Mother Culture: Advent & Christmas Reading

Short on time for including some Mother Culture in your life at this time of year? How about some short stories with Advent & Christmas themes:

The Story of the Other Wise Man by Henry van Dyke

The Story of the Other Wise Man is by far the best of the two stories in this book but The First Christmas Tree is a worthwhile read also so I’ll quickly mention a bit about that first. Set in Germany in the eighth century, The First Christmas Tree tells of the encounter between Winfried (known mostly by his Roman name, Boniface) and a group of pagans celebrating a festival in the woods. Boniface intervenes and saves the Chief’s young son from being sacrificed to appease Thor.

"...out yonder in the wide forest, who knows what storms are raving to-night in the hearts of men, though all the woods are still? who knows what haunts of wrath and cruelty are closed tonight against the advent of the Prince of Peace? And shall I tell you what religion means to those who are called and chosen to dare, and to fight, and to conquer the world for Christ? It means to go against the strongholds of the adversary. It means to struggle to win an entrance for the Master everywhere. What helmet is strong enough for this strife save the helmet of salvation? What breastplate can guard a man against these fiery darts but the breastplate of righteousness? What shoes can stand the wear of these journeys but the preparation of the gospel of peace?"

The First Christmas Tree is free to read here.

Henry van Dyke tells the tale of  'the fourth wise man,' one of the Magi from the East who was to go with the other three to seek the Saviour of the world:

'You know the story of the Three Wise Men of the East, and how they traveled from far away to offer their gifts at the manger-cradle in Bethlehem. But have you ever heard the story of the Other Wise Man, who also saw the star in its rising, and set out to follow it, yet did not arrive with his brethren in the presence of the young child Jesus? Of the great desire of this fourth pilgrim, and how it was denied, yet accomplished in the denial; of his many wanderings and the probations of his soul; of the long way of his seeking, and the strange way of his finding, the One whom he sought—I would tell the tale as I have heard fragments of it in the Hall of Dreams, in the palace of the Heart of Man.'

Highly, highly recommended!! I read it aloud last Christmas, and that was probably a mistake. I could barely read it towards the end as I was so emotionally affected by it. It is available to read online here and here. The book I linked to above is an unabridged Dover Publication HB and contains traditional simple, woodcut-type illustrations. Be aware that some copies of The Story of the Other Wise Man are revised or abridged. 

Henry van Dyck also wrote the lyrics to the hymn, 'Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee' in 1907. Some background to the hymn is here.

The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

The Gift of the Magi  by O. Henry is a beautifully illustrated & unabridged hardback book. The story is also free online (click on text below) and is quite short so it lends itself well to a picture book format although it's of more interest to adults, I think.

Classical Academic Press have a free audio of this story you may download.

The magi, as you know, were wise men - wonderfully wise men - who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

The Birth by Gene Edwards

An unusual look at the Christmas story. I wrote about it here.

Christmas at Thompson Hall by Anthony Trollope (1815 - 1882)

This is a collection of five short stories in a lovely HB presentation & set during the Christmas season. Christmas at Thompson Hall is the longest of the stories and is an enjoyable, light-hearted read that relates a sort of comedy of errors on the part of a Mrs Brown. Mrs Brown is a very proper British woman who commits a blunder in a night-time encounter in a French hotel. By a series of ‘fibs’ to cover up her embarassment, her innocent mistake develops into a serious situation.
Trollope's description of Mrs Brown:

‘She was a large woman, with a commanding bust, thought by some to be handsome, after the manner of Juno. But with strangers there was a certain severity of manner about her, - a fortification, as it were, of her virtue against all possible attacks, - a declared determination to maintain at all points, the beautiful character of a British matron, which, much as it had been appreciated at Thompson Hall, had met with some ill-natured criticism among French men and women.'


