A Writer's Desk: Holidays

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

10 Vintage Christmas Books to Open on Christmas Morning

The list, care of AbeBooks.

A Love Letter to the Christmas Card

The Telegraph waxes poetic.

From the piece...

This year the Christmas card celebrates its 170th birthday. Its beginnings were based on a personal malaise we increasingly acknowledge in our own lives: the concept of being “time poor”. In 1843, a man called Henry Cole found himself overwhelmed with work, and reasoned that he wasn’t alone in this predicament. But perhaps few were as busy as Cole. You may recognise his name as a founder and director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, but, as a trusted favourite of Prince Albert, he also appeared to be engaged in almost every other major arts, design and progressive educational project in London. He was practical too, helping to design everything from new teapots to universal penny postage (he was postal reformer Rowland Hill’s chief assistant). The notion of sending messages at the close of the year dates back to pagan times, but in the first years of Queen Victoria’s reign it was a custom predominantly practised by elaborate letter.

Friday, December 13, 2013

12 Interesting Literary Facts about Christmas

The list, care of the Huffington Post.

From said list...

7. Much of our modern idea of Santa Claus comes from the 1823 poem 'A Visit from St Nicholas.'
More commonly known by its first line, ''Twas the night before Christmas,' this poem popularized the image of St. Nick as a jolly fat man wearing fur-trimmed red robes (long before the Coca-Cola adverts popularized this). The poem also introduced us to the names of all of Santa's reindeer. It was published anonymously, and probably written by an American professor called Clement Clarke Moore -- although this claim has been disputed by some.