A Christmas Story

"You'll shoot out one of your eyes."
You either know that quote, start laughing and come right back with a quote of your own, maybe the triple dog dare or the yellow eyes of Scut Farkus, or you don't know it which means you have never seen "A Christmas Story".

Ralphie and his desperate Christmas wish for "an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle" have been part of my life for years and years, first brought to me by German TV, then after they stopped showing the movie for reasons unknown, on English DVD.
The season would not be the same without this movie, without Ralphie in his bunny suit, a gift from Aunt Clara who suffers from the delusion that he is a perpetually four year old girl, without The Old Man obsessing over his prize for a puzzle competition, a lamp in the shape of a lady's leg, and accusing his wife of destroying it on purpose, without Ralphie trying to drop (not always so) subtle hints about the Red Ryder everywhere, and of course without the neighbors' dogs stealing the turkey.
Oh, and if you want to know if Ralphie gets his BB gun, you should watch the movie.

Did you know that the stories in the movie are part of a collection called "In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash" by Jean Shepherd?

1st edition 1966, picture fair use
via Wikipedia

Jean Shepherd was an American humorist who performed on radio. Eventually he was convinced to write his radio stories down, fictional stories mixed with facts from his own childhood.
He was a writer for the movie, by the way, and narrated it himself brilliantly (after all he was a radio performer).
So the book would be good as well, right? Nyah (this is supposed to be a sound of not being sure) .... I got the book, struggled with it on too many of my commute rides, barely made it through and never touched it again.
Don't get me wrong, there were parts when I snickered, giggled or laughed, but there were many, many words, many, many descriptions, and the frame - a grown-up Ralphie returning home and telling of his memories in his old friend Flick's bar - didn't really work for me, either.
As always, not everyone has the same opinion from the reviews I read, but some feel exactly the way I do.
I guess I'll just stick to the movie, thank you very much.

P.S. I hadn't been aware of the sequels and will skip the summer one, but I'm waiting for the second sequel at the moment, so I may add a short review for that to this post once it's here.

Getting ready for Christmas - Part 3

I'll make this short.
In part 2 I showed you my decorations in the house hallway. Then I noticed that one of the Steiff mice was missing. A few days later I noticed that one of the teddies had been hiding in the same cabinet.
If someone has seen my brain, please tell it to come back. I'm not doing that well without it, it seems ...

Also I still wasn't happy with my improvised hooks, so I got some garlands which would hide them.
Basically that works well, but now I have the problem that the railings are quite smooth and the ornaments quite heavy which means the garlands keep sliding. I could stop one of them with the hooks on the railing which don't run that smoothly and therefore keep the ends in place, but the other railing doesn't have those hooks, so I will have to come up with an idea. Not this year, though. Maybe my brain will be back again next year ;-)

Nine red bullfinches

In my last post I mentioned an anthology of Christmas stories I got as a child. You can tell I loved the book, it looks very used.
Barbara Bartos-Höppner had the idea for the book. She was a German writer and asked other writers she knew to write Christmas stories. She was surprised that some writers said you can't write stories about Christmas in our time anymore, our time being 1971 when the first edition was published (I was six years old). The only condition was that the stories had to be set between the first advent and Epiphany.
In the end she had 16 very different stories by 15 authors from several European countries.
Its title is "Weihnachtsgeschichten unserer Zeit - Bekannte Schriftsteller erzählen vom Weihnachtswunder" which translates to "Christmas stories of our time - Well-known authors tell of the Christmas miracle".
If you think it's all joy and sparkling lights, you are wrong. The stories are
- heartwarming when a kid gang goes carolling to make some money under the pretense of collecting for sick kids and then one of them spontaneously - and surprisingly to himself - donates the money for a school for deaf children in the last house they go to
- sad when the story is about a nurse in the war who is asked to accompany a group of girls from a children's home and one of the girls dies from appendicitis; the last sentence always made me cry as a child "I never found Helga's parents, though".
- realistic in the story about a separated couple who try to make Christmas nice for their two children despite their differences
- joyful in the story about the homesick boy in Brazil missing snow on Christmas and the girl who makes "snow" for him
- magical in my favorite story.

That story is by Katherine Allfrey, a German-British writer, it is called "White Christmas".

A few days before Christmas, a Christmas elf is born in the yew forest above the Five-Lords-Ground, a rare event that means a White Christmas.
The elf is born because drops of clear silver, a tiny pond from rain or dew, accumulate in the stump of the oldest tree in the forest and are found by a light of ray.
A sparkle awakes in the dark hole and the ray pulls the silver up into the open letting it sink to the ground where it grows and grows until the elf is born, slender like a flame, clear like ice, and bright as a gem. (Isn't that absolutely beautiful?)

Now the elf has three tasks to do for Christmas to become white.
He has to find nine red bullfinches (I love the German word "Gimpel" for them) on a twig, he has to ring the bells of the abandoned church in the Five-Lords-Ground, and he has to bring Jack Frost back from the North.
He doesn't know how to do it, but out of the light snow comes a guide, the last unicorn.
Firstly, the unicorn tells the elf what bullfinches are, but the elf can only find two of them until he stumbles on a paper that has been blown out of a car - and shows nine red bullfinches on a twig. If they are real, he doesn't know, but they are alive.

