The hit song of 1942 is Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, sung by Bing Crosby in the movie Holiday Inn. Crosby first sang the song on Christmas Day, 1941 on an NBC radio show. But the song took off in late 1942, and it’s credited as the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide.
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Christmas in Norway, 1952
From Arne and the Christmas Star, a story of Norway by Alta Halverson Seymour. Illustrated by Frank Nicholas. Wilcox and Follett Company, 1952.
Arne knew there would be stacks of flatbrod, hard and crisp and round, each piece larger than a plate. Besta baked these right on top of her well-scrubbed cookstove. There would be heart-shaped waffles, and lefse and bakelse and rosettes and all kinds of good coffeecakes. His mouth watered at the thought. If a boy hung around the kitchen at the right times, he was sure to come in for a good many samples, especially broken bits.
He knew there would also be a final scouring of the house just before Christmas, that the windows and the copper flowerpots on the window sills would be gleaming. The geraniums and begoneas would be coaxed into bloom for Christmas. And of course the womenfolk would be busy planning and preparing food to last through the Christmas season.
Virtual Advent 2010
I didn’t know when I signed up to post for the Book Bloggers’ Virtual Advent Tour that my Christmas this year would be so mixed. Maybe mixed-up is a better word. I am enjoying the traditional holiday celebrations, and at the same time they move me to tears, sad tears for things that have been lost this year. I am singing the music, and yet I’m tired of the froth of jingling bells and pa-rumpumpum. I have been delighting in the literature of Christmas (see sidebar), and yet literature has lost some of its magic for me this year. I’m having one of those Christmases.
Maybe you are, too. It’s hard to summon up a celebratory spirit when things are not quite right in your family or in your world. If you’re not experiencing it now, you remember that Christmas when Mom was in the hospital or when your son didn’t choose to come home or when the money ran out in November, long before Christmas, or when you just didn’t feel like celebrating. At least not all day long for the entire month of December.
If you’re there or if you know someone who might be, this stop on the Advent Tour is for you. And the tradition I’m spotlighting is a simple one. It doesn’t require any money or holiday spirit or food or new clothes. You just need to sit still and . . . Remember. Take a pen in hand (or a computer keyboard) and remember what it is that makes Christmas special for you, what it is you’re supposed to be celebrating. I remember a lot of reasons to celebrate, even in the midst of some heart-crushing pain. And as I write, I am remembering everything in my life that makes Christmas worth celebrating:
I have a husband who loves me and cares for our family and works hard and loves Jesus.
I have a beautiful home, and my husband has a good job.
I have running water and electricity and even unnecessary toys and gadgets like a computer and internet connection to fill my life with goodness.
My mom is now living with us, and she gives lots of good wisdom to me and to her grandchildren.
My eight children are all physically healthy and growing, and they will all be here for Christmas.
Not only that, but my children are all going to school, either at home or at college. They all have opportunities to learn and to grow mentally in the coming year.
And those same children love me and love each other and want to celebrate Christmas as a family.
My sweet sister and her family are coming for a visit in just a few days.
All of my Christmas shopping is done, and I had money to get some gifts for people that they wanted and some things that they needed. And we’ll still be able to pay our bills in January.
I can read with eyes that work (with glasses), and I can listen to music and to audiobooks with ears that work fairly well.
I have friends who drop everything to help me and listen to my woes anytime, anywhere.
I have a church where salvation through Jesus Christ is preached and where people love and care for one another.
I have had the opportunity and the resources to give to another family in need this Christmas.
But most of all, “I thank God for his gift that words cannot describe.” Even when my family and my life are broken before Him, I remember that He gave himself as a living sacrifice for my sin and my brokenness. And through Christmas and the gift of God in His son, I was healed, I am being healed, and all manner of things will be well.
Deuteronomy 8:7-18
For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; 8 a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; 9 a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.
10 When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. 11 Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. 12 Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, 13 and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, 14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 15 He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. 16 He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. 17 You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.†18 But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.
Christmas is about remembering. Christmas traditions are about remembering. Take some time today to remember who you are, where your family and friends are, and most of all who God is. He is a God who provides, as demonstrated in His provision for the redemption of our shattered world through the most unlikely of sources, a baby boy born in a crowded little town called Bethlehem about 2000 years ago who grew up to be the Saviour of this bittersweet world.
Remember. Merry Christmas!
This post is part of the 2010 Virtual Advent Tour – a fifth year tradition in the book blogging community which allows book bloggers around the world to share their holiday traditions with one another. Visit the 2010 Virtual Advent Tour site for other book blogger’s holiday traditions.
On the Thirteenth Day of Christmas, Harvey House, Raton, New Mexico, 1887
In the Middle Grade Fiction Cybils nominee, When Molly Was a Harvey Girl by Frances M. Wood, a train is stuck in Raton Pass in ten foot snow drifts, and the staff at Harvey House in Raton provides refuge and comfort for the stranded passengers.
