In the week when Christmas comes: Christmas Eve!

Photo found here

Let every pen enfold a lamb
Sleeping warm beside its dam,
     In the week when Christmas comes.

~~ from "In the Week When Christmas Comes," by Eleanor Farjeon

In the week when Christmas comes: Friday

Let every night put forth a star
To show us where the heavens are,
     In the week when Christmas comes.

~~ from "In the Week When Christmas Comes," by Eleanor Farjeon

In the week when Christmas comes: Thursday

Let every steeple ring a bell
With a joyful tale to tell,
     In the week when Christmas comes.

~~ from "In the Week When Christmas Comes," by Eleanor Farjeon

A real-time view of three days before Christmas:

8 a.m.: Lydia has just left for school, and I have just fed Muffin a bowl of lettuce and carrots. I'm reading through the blogs on my feed, including why we need to teach arts instead of subjects at Circe, a poem by Malcolm Guite, and a pantry post from Coffee, Tea, Books, and Me. I have butter softening on the kitchen counter (for whatever I might need it for).

9:45 a.m.: Mr. Fixit has gone on his usual Thursday treasure hunting, after we both spent a few minutes clearing snow. Lydia had mentioned that we were low on some things, but I didn't see how that could be, until I checked the flour and the white sugar. Oops. Some creative compromising was required, but I do have the baking plan figured out now, and the table is  covered with pre-measured bowls of flour, raisins, and chocolate chips. There is also a loaf of stuffing bread already going in the breadmaker. (It has to dry out for a couple of days.)

12 noon: one load of in the washing macine, one in the dryer. Most of the baking dishes done. Bread out. Three kinds of sweet things and one orange-cranberry loaf out of the oven. Ingredients collected for fudge-making later.

I need some lunch and some Christmas music.

2 p.m.: Mr. Fixit came home and we got everything swept, boxed, folded, hung, dried, and/or put away. I had a bit of time to check e-mail and read Overdrive library books (I'm trying to reach my Goodreads goal).  Muffin came out of his cage for a human-visit.

4 p.m.: We decided to have an easy dinner, so there's a pan of frozen cannelloni in the oven. Mr. Fixit is going around the corner to check our mailbox, because for the second winter in a row, Canada Post refuses to bring letters to our door. While he's out, he's going to pick up Lydia at her stop and save her the walk home. She gets picked up at our house now, but the dropoff point is a few blocks away.

6:30 p.m.: Dinner is over, the fudge is made, and Lydia is studying for a last-day-before-the-holidays history test on World War II. I am still working on library books.

10 p.m.: Some people are probably watching Christmas movies. We watched an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise and tasted the fudge.

And how was your day?

In the week when Christmas comes: Wednesday

Let every doorstep have a song
Sounding the dark street along,
     In the week when Christmas comes.

~~ from "In the Week When Christmas Comes," by Eleanor Farjeon

In the week when Christmas comes: Tuesday

Let every hall have boughs of green,

With berries glowing in between,

     In the week when Christmas comes.

~~ from "In the Week When Christmas Comes," by Eleanor Farjeon

Mr. Fixit and I went to Giant Tiger this morning. For anyone who doesn't know, that's a Canadian discount store chain which, as I usually put it, is where you buy flip-flops. But they have groceries too, and we needed to get a few basics. Strangely enough, it's also where we find our favourite brand of frozen cabbage rolls (doesn't everyone want cabbage rolls on Christmas?). And we found a small frozen cheesecake, someone else's Christmas request...stay with me here...and we replenished the lettuce for the guinea pig, and picked up some juice and canned goods and organic rice crisp things (for company). And a small cheap floor mat for the garage, because Giant Tiger is where you find small cheap floor mats for the garage. We came out with several full bags, and feeling happy enough about it all.

We made a stop at the bank, and then dropped into a large-but-upscale chain grocery store next door, because Mr. Fixit has sometimes found holiday meat items there, and he thought it was worth having a look. If Giant Tiger is a bit, excuse the expression, lower on the food chain than the store where we usually shop (like, Walmart), this place was a few notches above. What's the difference, besides the prices? I don't know...maybe it was the huge amount of expensive chocolates and party food in your face everywhere you turned. Or the smell of the lilies in the floral department as you went out the door. Definitely a change from the discount store.

The fancy store didn't have what we were looking for, but it was no big deal, we'll find something. I was more struck by the every-day-ness of the discount store vs. the as-classy-as-a-big-city atmosphere of the other one. That kind of "classy" is a bit too demanding for me...I imagine that food (and the lilies) all standing in spotlights like movie stars, bowing and waiting for the proper amount of applause. I think I prefer every-day-ness, even at Christmas. 

In the week when Christmas comes: Monday

This is the week when Christmas comes,

     Let every pudding burst with plums,

And every tree bear dolls and drums,

     In the week when Christmas comes.

~~ from "In the Week When Christmas Comes," by Eleanor Farjeon

The gift of the longest-possible Advent: a whole week for it to be The Week When Christmas Comes.