Male Eurasian bullfinch, Lancashire, UK
© Francis C. Franklin / CC-BY-SA-3.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

Next are the bells in the church, but the old church's walls are crumbling, the door is rotten, the roof has half collapsed - and there are no bells in the tower.
The elf decides to go look for Jack Frost first, a long, dark, and difficult flight for a bright being like him. On the highest of mountains he finds the giant Jack who has turned hard, but he follows the elf, bringing hail and storm with him.
The bullfinches are waiting in the church, but there are still no bells.
On a ledge, however, is a tuft of grasses, fully encased in ice, and when the elf walks by and grazes them, he can hear a little tinkle. Only the hands of an elf can ring those tiny bells with their ethereal chime. The unicorn almost dances with joy, and hearing the bells, Jack Frost turns from a grim giant into a mild king, and the dead, black forest into a shimmering white winter forest.

At midnight, the elf rings the bells again, the rotten door opens. Christmas angels fill the church, the unicorn lays down in front of the old altar, and the bullfinches sit to the left and right like little choristers and whisper.
And they celebrate the Holy Night together until the sun of Christmas morning rises above the white world.

Why a child like me, who never loved snow, loved that story so much, I have no idea. I think it's the peace I am feeling in it, and it's so beautifully written.

I would love to embroider those nine little bullfinches on their twig, hardly until Christmas, but I don't have to hurry it. It will come to me when I'm ready.

Guarding the woods

When I first saw this picture, I imagined myself going out of the house early in the morning to make my way to the train station, still half asleep.

There's a small street and a square between a school and its gymnasium I had to walk across every workday. They have about ten streetlights and those lights were on the blink sometimes, quite literally, they would start blinking, mostly just one or two which was okay, but once they went one after the other day by day until they were all blinking in some kind of silent code. Honestly, at 5 a.m. I'm getting weird ideas easily and it really was a weird sensation. That day, however, I finally remembered to report it online and the next day they were fixed.
Of course it hadn't helped that the little park next to it produced some even stranger shadows than usual thanks to it. I was lucky the lady, who took her Great Dane there without a leash for a while, wasn't there at the time. Can you say Hound of the Baskervilles? It really made me jump the first time I saw that dog coming out of the dark.

And now imagine what coming across something like this creepy "creature" unexpectedly could have done to my tired brain. I can see myself screaming and running for the hills, only I can't run and there are no hills there.

Nevertheless, I love that picture and think it's sad that, according to the web, this streetlamp in Warsaw has since lost its hair as the company on whose property it is standing deemed it as dangerous for pedestrians.

The picture has been on the web for a while and keeps turning up. The last time a friend of mine shared it, I thought that I would really like to capture it in some way. In the past, I would have tried to bead loom it, but I would probably not have been able to do the vines the way I wanted to. Bead embroidery was another possibility, but in the end hand embroidery felt like the best choice to me.

At the beginning, the plan was to more or less copy part of the picture on a rather small frame as a sample to see how long it would take and if a bigger version made sense. I did the outlines first and then the flowing vines around the body and the head, and that's when I felt the need to put at least a bit of my own touch on it. Making more hair turned it into a different kind of creature to me.
From there on it should have been pretty clear that this would not stay a sample because next were hours of filling up the outlines with loads of small stitches going in all directions for some texture.

I had left the face until last. Obviously I didn't want to change anything about the glow, after all this makes for the amazing effect. Again I contemplated different options, silver-lined beads, other beads, even sequins cut in shape, all because I wasn't confident I would be able to achieve the glowing effect with embroidery as I haven't practiced shading a lot yet.
In the end the playchild inside me that likes to try out things convinced me to give it a go after all. I picked six colors from my floss, winged it and was happier with it than expected.

Somehow the creature started to change in my mind and the post on the left looked wrong to me, instead I began seeing trees. My favorite trees have always been birches, we had some in the neighborhood when I was a child and they were so pretty.
I couldn't stop myself and added one tree after the other, and then I really didn't have an excuse not to fill up what little was left of the background. Well, and then the scene called for snowfall.

When I showed my friend the first bad picture of the finished piece, she said she loved "her" with a question mark next to "her". I replied I wasn't even sure myself about "she" or "he" yet and that I felt there was a story in this that unfortunately I'm not good enough to write.
Small details of other stories I knew kept going through my head when I was working on this, for example my favorite Christmas story from an anthology I got as a child. It plays in the woods and I love it so much that one year I actually typed it up to copy it (typewriter, that gives you an idea how long ago that was) and give it to my friends.
Those bits didn't add up to a story for my guardian yet - because that's the only thing I'm sure of, that this is a Guardian of the Woods from ancient times and a spiritual world.
I'm not going to push it, maybe she or he will tell me their story eventually even if I won't be able to put it in words, but just see it before my mind's eye. Maybe I'll see something in one of my crazy dreams.

Anyway, I'm really happy with my new friend.
There's not going to be a bigger one, not only because it would probably take me forever, but also because the story can't be repeated.
I ordered a simple frame for it now and can't wait to get to get it on my wall (as far away from dem Dekan as possible!).
I couldn't resist showing it to you already, though.

