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.

Her book, The 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,

of Blueberries for Sal fame. (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

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories/Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: December 3

One of our Christmas trees this year will be decorated with handmade ornaments. Some have been made by us, some by friends and family members, and some were bought at church Christmas fairs or brought as gifts from foreign lands. I don’t remember having homemade ornaments on my childhood trees, although my siblings and I may well have made some in school or Sunday school. Onkel Hankie Pants’ family at least had the Danish paper hearts,
and in later years we learned to make these and various other ornaments at West Denmark Family Camp.
Tonight’s story is more about the absence of ornaments: The Tree That Didn’t Get Trimmed by Christopher Morley. It seems to have been published first in a book of essays, later as a stand-alone book, and on GoogleBooks I found it in an issue of Boys’ Life from the mid-50s. Morley was “a man of letters” who did not confine himself to one format. His first novels, Parnassus on Wheels and The Haunted Bookshop,became cult classics among a certain bookish crew; a later novel, Kitty Foyle, was made into a movie. Morley also was one of the first judges for the Book-of-The-Month Club and edited two editions of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations; he was a regular contributor to the Saturday Review of Literature, a magazine with which I whiled away many hours while I should have been studying. In Nassau County, New York, there is a park named for him where his “writing cabin,” The Knothole, is preserved.

The songs are a Norwegian song to the Christmas tree, Sang til Juletraeet, by Mike & Else Sevig, and a humorous song, Revenge of the Christmas Tree, by Erik Darling.
DOWNLOAD TONIGHT’S STORY HERE

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories/Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: December 2

Once again, I find I have nothing further to report on the writing prompt for today in the Geneabloggers’ Advent Calendar: Holiday Foods. Since I went on and on about them last December, you should look there if you want to know about some of our food traditions. Or, you could listen to tonight’s story, Robert P. T. Coffin’s Christmas in Maine.  Robert Peter Tristram Coffin is one of four literary figures memorialized in the sidewalks of our town, and the only one who is a native of this area (the others, who all sojourned here for just a few years, being Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.)

Coffin not only grew up on a farm in Harpswell, he stayed around as a professor at Bowdoin College, while also writing Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry as well as memoirs and other works. I wrote more about Coffin in the blog for December 21, 2008. 
I chose the song “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen” as sung by the BBC Welsh Chorus to accompany this night’s reading because it sounded to me like something the Coffins might have sung on their sleighride. According to both William Studwell in his useful The Christmas Carol Reader and Walter Ehret and George K. Evans in The International Book of Christmas Carols, the melody dates from at least the 18th century and probably earlier; the words are probably 18th century and may have originated with the London Waits, carolsingers of the time.  This carol is even mentioned in DIckens’ A Christmas Carol when Scrooge nearly assaults a carolsinger who dares to serenade him.
The recorded introduction was for 2006 when Sisterfilms was still living in City of Lakes and was flying out to be with us for Christmas.
DOWNLOAD TONIGHT’S STORY HERE

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories/Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: December 1

Today’s writing prompt for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories is the Christmas Tree. Now, I think I said just about everything I can recall about our Christmas trees last year, on December 2. So rather than repost, I’ll just send you there.
We have two Christmas trees at our house this year. One is the traditional balsam fir and the other, as best we can determine, is a hemlock (more on this anon.)
Sisterfilms has just unformed us that what she’d really like is a Scotch or

Norway pine with long needles.
Perhaps next year our woods can at least provide a white pine.

For tonight’s story, I had several Christmas tree stories to choose from; I picked one of the oldest, The Peterkins’ Christmas Tree by Lucretia P. Hale. Here’s the book it comes from – one of the Junior Deluxe Editions I used to get in the mail. I’ve had this book for about 55 years!

Lucretia Peabody Hale came from old Boston stock, and literary stock at that. Her father, Nathan Hale (named for his famous Revolutionary uncle) was an editor, and her mother an author. One of her many siblings was Edward Everett Hale, author of The Man without a Country, which I remember being assigned to read in junior high. And on her mother’s side, Lucretia could count as a relative the orator Edward Everett, now famous chiefly for being the “main” and lengthy speaker on the occasion when Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address.
Lucretia, who was born in 1820 and died in 1900, saw the introduction of the Christmas tree into New England. In Germany, Austria, and Scandinavia, Christmas trees were a long tradition by the 19th century, when Ernst Anschutz wrote some new words to an old tune, O Tannenbaum. I’ve selected a version by the Wiener Sängerknaben (The Vienna Boys’ Choir). Although Tannenbaum means “Fir Tree,” this is where we get back to our hemlock, for Maine’s own Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, apparently in the throes of unrequited love, wrote a non-Christmas poem, The Hemlock Tree, which is obviously meant to be sung to the Tannenbaum melody.
DOWNLOAD TONIGHT’S STORYTIME HERE

December Blogging Plans

Strictly speaking, I should have begun my Advent blogging last Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent. But since Advent calendars usually start on the first of December, I'll begin tomorrow.

