Christmas crackers - The seventh door

 

"This year Tom Smith celebrates the 175th anniversary of the invention of the Christmas cracker.", so I'm told by the website of Tom Smith.
Congratulations, Tom!
But who was Tom and what are Christmas crackers?
Crackers are not part of our German Christmas, here you mostly see them on New Year's Eve. I only know Christmas crackers and paper hats worn during Christmas dinner from British TV shows, but until today I never took the time to find out how this began.

Picture from Wikipedia

It began in 1847 (as you could already tell from the anniversary), but the inspiration came a few years earlier.
On a business trip to Paris in 1840, young confectioner Tom Smith discovered the "bon bon", a sugared almond wrapped in tissue. Tom took the idea home, but found that the "bon bon" mostly sold around the Christmas time. He kept working on the idea to make the most of the short season.
First, the sweets were replaced with little toys and trinkets.
Then the crackle of a log that Tom threw on his fire gave him the idea to turn "bon bons" into crackers and change the name.
They became bigger to make space for the cracking mechanism which developed from the pop to the snap.

Picture from Wikipedia

Christmas designs were developed and the mottoes in the crackers turned from the Victorian love verses to puzzles and finally into the corny jokes of today.
Eventually Tom's three sons took over, and one of them, Walter, introduced the paper hats looking like crowns which are worn during Christmas dinner.
Designs were made for special occasions or as special orders and still are today.

As it seems, people have different traditions around Christmas crackers. Some people decorate the house with them. Some give each one at dinner their own cracker, but obviously you get the best sound if two people pull, one at each end. In that case the person who gets the longer part of the cracker also gets to keep the contents.

I have to admit that I can't remember any occasion when I have pulled or even seen a cracker in person.
What's funny is that the German word for them, "Knallbonbon", "Knall" meaning pop or crack, still has the "bonbon" part. Actually we mostly use that word not for chocolate bonbons, but hard candy.
Back to the crackers, maybe I should try one out for Christmas myself this year?

References:
History of the Christmas cracker (archived web article from the old Tom Smith website)
Tom Smith Crackers website - Brand

Rybovka - The sixth door

Over the years I have written about Christmas carols more than once. I love the old traditional Christmas carols and Christmas oldies. They make me get all mushy. In fact I'm sitting here now, at the end of September - I had to start early to make sure I'd get the advent calendar finished in time - and listening to a "Vintage Christmas" playlist on YouTube, very softly, I don't want the neighbors to break down my door, but it helps me getting in the mood.

Today, however, my topic is a special piece of Christmas music that I hadn't been aware of before last Christmas when I happened to see a TV program on Christmas in Prague - Rybovka.

Jakub Jan Ryba's Czech Christmas Mass - "Česká mše vánočni" in Czech - also called "Hej Mistře, vstaň bystře!" or simply Rybovka, written in 1796, is his most popular work and still performed in churches around the country every Christmas.
Special about it is that Ryba, a very educated (but rather unfortunate) man and productive composer of mostly religious work, also wrote the texts - in Czech instead of the then common Latin because he believed it would provide a better and easier access for the people.

Within the frames of a traditional Latin mass, the Rybovka tells the Nativity story in a Bohemian setting. The music is lovely, and after listening to it first and then browsing some pages, I was happy to read that the music reminds of "Mozart's or Haydn's Vienna style" because that had been my impression, too.

Are you curious now? Why don't you listen to it yourself then?



References:
Ruth Fraňková:Česká mše vánoční - the most popular piece of Czech Christmas music
Peter Quantrill: Bohemian Christmas music: Beyond King Wenceslas

The Christmas Cat - The fifth door

Mine got a little nervous when they saw this topic because they thought that once was quite enough, thank you very much.
Gundel said she would move in with my sister and der Dekan just showed me his fangs.
I could calm them down quickly, though. I'm talking about Iceland's Yule Cat or Jólakötturinn.

Jólakötturinn - picture by Atli TýrÆgisson on Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Iceland has many Christmas traditions and stories. There's the tradition of giving books for Christmas, special food, visiting the graves of their loved ones, a Christmas tree and lights, but there are also Grýla, a troll woman, her husband, her thirteen sons, the Yule Lads, who are mischievous pranksters and visit children on the days leading up to Christmas, one after another ... and there is their cat Jólakötturinn.

Jólakötturinn is a giant cat that roams the land after Christmas. He looks into the windows to see if the children have got new clothes for Christmas. If not, he punishes them by eating their food, some say, but the more common story is that he eats the children themselves or how Haukur S. Magnússon puts in The Reykjavík Grapevine: "This is the kind of message Icelanders like to send out in their folklore: if you do not have the money or means of acquiring new items of clothing before the festival of lights, you will be eaten by a gigantic cat."

Oldest written records are from the 19th century, but the story itself probably dates back to the Dark Ages and has a background. If people were too lazy to process the wool before winter, they would have to suffer in winter. If children didn't help with the household chores, including preparing the wool for making clothes, well, tough break.
I guess we all know the story of the grashopper and the ant which teaches us the same lesson. Get things done in time and don't be lazy or terrible things will happen.
And in Iceland that's being eaten by a terrifying cat.

