A simple gift (a giveaway)

I didn't think I would have time to do any giveaways this season. But then, I made a little baby in a cradle for my daughter in anticipation of St. Nicholas' Day (this Friday, December 6), and decided that I would somehow make the time. This season, the presents I give will, as much as possible, be hand-crafted or composed by me. Chances are, I will sew a lot of these gifts, but I may come up with little songs, bake savory treats, or find something else that may be humble in terms of monetary cost, but convey love and thought.

With that in mind, I am hosting a small giveaway here on my quiet blog. I will make for you or your gift recipient a little cradle baby in the same vein as the one I made for my daughter.The color choices will be up to me, and will be a surprise for you. In the comments section, please leave a message letting me know for whom the cradle baby will be (an aunt, a nephew, yourself). For added interest, please share a December holiday memory that holds some significance for you. Your comment should either be linked to a profile that has a valid email address, or email me off-blog with your email contact information. (My email: saintsandspinners AT gmail DOT com)

The giveway runs from now until midnight (PST) of Friday, December 6. I will choose two recipients at random and contact you to find out your snail mail addresses. This will need to be quick in terms of turnaround time-- if I don't hear from you by Monday, December 9 (10am PST), I will choose another recipient.

This giveway is open to residents of Earth (sorry, Mars colonists!). If you are a recipient who lives outside of the USA, please know that I have to disclose the full value of the doll, and that there may be customs charges which will be your responsibility.

Updated: I realized I should have shared a December holiday, memory, too. I am going to cheat a little and refer you to a blog post from 2005. Thank you much for sharing your memories. I won't comment as I usually do, but I can tell you that it is truly lovely to read them. Just so you know, if you have a memory that is harrowing or sobering, that's okay to share too!

Jack Frost and Mrs. Thaw

Happy December! Jack Frost arrived this morning and reminded me that it's probably too late to weed my neglected garden. By mid-day, the frost had all melted. Thus, the struggle between Jack Frost and Mrs. Thaw, as recounted in Ollie's Ski Trip by Elsa Beskow, begins in Seattle, Washington.

I have both a Jack Frost and a Mrs. Thaw in my shop right now:



When my daughter was in a Waldorf parent-tot class, we sang a song based on the poem "Jack Frost Was in the Garden" by John P. Smeeton. I'll have to locate the song again and perhaps record it for A Storytelling of Crows. I posted the Fire Fairy Song yesterday.

As a reminder, two lovely saints' festivals are coming up: St. Nicholas Day on December 6, and St. Lucia Day on December 13.

Love Past All Measure: An Advent and Christmas Music Mix

For Diana (of St. Fiacre's Garden) and others who who find some winter holiday songs completely unbearable, here is my Advent and Christmas mix. It's called "Love Past All Measure," a line taken from "Lullaby from Poland" by Madeline MacNeil. "Coventry Carol" by Loreena McKennitt, is of course for after Christmas, and it's a wretchedly sad song. Then again, even the proportedly merry tunes have overtones of things to come during Lent and the Holy Triduum. Take, for instance, We Three Kings. It starts out so merrily, but by the fourth verse you've got:

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes of life of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in the stone-cold tomb...

I prefer O Come O Come Emmanuel-- right from the start, you know what you're in for:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.

On my mix, Sufijan Stevens performs it with a banjo. Steve Martin says, "You just can't sing a depressing song when you're playing the banjo. You can't go...'Oh, murder and death and grief and sorrow!'" Sufijan Stevens makes it happen. I've never heard "Rejoice, rejoice" sound so mournful.

Some of these songs you may like, and some of them you probably won't. I've included a list of the albums from which the songs come so that you may find them more easily.