4 x Jack

To some people, San Francisco means the Golden Gate Bridge, the Painted Ladies, Fisherman's Wharf, cable cars, and the Fairmont - just the first few things that popped into my head - but when we first made it to the USA, to the ex and me it also meant FAO Schwarz whose connection to Steiff was famous among collectors thanks to some special editions.
On our first visit there, we didn't have that much time which was probably better for our bank account. Through FAO Schwarz we got in contact with a lady who had done some Steiff repair jobs for them, and when we came to San Francisco some years later, we went there again, with the lady who had by now become a good friend.
Oh boy, we were like kids in a toy store. Wait, we actually were in a toy store ... Okay, we were big kids for sure. We really tried to be good, but you know how it goes sometimes.

Of course we had expected to buy some Steiff, but then we also came across Jack, four to be precise, and couldn't resist.
It was a set of four Jack Skellingtons from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" - one in his striped suit, one as the scarecrow with the pumpkin head, one in his pyjamas (his book is in a different cabinet right now, one of my Kens is reading it to my Skippers and other family members ;-)), and one as "Sandy Claws" in a Santa suit.
For those who have never seen the film ... Jack, the Pumpkin King, is the king of Halloween Town and he's bored and struggling from having to prepare Halloween over and over. By chance, he discovers the door to Christmas Town in the woods and he's overwhelmed with joy about this wonderful holiday. Despite the warnings of Sally, the rag doll who is in love with him, Jack decides to have Santa kidnapped, so he can take his role. He includes all the inhabitants of Halloween Town to prepare Christmas in their own style.
Things don't quite work out the way he had hoped, though. Children and parents are shocked by gifts of shrunken heads and monstrosities and the military is called in to shoot Jack down.
Meanwhile the little monsters tasked with the kidnapping by Jack have taken Santa to their superior Oogie Boogie, a bogeyman playing with Santa's life - and Sally's because she has tried to resuce Santa.
Jack gets shot down and is depressed about his failure for a bit, but then he finds this is giving him great new ideas for next Halloween. He returns home and rescues Santa and Sally by defeating Oogie who loses his sacklike shell and falls apart into a load of bugs.
Santa hurries to save Christmas, but also lets it snow in Halloween Town to show Jack he has forgiven him.
The film ends by Jack and Sally finally declaring their love for one another.

Here's a confession, the movie is not on my regular Christmas watch list. Although I'm fine with musicals in general and really love the songs "Jack's Lament" and "What's This?", it's a bit much singing for me here for a movie running only 76 minutes (I can't watch "Frozen" for the same reason, but that's a different story).
So I only watch it every few years and this year it was time for that again.
I'm totally in love with Jack, however.
I even designed a bracelet with him, but it was more fun to hang him on my wall than leave him in a jewelry box or drawer.

It has been a long time running joke with a US friend of mine that I should send it to her. I just can't part with him, but made a little something for her instead, a tiny beaded bottle.

My four Jacks are sitting behind glass at the moment, but I'm thinking I should put them on one of the cabinets der Dekan can't get to. They would look pretty cool up there.
I took them out for a photo shoot and found that Santa Jack had a dislocated arm, probably from tree hugging. Luckily, it was easy enough to snap back in.

Tree hugging? Well, when I decided to buy a little tree because Ponder was old enough to be a good boy around it, my sister suggested making Santa Jack the topper. I loved the idea and Jack protected the tree for years. See how excited he was to say hello to Ponder, and Ponder, despite being the occasional ornamentnapper, never did anything to Jack. I miss my big boy so much.

I'm sure that in about 30 or 40 years Gundel and der Dekan will have become calm enough to be as nice to the tree as Ponder was.
What do you think my chances are for that to be happening?
At the moment my bet is on 0% because der Dekan has been jumping around and into the tree for almost an hour now!

The Dark Is Rising

In olden times, almost forgotten, I tutored others, mostly in Latin and English, and mostly thanks to my Latin teacher sending them my way.
Some of them were not much younger than me and after cramming we sometimes did stuff together, went downtown, played a board game or just talked about books or music.

One of them lent me the German translation of the book "The Dark Is Rising" by Susan Cooper and it quickly became a favorite of mine which I still love as a grownup.
For the longest time, I wasn't aware that it was the second book in a series of five - "The Dark Is Rising Sequence" -  simply because only this one had been translated into German. Back then, it was not as easy to get access to English books, you couldn't just go online and order something from a specialized book store or even from another country. Bookstores usually had a small shelf with English books because demand wasn't that high at the time (I'm talking late 70s to early 80s).

Then something terrible happened. I was playing with my little brother when the borrowed book got knocked behind the end of my couch bed facing the wall, it opened up during the fall, and the cover got stuck on the shelf standing there and ripped right off. This was a matter of seconds and although I tried to jump after it, the damage had already been done. You can imagine how horrified I was, not only as a book lover, but because the book wasn't mine (to this day, I don't understand how some of our library patrons handle our books without any respect to the fact they don't belong to them).

Easy, go to the bookstore and buy a new one, right? Not that easy. First of all, it meant I lost the money for almost a whole tutoring lesson which was a lot for me back then, and second, it was so terribly embarrassing having to tell my tutee what had happened, after all she had trusted me with what was one of her favorite books.

As cou can see, I still have the book and after having repaired it very badly back then, so I wouldn't lose the cover page, it finally came off again when I read it last year.
Do you wonder why I didn't get myself a new copy during the last 40-something years, for example when the other four were finally published here? It's the memory. I'm weird that way sometimes.
Also I got myself the English originals as well eventually.
Oh, and by the way, my tutee was very gracious about it, even saying I didn't have to buy her a new copy. I wonder where she is today.