The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding by Agatha Christie (1960)

Agatha Christie described this collection of short stories as a book of Christmas fare with two main courses: The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and The Mystery of the Spanish Chest. It also includes a selection of three entrees, and a sorbet!
I’ve had this book for awhile and plan to read it over December. Fun!

  

Hope

“Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen one in whom I delight;
I will put my Spirit on him,
    and He will bring justice to the nations.

He will not shout or cry out,
    or raise his voice in the streets.

A bruised reed He will not break,
    and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out.
In faithfulness He will bring forth justice;

    He will not falter or be discouraged
till He establishes justice on earth..."

Isaiah 42

Tidings of comfort & joy...

Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room - ideas for Advent when life is busy...

The last days of November mark the beginning of a rush of family birthdays which continue through to the end of March for us. With Christmas preparations added to the birthday celebrations life can get quite busy. I often think of the words of the Christmas hymn, Joy to the World, where it says,

 'Let every heart prepare Him room.' 

How do we make room in our hearts and in our lives for Him at a time of year when everything pushes us into rush and busyness?

 Christmas Eve: And there was no room for them in the inn by Arthur Melville, 1900-1904

Keeping things simple and do-able is the only way I can do this. Perhaps in a different season of life my plans could be more complex, but for the time being, simple is do-able. Below are some ideas that we've used, or are planning to use, over the season of Advent. They are mostly ideas that fit well with the rhythm of our Ambleside Online schedules, which are usually still in place up until the second or third week of December. Some of these ideas have become yearly traditions, which are simple for us because we've already done them multiple times. Some are things that were great one year but didn't suit the next.


Folksongs

Music is on of the easiest ways for our hearts to 'prepare Him room.' I'll start with our favourite Christmas folksong for the past two years  - an oldie with a new twist.





And another we listen to:




Poetry

The original poem, Christmas Bells by William Wadsworth Longfellow was written in 1864 during the American Civil War. The whole poem and the story behind it is here. One of my very favourites for this time of year and very appropriate as we see what is happening in other parts of the world or sometimes within our own borders.

And in despair I bowed my head;

"There is no peace on earth," I said;

"For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Hymn Study

Joy to the World! An Advent Devotional Journey through the Songs of Christmas by Ray Pritchard. This is a kindle edition available from Amazon and they were offering it as a free download. It may still be available. Each day from the 1st to the 25th December a Christmas hymn or song is highlighted, some of the history of the song is covered, and then there is a link to a youtube version of the song. A handy pick up & go, no planning needed, resource. I would find doing a different song each day too much and would prefer to concentrate on just a few which would work just as well.
I've added some links below to posts where I've included some hymns that we like to listen to leading up to Christmas.

 

My Reading

The Birth by Gene Edwards. I reviewed this book here. This is a refreshing and different view of the whole Christmas story in fictional form, and I really enjoy it for that reason. I have a friend who reads this every Christmas.

Read Alouds


I Will Honour Christmas in my Heart - books we used last Christmas; some lovely picture books are included. We read through Dicken's A Christmas Carol and listened to a recording of Handel's Messiah using Cindy's schedule.
Nancy @ Ipsofactodotme joined us with both of these and she posted her very thoughtful observations on her blog. See also her blow by blow description of A Christmas Carol.

Advent favourites - this is a post I did two years ago that includes a range of ideas and resources - art, music, handicraft etc which we've used for Advent and Christmas.

Christmas Ideas in a Charlotte Mason Education - another post: books, handicraft etc

Keeping Christmas

The Adoration of the Shepherds by Gerard van Honthorst, 1622

Keeping Christmas Update

This post follows on from two I did previously: 1 & 2. We're continuing to listen to Handel's Messiah. I found an easier way to follow along if you don't have the CD - check the number of each section and google Handel's Messiah No. 38 (or whatever number you are up to) There are heaps of YouTube videos covering various sections. It's more time consuming than a CD but it's free.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens - loving this. We've just finished reading Stave 4 - The Last of the Spirits. There's a good Kindle version of the book here - illustrated by Arthur Rackham. I was so pleased to have Nancy from the Netherlands, on other side of the world, join us in listening to Handel's Messiah over December as well as reading through A Christmas Carol. She has shared her very insightful thoughts on both Handel's music and Dickens' book at her blog, ipsofactodotme.