Now der Dekan says he wants to be Jólakötturinn when he grows up!

Let's finish this with a song by Björk (you can find the lyrics translated into English here).

Christmas quote of the week - The fourth door

I revived the quotes of the week especially for the advent calendar and today's quote is perfect following yesterday's post.
Imagine a small English village and its Women's Guild putting on a Cinderella panto at the village hall.
It starts with the auditions, one actor has to be lured in under some pretext as he really doesn't want to participate, there are talented people and not so talented people who present anything from dance to song.

My favorite audition is that of the young girl singing "Morning has broken" only to be chosen for a lizard footman.
I really wish they had shown the costume, it sounds fascinating! ;-)

It's also quite fascinating that there will be skeletons, mermaids, and Hawaiian dancers in the ballroom scene ....

Jam and Jerusalem, Special "Christmas Panto", UK, 2006

Move over, Santa Claus! - The third door

Sorry, Santa, but there are two new kids in town.

First we have Santa Gundel. She's fine with the job, but didn't like the outfit much. Finally she granted me a minute to get it over with and take pictures.

Then there's der Santa Dekan. He didn't mind the hat, but the mere idea of having to travel the whole world and go down chimneys and back up was very exhausting.
It definitely called for a (not so) little nap beforehand.
Children, if I were you, I'd count on Santa Gundel to bring you gifts, I don't think der Santa Dekan is up to the task!

P.S. I'm not a fan of clothes for my cats, but I couldn't resist trying this after finding that the hat of my Steiff Santa Claus replica wasn't attached to his head (anymore?). The size was so perfect.
Gundel removed the hat a few times with a flick of her head, but then gave in because sometimes that's easier than being annoyed by forever.
Der Dekan made it more difficult. I had to lure him onto the bed for a nap, and when he was awake again, he was still too tired to bother about a stupid hat.

Bead embroidered Christmas stockings - The second door

In 2014, I wrote about the tradition of Christmas stockings (I also linked to an article in the Smithsonian Magazine with pictures of a variety of vintage ones).

The stockings I want to write about today, however, are not vintage.
I made them for the Jewelry Artisans Community challenge. The challenge was to make Christmas jewelry inspired by the famous American "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" poem.




I had several ideas, but settled for the "stockings hung by the chimney with care" in the end. With everything else going on in my life, I didn't manage to get my initial plan to bead embroider a little chimney with stockings realized, instead I made individual ones which can be both pendants and little tree ornaments.
Aren't the silver lined beads with the matching sequins so festive and sparkly looking with the icy matte tops? I simply couldn't stop until I had used all of the silver lined colors in my stash (except my other two green tones because they were too similar) and almost used up the matte beads.
Only when working on the last, smallest one, it came to me that earrings would have been cute, too. As you can see, all stockings have different shapes because I drew the outline quite randomly on the backing. The patience for symmetrical earrings I just couldn't muster. What do you think, though, should I put them on my list for next year?

Someone should please tell me to start earlier next year, anyway, so I can also try some patterned ones!

P.S. A few days after scheduling this post I found yet another color. The only difference is that the golden one doesn't have a matte clear top, but a pearly white one as I didn't have enough of the matte beads left. There's always one that has to be different! ;-)

Decorations - The first door

Are you ready for a new advent calendar this year?
It has been four years that I did the last one, and I'll try to present some customs and stories that I haven't shared yet, some of which I even hadn't heard of myself before, to be exact.
By no means do I claim to be complete in my posts, but as usually, I will provide links, so you can look up more about a topic that is particularly interesting to you. And please, if you find something that is not right, let me know!

Last year I missed sharing pictures of my Christmas tree here which looked different from the years before because I had to take the criminal energy of a certain kitten into account and therefore had no breakable ornaments at all on my tree, only my wire knit "pineapple slices" and the wire crochet baubles.
That kitten has turned into a big ole cat, and I thought about the right spot for the tree for a long time before I decided to give it a break this year. The master loves to pull things and he has not only become very strong, but has also been in extreme hunting mode lately. My usual trick of wrapping two of the branches around the bars of the stairs would probably not be enough.

To get into the Christmas mood and to set the mood for the advent calendar, however, here are this year's decorations from the hallway.

The full view.

The window sill with the Lego ornament and the Discworld advent calendars of which there were unfortunately no new ones in the last two years :-(

The Steiff parade with Santa Claus, the Christmas mice, and the cute teddy ornaments.
Seems my felt polar bear has sneaked his way in there as well!

And of course my advent calendar tree made by Paul from Phoenix Glass waiting for its beautiful lampwork embellishments from the little parcels, well protected by my needle felted/bead embroidered snowman.

I know, I know. You have seen them (almost) all before.
Have you noticed, though, that some of the non-beaded baubles (and the usual mistletoe which is so big this time that I have to cut it up a little first which really is a shame) are missing from the hallway decoration?
Maybe I need those free spots.
Who knows? I might not have shown you all of the decoration yet, so I won't spoil the surprise for some of the upcoming posts ...