Happy Michaelmas!

If you have spent any part of your life reading the classics, you have read about Michaelmas. Or perhaps you celebrate it now in your own observances. I myself was introduced to it through multiple readings of Jane Austen and others, but it appears often in Austen's works and I remember when I was younger and sans internet wondering what it was.

Well, today is Michaelmas. If you celebrate, enjoy! If you don't and want to know more, there's a helpful entry on Wikipedia. Yes, it has been primarily a religious holiday, but it is also strongly associated with the autumnal equinox--which I neglected to post about last week--and is often observed along with that, too.

I also found this website helpful about Michaelmas where you can read about customs, history, etc. And yes, I count this as pertinent to SurLaLune as part of customs and traditions with associated folklore, albeit they are primarily religious traditions which have a heavy influence on folklore.

St. Patrick's Day Storytime

  

I've received a few emails recently about my SurLaLune Storytime pages hidden away on the main SurLaLune site. Apparently the area has many fans of its own. The pages are webpages from my personal notebook of the odds and ends I gathered when I presented several storytimes a week as a children's librarian. I haven't updated it very often with new titles, but it is filled with songs and finger plays as well as book suggestions for many, many storytime themes. I had never posted the St. Patrick's Day page so the emails were searching for it since it was missing. This week I programmed it and now it is online.

I found some more books that appear suitable for toddler and preschool, but when I was doing storytimes, I mostly had to stick with a color green theme because most of the books are either too small format for a storytime setting or way too wordy for a young audience. Hooray for St. Patrick's Day! (Lift-the-Flap, Puffin) was fine for toddlers, for example, but it's a small book and was horrible for reading to a group of people.

  

Despite all my best efforts genealogically, I haven't a touch of Irish blood in me although we believe my husband has some way back--most of his family is Pre-Revolutionary War--so we're talking way far back. Still, so many of us enjoy the day who have zero blarney blood. I'm sporting green nail polish this week (well, I do most weeks if it's not blue) and I am already anticipating at least one meal or more of corned beef and cabbage. Believe it or not, my favorite rendition in recent years was at Cracker Barrel where the cabbage was not so overcooked it was disgusting. Besides, my friends and family are not obliged to eat the same dish if we eat out. Apparently, not everyone is a fan of cabbage which I rather adore if it is cooked well. I cook it it in other dishes but prefer not to cook corned beef myself since I don't do it often enough to be competent. Although I am tempted when I see it in the store, I just don't cook a variety of meats often enough. I'm not a vegetarian, but a lot of my cooking imitates one.

  

So here are some books, many of these pictured here are not for preschoolers, as well as the link to the storytime page if you are looking for some inspiration for celebrating the day with a young one or ones next week.

Looking Back: Fairy Tales and Romance

Last year I produced an entire week of Fairy Tales and Romance leading up to Valentine's Day. I considered doing the same again this year, but to be honest, most of what I thought up was just a rehash of last year's entries. I try not to repeat myself too often. However, the blog's readership has also doubled in the past year, so I wanted to direct you to those many entries if you are interested in reading about fairy tales and romance.  Here's a list of the entries:

Fairy Tales and Romance Week: Valentine's Day (Greeting cards)

Fairy Tales and Romance: East of the Sun and West of the Moon

Fairy Tales and Romance Week: The Prince's Diary

   

 

Fairy Tales and Romance Week: Weekend Reading

Fairy Tales and Romance Week: Fairy Tales as Story Outlines

Fairy Tales and Romance Week: All That Fairy Tale Nonsense

Fairy Tales and Romance Week: Fairy Tale Romance Novels

Fairy Tales and Romance Week: Jennifer Crusie

Happy Valentine's Day: Cinderella Roses

Happy Valentine's Day to all you wonderful readers. I admit that my husband and I don't do much to honor the holiday in the way it is promoted. Our special romantic day comes a week a later with the anniversary of our first date. So I tend to use Valentine's Day to celebrate all types of love with little emphasis on the romantic.

Still, when one thinks of the commercial aspect of the holiday, chocolate and roses are de rigeur for many. So I decided to give all of you Cinderella Roses today, at least digitally. They won't wilt. They won't need to be thrown out in a week either.

It is probably no surprise that there are many flowers named for Cinderella. I am most familiar with the roses so went hunting for images of them today. These images came from Rosesuk.com which sells the roses to the British Rose Group exclusively.

