Updates, Fruitcake, and Technical Tips

I don’t think I’m going to get the Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: Day 15 posted this evening, as it’s already quite close to old Auntie’s bedtime. I’m two days behind on my Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories. The prompt for yesterday, December 14, was “Fruitcake: Friend or Foe?” I really can take it or leave it; fruitcake doesn’t stir any particular emotions in me, nor do I have any family memories about it. I tend to like the “ethnic” fruitcake varieties which usually seem to have more cake and less fruit, such as the Italian Panettone ,

the German Stollen,

or the Norwegian Julekage.

I did want to update a couple of prior posts with new information. On December 7, I shared a story in verse, The Year without a Santa Claus by Phyllis McGinley, and I said it had nothing to do with the television special. Just a day or two later, Sisterfilms was watching that very special while decorating cookies, and called to tell me that it actually was based on the book, which I would have known had I only checked iMDB. The screenwriter, William Keenan, added the characters of Snow Miser and Heat Miser, which is why I didn’t think the two works were related.

Speaking of Santa Claus, I have some more information relating to my December 6 post in the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories. My uncle Carl tells me that it was probably either my uncle Ellis or his brother Hank who came to the window as Santa Claus, as Ellis had had a Santa Claus suit several years before when Carl was small and used to dress up in it for him and Ellis’s own son. Here’s a picture of Ellis. He and my grandmother are the ones who are responsible for my love of mystery stories; the story was that he would read all but the last few pages of a mystery so he could read it again and still have the suspense. I also talked to my brother and he says that, although he only has the image of the Santa face in the window in his memory, he remembers our mother telling him that he was the one who wasn’t afraid of Santa. Just as I feared.

One technical tip for anyone who hasn’t learned by trial and error: to connect to the link, left-click on the blue words of your choice. That will take you to the download site, where a button will await you. The individual files will download individually; the Self-Extracting Zip Files will have everything for that day in one folder. Some browsers (Google Chrome for example) will give you a scary message because of the Self-Extracting Zip Files which include a small .exe file. You do not need to be afraid of these. They are produced by WinZip, a very reputable company, and I use an anti-virus program daily to make sure I don’t spread anything bad.