Now you may also wonder why a publisher would only translate one book out of five, but - and I'm not alone in thinking this - this book doesn't necessarily need the others. One YouTuber said you could well read the second book first and then the first one which is kind of funny as originally the first book was supposed to be a stand-alone novel and was actually published eight years before the second one followed.
I have read "The Dark Is Rising" many times in the last 40 years, it's a regular Christmas re-read for me, but the other four not that often. They are fine, but they don't grab me the same way.

The books are about the fight between "the Light" and "the Dark", good versus evil, and they are inspired by the Arthur legend, Celtic and Norse mythology, and English folklore.
"The Dark Is Rising" is about Will Stanton, the seventh son of a seventh son. On his 11th birthday, which is at winter solstice (which is the German title, by the way - "Wintersonnenwende"), he experiences strange and magical things. He can't understand them until he meets a stranger called Merriman Lyon (the name hints at Merlin - Merry Lion) and an old lady who explain to him that he is the last of the Old Ones, guardians of the Light, and that it is his task to collect the six parts of the "Circle of Signs", one of four magical talismans that the Light needs in its fight against the Dark.
Winter solstice being the darkest time of the year in the Northern hemisphere, it is the perfect time for the Dark to attack.

I always wished someone would have created these signs for real, I love the way they are described.
They all have the same shape, a circle with a cross in the center dividing it into four.
"When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;
Five will return and one go alone."

I have been thinking about the best way I could make one of my own, but haven't had the perfect idea yet.

Now please excuse me, I haven't finished the book yet for this year. Instead of reading it silently, I'm reading it to my cats.
It may take longer, but lately my brain tends to get distracted more easily. Too much is happening at the moment and I'm a natural overthinker, anyway. Do you also hate if you read a sentence five times and notice you still don't know what it says?
Reading aloud helps me with that and the cats seem to enjoy the sound of my voice, too. Der Dekan gets calmer, Gundel is purring, and if they fall asleep and miss something, I don't take that personally ;-)

Oh, a last note.
They turned the second book into a movie - The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising. I was smart enough not to watch it, even before I read reviews, and oh boy, there are some really eloquent reviews about it out there (although there are of course a few people who don't think the movie is quite that bad and there are also people who think the book is boring *gasp*).

10 on the 10th - December

That's the prompt for the 10 on the 10th by Marsha in the Middle. Sounds easy, doesn't it?
I honestly don't know, however, if I can come up with ten, but I'll give it a try.

1. This is not specifically a December thing, but more of a winter thing. Not only don't I mind it getting dark earlier, I actually like it. Even when I didn't work from home, I was used to leaving in the dark and it was okay for me to come home in the dark. It gives me a cozy feeling, just like rain does. I probably told that story before. When I was in first class, our classroom was on the ground floor. One day it got really dark during the day due to a big thunderstorm. I can still see myself sitting there thinking how wonderful it felt to be inside and safe and cozy and hear the rumbling and the heavy rain.
So people have been saying to me that I might be well suited to live where it's dark all winter, but ...

2. snow is a deal breaker. I don't like snow. I found shovelling snow deeply exhausting even when my health was still better. I absolutely hate waking up to the sound of someone shovelling snow.
Yes, it's beautiful to look at from the inside, with a nice beverage in my hand, untouched, that is. Mushy and dirty snow in the city, though - not so much. Going out to find beautiful snow - an absolute no go for me by now. As a kid, I was dragged out into the snow (not literally) and most of the time I didn't even like it then although I often didn't admit it to fit in because the others loved their sleighs and skis. It makes me think of feeling wet and cold. And of scratchy tights.

Looking down on my town from our "house mountain"
many, many, many years ago -
it looked beautiful, but I remember being so cold

3. Christmas lights. I turn into a child when I see a street lit up by Christmas lights. I loved going to the train station in the morning and look left and right to take in all the lights downtown hanging above or winding around Christmas and other trees.
It's the small sparkles that appeal to me while I have never been a fan of brightly lit rooms, for example. At home, I only turn the ceiling lights on if I really need them, but if not, I prefer spots of light here and there. I wish I could put up candles, but with the cats it has never been possible, and although I have a few battery-operated ones, it's not the same.
Of course I love Christmas ornaments as well, those I wouldn't hang up myself or am not able to hang up because my tree is too small or my cats too deadly, those that hold special memories, and handmade ones, my own or those gifted by others.

4. Christmas carols, especially the traditional ones. They make me go all fuzzy inside, always have, not the lyrics necessarily as I'm not a religious person, but the tunes. Maybe Christmas still has that childhood magic to me, the ritual and the memories that make them extra special.
I don't know why, but the last few months my street seems to be the way (home?) for groups of kids and a few days ago a bunch of them walked through laughing and loudly singing a traditional carol. It was nice.
That doesn't mean I love all carols or Christmas songs because

5. there are some I really dislike. I never seem to be able to win Whamageddon and the song about the missing two front teeth makes me want to throw something.
The songs that annoy me the most, however, are "Feliz Navidad" (which an unnamed family member likes to sing to me knowing very well how much it grates on my nerves) and "Jingle Bells".
When I was around ten years old, I sang in a children choir with my best friend from school. I can still see us dancing in a circle and singing "Jingle Bells". Over and over and over and over ... it was endless and I hated every second of it.