Yes, we have snow--plenty of it, unlike last Christmas. Lydia's school was even closed one day because of bad weather.

Yes, we have decorations. It's not looking too bad.

Yes, we have things to make cookies with, although nobody's done any baking because Mama Squirrel and Mr. Fixit have been down with colds and didn't want to "share the love."

But it's still too easy to focus on what isn't, what we'd rather have, what we could have done. I think everyone has some mental version of Dickens that comes to visit over holidays..It might be just a scrap of something missing, or a major discontentment, or outright grief. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or not at today's rather blunt Vivienne Files post. Under the portrait of a glum-looking woman painted by Chagall, Janice adds this note:  "She's NOT Feeling Christmassy... Some years, you just don't..."  Is it a coincidence that the imagined character's "accent colour" is a somewhat Grinchy green?

Then I read Brenda's post "Beauty With or Without an Audience," and things made more sense. If beauty is important, then we need to make beauty, even if it goes largely unseen. Even if those who do see it rush past (like the legendary crowd in the subway who didn't stop to hear the famous violinist, although you can read the true version of that here, since we try not to do Tonypandy at the Treehouse). Sometimes we make the extra effort simply as an act of faith.

Found: similes!

Our last lesson in Matt Whitling's Grammar of Poetry was about similes.  Similes are sometimes harder to find than you'd think. I keep seeing personification, metaphor, but not so many similes.

But here are some I just came across.

Oh! I have just had such a lovely dream!
And then I woke,
And all the dream went out like kettle-steam,
Or chimney-smoke.

My dream was all about--how funny, though!
I've only just
Dreamed it, and now it has begun to blow
Away like dust.

~~ Eleanor Farjeon, from "Waking Up," in The Kingfisher book of Children's Poetry

In a single motion the river comes and goes.
At times, living beside it, we hardly notice it
as it noses calmly along within its bounds
like the family pig.  But a day comes
when it swiftens, darkens, rises, flowers over
its banks, spreading its mirrors out upon the flat fields of the valley floor, and then
it is like God's love or sorrow, including
at last all that had been left out.

~~ Wendell Berry, from "Sabbaths 1998" in Given: poems

Back to the Library Sale

We did go back to the library sale, and brought home another boxful. The Apprentice also filled up a bag with CDs, audio books and books of her own (including some Biochemistry software).

Still it was kind of sad leaving all the rest of those boxes behind to be euthanized recycled.

Books we didn't have:

Give the Dog a Bone, by Steven Kellogg

April's Kittens, by Clare Turlay Newberry (I got this to replace another copy which I was scolded for selling)

What Do You Do, Dear? by Sesyle Joslin, pictures by Maurice Sendak

Exploring Nature Around the Year: Fall, by David Webster (we have the Winter book in this series)

Hurry Home, Candy, by Meindert DeJong (to replace that copy that we couldn't use for school because it was missing a section)

Puppy Summer, by Meindert DeJong

Circus Shoes, by Noel Streatfeild (we do have The Circus is Coming, which is the same book, but there are a number of changes between the two, and it's uncertain whether Streatfeild herself revised it or whether someone else had a hand in it.)

The Fearless Treasure, by Noel Streatfeild

Missee Lee, by Arthur Ransome

Kaleidoscope, by Eleanor Farjeon, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone

Minnow on the Say, by A. Philippa Pearce

David Balfour, by Robert Louis Stevenson, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth (really nice hardcover)

Saints: Adventures in Courage, by Mary O'Neill (rough shape, but interesting)

God's Troubadour: The Story of St. Francis of Assisi, by Sophie Jewett

Miss Bianca and the Bridesmaid, by Margery Sharp

My Father's Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett

Companion to Narnia, by Paul E. Ford

The Swans of Ballycastle, by Walter Hackett

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, by Rumer Godden

The Fairy Ring, edited by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora Archibad Smith, revised by Ethna Sheehan

Pegeen, by Hilda van Stockum

The Carved Lions, by Mrs. Molesworth

The House of Arden, by E. Nesbit

The Wonderful Garden, by E. Nesbit

The Second Mrs. Giaconda, by E.L. Konigsburg

Emily's Runaway Imagination, by Beverly Cleary

Otto of the Silver Hand, by Howard Pyle

Underground to Canada, by Barbara Smucker

Chemistry For Every Kid: 101 Easy Experiments That Really Work



Books we already have but these are nicer copies or particular editions:

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, hardcover illustrated by Graham Percy (I like Shepard's illustrations, but these are nice too)

Rufus M., by Eleanor Estes

Little Plum, by Rumer Godden, hardcover to replace our paperback

Pilgrim's Progress (Mary Godolphin's version), illustrated by Robert Lawson


Books we already have but I got them anyway to swap or sell:

The Young Brahms, by Sybil Deucher

The Happy Orpheline, by Natalie Savage Carlson