief amusement desired here.

* We actually don't know when Willow was whelped. We got her on the last week of May, and they told us she was ten weeks old, so I counted back to a date I could remember. :-)  Schuyler has the same deal: she was just a new baby when I bought her on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, so I counted back a month and picked out another date I could remember (April 23, St. George's Day and Shakespeare's birthday).

A Little Christmas Spirit for the Upcoming Sneezy Ordeal of Spring

Everlasting Christmas Movie Montage - Happy Holidays!

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. :-(