LOVE PAST ALL MEASURE: Songs for Christmas and Advent

1) Awake and Join the Cheerful Choir—Anonymous 4
2) I Wonder as I Wander—Emily Von Evera
3) O Come O Come Emmanuel—Sufijan Stevens
4) Blessed Be the Maid Marie— Madeline MacNeil
5) Seven Rejoices of Mary—Anonymous 4
6) God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen—Loreena McKennitt
7) O Holy Night--Tracy Chapman
8) Coventry Carol—Loreena McKennitt
9) Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming—Diane Taraz
10) Three Ships—Cyndi Lauper
11) Good King Wenceslas—Loreena McKennitt
12) What Child is This?— Madeline MacNeil
13) Il Est Ne, Le Divin Enfant—Diane Taraz
14)Can Wassel—Anonymous 4
15) Lullaby from Poland/ Winter Waltz—Madeline MacNeil
16)Christ Child’s Lullaby—Kathy Mattea

Amended to include:
17) Silent Night--Sinead O'Connor

ALBUMS USED

Anonymous 4: Wolcum Yule
Cyndi Lauper: Merry Christmas... Have a Nice Life
Loreena McKennitt: A Winter Garden: Five Songs for the Season
Madeline MacNeil: The Holly and the Ivy
Kathy Mattea: The Best Of Celtic Christmas
Sinead O'Connor: Alternative Rock X-Mas
Sufijan Stevens: Songs for Christmas
Diane Tiraz: Hope Says the Holly
Emily Van Evera, Taverner Consort and Choir: The Ultimate Classical Christmas Album Of All Time

P.S. Tomorrow is St. Nicholas' Day. Remember to put out a shoe tonight in the hopes of receiving treats tomorrow. When I was little, I felt sorry for children who had Santa Claus, who only came to visit once in December. (Then again, I did get coal in my shoe.)

Three Wishes and One Too Many Shaggy Dogs

Most of the improvisational stories I tell Lucia have simple plots. I learned early on that Lucia was less concerned with what the characters did than what their names were and what they wore. Originally, I distracted a howling Lucia in the bathtub by telling her about her dolly Pepper’s eleven brothers and sisters. I gave them all flower names, i.e. Hyacinth, Carnation, Lily-of-the-Valley, et al, and Lucia supplied them with differently colored capes. When Pepper’s numerous siblings go swimming, they all have to have water-wings, flippers, snorkeling gear and spectacular bathing suits. These shaggy-dog tales I tell have made bath-time much more endurable.

Bedtime is a different story, literally. As much as Lucia would like for me to tell long, sprawling anecdotes about Pepper, Queen Cleopatra, Princess Saffron (Pepper’s auntie and mother of Salt) and Simon the Wizard, I want to move the bedtime ritual along so that I have the evening for my grown-up time. Again, they are not big on plot, but they serve the purpose for which I intend. Here is a story I often tell Lucia:

One day, Cleopatra decided to go fishing on her barge. She dropping the fishing line over the side of the barge and waited for a fish to bite. Very soon, she felt a tug on the line. “That must be a fish!” Cleopatra said. She pulled up the line, but instead of a fish, there was a bottle attached to the end of the line.

Cleopatra opened the bottle. Out popped a fairy. “Thank you for freeing me, Cleopatra!” the fairy said. “In thanks, I will grant you three wishes. What is your first wish?”
[Lucia replies: “A mermaid dolly!”]
“You shall have your mermaid dolly,” the fairy said. “What is your second wish?”
[Lucia: A hat!”]
“Here is your hat,” the fairy said, and gave Cleopatra a purple hat with a red feather. “What is your third wish?”
[Lucia: “Two scepters!”]
“Here you are,” the fairy said, presenting Cleopatra with one gold scepter and one silver scepter.

“Now that I have granted you three wishes, I shall fly about the world to see what I’ve missed,” the fairy said. Cleopatra sailed her barge home, then played with her mermaid dolly, wore her hat, and waved around her two scepters. She told her friends all about the fairy and the three wishes, and they thought that maybe they too would find a fairy trapped in a bottle. However, when they went out fishing in the Nile River, all they ever found in the water was fish.