Those of you who are my friends on Facebook may have noticed that I promised myself to check Facebook only once a week starting December 1 (and for as long thereafter as I can hold out). Instead, I'll be spending time blogging, reviewing, and reading blogs. I have two specific projects for December, both of which I also attempted last year. One is the Geneablogger Advent Calendar of Family History; the other is Auntie Knickers' Advent Storytime.

Geneabloggers is an aggregation of people who blog about genealogy and family history. Each day from December 1 through 24 has a writing prompt. The prompts are the same as last year's, so if I can't think of anything different to write about I'll skip a day here and there. I thought it might be fun, when possible, to coordinate my read-aloud stories with the family history tales, so I'll be doing that when it's appropriate.

As I did last year, I'll be posting my readings of Christmas stories to a filesharing site where readers who wish can download them. I'm using MediaFire this year. The Sendspace links from last year are no longer active; if anyone requests it, I can repost them on MediaFire. Since Sisterfilms, for whose benefit I did this last year, is now in residence here, I'm not going to post individual files for Mac users unless someone else asks me to. The files I'll post are Self-Extracting Zip Files and seemed to work fine last year. After I've posted the first one I'll possibly have a few more instructions for you.

I've written at length about some of the stories and songs before, and I'll point you to those posts in the blog archive, but I'll also try to find some more information about the authors or anything else that seems interesting.

I hope a few people will enjoy these stories. One last note: there are a few tales that are a little more adult in nature; on those days I'll include two stories so there'll be one for kids too.

See you tomorrow!

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: Day 13

(A busy couple of days past means I’m a day behind, but hope to be caught up by the end of the night.)

One of my blogging friends, LutheranChik, has just returned safely home to Michigan after a trip to California. LutheranChik is a great champion of Michigan, its food, crafts, and tourism, so I’m dedicating this post to her and her beloved state. Patricia Polacco, author and illustrator of many excellent children’s books, is a native of Union City, Michigan (a Michigander!) who has returned there after many years away. Her author website makes good reading and so does this Christmas story from her family history, An Orange for Frankie. Get the book if you can, for as you can see the illustrations are beautiful.

I chose two very different songs for this story: “Christmas Train” is a rockin’ good number from Carey Bell, featured on Alligator Records Genuine Houserockin’ Christmas compilation; “This Old World” is a more reflective song by the group of folksingers gathered as the Golden Ring Singers.

Since the 13th of December is St. Lucia’s day in Sweden and Swedish-American communities, back in 2008 I recorded a section from Vilhelm Moberg’s The Emigrants, telling of Karl Oscar and Kristina’s “Christmas in the New Land” near Taylors’ Falls, Minnesota. For some unfathomable reason, the films made from these books by Jan Troell are not available on DVDs that will play in most US players. (For a lot of money, you can get Region 2 copies, which you might be able to play on your computer or if you have a multi-region player.) However, you can still read the books. For many years we’ve been driving through (and sometimes stopping in) Lindstrom, Minnesota, which has a water tower shaped like a Swedish coffee pot , a statue of Karl Oscar and Kristina, a Swedish bakery, and whose yearly festival is called “Karl Oscar Days.”

Here are Karl Oscar and Kristina, with American and Swedish flags. Kristina is looking back to Sweden.

One of Sisterfilms’ great experiences during high school was performing in the Christmas Revels in what proved, sadly, to be its last year in Minnesota. The theme that year was Scandinavian and she sang several Swedish and Finnish songs. I can’t recall if they used “Julafton,” recorded by the Revels Chorus of Houston on a combined Russian/Scandinavian recording, To Drive the Dark Away. Another version of the same song is done by the Lund Cathedral Boys’ Choir and called “Goder Afton.”