“I have sandwiches,” Molly told Annis. Gaston was sending out more substantial food. The townspeople ate too, as much as the passengers. Still, Gaston provided. “Pineapple,” Molly announced. This was a special treat, holiday fare. “Roast beef and crab salad.” The buffet was turning into Christmas dinner. Molly was now bringing out platters of ham, turkey, asparagus, pickled onions, salted almonds, roasted buttered yams, winter squash, applesauce.
“We need more coffee,” said Sissy. “I’ll fetch it, Molly.”
So many people, and yet the Harvey House provided. Colleen and Jeanette swirled through the crowd, carrying plates to the injured. Miss Lambert sent Molly back to the kitchen yet again. “The babies need milk,” Molly shouted above Gaston’s din. Susana grabbed her shawl and was gone.
Sometime during that long, long evening, a tree appeared in the dining room. Coal miners and railroaders and even some passengers carved trinkets for hanging. . . . What next? Molly wondered.
What next was Gaston. For hours he had been performing miracles. Now he left the kitchen as if on parade, wearing a clean hat and apron. The baker, breakfast cook, and two assistant day cooks walked ever-so-carefully behind him., carrying a huge tray. The tray bore a cake large enough for a wedding, but decorated for Christmas with garlands of bright red icing over white. The only way to achieve such red was by mixing in dried cocks’ combs. “He must have used them all,” Molly breathed.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about 13 year old Molly’s adventures as a Harvey Girl waitress in Raton, New Mexico. Because Molly and her older sister Colleeen are orphans with no money left after the expenses of their father’s long illness, Molly pretends to be eighteen so that both girls can get jobs at Harvey House, a chain of restaurants along the railroad line from Topeka, Kansas to San Bernardino, California. Colleen and Molly travel from their home in Illinois to wild western New Mexico where Molly learns to work hard, and where she grows up among the railroaders and business people of the Wild West.
Good story.
Today’s Gifts:
A song: Hark the Herald Angels Sing
A booklist: Historical Fiction for Young Ladies, Part 1
Historical Fiction for Young Ladies, Part 2
A birthday: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, b.1918.
A poem: A Child of the Snows by Gilbert Chesterton
There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.
Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.
And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.
The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, England, c. 1930
The Borrowers Avenged by Mary Norton:
“Oh,” cried Arriety. “I know all about Christmas. My mother’s always talking about it. And the feasts they always had. When she was a girl, there were a lot more borrowers in the house, and that was the time–Christmas time–when she first began to notice my father. The feasts! There were things called raisins and crystal fruit and plum puddings and turkey and something called game pie . . . And the wine they left in glasses! My father used to get it out with a fountain-pen filler. He’d be up a fold in the tablecloth almost before the last human bean had left the room. And my mother began to see what a wonderful borrower he might turn out to be. He bought her a little ring out of something called a cracker, and she wore it as a crown . . . ” She fell silent a moment, remembering that ring. Where was it now? she wondered. She had worn it often herself.
Today’s Gifts:
A song: Joy to the World by Isaac Watts.
A booklist: 100 Magnificent Children’s Books of 2010 at Fuse #8
Birthdays: Actor/director Kenneth Branaugh, b.1960, Emily Dickinson, b.1830, Geroge MacDonald, b.1824, Rumer Godden, b.1907, Mary Norton, b.1903.
A poem: Twas just this time, last year, I died by Emily Dickinson.
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas, Ratzeburg, Germany, 1799
Poet Samuel Coleridge wrote:
“There is a Christmas custom here which pleased and interested me. The children make little presents to their parents, and to each other; and the parents to the children. For three or four months before Christmas the girls are all busy, and the boys save up their pocket-money, to make or purchase these presents. What the present is to be is cautiously kept secret, and the girls have a world of contrivances to conceal it—such as working when they are out on visits, and the others are not with them; getting up in the morning before day-light, and the like. Then, on the evening before Christmas Day, one of the parlours is lighted up by the children, into which the parents must not go. A great yew bough is fastened on the table at a little distance from the wall, a multitude of tapers are fastened in the bough, but so as not to catch it till they are nearly burnt out, and coloured paper hangs and flutters from the twigs. Under this bough the children lay out in great order the presents they mean for their parents, still concealing in their pockets what they intend for each other. Then the parents are introduced, and each presents his little gift, and then bring out the rest one by one from their pockets, and resent them with kisses and embraces. When I witnessed this scene there were eight or nine children, and the eldest daughter and the mother wept aloud for joy and tenderness; and the tears ran down the face of the father, and he clasped all his children so tight to his breast, it seemed as if he did it to stifle the sob that was rising within him. I was very much affected.”
Today’s Gifts:
A song: On December 8, 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired on CBS.
A booklist: Top 10 Poetry Books for Christmas (books about writing and reading poetry) at Seedlings in Stone
A birthday: John Milton, poet, b.1608.
Joel Chandler Harris, folklorist, b.1848
A poem: Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity by John Milton.