6. Christmas movies, specials, and reads. I have a long list of things to re-watch and re-read. I don't always manage everything, but that's okay as long as I can watch my favorite movie (see yesterday's post).

7. Going downtown. I knew it before that, but only since Covid and being allowed to work from home, I really noticed just how bad I am with crowds. I think online buying was invented for me. Of course I have some good shopping memories, but they usually have to do with the people I had with me at the time, though, not the shopping experience per se.
A lot of my problem with crowds has to do with my long commute over so many years. The longer I did it, the more I turned into an introvert.
When I go downtown now, I am always surprised how many people are out and about quite early, and in December it overwhelms me even more quickly. Pushing through a Christmas market would be rock bottom which is a pity as I like the stands themselves and also the mood, I'd even go for mulled wine, but I usually have enough after walking - or being pushed through - once and these days I don't think I'd have the nerve for even that.

8. I only started that "tradition" last year - a long Christmas vacation. I love that, vacation in summer doesn't do much for this vampire, but a December vacation does!

9. Gingerbread and chocolate "Nikoläuse" and Santas (not the same!), "Dominosteine" and "Spekulatius" may be in the shops from August on and I have totally failed last and this year in not touching any of it before December because my spirits needed some lifting, but it's still a December feeling eating my favorite gingerbread. I love all the winter spices, both in taste and scent. I love a traditional "Schnitzbrot" once a year. I love the scent of mulled wine although I rarely get the chance to drink it.

10. Gifts. There, I said it. I like getting gifts (not just on Christmas and they don't have to be big), but I think I like giving them even more.
In the last few years, however, my gift giving within my small circle has changed. I give a few personal gifts, but mostly I give donations to different charities which I know my people appreciate, just as I appreciate others doing the same as a gift for me.

Well, I made it to ten after all!
It looks as if I like a lot about December even if most of it is Christmas-related, but I'm not surprised about that because otherwise December is just another winter month for me.
If I'm in my cocoon hiding from the cold, I may as well have it nice, right? :-D

The Bishop's Wife

A few days ago I watched "The Bishop's Wife" with Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven (available on YouTube here, not that I haven't had the DVD for a long time).
It's my all time favorite Christmas movie and has been since I was small. I think movies that I have loved for so many years always give me an extra fuzzy feeling, and to be honest, I don't think I would even have to watch them because they are so familiar that I can just play them in my head. The real thing is still better, though ;-)

Public domain via Wikipedia

Actually, there was quite an unpleasant incident in my life this year that got me down so badly that the only way to comfort me at the time was to watch "The Bishop's Wife" - in August.

Of course I have my favorite scenes, the trimming of the tree - which I used for my quote of the week exactly twelve years ago, by the way - and the skating, the sermon, but I'm always looking forward most to the boys choir, they sing so beautifully and I love the song, too. I also like the way how they come in one by one, summoned by a wave of Dudley's hand, looking at him like they wonder what's happening here.

Wait, I just noticed I totally took for granted that you know the movie, sorry.
This is the story.
Bishop Henry Brougham is struggling to raise funds to build a big cathedral. He prays for divine guidance and is sent an angel. Dudley is not quite helping him the way he would want him to, though. Officially posing as the bishop's assistant, he begins to change the lives of the people around the bishop, his wife Julia and daughter Debbie who have to suffer from his obsession with the cathedral, his staff, an old friend, the wealthy parishioner who is trying to push Henry into making the cathedral a monument to her late husband, even the taxi driver giving them a ride to the choir rehearsal.
Henry begins to feel how everything seems to be slipping away from him and senses that Dudley is falling in love with Julia. He finally realizes what is really important. This is when Dudley's task is done and he is called back even if he regrets it.
The next day everyone has forgotten he ever was there and you see him standing in the street looking at the people going into the church where Henry delivers the sermon Dudley wrote.

If you know the movie, however, do you also know the book it is based on?
It's a novella by Robert Nathan from 1928 and it's not quite like the movie.
In fact, you will find a lot of people who prefer the movie to the book, me included. Usually it's the other way round, but I think it also depends on what you first fall in love with. I knew the movie since I was a child, but got the book many years later and got a big surprise.

If the book stood by itself, it might have been an interesting read, about a marriage in which the wife has come to terms to live without any passion and much intimacy, whose only comfort is to have a daughter she can care for, while her husband, the bishop, is only thinking about raising funds for a big cathedral and about the purity a lack of which he thinks can be seen in the country. He's looking for a new archdeacon and asks for an angel to help him.
Enter Michael, the angel, who preferred spending time with poets instead of clergymen, who is shocked about the moral decay of modern times, who likes to philosophize, who is more than willing to help the bishop in his plans for the cathedral ... and who falls in love with the bishop's wife in a very non-spiritual way and awakens feelings in her that she thought she had locked away.
When they kiss, however, it is Julia who pulls away.
In the end, she resigns to a life with a man who won't be able to give her the love she's craving and decides she wants to have another child to find happiness.

My problem is that I don't really like any of the characters, not even the daughter. I miss the charm and humor and, yeah, the warm fuzzy feeling in the book.
That's not the book's fault, it obviously wasn't written to be a charming Christmas story, but I'm pretty amazed how someone could have read the story and said: "Hey, let's turn this into a heartwarming Christmas movie!" I for sure didn't find it in there. There was no happy ending for anyone and the thought of the Broughams just going on like that in their "pure" life would be sad if I could make myself to care more about them.
After thumbing through it again - I couldn't get myself to read it completely a second time - I  wondered why I even kept it and decided it will go to the public book cabinet. Maybe someone will pick it up and appreciate it more than I do.