Handicrafts

Woodburning practice while listening to me read aloud the book above:

I've added a couple of Carols this year but we're still listening to our favourites from other years.



Also known as the Carol of the Drum:



If you're interested in how much the 12 Days of Christmas items actually cost...
http://www.news.com.au/finance/money/how-much-do-the-12-days-of-christmas-items-actually-cost/story-e6frfmci-1227141860687

 My wonderful sister-in-law is coming over next week to do some Christmas cooking with the youngest two and I'll be making my specialties - fruitcake, carob balls and fruit logs. My arm's being twisted to also make some Scottish tablet but it's lethal stuff. I'll annoy everyone and come up with a healthy version, which of course won't taste anything like the real thing.

'Maybe Christmas,' he thought, 'doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!'

Nativity by Tintoretto (c.1550-1570)

We're in the middle our terms' work and I wanted to continue our regular schedule  in the lead up to Christmas but also allow room for celebrating Advent & preparing for Christmas. So what I've done is to stretch out a week's work into one and a half to two weeks. I do this from time to time if I need to fit in extra things that I think are important or if we've had a lot of interruptions.

As in previous years I've adapted music appreciation, poetry, folk songs, picture study and handicrafts to the season and this year I'm reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens aloud and will also have some other Christmas books on hand for free reading.

We were reading of Scrooge's encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol this week. In Dickens' allegorical story the Ghost takes heartless old Scrooge back to the long forgotten scenes of his boyhood days:

'The school is not quite deserted, said the Ghost. 'A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.'

They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be.

I've read Dickens' book before so I know the ending. It's really a story of Redemption.

Scrooge is a grotty, detestable & wicked old man who cares for no one and deserves nothing but judgement...but the unbelievable happens and Scrooge is transformed. Dickens' story illuminates what is at the heart of Christmas:

"The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost." Luke 19:9

We're listening to this folk song again this year. It really does capture the joy and Good News of Christmas.

This year we're listening to the full version of Handel's Messiah. In the past we've used excerpts but Cindy's Handel's Messiah Schedule for Advent has made it easy to fit in. Just 6 to 10 minutes a day in the lead up to Christmas is very do-able and if you haven't started it yet there's still time. A few of the pieces are very short so you could easily fit two into a week and get it done.

I didn't think I had a full recording so we started off using this one on YouTube.

Then I discovered a secondhand CD I'd bought a few months ago and realised it was the version Cindy used on her schedule so we got that out only to find that instead of two CD's there was only one, so I'll be going back to YouTube for the second half. Just as well I only paid a dollar for it.

The approximate time for each section is included in Cindy's post, but an outline of the different parts is here which might be helpful and the text used by the singers is here.

The Story of Holly & Ivy by Rumer Godden

C.S. Lewis famously wrote that he was 'almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story.'
I didn't read this book when I was a child but I thought it was just lovely when I read it for the first time as an adult.

If you have a little girl (or a little boy) don't miss this book. If you're an older girl, like me :) don't miss it either.

Around the age of six and up would be a good time to give it to someone or it could be read aloud to a younger child - if you don't mind having a cry while you're reading. The edition below on the left is 57 pages long with charcoal illustrations throughout but the book was first published in 1958 and there have been numerous versions, including the one on the right below illustrated by Barbara Cooney.

Like teddy bears, the dolls held out their arms. Toys, of course, think the opposite way to you. 'We shall have a little boy or girl for Christmas,' said the toys.

The toys knew what homes were like from the broken dolls who came to the shop to be mended.

'There are warm fires and lights,' said the dolls, 'rooms filled with lively things. We feel children's hands.'