On the Tenth Day of Christmas, Claremont, England, 1836
From Princess Victoria’s journal, Claremont, December 24, 1836:
“Very soon after dinner Mamma sent for us into the gallery, where all the things were arranged on different tables. From my dear Mamma I received a beautiful massive gold buckle in the shape of two serpents; a lovely little delicate gold chain with turquoise clasp; a lovely coloured sketch of dearest Aunt Louise by Partridge copied from the picture he brought and so like her; 3 bautiful drawings my Munn, one lovely seaview by Peser and one cattle piece by Cooper (all coloured), 3 prints, a book called Finden’s Tableau, Heath’s Picturesque Annual, Ireland; both these are very pretty; Friendship’s Offering and the English Annual for 1837, the Holy Land illustrated beautifully, two handkerchiefs, a very pretty black satin apron trimmed with red velvet, and two almanacks. From dear Uncle Leopold, a beautiful turquoise ring,; from the Queen a fine piece of Indian gold tissue, and from Sir J. Conroy a print. I gave my dear Lehzen a green morocco jewel case, and the Picturesque Annual; Mamma gave her a shawl, a pair of turquoise earrings, an annual, and handkerchief. I then took Mamma to the Library where my humble table was arranged; I gave her a bracelt made of my hair, and the Keepsake , and Oriental Annual. I stayed up til eleven!”
Victoria was seventeen years old when she wrote this entry in her journal. The next year, 1837, when she was eighteen years old, she became Queen Victoria, Sovereign of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Today’s Gifts:
A song: Be Still My Soul, music by Jean Sibelius.
A booklist: Popular and well known authors choose their favorite books of 2010.
A birthday: Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, b.1865.
On the Ninth Day of Christmas, New Mexico, 1850’s
From Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop:
Father Vaillant had been absent in Arizona since midsummer, and it was now December. Bishop Latour had been going through one of those periods of coldness and doubt which, from his boyhood, had occasionally settled down upon his spirit and meade him feel an alien, wherever he was. He attended to his correspondence, went on his rounds among the parish priests, held services at missions that were without pastors, superintended the building of the addition to the Sisters’ school: but his heart was not in these things.
One night about three weeks before Christmas he was lying in his bed, unable to sleep, with the sense of failure clutching at his heart. His prayers were empty words and brought him no refreshment. His soul had become a barren field. He had nothing within himself to give his priests or his people. His works seemed superficial, a house built upon the sands. His great diocese was still a heathen country. The Indians travelled their old road of fear and darkness, battling with evil omens and ancient shadows. The Mexicans were children who played with their religion.
The novel goes on to tell how Bishop Latour is renewed in his faith by the faith of an old peasant woman, Sada. We all need renewed vision sometimes. If the above description applies to you this Christmas season, take heart. I believe Christ will meet you in the middle of a Christmas drought if you keep your eyes open and your ears tuned to His voice.
Today’s Gifts:
A song: Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus at Mocha with Linda.
A booklist: Read aloud Christmas titles from the library at Hope Is the Word.
A birthday: Willa Cather, American novelist, b.1873.
A poem: The Oxen by Thomas Hardy
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel
In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
On the Eighth Day of Christmas, Myra, Lycia (Turkey), c.300.
St, Nicholas Day.
“The giver of every good and perfect gift has called upon us to mimic his giving, by grace, through faith, and this not of ourselves.” ~Nicholas of Myra, c.288-354 AD.
Today’s gifts:
A song: Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
A booklist: Mother Reader’s 105 Ways to Give a Book
A birthday: Joyce Kilmer, b.1886.
On the Seventh Day of Christmas, Nashville, TN, 1828
From the biography, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham:
Shortly after nine on the evening of Monday, December 22, three days before Christmas, Rachel [Jackson] suffered an apparent heart attack. It was over. Still, Jackson kept vigil, her flesh turning cold to his touch as he stroked her forehead. With his most awesome responsibilities and burdens at hand she left him. ‘My mind is so disturbed . . . that I can scarcely write, in short my dear friend my heart is nearly broke,’ Jackson told his confidant John Coffee after Rachel’s death.
At one o’clock on Christmas Eve afternoon, by order of the mayor, Nashville’s church bells began ringing in tribute to Rachel, who was to be buried in her garden in the shadow of the Hermitage. The weather had been wet, and the dirt in the garden was soft; the rain made the gravediggers’ task a touch easier as they worked. After a Presbyterian funeral service led by Rachel’s minister, Jackson walked the one hundred fifty paces back to the house. Devastated but determined, he then spoke to the mourners. ‘I am now the President elect of the United States, and in a short time must take my way to the metropolis of my country; and, if it had been God’s will, I would have been grateful for the privilege of taking her to my post of honor and seating her by my side; but Providence knew what was best for her.'”
Today’s Gifts
A song: In the Bleak Midwinter, lyrics by Christian Rossetti, music by Gustav Holst.
A booklist: Biographies of the U.S. Presidents (books I’m planning to read)
A birthday: Christina Rossetti, b.1830.
Walt Disney, b. 1901.