I know this is hardly a review as I left out so much, but if you are interested in finding out more, you can find a readthrough here.

Getting ready for Christmas - Part 2

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I couldn't get myself to decorate the house hallway in time which meant I was very behind on my advent calendar tree.
There was really no excuse anymore now, so I gave myself a good kick yesterday and went to it.

This year I had to make a few hard decisions. Thanks to my crafty advent calender last year and thanks to not being able to put any of those new ornaments up inside my flat *stern look at somecat who's not interested in stern looks at all*, some of the regulars couldn't find a spot in my hallway decoration this time. Not one spiky bauble! I only have a window sill to hold my Discworld advent calenders and a wardrobe with a small surface, some hooks, and rails which weirdly was not made for decorations originally.
I'll have to think of something next year, maybe some kind of garland for my beaded ornaments to hang on the wardrobe, so I can put the baubles on the rails.
I'll also have to come up with some better hooks. Ordinary Christmas hooks are too small for the rails and I had forgotten to get a better wire to make bigger ones of my own. It really comes out worse in the picture because of the flash, though (it was already darkish when I decorated, so I needed the flash, as if it isn't hard enough to get a good angle for a picture, anyway). I picked stainless steel, thin so it wouldn't show too much, but strong enough to hold even the heavier ornaments, but those makeshift hooks are by no means uniform. Will someone please remind me in time next year?

To give you a better idea if you haven't followed last year's advent calendar, I made a collage of the ornaments I put up (in the picture above the felt ball is missing because I had forgotten it).

Of course, a Christmas decoration without my beloved Steiff is absolutely unthinkable. This year, there is not one but two Christmas trees one of which I topped with my Christ Child Dawn, and an adorable Christmas bunny joined Santa Claus and his teddy and mouse crew (plus one missing in the picture because I had left him behind in the cabinet, what's wrong with me?), also a sweet mouse who's not in festive garb, but fits in so perfectly.

Also I can't do without my advent tree and today I got to open several of the little parcels! What a reward for being so late.

I know it's not much compared to the decorating some people do, but it makes me happy and that's what counts.

Little Lord Fauntleroy - a marathon

There are many versions of "Little Lord Fauntleroy", but one version has turned into one of Germany's favorite Christmas movies - the 1980 movie with Alec Guinness and Ricky Schroder made for British TV as a Christmas program.

The first broadcast in Germany was on Christmas 1982 and the same TV channel has shown it every year since, usually on the last Friday before Christmas Eve.
To me it feels as if I have seen it a thousand times, but I'll still watch it again every year.
This year, however, I did it a bit differently. I went on a marathon through different versions of it - including the book.

"Little Lord Fauntleroy" is a children's novel written by Frances Hodgson Burnett and published as a serial between 1885 and 1886. It's pretty amazing that the story is still popular after almost 140 years, but my guess it's that the reason is the same as for to Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" from 1843 - the idea that a heartless rich man is being converted appeals to us, possibly even more in our times when we would love to have such a story come true.

First edition 1886 (public domain
via Wikimedia Commons)

I don't know if there is anyone among you who doesn't at least know vaguely what the novel (which is in the public domain, so you can read it online, for example here) is about.
A British Earl disowns his youngest son for marrying an American woman. After all of his sons have died, he sends his lawyer to New York to bring his only grandson home to England to raise him in the manner that behooves a future Earl. His condition, however, is that Cedric - named after his father - will be living with him in his castle while "Dearest" - Cedric's mother whose first name is never mentioned, he is calling her that because his father did - has to live in a house nearby because the Earl refuses to see the woman he thinks is "a mercenary, sharp-voiced American".
To make it short, Cedric's lovable, modest, and generous character eventually changes his grandfather's heart, and when another woman turns up and claims her son is the real heir, he understands how wrong he had been. Obviously the woman is an impostor which they find out with the help of Cedric's American friends.
Unlike the 1980 movie which ends with a great Christmas feast in the big hall, the book ends with Cedric's 8th birthday (just like the other filmed versions I watched) - and all of them live together (including Dearest) happily ever after, no doubt.

Let's get to the filmed versions now. This is not a full list of all existing ones, but only those I know of, have watched or could have watched.

I didn't find the first movie which is from 1914 which didn't really surprise me.
Then there's the silent movie from 1921 (on YouTube in both color or sepia tones) with Mary Pickford both as Dearest and a Cedric with long curls which were surely inspired by the original illustrations, but didn't necessarily help with seeing her as a boy. It's the first movie with a double exposure, by the way, in which the two characters seem to touch.
The movie is almost two hours long, I admit I gave up after a while. Maybe I'll manage some other time, but it can be quite hard to concentrate on a silent movie that doesn't even have music. At the moment, my attention span simply wasn't up to it.