Individual Files for Mac Users

Intro Dec 13 2010 Surprise 1 Surprise 2 An Orange for Frankie

Intro Dec 13 2008 Surprise 1 Surprise 2 Christmas in a New Land

Self-Extracting Zip Files for the Rest of Us

December 13 2010 December 13 2008

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: Day 12

Tonight, in honor of my Minnesota connections who are dealing with the aftermath of a big snowstorm, one more Minnesota memoir, of a somewhat more recent vintage. In fact, it tells about Christmas of 1984, a day I remember quite well (see yesterday’s Memories post for the reason.) Colleen Kruse is a Minnesota radio personality and stand-up comic who is very funny, but has her serious side too. And indeed as she says, Mickey’s Diner is still there: here’s a picture. I have to admit I’ve never been.

It’s all too easy to forget the people – some well-paid, most not – who work on Christmas to deliver babies, plow snow, drive buses and taxis, and keep the convenience stores and diners open, and provide many other amenities that make our lives better. Dave Carter’s song “American Noel” won’t let us forget. It’s one of my favorites, which I first heard on the album Wonderland (issued to benefit a Western Massachusetts foodshelf program). I recently bought Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer’s album American Noel which also contains more great original songs as well as some lovely and unusual versions of more familiar carols. Either would be a great addition to your Christmas music library.

For a more child-friendly story, try Merry Christmas, Strega Nona by Tomie de Paola from my 2006 stories. The song that goes with it is “’Twas on a Night Like This,” (sometimes known as the Star Carol; the tune is the Carol of the Italian Bagpipers mentioned in the story.) You can go here for more information.

Individual Files for Mac Users

Intro Dec 12 2010 Surprise Mickey's Diner

Intro Dec 3 2006 Surprise Merry Christmas, Strega Nona

December 12 2010

Self-Extracting Zip Files for the Rest of us

December 12 2010 December 3 2006

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: Day 11

Tonight’s story, a memoir, also has a little bit of family history connected with it as well as some interesting political aspects. It is an excerpt from “The Victorian City in the Midwest,” by Harrison Salisbury, first published in Growing Up in Minnesota (University of Minnesota Press, 1976) and reprinted in Christmas in Minnesota (Minnesota Historical Society, 2005).

Harrison Salisbury (1908-1973) was born and grew up in North Minneapolis in a now-disappeared neighborhood of nice homes called Oak Lake. Its heyday was 20 years or so before his birth. By the time Harrison was born, the wealthy had moved south, and his father, a bookkeeper for a bag factory, could afford to live there with his wife, two children, a boarder and a servant (as of the 1910 census). The Salisburys lived at 107 Royalston Avenue. I was surprised to find that this street still exists, although 107 seems to be a parking lot; the area is completely given over to industrial and warehouse/commercial buildings now, and is just north of Glenwood Avenue near a conglomeration of freeways. (You can see for yourself if you type the address into Google Maps.)

In the memoir, Salisbury and his sister are taken to Holtzermann’s department store – the official name was Holtzermann’s Chicago Store Company. (Chicago seems to have been added for glamour.) Forty or so years after Salisbury’s World War I-era experiences there, Onkel Hankie Pants and his sister (oddly enough, as close in age as were Salisbury and his younger sister Mary) were taken to Holtzermann’s by their father at Christmastime also. Post-World War II, the store offerings seem to have recovered some of their magic, or at least that’s the way my husband and his sister remember it. My sister-in-law still treasures a large and beautiful ornament that she wheedled her father into buying for her at Holtzermann’s (and he was not a man given to impulse purchases.)

While looking for more information on Holtzermann’s, I discovered many interesting facts about Jacob D. Holtzermann – both the elder and the younger. The elder Holtzermann, born in 1869 in Piqua, Ohio, held the patent on Holtzermann’s Patent Stomach Bitters, a preparation intended to aid digestion (and which may have contained alcohol) but which is now mostly known for the collectibility of the bottles it came in. He and his brother Louis came to Minneapolis in 1887 and opened the store. It’s not clear whether Jacob died young, but he does not appear in the most recent censuses available; instead there is a younger Jacob D. Holtzermann, born in 1902, who is either the son or nephew of the first Jacob D. It is this Jacob D. Holtzermann who owned the store when my husband was a child. He graduated from the University of Minnesota, studied in Geneva and Munich, and received a master’s in International Law from Harvard – and then came back and ran the store. He made numerous trips to Europe on buying expeditions – I’ve never seen someone who showed up so often in the New York Passenger Lists on Ancestry.com – and remember, this was all on ships.