One of my favorite jewelry lines is Silver Seasons by Michael Michaud. One of his earlier creations for the line, now long retired, was a necklace of Cinderella roses. I ordered it several years ago, but alas, I really didn't like it in person (unlike most of his creations which I adore, especially the fruit ones and some of the other florals) and sent it back. So I don't own Cinderella roses in any form, but I like these pictures well enough and they aren't cluttering my jewelry drawer. Here's an image of that Cinderella rose necklace which came in two colors, pink or yellow.

New Book: The Runaway Wok: A Chinese New Year Tale

The Runaway Wok: A Chinese New Year Tale by Ying Chang Compestine is a new book which celebrates the Chinese New Year which falls on February 3rd in 2011. The original story borrows elements from Jack and the Beanstalk and The Gingerbread Man with several twists and final message about the joy of generosity.

Book description from the publisher:

When a boy goes to the market to buy food and comes home with an old wok instead, his parents wonder what theyÕll eat for dinner. But then the wok rolls out of the poor family's house with a skippity-hoppity-ho! and returns from the rich man's home with a feast in tow!

I didn't want to save this one for February 3rd for then it would be too late to really use the story for the holiday. The bright and colorful illustrations are fun. It has been well-reviewed so far, so it sounds like a great way to discuss the holiday with the children in your life.

Merry Christmas to All

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate this season and Happy Holidays to those who don't.  One loveliness of SurLaLune is its variety of readers from all over the world. 

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Jack Johnson included

Yesterday I attended one of my family's favorite Christmas traditions: Tuba Christmas.  My husband is a tuba player,only for fun these days. Tuba Christmas is his annual opportunity to play with a large band which is an adrenaline rush when it is composed of a minimum of 85 tubas, usually many more but the weather interfered yesterday.  It is free, it is holiday-spirited and always fun. In Nashville, we also have an eight piece Dixieland ensemble of musicians who play for 20-30 minutes before the concert and are wonderful, playing off the cuff and pretty much showing up close and personal how wonderful master musicians sound. That is one blessing of living in Music City. I may not love country music, but I enjoy anything live that is well-played and well-written which tends to be pretty common around here.

One of the Christmas standards in constant play this time of year is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, a Christmas fairy tale these days never mind its commercial origins.  At least I consider it much more of a fairy tale than either Wizard of Oz or Peter Pan or Alice in Wonderland are.  Those are wonderful fantasy books, but they aren't fairy tales in the folkloric sense. Anyway, I digress and return again.

I enjoyed Rudolph as a kid but for years it has disturbed me as rather unresolved and horrible since Rudolph is only valued for one trait, one which has tormented him for years. He is happy that everyone is finally nice to him, but I never trusted those fickle reindeer to not turn on him again once the fog had cleared.  Then a few years ago, I was thrilled to hear Jack Johnson's version of the song which has become my absolute favorite and the only one I like to listen to now on my holiday playlist. It appeared on This Warm December: Brushfire Holiday's Vol. 1 and some other compilations.

I am embedding a concert performance of the song below with Johnson's introduction.  Essentially he added a verse to the song.  I still remember the first time I heard it, not expecting the verse and then I replayed it about ten times in a row, determined to memorize it. I was charmed. "Rudolph, he didn't go for that..." etc. So here's a bit of a Christmas fairy tale, added to by an artist, to make it even richer, especially in a world where bullying has been a serious topic of late (and always in the history of the world).



And do look for a Tuba Christmas opportunity in your area.  It's amazing how so many strangers come together with an 80 year age range to make great music in the community after an hour or so of practice. It is always an inspiring way to celebrate the holiday season. It's rather like a better organized flash mob of Christmas music.

Runaway Gingerbread Man for Eating

I discovered this Runaway Gingerboy Cookie Kit By Gingerhaus® at a local store while browsing last week and was amused.  Gingerbread men are everywhere, especially during the holiday season, but few play off the fairy tale with a nonstandard pose.  So the Runaway Gingerbread Boy made me smile and I remembered it when I got home and looked for images online to share with you.  Here they are from Amazon.

I also saw these, a Night Before Christmas cookie cutter set and another runaway gingerbread man cookie cutter sans kit. 

So how many of you make Gingerbread Men and Women during the holidays?