'Bah! Children's hands are rough,' said the big toy owl who sat perched on a pretend branch below the dolls. 'They are rough. They can squeeze.'

'I want to be squeezed,' said a little elephant.

The toys thought that all children have homes, but all children have not.

"Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the worst."

1 Timothy 1:15

'I Will Honour Christmas in my Heart'

I've started reading aloud  A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens using the beautifully illustrated version above. This version is illustrated by Robert Ingpen, an Australian artist. We have a number of books illustrated by Ingpen, all quite different in subject matter from one another, and yet again he demonstrates his skill with the magnificent job he does in capturing the feel of Dickens' world in this lovely book.

Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

'I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.'

Silent Night: The Song and its Story by Margaret Hodges; illustrated by Tim Ludwig

A warm and touching book which tells how the hymn, Silent Night, came to be written in Austria in 1818; how it spread from country to country and the original composers, Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber were forgotten for a time. The book follows the hymn through the years to Christmas 1914 when, during a truce at Christmas, the German soldiers began to sing the carol from the trenches and were joined by British voices from across no-man's-land...and into a Russian prison camp during the same war...and even to the Korean War.
This book would appeal to a range of ages. The words of the hymn, piano music & chords are included.

Great Joy by Kate DiCamillo; illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline

Great Joy uses the story of a young girl, Frances, whose heart goes out to a poor organ grinder and his monkey out in the cold in the week before Christmas, to awaken compassion and the message of joy that Christmas brings. Set in the 1940's, the illustrations are large and have a lovely softness.
When the time comes for Frances to say her lines at the Christmas pageant, all she can do is think about the poor man and the monkey out on the streets but the gift of compassion within her rises and gives voice to the message of Christmas at the time when it is needed.

Kate DiCamillo said that this book began for her with the image of an organ grinder playing music in the depth and darkness of winter and that this music led her to the heart of the story:
"In a dark time, doors will sometimes magically open and let us step inside to the warmth and light of a community."

The book is recommended for ages 4 to 8.

 

The Birth by Gene Edwards

 
I read The Birth by Gene Edwards years ago (in 1995 actually) and just finished reading it for the second time. I have a friend who reads it every Christmas and I've always meant to read it again at this time of the year but I only just got to it this past week. It's a short, easy read and this poem which the author shares before the story starts gives an insight into what he had in mind when he wrote it:

I shall drink from waters deeper than the 

spring,

And from the poet's eye shall I read his 

book.

But, oh, what I might learn should I dare to 

look 

From God's view even of the simplest 

thing.

Christian Maynell

This story of the Incarnation begins in heaven when Michael the Archangel feels a strange compulsion to visit the Door, the passageway to the physical realm.

It had been ages since the Door had opened into that realm. Not since Malachi the prophet had there been commerce between the two creations.

It is the fullness of time and Lord has a mission for Michael: to open a pathway from the heavens to the earth.

Now the Door between the two realms opened again....Could it be that something of the very essence and totality of God was about to pass into the other realm?

In the midst of this incomprehensible moment, the voice of Recorder sounded forth once again.

"Many of us have passed through this portal that joins our two realms. Long ago, as you recall, the Door was always open. The two realms joined together...at a place called Eden. After the Great Tragedy, the Door closed.

"On frequent occasions, at the command of our God, the Door has opened. Several times the Lord stepped through this Door to visit Abraham. Once the Door opened for Moses and the seventy elders to step into our realm. Once also for Isaiah, who stood in this very doorway and looked upon our dwelling place. But always the Door has closed again......But never before has anything such as this occurred.

"Today, the Door opens inside a woman's womb!"

This unusual Christmas story is one that looks at both realms - from the angels in heaven as they see God's eternal purpose unfold; to Elizabeth and Zachariah, Mary and Joseph, and others in the earthly realm whose lives are woven into this wonderful drama. Even though it's a fictionalised account, I thought it was a refreshing and thoughful view of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.