Whether because or in spite of his cosmopolitan outlook, Holtzermann was a staunch isolationist in the years leading up to World War II, and one of some influence, since he owned a local isolationist paper, The Beacon. But unlike some America Firsters, he was not an anti-Semite. A Lutheran, he belonged to a local organization called the Roundtable of Christians and Jews (and this meant something, because Minneapolis was a very anti-Semitic city in those days). When Charles Lindbergh was making speeches which might have been open to interpretation as anti-Semitic, he wrote to the aviator urging him to repudiate such statements. Lindbergh did not. And, when Soviet Russia invaded Finland, he was at the forefront of a campaign to raise money to help the Finns; $150,000 was raised in a statewide drive (in addition to money that the Finnish-American community raised.)

In later years Holtzermann was active in Republican politics and attempted to gain the nomination for Senator in 1966; he died in 1969. The store closed a few years later (I don’t think it was there any longer when I came to Minneapolis.) The building still stands and apartments in it are advertised as being in the “Historic Holtzermann Building.” There are also numerous businesses, many of them connected to the Somali community. In Salisbury’s time, Holtzermann’s was on “Snoose Boulevard”, the center of a Scandinavian immigrant community.

I just want to mention, though it has nothing to do with Christmas, that Salisbury’s book, The 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read. It was totally riveting and I still remember it years after reading it; I highly recommend it. If the remaining 28 books of Salisbury’s oeuvre are even half as good they are worth reading as well.

Since Minneapolis is experiencing a big snowstorm today, and because of the German connection, I chose the song “Leise Rieselt der Schnee” (Softly Falls the Snow), sung by the Bielefelder Kinderchor sometime in the 1950s.

For something a little more child-friendly, try the December 11, 2006 reading, Cat in the Manger by Michael Foreman; you can find more information here.

Individual Files for Mac Users

Intro Dec 11 2010 Surprise A Day of Excitement, of Joy

Intro Dec 11 2006 Surprise 1 Surprise 2 Cat in the Manger

Self-Extracting Zip Files for the Rest of Us

December 11 2010 December 11 2006

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: Day 10

I am short on time today, as I’m going to a play tonight, and not just any play. It is It’s a Wonderful Life, at the Chocolate Church in City of Ships, and starring (at least I think so) Onkel Hankie Pants as Clarence Oddbody, AS2. So, I chose a picture book which I bought last year for a buck or so at the Christmas Tree Shop. It’s called Harvey Slumfenburger's Christmas Present. John Burningham, born in England in 1936, both wrote and illustrated the book.

I’ve loved the song that goes with it ever since I first heard it on the late lamented Minnesota Public Radio Morning Show. It’s “Jogging Along with My Reindeer” by Seamus Kennedy from Goodwill to Men.

For a slightly longer story, you can go to December 10, 2008, for Appalachian writer Rebecca Caudill’s A Certain Small Shepherd. One Appalachian carol (written by John Jacob Niles, based on a tune fragment he heard in the mountains), one African-American carol, and one American carol whose provenance I’m not sure of are songs to go with the story.

Individual Files for Mac Users

Intro Dec 10 2010 Surprise Harvey Slumfenburger's Christmas Present

Intro Dec 10 2008 Surprise 1 Surprise 2 Surprise 3

A Certain Small Shepherd

Self-Extracting Zip Files for the Rest of Us

December 10 2010 December 10 2008

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: Day 9

Tonight I rectify a great injustice. Yes, I must confess it: I have never before read a Betsy-Tacy story. It follows that I never read them to my children either. And yet, I lived for three years just 25 miles from Mankato, the “Deep Valley” of the Betsy-Tacy books, and many more years in Minnesota, home of Maud Hart Lovelace. I found this story in Christmas in Minnesota, published in 2005 by the Minnesota Historical Society. The story is cited as coming from Down Town: A Betsy-Tacy Story, published in 1943. I’m not sure if this is the same as the book Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, published the same year. There is a Betsy-Tacy Society which has restored the homes of Maud Hart Lovelace and her best friend, on whom the stories are based. Above is a picture of the first Betsy-Tacy book with the original cover illustrations by Lois Lenski (she wrote as well as illustrated and I may be reading one of her stories later on.)

There aren’t many good songs about Christmas shopping; “Pretty Paper” and “Shake Me, I Rattle” are a bit maudlin for my taste, and there is a new song called “I Broke My Arm Christmas Shopping at the Mall” which does not fit the spirit of our story. So we turn to the classic “Silver Bells,” in its first recorded version by Bing Crosby and Carol Richards.

