Things to do...

...on Boxing Day.

:: Get outside and play games in the fresh air.

:: Drink glögg.

:: Sing a carol.

:: Eat mince pies.

:: Walk along the beach.

:: Discuss life, the universe and everything with your family.

:: Read your Christmas presents.

:: Spend time alone.

:: Watch the candles flicker.

:: Write a letter to a friend.

:: Watch Love Actually with your significant other.

:: Start a jigsaw.

:: Eat cherries.

:: Bake gingerbread men.

:: Snuggle.

:: Phone a friend.

:: Enjoy the simple things.

 

Christmas greetings, my lovelies

Hello, my darlings! It's the first of December. I guess you knew I couldn't stay away for the whole of my favourite month, didn't you, and here I am inspired to write to you on the very first day. Wow! So how are you all? Well and happy? We are, and I do hope you are too. It's been so long since I've written that Blogsy didn't recognise me and I had to register all over again. Now I can't find the photos that I've only just taken of our Christmas decorations to show you, so I think I'd best write now and worry about that later in case the inspiration leaves me and the post won't get written at all.

Is your tree up? Ours is, even though it's only the first day of December today. A few years back we decided that putting up the tree on a weeknight was too stressful for words, so now we do it the weekend before. Much better. We trimmed our tree on Sunday night, with much laughter, glögg and shortbread, and The Snowman on the telly. It's gotta be The Snowman while you trim the tree.

Jemimah is at rehearsals for her dance concert at the moment. In December she's almost always at dance, but she loves it, and she has good friends there, so all's good. She's 15 in February - can you believe that? Do you remember how young she was when I first started writing here? Now she's almost as tall as me. I still have a few centimetres on her, but not for very much longer, I fear. She's a lovely young lady, and I enjoy her company very much. AO10 next year. How can that be when she was only in kindergarten last week?

We started our Christmas read alouds today. I posted them on Facebook for you to see. I love doing my picture book advent countdown over there each year. I have some lovely books lined up for this year, and even have a few blog posts planned to tell you about them, so we'll see how that goes. I especially want to share my very favourite super special books, so I'll try to get that post up at the very least. I haven't started my 'book for mum' yet.  I have my book club breakup next Tuesday, and I still need to read that book, so I'm trying to be good and sensible.  What are you reading this December?  Any ideas for me?  I've picked up Jeanette Winterson's new book, Christmas Days, and it looks beautiful, filled with stories and recipes - yes, recipes  - for mince pies and trifle and red cabbage and mulled wine and other perfect Christmas food. Did you know that Jeannette Winterson has a Christmas Eve ritual that includes champagne?  Champagne AND smoked salmon? She even gives her favourite French champagne choices. I just knew we were kindred spirits.  There are twelve stories here, so I was thinking of saving this for the 12 days of Christmas, but I'm not sure I can wait that long.  Besides, I might need to try that trifle.  And some champagne, of course.

We are almost halfway through our long summer holiday this week, and I don't feel organised about AO10 at all.  I need to order the books at least, so that they arrive before the start of term.  I've got lazy over the years.  Long gone are the days when I planned years in advance.  Poor child deserves better from her teacher than this.  It's amazing how it all seems to fit together, though, in the end.  I love the books she'll be reading next year.  I hope she does too.

Okay, I'm going to stop now so I can sort out how to upload these photos and resize them so they fit between the columns.  Hopefully I'll be back in a day or so with some booklists.  If not, feel free to give me a nudge.  It's been so nice chatting to you all.  Let's just imagine for a moment that I'm standing under the mistletoe in our hallway waiting to give you a kiss.

Milles Bisouxxx.

Jeanne

Merry Christmas

 

A very Merry Christmas to each and every one of you. Thank you for being my friends and for encouraging and supporting me. May God richly bless you and your families this festive season. xxx

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lovely gift

 

A very dear AO friend, whom I am also privileged to know in real life, sent me this amazing hand cross stitched card. It is so beautiful, and she is so clever and I...well I love it.

When Christmas is over, I'm going to get it framed.

Here's the lovely verse from inside:

Set ev'ry peak and valley humming

with the word, the Lord is coming.

People, look East, and sing today:

Love the Lord is on the way!

-Eleanor Farjeon

Thank you, dear friend, and Merry Christmas. xxx

 

Christmas in Australia

I love this etching. Entitled Christmas in Australia, it was painted in 1865, and shows a family enjoying their Christmas picnicking in a cool fern gully. It looks like the Dangenongs, don't you think? Or Ferntree Gully, perhaps.

I especially like this bit of people reading. No surprise there, I guess. Heh.