Public domain via Wikipedia

I didn't have such problems with the 1936 version starring Freddie Bartholomew as Ceddie and C. Aubrey Smith who made a fabulous Earl of Dorincourt (I even liked him more than Alec Guinness).
Although this version is about the same length as the one from 1980, there are differences. The old movie shows a lot more of Cedric's life in New York to introduce his character right from the start, a normal nine year old (in all the films he's older than in the book) who likes to run and doesn't fear a fight, but who also loves his mother dearly and is polite and sweet to all of his friends, including the older ones like Dick, the bootblack, the old woman selling apples, and Mr. Hobbs, the grocer. On the other hand, it leaves out scenes in England showing how good he is to some people there winning him everyone's hearts.
They talk in a stilted way compared to the more modern movies, but I think it rather fits a literary adaptation from this time and didn't mind it.
The biggest difference, however, is how Dearest is shown. Here she is friendly and demure, even when she tells the Earl's lawyer she will refuse his money. Apart from that, she mostly gets mentioned by Cedric, but rather stays in the background, much like in the book.



The next movie may surprise you. It's a German version from 1962 which moves the whole plot into the 60s, with planes instead of ships, cars instead of carriages, a newspaper seller instead of an apple woman.
According to the credits, it is based on both the book and a stage adaptation, and it often does feel stagey, in the acting, but also some of the scenery, but despite the time jump it is still very close to the book.
I'm sorry to say that this Cedric is the one I like least. His acting really is too stagey for me in the way he emphasizes words and it makes him look annoyingly precocious at times.



1980 - the Germans' beloved classic.
Unfortunately, this one isn't on YouTube, but here's a short clip in English from it.



Cedric's character is very much like in the other movies, a real boy with a heart of gold, but by keeping the speech and even most of his clothing more casual compared to 1936 (if you would like to know more about his iconic velvet suits, check out this article, those suits really made their mark on actual fashion), he seems a little more natural.
As mentioned before, the part of his life in America is cut shorter, instead we have a longer scene of him helping a lame boy which introduces him to the villagers, and then there's that heartbreaking scene when he and his grandfather are riding through the part of the village where the Earl's poor tenants live - run down, dirty, and OMG, that three legged dog in the mud gets me every time! - which makes the Earl see how much he has neglected his responsibilities.

Dearest, however, is a very different woman here. First of all, she doesn't have "a little money of my own", she has worked for her money sewing shirts at home, and after refusing to take the Earl's money, she goes right into the village and gets herself a job assisting the only local seamstress. Of course she still takes the time to help the poor tenants.
Then there's that scene when she meets the Earl's carriage when walking back to her house, stands up to him and thanks the revolution that has set the Americans free from the British, politely but firmly.
I'm sorry if it sounds as if I'm ridiculing her American pride, but honestly, it's a bit much given that nothing of that is in the book at all, well, except the poor people of course.

The rest is pretty much the same as in the book and the other movies. Minna the imposter turns up and gets found out with the help of Ceddie's American friends (minus the apple woman who got left out of the script ;-)) because it's her bad luck that the story is also in American newspapers and Dick recognizes them from the pictures as his brother's estranged wife and their son.

They celebrate with a big Christmas feast, together with staff and villagers (I wonder how they picked who was allowed to attend and who had to cook and serve everything) - and the three legged dog who becomes friends with the Earl's Great Dane (I do love a happy ending :-D).

If you think you are off the hook now having come this far, you are wrong.
There's a British five hour mini series from 1995 adapted by Julian Fellowes (who may sound familiar to you as the creator of Downton Abbey and more). For the VHS and later DVD edition the series was cut down to about three hours which I was very grateful about. I watched it once and don't think I will do that again.
It's on YouTube in a playlist of many short videos.

There you are. I'm now filled up to the brim with Lord Fauntleroy versions and can honestly tell you that I can't pick between the 1936 and the 1980 ones. They both have their own special charm and you can shut out the real world for a while which isn't the worst thing at the moment.
It's amazing, though, how people can fight about what's their favorite and why and what's wrong with all the others and who was the wrong cast and ... and ... but people can fight about absolutely everything, right?

Do you know any of these versions? If so, what's your favorite? Are they Christmas treats for you?

Nostalgia - Chinook

Some years ago when I still did the "Finds of the week" posts, I had some called "I'm a collector" in which I shared vintage items. Over time my collections have mostly stopped growing due to different reasons, but they are still there and still loved. I also have vintage items, some inherited, some gifts, some from fleamarkets, some more interesting than others. So I thought it could be fun to share some of them every, now and then and tell their story.

As you know, I'm a cat person. I love dogs, but like to say that I would be a better dog aunt than dog mom. On the other hand, I'm a fantastic cat mom (ignore Gundel and den Dekan laughing their furry little butts off in the back).
Nevertheless, I have a lot more Steiff dogs than cats. Just as real dog breeds look much more differently from one another than cat breeds, Steiff made a lot more different dogs than cats, possibly for just that reason.

One of them is Chinook.
Have you ever heard of Chinook who gave his name to a whole breed which has been the official state dog of New Hampshire since 2009?
Chinook's story, however, already began over 100 years ago, with Arthur Treadwell Walden of the Wonalancet Farm and Inn. Walden had worked in the Klondike during the gold rush, delivering supplies and mail, and thus gained experience with sled dogs. There he met a Native American guide and his dog named Chinook.

Walden and Chinook (public domain via
Wikimedia Commons)

After his experience in the Klondike, Walden decided to breed sled dogs himself, strong but also fast.
In 1917, three pups were born to a Greenland Husky - a descendant of Admiral Peary's lead dog for his North Pole expedition, Polaris - and a Mastiff/St. Bernard-type mix. Walden's wife called them Rikki, Tikki, and Tavi, after the Jungle Book, but eventually Rikki was renamed in honor of the original Chinook.

