Happy Christmas
[As I look for the annual A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge, I thought I would re-run this post. Frankly I can’t find anyone really playing Christmas carols on the radio.]
The British have some wonderful Christmas customs that have survived the incursion of Christianity, especially the Puritan party poopers. Stealing customs from the Celts, Germans, and Scandinavians, they have created a wonderful holiday that I fondly remember from time spent there.
The bird is a European robin that is featured on British Christmas cards, as it is a Winter bird in England, unlike the fair-weather laggard of the same name in America. It is bracketed by holly and mistletoe. All go back to the druids and solstice celebrations.
If you read the Harry Potter books you will get a taste, but not the full effect of a British Christmas. A full-on Christmas dinner is wretched excess to the nth degree – Thanksgiving on steroids.
The BBC has the background on Father Christmas.
7 comments
I heard the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols yesterday morning via Interlochen Public Radio, the broadcasting facility of the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan. I’ve listened to it every year via the net since I lived up there in the 90’s. (I’m listening to that station now, even though they’re just sending out the feed from Minnesota Public Radio’s classical music channel.) In fact, I listen to that station all year at work. (http://interlochenpublicradio.org/)
Happy/Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.
How about that, Bobby! My old composition teacher, Tom Benjamin, was very much involved with Interlochen for decades.
Bryan, Merry Christmas. I say that with no apologies to Christians (which I’m not), Jews (also not), UUs (which I was), UU Jews (of which there are many, including the aforementioned Prof. Benjamin), atheists (sometimes on my difficult days) and people who set out deliberately to annoy the bejezus out of Bill O’Reilly (yes, I’m one of those).
Weather here is mostly cloudy and may touch 60°F today; there’s fortunately no rain forecast, considering the number of elderly drivers (including us) likely to be on the roads today.
Hope y’all have a good one… we’re going to dine at Kim Son, which always improves any day.
Happy Christmas Bryan.
MB, thanks for the link. They have a re-broadcast at 6pm, so I’ll catch it then, and Happy Christmas to you.
Happy Christmas, Steve. Yes, fortunately there are always Asian restaurants ready to cover the holiday meal needs.
Thank you, Fallenmonk. I enjoy the holiday, if not the associated propaganda.
You’re welcome, Bryan. It’s fun to listen to IPR; they have a lot of good music, they broadcast “Performance Today” at 10:00 a.m. to noon (ET), and it’s fun to hear the weather forecasts for northern lower Michigan in the winter. At the office I turn it up and shock my officemates with predictions of six inches of snow and temps in the teens.
Also, when IPR does fund-raising, they actually make it enjoyable to listen to. When I lived there I used to answer phones for them during the fund drives and we had a great time.
Since I’m all asynchronous these days, I watched this one last night:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p0T5SOAEQQ
I used to listen to Christmas music on the local NPR stations, but both changed to a news/talk format on the signals I can receive. The local ‘religious’ stations do ‘contemporary Christian music’ which sucks, frankly, and none of the franchise commercial stations consider changing their playlists for holidays.
It is a very strange thing to see such a total lack of Christmas that isn’t tied to local government or businesses, in area with so many churches, albeit the majority in strip malls or double-wides, that claims to be ‘Christian’.
I’ll try YouTube next year, if I’m still around, NTodd, thanks for the heads up.