Despite being painted almost 150 years ago, the work depicts a Christmas pretty similar to that enjoyed by many Australians today. Although you are more likely to find my family tucking into traditional English Turkey and plum pud, our local parks are filled on Christmas Day with families barbequeing and picnicking, and making a grand use of our beautiful summer weather.

At a time of year when we are more likely to be gazing on wintery Christmas scenes like Brueghel's Hunters in the Snow, or Turner's Frosty Morning, it is great to look instead at this painting of our own country, and appreciate how blessed we are to be living right here, right now.

Although I'd love to have this etching hanging on my wall, you'll actually find it in The State Library of Victoria. Oh well.

 

Tea and Sugar Christmas

I bought this book sight unseen, based on the title and the name of the illustrator, but look how beautiful the cover is.  When I saw it, I thought it was a keeper, and it is.

To start with, it is a wonderful addition to a very sparse selection of really lovely Australian Christmas Picture Books.  There are some really fun books, of course, but few that really deserve the title of Living Book.  This one looks beautiful, is truly Australian, and is historically educational to boot.

It's the story of a young girl called Kathleen who lives in a settlement along the line of the Tea and Sugar Train, the train that travelled from Port Augusta to Kalgoorlie across the Nullarbor Plain.   The train only travelled the line once a week, and it passed Kathleen's township on a Thursday.  Settlements along the track had no stores or services, so the train was truly a lifeline, bringing groceries, fresh meat, books, and mail from the outside world.  Once a year though, the Tea and Sugar Train, always a special occasion, become something magical.  Once a year it became the Christmas train, and along with the tea and sugar, Father Christmas travelled the line.

This week, Kathleen and her mum and dad had run out of tea and sugar, but it wasn't the groceries that they looked forward to, of course.  It was that jolly man with a blinding white beard and clothes of Christmas red.  Just like in the pictures.  What do you think happened next? Do you think Kathleen saw him?

 The pictures in the book are truly magnificent, fold out, double page coloured paintings interspersed with delightful pencil sketches.  I adore the authentic cutaway of the railway carriages, but each page is exquisite.  Jane Jolly, a new name to me, has written a sweet, historically correct, story, which really makes you wish that the Tea and Sugar still travelled the line and that you could go and visit it.  It did me, anyhow.  It is best for the 5-8 yo crowd as a story, but those illustrations transcend the ages.

Every Aussie needs a copy of this book.  Even those of you who prefer not to let the jolly fat man enter your home and unlikely to have issues with this one, I suspect.  Call it history or geography or something.  Or art.  Its all of these as well as a Christmas book. It is really special.

Tea and Sugar Christmas has just been released.  You can find it in any bookstore, I suspect, or order it online from Readings here.

Christmas Eve

A week later it was Christmas Eve. Everyone stopped harvesting early that night and all the people from the district, men, women and children went down to the little church in the valley. They did it every year. They'd been doing it as long as he could remember, and he hoped they would always keep on doing it as long as he lived. For there was something about Christmas that made him feel different, almost as if he wanted to cry. The great Christmas tree rose up almost to the ceiling of the church, gleaming and sparkling with light near the steps of the altar. And when it was ablaze with hundreds of pretty candles it was as if fairyland and heaven had combined. In front of it sat the children, rows and rows of them, their faces bright from the light of the tree and the eyes brighter from their own radiance, nearby stood the little tableau of Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus in his crib of straw in the stable — straw that seemed somehow to fit so naturally into the pattern of their own lives in the harvest season. Soon the organ started playing, and the people sang then as they never did for the rest of the year: the fine old carols that meant Christmas and nothing but Christmas — 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing' and 'The First Noel' and 'Silent Night'. The children sang too — special songs and items of Christmastide — and the pastor read again the story of the shepherds and the coming of the angel.

Then all the children filed past the tree to receive a gift and a great bulging bag of Christmas lollies before everyone went out into the mild summer night. And there was peace on earth and goodwill among men. The stars fairly glittered in the night sky and the land lay still and dark and quiet right up to the crests of the hills. Outside the church the people shook hands and laughed and gave each other Christmas wishes. Bruno thought it was wonderful for people to be so happy. Then at lays they began to trickle off home, some walking and some driving, to their own little Christmases in the parlours and the dining rooms, where there were still more Christmas trees with parcels to be unwrapped and shouts of glee and thanks and the lighting of candles and the singing of carols. And finally there were bottles of hop beer from the cellar and good things to eat and new presents to try out and a happy going to bed because tomorrow was Christmas Day.