For those who want something a little more substantial, in 2006 I read In Clean Hay by Eric P. Kelly; a good song to go with it is “Wsród nocnej ciszy (Amid the Silence)”, a Polish carol sung by a Polish choir. You can read more about them here.

Individual Files for Mac Users

Intro Dec 9 2010 Surprise Betsy Tacy and Tib Go Christmas Shopping Intro Dec 9 2006 Surprise In Clean Hay

Self-Extracting Zip Files for the Rest of Us

Zip December 9 2010 Zip December 9 2006

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: Day 8

I’m not the world’s biggest fan of major department stores. But I think we lost something important when so many American cities’ iconic local department stores were subsumed into Macy’s. I think Macy’s (the original, Thanksgiving Day Parade, Miracle on 34th Street Macy’s in New York City) lost something too. It’s not special any more. But wait, isn’t this supposed to be storytime? Where’s this rant coming from? Well, back when the new Governor of Minnesota’s name was on the big store on Nicollet Mall, one of our yearly family rituals was to take in the Dayton’s 8th Floor Auditorium Holiday Show. We often did it on Christmas Eve morning, with some sort of treat afterwards – when SonShineIn was small, it was lunch at Kramarczuk’s in Northeast Minneapolis, later when more children and church responsibilities meant a more hectic day, simply hot chocolate and a special cookie sufficed. There is still a show at what is now Macy’s, but Sisterfilms tells me that it just isn’t the same. Twenty to thirty years ago, each year’s show was different, often based on a classic children’s book. Sometimes it tied in with the Christmas show being put on at the Children’s Theatre Company; some of the same designers worked on both.

One year the show was How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and that was the year I bought the book – the same edition shown in the picture, although our copy is pretty worn now. I can’t remember if I had read the book in childhood – I was beyond the picture book stage in 1957 when it was published – and I’m not sure I saw the first broadcast of the TV special as it took place December 18, 1966, and I may not have been home from college yet. (Television was a rare thing at my alma mater. I believe they brought some in to the dorm lounges on Election Night, and I only remember one person on my freshman floor who had a television in her room.) I’ve never seen the Jim Carrey movie, even though I picked up a copy at a yard sale, because that man’s face gives me the willies.

As he often did, Dr. Seuss has a message deftly hidden amidst all the fun and wordplay in this book. It’s one we can all use since the Recession Grinch has scaled down our material expectations of Christmas. (Every dark cloud has a silver lining!)

The well-known song from the TV special, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” has become a favorite of rock, pop, and jazz artists for inclusion on their Christmas albums. So I chose something a bit different – an instrumental played by All the King’s Tubas.

Now, if you are already completely Grinched-out and feeling Grinchy about the Grinch, perhaps you’d like to join Jim and Della once again in O. Henry’s Gifts of the Magi. You can go here to read more of the history of the story. This story has been dramatized and adapted numerous times, but to my knowledge no one put it to music till the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

Individual Files for Mac Users

Intro Dec 8 2010 Surprise How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Intro Dec 8 2007 Surprise Gifts of the Magi

Self-Extracting Zip Files for the Rest of Us

8 December 2010 8 December 2007

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: Days 6 and 7

I had not intended to fall behind so early in the month, but a defunct surge suppressor left me Internet-less all day yesterday. So tonight there are stories for both the 6th and 7th.

Baboushka and the Three Kings, a retelling of a Russian folk tale by Ruth Robbins, won the Caldecott Medal in 1961 for its illustrations by Nicolas Sidjakov. This ensured that it would remain in print and on library shelves, so it’s not hard to find and you really should look at the pictures. The story is suspiciously similar to the Italian legend of La Befana (which was retold and illustrated by Tomie de Paola years later). Archetype? Cultural migration? Who knows. It’s a lovely story.

For music to go with it, Sergei Prokofiev’s Troika, from the Lt. Kije Suite, gives a musical picture of a sleigh or carriage pulled by three horses. There are many performances available; I chose one by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

Then, the St. Petersburg Chamber Choir sings Noch’ tikha, noch’ svyata (Ноч Тиха, Ноч Свята) – Silent Night in Russian.