The End




Left to right: Cleopatra the Queen, Simon the Wizard, Marie the Mermaid, Lucia the Girl

Afterword
Yesterday, Lucia found a Playmobil mermaid dolly in the shoe she had placed by the fireplace for St. Nicholas’s visit. Throughout the day, she looked affectionately at the dolly, newly named Marie, and said, “It’s on your wish-list!” When Lucia gets older, she'll learn those folktales about the fallacies of wishing for too much, a la "Fisherman and His Wife," and all its derivatives. For now, her wishes are tangible and reasonable.

Advent Notes

After Lucia set up the felt Kyrgyz Nativity set, she brought visitors in addition to the Magi. And no, she hadn't read Susan Fletcher's The Alphabet of Dreams.


Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Lucia has already opened the first two doors of her Advent calendar. While she wants to open all the doors at once, she is starting to grasp the idea of the progression of days. If you'd like your own online Advent calendar, here is a link to this year's edition of The Cat Who Laughed. (You may find previous years' calendars here.

St. Nicholas' Day is coming up on December 6th. Ever since I was a little girl, I put out my shoe the night before with hopes of finding good things the next morning. I did indeed get a lump of coal one year, but I knew that St. Nicholas was not the person who left the coal in my shoe. I lived in coal country, after all. I was pretty lucky: St. Nicholas left gifts for me on both the 6th and the 25th. For stories about the saint as well as ways people around the world celebrate the feast day, click here.

Waiting for Saint Nicholas

Footwear left to right: Bede, Brad, Lucia, Alkelda (as usual, Ulric has too much dignity for such an affair)
We have put out our shoes and boots by the fireplace and hope for good things from Saint Nicholas, whose Feast Day is December 6. When I was a child, Saint Nicholas came first on his Feast Day to put presents in my shoe, and then stood in for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve to put presents in my stocking. In the early years, I did receive lumps of coal from time to time, in addition to an orange and a present. Yes, I was a difficult child, but I was also whip-smart: my father was a coal-miner, and I figured he put the lump of coal in my shoe for a joke. Sometimes I received a switch in my stocking along with the presents. Again, I suspected my parents of sneaking it in.* It wasn't that I believed someone actually came down a chimney (or on horse, as the historical St. Nicholas would have traveled), but I had a sense of wonder and gratitude that someone was rooting for me. Most of my relatives assure me now that they doted upon me, and I believe them, but many of my memories involve making people cross without understanding what I had done to upset them. St. Nicholas was someone who believed in my goodness.

It was only many years later that I realized the person who was rooting for me the whole time was my Grandma Orpha. Of my three grandmothers, Grandma Orpha was the one who was actually strict with me. However, she was the one who scolded my mother for putting the switch in my stocking. Grandma was not materialistic, but she paid attention to my various worldly wishes. As a teenager, I wanted a black leather skirt. I envisioned something small and scandalous, but when I opened my Christmas package, I found a full-length, wide-sweeping leather skirt that I could actually wear to school. In that same era, I wanted a crystal necklace akin to the one my idol, Joan Jett, wore. It showed up in my stocking.

I don't like to accumulate possessions, but I do like presents. I like to give and I like to receive. There is something thrilling about quietly noting what someone desires or needs, and finding some way of granting those wishes. While it is nice to have a little money to spend upon gifts,especially for the raw materials one needs to create something lovely, it is not necessary. (Yes, Brad the Gorilla, I know you absolutely positively NEED a fancy new sportscar, but you will have to make do with a knitted hat.)

Happy St. Nicholas Day! Place your wishes in the comments section. For what do you long that money can't buy?

*My parents are actually quite loving and generous. I think the stress of having a wild and wooly child probably took its toll in various forms of comic relief such as the ones I mentioned. Can you tell that I'm slightly more sympathetic now that I have a child of my own?!