2.4 Advent and Christmas Traditions
With the start of Advent, Emily and Katie discuss all sorts of fun and meaningful aspects of the Advent, Christmas, and even Epiphany seasons. They also talk about listening to Handel's Messiah during these seasons and give some details and information about that work as well as a few guides to increase your enjoyment when listening to it. Enjoy!
Show Notes:
Show Notes: "Dear Editor— I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.' Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus? Virginia O’Hanlon"
"Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding."
- Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus
https://www.villageschoolma.org/pdf/YesVirginiathereisaSantaClaus.pdf
"This quality will be understood by any one who really understands the meaning of the Middle English word solempne. This means something different, but not quite different, from modern English solemn. Like solemn it implies the opposite of what is familiar, free, easy, or ordinary. But unlike solemn it does not suggest gloom, oppression, or austerity. The ball in the first act of Romeo and Juliet was a ‘solemnity’. The feast at the beginning of Gawain and the Green Knight is very much of a solemnity. A great mass by Mozart or Beethoven is as much a solemnity in its hilarious gloria as in its poignant crucifixes est. Feasts are, in this sense, more solemn than fasts. Easter is solempne, Good Friday is not. The Solempne is the festal which is also the stately and the ceremonial, the proper occasion for pomp - and the very fact that pompous is now used only in a bad sense measures the degree to which we have lost the old idea of ‘solemnity’. To recover it you must think of a court ball, or a coronation, or a victory march, as these things appear to people who enjoy them; in an age when every one puts on his oldest clothes to be happy in, you must re-awake the simpler state of mind in which people put on gold and scarlet to be happy in. Above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a widespread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connexion with vanity or self-conceit. A celebrant approaching the altar, a princess led out by a king to dance a minuet, a general officer on a ceremonial parade, a major-domo preceding the boar’s head at a Christmas feast - all these wear unusual clothes and move with calculated dignity. This does not mean that they are vain, but that they are obedient; they are obeying the hoc age which presides over ever solemnity. The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual." - C.S. Lewis: Preface to Paradise Lost - Pg 21
O Come O Come, Emmanuel - Kloria Press
Saint Nicholas: The Real Story of the Christmas Legend
Messiah: The Greatest Sermon Ever Sung by Tony Pittenger (also available through Kloria). Can be used as a devotional book with children.
JesseTree.pdf (confessionsofahomeschooler.com) - Jesse Tree Advent Study
Jesse Tree: Daily Devotions: Michelle Domin: 9780758665508 - Christianbook.com
Advent Wreath for Building and Playing - Wicking Vicar
George Balanchine's The Nutcracker® | New York City Ballet (nycballet.com) - A history of The Nutcracker ballet as most of us know it; the George Balanchine version influenced ballet companies all over the United States, including ones I was involved with as a child.
The 12 Days of Christmas: The Story... by Haidle, Helen C. (amazon.com)
The Third Gift book by Linda Sue Park (thriftbooks.com)
Find Emily at: https://agoodwilderness.substack.com/