For tonight, a story about a time when Santa didn’t want to climb into that old sleigh again: The Year without a Santa Claus by Phyllis McGinley. This has nothing to do with the television special, as far as I know. Phylis McGinley was a very popular writer of light verse in the 1950s. Her poems dealt mostly with the trials of the suburban housewife, always with a humorous touch, and were published widely in mass-market magazines (which actually published poetry and short stories back then.) I found a song by country singer Marty Stuart that seemed to go well with the story: Even Santa Gets the Blues.

For the alternative story on December 6, here’s one recorded in 2007, which I recall reading more than once at church on Christmas Eve. Mr. Edwards Meets Santa Claus is a chapter from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie; here is the cover from the original edition, and then a photo of the set of paperbacks I bought a few years before our first child came along.

Because of the television series, many people think that the Little House on the Prairie was in South Dakota, but in fact it was in Kansas (as this chapter shows, mentioning towns there). I actually have a friend who comes from that part of Kansas and she has confirmed that the winters are as described. At the time I recorded this story, the Pa's Fiddle Project either had not begun or was in the planning stages, and I couldn’t find a solo fiddle playing a Christmas carol. An Americana Christmas, with Vassar Clements, Norman and Nancy Blake, and others, was the closest I could come with their lovely performance of Cradle Hymn (Away in a Manger) to the tune Afton Water.

Once during the 24 days of stories, I give myself a break by using a recording of a piece read by the author. In 2008 it was Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory. For me, hearing Capote’s voice helps me get into the world he and his cousin inhabited. Since the story is about that much-maligned confection, fruitcake, I chose Seamus Kennedy’s singing of the humorous ditty, Miss Fogarty’s Christmas Cake, which is followed by an instrumental piece called The Cook in the Kitchen. His album Goodwill to Men is a wonderful blending of humor, raucous celebration, and quiet spirituality which I highly recommend.

Individual File Links for Mac Users

Intro Dec 6 2010 Surprise 1 Surprise 2 Baboushka and the Three Kings

Intro Dec 7 2010 Surprise The Year without a Santa Claus

Intro Dec 6 2007 Surprise Mr. Edwards Meets Santa Claus

Intro Dec 7 2008 Surprise A Christmas Memory

Self-Extracting Zip Files for the Rest of Us

December 6 2010 December 7 2010 December 6 2007

December 7 2008

And if you are looking for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories, I'll be posting three days at once tomorrow!

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: Day 5

Tonight there’s something a little different – it’s a memoir, or part of one. Lillian Smith, the author of such classics of civil rights literature as Strange Fruit and Killers of the Dream, wrote this memoir of her childhood Christmases that goes a long way to explain how this Southern white woman became a crusader for the civil rights of all people.

A good song to go with it is Almost Day, the Seeger family’s version of Leadbelly’s song On a Christmas Day.

The song is associated with Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter) and some say he wrote it. Ledbetter may or may not have worked on a chain gang like the Christmas guests in our story, but he definitely served time in Southern prisons. Afterwards, he made part of his living entertaining at children’s parties until he was discovered by folklorists John and Alan Lomax.

If you’d like something a little more antique, try this story that I recorded in 2006, the chapter “The Festival of St. Nicholas” from Mary Mapes Dodge’s Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates. At the time, the only Dutch carol I could find was King Jesus Hath a Garden, sung by the Clare College Choir. Here’s another version by the Wells Cathedral Choir, in an arrangement by John Rutter.

Individual Files for Mac Users:

Introduction Dec 5 2010 Surprise Memory of a Large Christmas

Introduction Dec 5 2006 Surprise The Festival of St. Nicholas

Self-Extracting Zip Files for the Rest of Us

December 5 2010 December 5 2006

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: Day 4

Sorry to be a little late tonight; I had a party to attend! Tonight we conclude Barbara Robinson’s classic, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

I think this was a play poster.

One Christmas song that always has me tearing up a little is “Away in a Manger” as sung by the cherub choir. Joan Baez does a good job too.

For those who’d like something a bit different, I’m including a Zip file of the story from December 4, 2007: Deputy Sid’s Gift by Tim Gautreaux, a fine contemporary Southern writer. I always enjoy reading stories in a dialect not my own. My general plan of attack is merely to suggest the accent, rather than trying to mimic it perfectly (which I can’t do in any case). If you’re from Louisiana, let me know how well I did on this one. I’m only including the Zip file because the story was 4.06 MB too long to fit the file-hoster’s protocol.

