We were going to get our Christmas tree on Monday, but it was a rainy day and not well suited to acquiring Christmas trees. Besides, I’d decided that the bay window in the living room where the tree sits needed some sprucing up. So after I got home from school that day, I began a project that, later on, Stacey and Miriam joined in on. As with all things in this old house, trying to fix one thing revealed a dozen other things that need fixing. We’ve lived here for over twenty years and still haven’t gotten around to fixing up the living room, probably because it is still functional, though shabby. Now that I think of it, this year, 2021, marks the one hundredth year the Howe family has lived in this house. My grandparents bought this house (the oldest part of which was built in 1869) in 1921 and when they moved downstate later, my great aunts moved in and lived here until we bought it and moved here in 2000.
So anyway, back to the bay window – I was just going to prime and paint the trim around the windows, but after a coat of primer, the peeling wallpaper around them looked too obvious. The walls in the living room are crumbling plaster covered with thick cardboard and a half dozen layers of wallpaper. Rather than pull it all off, we decided to just cover it with thin lumber paneling we had leftover from another project a few years ago. Cutting and fitting the pieces of paneling, mostly Stacey and Miriam’s work, took the rest of evening. Then on Tuesday morning, I primed and painted all of it. So the bay window looks nice, but now the rest of the room looks even shabbier. One of these years we will completely redo the whole room, but not now.
Tuesday evening we drove up to Greenman Hill and got our tree. It had been snowing off and on all day, which set a perfect wintry mood for our excursion. I’ve heard that Christmas trees are in short supply this year and Hannah, who works for Wending Creek Farms, the company that owns the tree farm, says it’s true. They cut and sent trees to their regular wholesale distributors and kept what they sell locally and they’ve been getting calls from all over asking for additional shipments of trees that they can’t send. They had a nice selection for us to choose from and since Hannah, Stacey, and sometimes Miriam work for the family that owns the business, we get our tree for free. We picked out a very pretty eight foot tall Canaan fir tree (Abies balsamea var. phanerolepis). Setting it up and decorating it took the rest of the evening. Hannah and Miriam are especially particular about light and ornament placement. I just sit back and watch them work. My job is to put on the bead garlands at the very end. All decked out, it is a beautiful tree and it fills the room with its sweet balsam fir perfume. Now our Christmas decorating is complete.
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| Trying to find the perfect tree. |
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| Baling the tree for transport. |
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| Home with the tree. |
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| Putting up the lights. |
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| All decorated. |
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| With the house lights turned off. |
So with the decorations, the tree, the baking, and a bit of snow (when it stays), it’s starting to look and feel very Christmassy at our house. We usually have Christmas music of some sort playing all day during the waking hours. From the silly secular winter songs to the beautiful sacred carols, we love Christmas music. And there is a lot of it! One site I looked at says that in December 2014, they checked online music catalogs and found 914,047 Christmas tracks – that’s just under a million and I’m sure there’s lots more now! But their way of counting is a bit deceptive because they counted the same song separately every time it occurred on a different online music site. That means that out of those 914,047 tracks, 2,196 of them were Bing Crosby’s classic White Christmas. Here are the 25 most common Christmas songs – the ones that have been recorded the most by any artist.
1 Silent Night 19,041
2 White Christmas 15,928
3 Jingle Bells 14,521
4 Winter Wonderland 9,524
5 Joy to the World 9,093
6 The First Noel 8,731
7 Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas 8,511
8 O Holy Night 7,925
9 Hark The Herald Angels Sing 7,727
10 The Christmas Song 7,673
11 Away in a Manger 7,544
12 God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen 7,524
13 O Little Town of Bethlehem 7,480
14 Santa Claus Is Coming To Town 6,851
15 I’ll Be Home for Christmas 6,844
16 O Come All Ye Faithful 6,273
17 Deck The Halls 6,057
18 Silver Bells 6,044
19 Ave Maria 5,847
20 What Child Is This? 5,755
21 We Wish You A Merry Christmas 5,619
22 It Came Upon A Midnight Clear 5,019
23 Sleigh Ride 5,004
24 Blue Christmas 4,688
25 Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! 4,598
Some of my favorite Christmas music doesn’t even appear on that list, but then I’ve explored the world of Christmas music enough that I might have developed a more eclectic list of favorites, especially when it comes to carols. I especially love the very old carols like Veni Veni Emmanuel (O Come, O Come Emmanuel, 8th century), Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (Lo, How a Rose Ere Blooming, 1599), In Dulci Jubilo (Good Christian Men Rejoice, 1328), The Wexford Carol (14th century), The Coventry Carol (16th century), and Corde natus ex Parentis (Of the Father's Love Begotten, 4th century). I love newer carols like John Rutter’s What Sweeter Music, and Candlelight Carol. One of my favorite carols not on the list is In the Bleak Mid-Winter.
In the Bleak Mid-Winter is based on a poem by the English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). She was a gifted poet from an interesting family. Her brother, Dante Gabriele Rossetti, was also a poet and an artist. He was one of the founders of the group of painters known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and he used his sister as a model in several of his paintings. Christina Rossetti was a popular published poet during her lifetime. In the Bleak Mid-Winter was first published in the January 1872 issue of Scribner's Monthly, under the title “A Christmas Carol.”
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
Nor earth sustain,
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty —
Jesus Christ.
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom Angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air;
But only His Mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.
Poor as I am? —
If I were a Shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part, —
Yet what I can I give Him, —
Give my heart.
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| Christina Rossetti in a drawing by her brother. |
In 1906, the composer Gustav Holst composed a setting of it for inclusion in The English Hymnal which is the most popular version of it. There is another setting composed by Harold Darke in 1909 which is also lovely.
We haven’t arrived at the bleak midwinter stage yet. It won’t officially be winter for another nine days and right now it doesn’t look like winter at all. Snow fell in flurries off and on through Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. By Thursday morning we had about three inches of it on the ground and it looked very Christmas card pretty. Then it warmed up on Friday and it all melted. Yesterday in the early morning a storm front came through and gave us a December thunderstorm. There was lightning and thunder and it poured rain for several hours. I believe it was part of the same system that brought devastation and tragedy to parts of the South and Midwest. So instead of looking like a Christmas card right now, we look like a soggy mess. Yesterday it was 58° here! And the forecast doesn’t show much chance for snow over at least the next ten days. I both like and hate that. It’s easier to do things like the chores and driving when there is no snow, but I want snow for Christmas. Besides, it isn’t good for the garden to have soggy, wet soil during the winter. The ground needs to freeze and have a nice layer of snow over it for the garden’s sake.
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| Thursday morning. |
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| Friday evening. |
The wind howled all day yesterday and into the night. This morning we awoke to a very light dusting of what I call “Pretzel Salt Snow,” but the sun is shining brightly today and all of it is gone now except in the deepest shade. We are home from church now. Lunch is almost ready. The bright sunshine is deceptive. It makes me want to take a walk, but it’s only 35° out there, so I will only go out long enough to do the chores.
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| Miriam making lebkuchen. |
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| Lebkuchen. |
This week we will continue our preparations for the holiday. Miriam made lebkuchen yesterday and Bombard cookies, some of our favorite Christmas cookies, and she and Hannah will keep on baking all week. Over at the Shillig’s house, things are livening up. Kurt and Julie arrived home from a trip out west on Thursday and their daughter-in-law, Jillian, and granddaughters, Phi and Frejya, came with them. More family will be arriving over there shortly. On Friday, Josiah will be home. Then things will get a lot livelier here at our house.