He was a "sport of nature" meaning he didn't resemble either of his parents - traits he passed on to his own descendants. Also he was not only an outstanding sled dog, but also a very gentle one.

Mountan Laurel Ajax
(by Muu-karhu on Wikipedia, free use)

In 1927, Admiral Richard Byrd chose Walden to run the dog teams (half of which were Chinook's descendants) during his first Antarctic Expedition (1928 - 1930).
Walden accepted only after being guaranteed that no dogs would be shot to save supplies.
In January 1929, Chinook disappeared from the camp and never returned (if you are ready for some tissue work, have a look at the newspaper article from 1930 on the blog you find under 1. in my sources).
His legacy, however, lived on in the rare dog breed called Chinook.
When Walden returned from the Antarctic, he found part of his farm had been sold due to his wife being ill, and he also sold his dogs to another breeder, but still had an influence on the breed.
If you are interested in more history, please check my sources towards the end of the post.

Now to my own Chinook.
When we first saw the Steiff Chinook in the Cieslik book, it was love at first sight. Over the years we were lucky enough to find two of them, both lying down, so we both got one when we split up. Otherwise I might have had to fight for him ;-)

Steiff's Chinook came in three versions and different sizes, lying down, standing, and sitting (the last one without or with a neck mechanism moving the head if you turned the tail). The one with the neck mechanism is the rarest with 257 items, but "Chinook - Byrd's Antarctic Expedition Dog" (that's what the tag says) is generally almost as rare as the real breed.
According to the Cieslik book, only 2,493 were made between 1930 and 1931. However, they captioned a picture of what looks like Walden with Chinook to me with the name Byrd, and according to Steiffgal's blog, the production time was between 1930 and 1932. Both agree on them being rare, though.

Here's my own Chinook who is usually in my dog cabinet, surrounded by other wonderful Steiff dogs.

So his wool plush is not as vibrant in color anymore, his harness is gone, and his collar is very worn, but isn't he gorgeous, anyway?
I love his face so much.

You can only wish to look as good at more than 90 years old. Imagine what that would be in dog years!

Sources:

1. Heather Wilkinson Rojo: "Chinook's Great Adventure at the South Pole" in "Nutfield Genealogy", posted May 21, 2020 (there are several posts about Chinooks on this blog)

2. Arthur Treadwell Walden on Wikipedia

3. Chinook Owners Assocation: History (with a lot of historic pictures)

4. Chinook Club of America Inc: Chinook History (also with historic pictures)

5. Jürgen and Marianne Cieslik: Knopf im Ohr. Jülich, Cieslik, 1989

6. My Steiff Life (Steiffgal's blog)

And here's a little extra (I would recommend to turn the music off, but that's just my personal opinion).

Getting ready for Christmas - Part 1

Vacation time, yay! I have a long list of things I should be doing and a list of things I'm actually looking forward to. I already know that the long list won't be much shorter at the end of my vacation, the other one, well, we'll see.

First on the list is decorating for Christmas. I'm by no means a big decorator and it has become even less since der Dekan moved in because some things are just too risky around him. I'm not going to put up my Moravian stars for example, cords are far too tempting for him.

So, last year I had a really hard time to motivate myself and ended up with a completely empty house hallway, but my little tree with its sparse decoration made me - and den Dekan - very happy.
I don't know if you have seen any of my last year's advent calendar posts, but it was sad that I couldn't put any of the ornaments I made on my tree. There is just too much time in there for den Dekan to have fun with them. They will get their chance to shine in the hallway this year, I just hope I'm not going to run out of space, but I can always leave out some of the not handmade pieces.
A friend suggested to make a garland for my beaded ornaments to hang from the ceiling, but my ceiling is too high for my taste. Ladders and I are not friends.

Today I started by putting up my little tree. This year, I got a special surprise for den Dekan although I knew of course that I will probably have to be stooping down a lot during the next few weeks, picking up ornaments and putting them back on the tree.
Last year he went absolutely wild with the gnome girl, so this year I got him a whole pack.



Of course Gundel is more than welcome to join in, but so far she has only paid a short visit to the tree. She usually starts playing with toys at night, though, so who knows what's going to happen.

My gift was a full success.
Der Dekan had to wait outside while I trimmed the tree with the victims, uhm, gnomes, my pineapple slices and some other unbreakables. I wanted to avoid a Pink Panther scene of me putting up ornaments on one side and him pulling them off on the other, working our way around the tree.
When I opened the door, der Dekan played it cool for about five seconds and then he went right in as expected.
About fifteen seconds in, the first gnome fell, seconds later the first pineapple slice, and right after that the second gnome. Then he threw himself between tree and the light arch and started pushing with all four.

Don't think he's constantly in the tree. He will launch an attack, go crazy for a bit, storm off and then come back to sleep in his Christmas bed next to the tree or his donut behind the tree - until the next attack. I have no idea what sets him off.
His second attack was swift and effective - four pineapple rings and four gnomes.
So far I haven't been lucky to get anything but blurry pictures of him in action, but here are a few general impressions.

And here's a rare Gundel sighting.
Good luck seeing anything in that photo but a dark shadow!