Bruno fairly sang with the happiness of that Christmas. They went off to church again next morning, and although the great tree seemed strangely subdued after the glory of the previous night, the church was still full of its spirit, and the message and the music were still the same. Then there was a huge Christmas dinner, with Mum for once completely relaxed behind her mountains of food, and the boys fairly rolling wand wallowing with ham, turkey and Christmas pudding so that, after the washing-up, everyone had to lie down and sleep it off for an hour. Everyone except Brino. He couldn't bear to be idle when there were so many new things to test and explore. At last the others began to appear again; Mum organised the milking squad because of Christmas Day everyone helped with the milking except Dad, who of course was never called upon to do such a thing; and then the whole family went off to Obst's, where the Gunthers and the Geisters and the Scholzes had been invited for a mammoth Christmas tea.

Colin Thiele, The Sun on the Stubble

I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and a Safe, Healthy and Blessed New Year. Thank you for reading A Peaceful Day, and thank you, especially, for being my wonderful friends. I appreciate you all so very much, and look forward to learning more about you and your thoughts on things dear to your hearts in the New Year.
It's Christmas Eve. It has begun! We're doing the things that we do every year, and like Bruno, I hope we keep doing them as long as I live, because Christmas is special to me too, and I love the way it makes me feel, and the way people are nicer to each other, somehow, and how people sing more, and give special, thoughtful gifts to each other, and smile a lot. And then there is the food. Oh my! The food.
May God bless you all this festive season.
With lots of love

Jeanne and family. xxx

Father Christmas

It's a bit naughty, but we bloomin' well love it!!



Listen to what author Raymond Briggs has to say about it here:



And here, for completion, The Snowman.



We never miss either of them. Chuckle.

A Gingerbready Christmas

It's turned out a gingerbready sort of Christmas. First Jemimah felt a need to try her hand at gingerbread men (and gingerbread ladies, and gingerbread babies as well).

Here's the gingerbread recipe she used (watch the language).  It worked really well.  The dough was easy to roll, and the gingerbread was a little bit soft inside a nice crunchy exterior. Oishi. 8 minutes, exactly, did the trick.

Meet Mr and Mrs Claus. (They were a bit suntanned from their pre-Christmas holiday in Tahiti.  It looked nice and warm, and they decided on the spur of the moment to go.  Just the two of them.  They're spontaneous like that.)

Next Jemimah and the Princess Pea turned their hands to gingerbread houses for the gingerbread family to live in.

They are both much more talented than me and they did rather a fine job. Yes?

Then, coincidentally, the  Myer Windows this year featured Jan Brett's Gingerbread Friends, which was a most very pleasant surprise, and made everything seem sort of meant to be. In a Christmassy sort of gingerbready way.



Of course, seeing the windows lead to reading the book.  Which was very fun, as reading to the family always is.  It was a new story to us, and Jan Brett's pictures were just wonderful!

It was kinda cool being able to purchase one of Jan Brett's picture books in an Australian store. Because of the windows, of course. For some reason her books have never taken off Downunder, and I've never seen one for sale here before.  Fortunately, some of them are on YouTube.  Here's Jan, herself reading Gingerbread Baby.





I love this too - plus, I went to Stockbridge earlier this year with the beautiful Richele. Isn't that cool?



The Night before Christmas is now the next book on my 'must have or I'll just die' list.

I just adore the way she tells a second story in the borders.  In Gingerbread Friends, it is the story of Gingerbread Baby.  A completely different book.  That is just so tantalising!

Doesn't this make you want to bake warm spicy gingerbread yourself?  It makes the kitchen smell so good.  If you live somewhere that you can get Golden Syrup, then do give the recipe we used a try.  It's fantastic.  The rest of you will need to settle for Molasses, I guess.

If you don't have time to make and decorate a Gingerbread house, you can decorate a virtual one here.  It is a whole lot easier to clean up after than a real one, and Jemimah and I had quite a lot of fun with it.  Perhaps you will too.

The countdown to Christmas Day is really on now.  4 more sleeps.  Are you getting excited?  (I am.) Have you finished your Christmas shopping?  (I have.  Feeling smug.)  Have you been feeling gingerbready this year, or have you been baking something else or doing something extra crafty?

 I'd love to hear about what you've been up to!  Come and talk to me!

Snippets of home

 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

 

It's all about the food

Madam could have scratched Oliver for designing to spoil her party. But bush-rangers were a subject on which everybody could talk—and did, over the blazing brandy fumes of the plumpudding; over the steaming mince pies, melting and golden; over the ruddy raspberry tarts, the tansy shortbreads, the queenpuddings frail with white of egg. There were strawberries in great silver dishes, and clotted cream in Doulton bowls, pale lakes of gooseberry-fool, yellow custard in fat cups of cut glass. Madeira and port took the place of sherry. The company grew mellow. Madam was happy again, and husbands looked at wives down the table-length and smiled. Danger might come with the morning, their eyes said, but we will take what the gods give to-night.

G. B. Lancaster, Pageant, 1933