For Mac Users:

Intro Surprise Chapter 6 Chapter 7

Self-Extracting Zip Files for the Rest of Us

December 4 2010 December 4 2007

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: Day 3

Tonight, chapters 3, 4, and 5 of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. The picture is another of the many covers the book has gone through in nearly 40 years. Sisterfilms said she had forgotten how bad the Herdmans really were – burning down a house and then considering doing it again to get more doughnuts! A good song for tonight, I thought, would be “Rebel Jesus” as sung by Jackson Browne, backed by The Chieftains.

If three chapters are a bit too long, or you’d prefer something just a bit more adult-oriented, I also have links to the story I recorded for December 3, 2007: A Hint for Next Christmas by A. A. Milne. No Winnie the Pooh here, but the young man in this piece has some of the same hapless quality as the bear.

Individual Links for Mac Users

Intro Dec 3 2010 Surprise Dec 3 2010 Chapter 3

Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Intro Dec 3 2007 Surprise Dec 3 2007

A Hint for Next Christmas

Self-Extracting Zip Files for the Rest of Us

Zip for Dec 3 2010 Zip for Dec 3 2007

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime: Day 2

It seems I’ve been reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever forever – or at least since SonShineIn outgrew Santa's Beard Is Soft and Warm.

Barbara Robinson’s tale was already a well-known book by that time, having been published in book form in 1972, and earlier in McCall’s Magazine. I certainly read it to all three children. It was too long for me to read at church on Christmas Eve, although one year when I was out of town another member presented an abridged version. I’ve even seen a theatrical version at Lakeshore Players in White Bear Lake. (Minnesotans: a theater in Chaska is presenting it this season.) I’d avoided recording it, though, just as I’ve so far skipped Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, because of the length (80 pages). Last year, I decided it could be read over a three-day period, so here tonight is the first installment.

Barbara Robinson is best known for this book, and I had not known until today that she wrote two other books featuring the Herdmans.

The song I chose to go with tonight’s reading is Nuttin’ for Christmas as performed by Art Mooney and His Orchestra with vocal by Barry J. Gordon.

(My introduction, recorded last year, was incomplete.) Written by Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett, Nuttin’ for Christmas was a major hit for several artists in 1955, and this version made it to No. 6 on the Billboard charts. Tepper and Bennett also wrote at least one other Christmas song, the Rosemary Clooney hit Suzy Snowflake, as well as most of the songs for Elvis Presley’s movies

Some years, if the timing is right, I also record a Chanukah story, so for tonight, the second night of Chanukah, you can also choose to hear The Peddler’s Gift by Maxine Rose Schur.

It’s come to my attention that the self-extracting Zip files don’t work on Macs, so I am including links to both the unzipped and Zip files.

Intro 2 Dec 2010 Surprise Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Self-Extracting Zip File for December 2 2010

Intro to Chanukah Story Surprise 1 Surprise 2 Surprise 3

The Peddler's Gift

Self-Extracting Zip File 15 December 2006 (original date)

But wait, there's more!

Here's a link that will give you the whole folder for December 1, 2010, in a self-extracting Zip file (faster downloading).

And for a more "grown-up" story, here's a link for my reading of "Dancing Dan's Christmas" (see December 1 2009 blog for more information about the story, etc.)

Auntie Knickers’ Advent Storytime Begins!

It sometimes happens that life interferes with our best-laid plans, and that’s what happened last year around this time; a thing as small as a broken tooth kept me from fulfilling my commitment to bring stories for the Christmas season on my blog. This year, I’m planning to do better. I will be telling about a story every day, but also making available a reading (by me) of the story with a link to a file-hosting service. (The service is free to downloaders, but limited, so if you want to download the stories, I’d advise doing it immediately rather than saving them up to get all at once.)

Today’s story is a silly one that shows the dangers of taking things too literally. Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia was the next-to-last of the Amelia Bedelia series to be written by the original author, Peggy Parish. (After her death in 1988, her nephew took over the series.)

The Amelia Bedelia books were favorites when we wanted a simple, silly story. Yet, there is no book so silly that it cannot start a discussion. Amelia Bedelia has problems in her work because she doesn’t understand common idioms and takes her employer’s orders too literally. She also has a good heart and a fund of common sense, so when things go wrong, she generally is able to have everything turn out for the best.

