Sunday, December 4, 2011

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime/Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories: December 4

Today is St. Barbara’s Day, which is celebrated (according to Mimi Sheraton’s wonderful Christmas cookbook, Visions of Sugarplums) in the Levant by Christian Syrians, Lebanese, etc. and also in German-speaking countries. Look back to my post of December 4, 2008 for more information about St. Barbara and tonight’s story and song. I’m really glad I have a backlog of recorded stories to use because I have a dreadful cold and can’t go two minutes without coughing!
Tonight’s story, Schnitzle, Schnotzle, and Schnootzle, is from The Long Christmas, a book of tales collected and told by Ruth Sawyer, the master storyteller and writer.
ruth sawyer
Her book, The Way of the Storyteller, way of the storyteller
is still a great manual of instruction and inspiration for anyone who wants to be a storyteller. She was also the mother-in-law of Robert McCloskey,
mccloskey
of Blueberries for Sal fame. vlueverriees (I’m supposed to be writing about Holiday Foods today but I used up all my thoughts on the subject last year. We had blueberry pie at Thanksgiving, so does this count?)
The song for tonight, to go with the story from the Austrian Tyrol, is “Aba Heidschi Bumbeidschi,” a rather eerie lullaby sung in the Austrian dialect by the Konrad Plaickner Chorus and Orchestra. The words of this lovely song are so disturbing that many modern singers (Nina Simone, for one) have recorded it with changed words.
Since I did get a request from a Mac user, I’ll post links to individual files as well as the zipped files which I’ve compressed using the WinZip program. Be aware that the Mac-compatible (I hope) files will take longer to download since they are not compressed.
DOWNLOAD TONIGHT’S ZIP FILE HERE
DOWNLOAD INTRO FOR MAC HERE
DOWNLOAD STORY FOR MAC HERE
DOWNLOAD SONG FOR MAC HERE

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