A summary of seasonal articles

For anyone who is looking for something suitable for the holiday season, here is a summary to date of the articles that feature Christmas and the New Year.  

Christmas articles

King George V's Christmas speech features the first-ever Christmas broadcast by a British monarch. The King's speech was written by Rudyard Kipling.

An unusual Midnight Mass: the real spirit of Christmas?  contains the moving poem Eddi's Service by Rudyard Kipling.

John Masefield and the magic of Christmas Eve is about Masefield's wonderful children's book The Box of Delights. 

Cults and John Masefield’s Box of Delights highlights a a successful resistance to a recruitment attempt.

John Masefield’s Box of Delights and Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather lists some elements that these two seasonal books have in common, including an attempt to ruin the holiday spirit.

The Polar Express: a controversial Christmas film gives some opinions of the film that was my Christmas treat for 2004.  

There is another side to Christmas: it can be more stressful and depressing than enjoyable, and it is often a time when sinister forces are abroad.

Unseen Influences at Christmas has something to say about depression and describes some disruptive incidents at Christmas Eve services.

Depression at Christmas covers some causes of seasonal depression. 

Christmas pictures

Beautiful - and amusing - images can help to raise the spirits.

 A lovely picture can be seen in A beautiful Christmas card; another of the bargain cards that I scanned is shown in Another beautiful Christmas card. 

Some more lovely images can be seen in The Three Ships of Christmas; the seasonal article for the following year features The Twelve Days of Christmas.

There are also some seasonal pictures from Frank Kelly Freas. 

New Year articles

Rudyard Kipling's New Year's Resolutions features an amusing poem he wrote for New Year 1887 about his good intentions for the years ahead.

Ringing out the old year and ringing in the new features Tennyson's poem Ring Out, Wild Bells.

Charles Lamb's sad words about the New Year also mentions bells. This article features his poem The Old Familiar Faces. 

A little New Year poem from Ogden Nash contains his amusing little verse Good Riddance, But Now What?

Another beautiful old seasonal card from my collection:

Something about the Open Library

When I wrote about public libraries and the lockdowns around a year ago, I said that eBooks and other online material can help to compensate for the lack of access to physical library books. 

The library restrictions eased during the summer, but there is a possibility that stricter rules will soon be re-instated. If so, I will once again stop visiting the public library. The pile of my own books that I set aside last year to re-read and donate in batches has shrunk to almost nothing, but I have found a new – to me - online resource in the form of the Open Library, a not-for-profit project that operates very like a public library.

Project Gutenberg is a good source of digitised books, but in some ways the Open Library is better. 

Where Project Gutenberg has only older books that are in the public domain because their copyrights have expired, the Open Library's lending stock includes newer, in-copyright books; where Project Gutenberg's books are available in various modern formats, the Open Library provides online images of the original print versions: readers get scanned covers and text pages, and illustrations and photographs are often reproduced too. 

As can be seen from the labels, ticket pockets and date stamps on some opening pages, many of the books were provided by public libraries; this makes the reading experience even more like the real thing.

Where Project Gutenberg has lists, the Open Library also has 'shelves' that are organised and can be browsed like those in a physical library.  

The ever-growing Open Library catalogue aims to list all works by a particular author whether they are in the Library or not; it is possible to select only those that are available for Reading and Borrowing.

Some more Sagittarian writers of interest

I noticed a while back that a few writers of interest were born at the end of November.  

I found some good connections while I was looking to see what these astrological Sagittarians had in common.

A few more writers whose work I like or at least am familiar with and/or who are of interest for other reasons were born under the sign of Sagittarius – some before the end of November and some in December.

Most of them have been featured or at least mentioned in articles in the past; there may be more to say about a few of them in the future. There may also be some new names to add to the list.

Jane Austen was born on December 16th 1775.
Although her books don't inspire commentary, she has been mentioned on here in a few articles in connection with suspicious deaths. She also appears in articles about tangled webs of connections.

She mentions a witch on one occasion:

“Ah, Mother! How do you do?” said he, giving her a hearty shake of the hand. “Where did you get that quiz of a hat? It makes you look like an old witch...”

From Northanger Abbey

The Reverend Richard Harris Barham was born on December 6th 1788. 
His Ingoldsby Legends, which contain some stories about witches, are praised by Allan Quatermain in Sir Henry Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines and its sequel.

Lucy M. Boston was born on December 10th 1892.
She lived to the age of 97. One of her Green Knowe books features the witch Dr. Melanie Powers, who is mentioned in a few places on here, and her autobiography is the subject of an article.

Flying horses, which were mentioned in connection with writers born in late November, appear in The River at Green Knowe.

Frances Hodgson Burnett was born on November 24th 1849.
Her children's classics A Little Princess, The Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy are her most famous works. They are rather dated but still selling well. She was involved with metaphysical matters; I will investigate this once the people and topics of current interest are finished with.