Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holidays. Show all posts
Thursday, December 12, 2024

Old-Fashioned Holidays

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Having recently discovered we own a copy of Washington Irving's SKETCH BOOK, published around 1820 (one of the books we inherited from m...
Thursday, November 28, 2024

Happy Thanksgiving

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Happy American Thanksgiving! It's been our custom for many years -- aside from the COVID-19 hiatus -- to attend Chessiecon (formerly D...
Thursday, February 01, 2024

Groundhog Day

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February 2 is almost upon us -- Groundhog Day, aka Imbolc (Celtic) or Candlemas (Christian). Here's a brief overview of its history: I...
Thursday, November 23, 2023

Thanksgiving and Traditions

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Happy American Thanksgiving! Ordinarily we spend the weekend after Turkey Day at ChessieCon, formerly Darkover Grand Council, which has trad...
Thursday, November 02, 2023

Scary Solstice

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I recently read a lavishly illustrated book about midwinter folklore, THE FRIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, by Jeff Belanger, featuring Krampus, the ...
Thursday, October 26, 2023

A World Without Christmas

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The Hallmark channel has already begun its annual Countdown to Christmas movie marathon. For us (Episcopalians) the season runs from the fir...
Thursday, December 22, 2022

Holiday Parodies

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Have I previously recommended POLITICALLY CORRECT HOLIDAY STORIES, by James Finn Garner? Although slightly dated to the specific "polit...
Thursday, December 08, 2022

Commercialized Holidays

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Recently I saw a Facebook post lamenting the materialistic nature of the Christmas season nowadays. The holidays focus too much on buying an...
Thursday, December 23, 2021

Anti-Santas

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You've probably heard of Krampus, the horned, hairy, bipedal monster from Austrian legend who prowls in December, mainly on Saint Nichol...
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Thursday, November 25, 2021

Thanksgiving Day

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Happy American Thanksgiving! I recently watched a fascinating episode of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE on PBS, about the Pilgrims' early years i...
Thursday, April 01, 2021

Special Days

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Here's a website that lists all the official, quasi-official, or just plain weird celebratory and commemorative days in the year: Nati...
Thursday, December 31, 2020

Happy New Year

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Here's a page of New Year's customs from around the world: New Year's Traditions One immediately notices the universal them...
Thursday, December 24, 2020

Xmas Musings

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I've just read a recent book about Dorothy Sayers, SUBVERSIVE, by Crystal Downing. One theme to which the author frequently alludes is t...
Thursday, November 26, 2020

Thanksgiving

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Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it today! We're preparing our usual turkey dinner—actually, my husband does all the hard parts...
Thursday, December 26, 2019

Discontinuities

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Happy midwinter holidays! I hope everybody who celebrates Christmas had a merry one. One of my most thrilling gifts was a DVD set of IN THE ...
Thursday, December 19, 2019

The Holiday Stories of Connie Willis

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If you feel in the mood for winter-holiday-themed stories, pick up A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS (2017), by Connie Willis. This volume is an expansio...
Thursday, November 28, 2019

Happy Thanksgiving

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Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it today! This will be the first Thanksgiving weekend since sometime in the 1990s when we won'...
Thursday, January 03, 2019

New Year Customs

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Happy New Year! Do you eat black-eyed peas for luck on New Year's Day? Although my grandmother, who grew up in rural North Carolina, o...
Thursday, December 27, 2018

Alternative Christmases

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When is Christmas not Christmas? When its equivalent appears under another name in a holiday episode of a TV series or movie franchise. TV T...
Thursday, December 13, 2018

The Monsters of Christmas

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On Facebook I came across a link to an article about the dark side of the Christmas season in many European folk traditions. It includes som...
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