When I was researching a bit about Peggy Parish, of course one of the first Google hits was a Wikipedia article. It made me a bit more suspicious of Wikipedia than I had been, since it claimed that Parish got her idea for Amelia Bedelia from time spent in Cameroon. None of the other biographies,those from her publishers or the Greenville Library one referenced above, mentioned such a stay, and indeed, it’s hard to see when she would have fitted it in. According to Greenville, Parish actually got the idea from the literal-mindedness of her privileged students at the renowned and expensive Dalton School in New York City.

Most kids now don’t grow up with a full-time maid in the house, so reading this story would also be a time to talk a little bit about domestic service, especially if, as we do, you have grandparents or great-grandparents who entered the work force by that route. If you can recall some of the stories they told, or if you are fortunate enough to have such relatives still living, even a silly tale like Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia can be a springboard for teaching family history.

The introduction I’ve recorded was written for Sisterfilms. There’s also a little surprise included in the folder you’ll get with the link below. Meanwhile, here’s a video posted by a pretty good guitarist/singer of the song, “Serving Girl’s Holiday.”

And here are three links that will take you to the downloads:

Introduction Story Surprise

You’ll want to save them into a Downloads folder and then open them; I think they should play in either Windows Media Player or iTunes. Enjoy! (And let me know if you have any trouble, I’m new at this.)

December Stories and Songs, Part 9

Continuing the Christmas tree theme, today’s story is The Tree that Didn’t Get Trimmed by Christopher Morley. It’s available in a couple of solo editions, which are out of print and quite expensive; but I also located it in A Christmas Treasury and The Home Book of Christmas, which should be easier to find. Like the tree in H. C. Andersen’s The Fir Tree, the tree which is the protagonist of this story wishes very much to be a Christmas tree; to enjoy the merriment and be decked with shiny baubles. But he languishes on the tree lot and there is a different fate in store for him – a far more cheerful one than that of Andersen’s tree!

Although I only chose two songs to accompany this tale originally, I’m giving you three today. I found a beautiful rendition of Sang til Juletræet by Christopher Pedersen. However, it appears (at least to my tin ear) to be sung to a classical setting by Edvard Grieg and not to the tune I am familiar with from Mike and Else Sevig’s A Norwegian Christmas. So here’s the Sang til Juletræet that I was able to find.

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And to show how important the tree is to a Scandinavian Christmas, here’s another familiar song from our Danish Sangaften, Højt fra træets grønne top (High upon our Christmas tree).

And last but not least, a funny song by the late Erik Darling, which you can listen to here. You will need to download RealAudio (free and safe) before you can listen to Revenge of the Christmas Tree. Erik Darling, who died in 2008, had a long career in folk music. One of the first folk records I bought was Travellin’ on with the Weavers, on which Darling replaced Pete Seeger in the group.

December Stories and Songs, Part 8

Here’s a picture of me and Brother #1 at Christmas, I think 1952. Our Christmas tree this year will come from the same woods that this one probably did. We don’t have it yet – I’ll have to send Onkel Hankie Pants out into the snowy woods for it this weekend. But if you don’t have a tree yet, it’s probably time to start thinking about it. So the story and song today are both about Christmas trees. (I’m hoping to get caught up today….)

A Christmas Tree for Lydia is a short story by Elizabeth Enright that I found in a little Scholastic paperback called Ten Tales of Christmas. The paperback anthology is still available and not too expensive; it’s worth buying for that story alone. The story also appeared earlier as a picture book (see photo at left), but that one will now set you back $50.00 or more. You could ask your local librarian to track it down in either version, or check the Short Story Index to see if it’s anthologized elsewhere.

The story is set in New York City shortly after World War II, where a young war widow is struggling to raise two children – an elementary-age boy and Lydia, a preschooler. The theme is not an uncommon one for Christmas tales – love and ingenuity overcome poverty to make Christmas happen. It’s one of my favorites, and I hope you will be able to find a copy.

Both the story and the song today are ones you may have to buy, unless you can find them at the library. The Tree is by Jim Henry, a folk singer/songwriter from Western Massachusetts. It appears on the CD Wonderland: A Winter’s Solstice Celebration, and as best I can tell, some of the royalties on this album still go to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. The CD is still one of my favorites several years after I bought it; it holds a great mix of music, from Bach to You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch, and several original songs, all performed by local artists. Henry’s song is full of childhood memories of the Christmas tree and how big it seemed, and how “it won’t be Christmas till we’ve got the tree.” By the way, if you get hold of the CD and can play music, here are the chords and lyrics to The Tree.