What do you do when you are celebrating your Christmas at your home? Keep things the same? Stick to tried and trusted
formulas? Or venture something much more radical? In my case, I turn to art, music and
literature for inspiration every year. This year, I have been inspired by the
German folktales and I would like to set my Christmas theme in the mysterious wood. There is
something magical about looking at a delicate shimmer of greenery flickering in the
sunlight and twisting paths glistening with dews as you walk into the wood in
the early hours of the morning. Listening to the chorus of the songbirds in the
deep grass track or the sound of woodpecker breaking into the gnarled,
wind-bent trees like bells ringing and echoing through the woodlands.
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German fairy tales and Adalbert Stifter's short stories are the inspiration for my Christmas decorations this year. A must read for this time of the year - Adalbert Stifter's classic short story - one of my favourites - Rock Crystal: A Christmas Tale (translated from the German by Elizabeth Mayer and the poet, Marianne Moore). Illustrated by Josef Scharl. Pantheon books, 1965.
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I must confess that I have recently been
unaccountably busy with work. I have neglected my writing of this blog for
several weeks. But I managed to do a lot of reading instead of writing. One of
the books that I re-read a few weeks ago was a classic German short story by
Adalbert Stifter called Rock Crystal: A
Christmas Tale, translated from the German by Elizabeth Mayer and the poet,
Marianne Moore. It was first published in 1843 under the title ‘Holy Eve’.
Stifter rewrote it and incorporated it in a collection of short stories which
he called Coloured Stones (Bunte Steine).
Each story in the collection is named after some mineral or semiprecious stones
which stands as a symbol for the character of the story and ‘Holy Eve’ was
renamed Rock Crystal. Stifter, who
was a perfectionist, later commented: ‘Were I permitted to polish and reset
this tale a third time, by the powers of heaven I believe it might become a
diamond’.
Rock Crystal was
re-published in 2008 in paperback format by NYBR Classics which contains a
beautiful introduction written by W. H. Auden. I fell in love with the writing
of Stifter immediately as soon as I started to read this short story. His
delicate and exquisite prose especially when describing nature – the sentences
are poetic and long but mannerly and crafted with extreme subtlety - there are
not many novelists today capable of that degree of psychological insight or
technical skill.
The beautiful and poetic description of the
valleys, the woodlands and the countryside in Stifter’s novella, Rock Crystal, gave me the inspiration
for decorating my Christmas dining table. I decided to bring the outside
indoors with little firs, ivy branches and leaves which I collected during my early
morning walk and set them all on white tablecloth and arrange them among the green
glassware. I use the complete set of bone China Royal Doulton dining set ‘Sonnet’
which also has a decoration of green and ivy leaves around the plates.
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I added beautiful Cicely Mary Barker's flower fairy painting cards which provide a perfect complement to this year's theme of German fairy tales.
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Christmas with Marilyn Horne and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (1997) is one of my all time favourite Christmas albums.
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I have invited three of my dearest friends
(including Gordon who is in charge of preparing food in the kitchen) who come
to have a Christmas luncheon with me every year. We shall listen to Christmas
songs beautifully sung by one of my favourite singers, Marilyn Horne. Since we are all balletomanes, it has become an
annual tradition to end our Christmas day with watching something soothing,
magical and fairy-tale setting in the delightful ballet interpretation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, with choreography by Frederick Ashton. At the end of the
ballet, we look forward to exchanging small gifts with each other.
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| The ballet programme for our evening entertainment after Christmas luncheon. |
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The Dream is a one-act ballet adapted from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, with choreography by Frederick Ashton to music by Felix Mendelssohn.
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| The frosted window and the interior with Christmas tree on a very cold December morning |
I wish you all a very merry Christmas. I send you
all my good thoughts and thanks and love on this holiday. I am grateful to you
all and I feel very blessed that our paths have crossed in our lifetime. Gratitude
is an enormous blessing that is available to all of us. I would like to thank
you for your friendship and support for not just today but for all the years
past.
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I use the complete bone China Royal Doulton
dining set ‘Sonnet’ which also has a decoration of green ivy leaves around
the plates.
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May your holidays shine brightly, may your hearts
be warm, may your new year be special with love and peace, and may all your
dreams and wishes come true....
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Enchanted Carols. CD Label: Saydisc (1993). A feast of Christmas music with Victorian musical boxes, Handbells, Church Bells, Barrel Organs, Street Pianos, Handbell Choir & Brass Band. This is a truly beautiful and nostalgic Christmas album for those who want to capture an old-fashioned Christmas from the bygone era. What could evoke more magical and magnificent aural experience of yearning and nostalgia than an old music box? I'd like to think that the old gaiety is much more superior than the new.
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Dearest ASD,
ReplyDeleteHow delightful to see your post of today. I have been thinking about you and hoped you were still blogging and writing and my wish came true.
Your Christmas luncheon hold so much promise. Your table setting and china set the stage. Delicious food, ballet and good music will ensure a successful Christmas day.
I am so happy that our paths have crossed and I wish you a very Happy Christmas and goodness, good health and joy in 2017. Regards to Gordon.
Helenxxx
My dear Helen, Thank you so much for your kind words and Christmas greetings. I send you all my good thoughts, and thanks and love on this holiday. I have been frightfully busy with work and that's why I have not been able to write my blog posts as regularly as before. I hope that I will be able to write more often in the new year. You are such an inspiration to me. I’ve been reading your blog for a number of years now, and it’s something I really look forward to. I hope you won't give up with your writing blog as and when the time permits.
DeleteWith my warmest wishes,
ASD xx
Everything is so beautiful! I hope your gathering and the New Year are filled with joy! Best to you and Gordon.
ReplyDeleteMy dear e,
DeleteWishing you a merry Christmas and a beautiful new year! Thank you so much for all your friendship over the years and sharing parts of your life with us on your blog, along with your thoughts and feelings. I feel privileged to have an opportunity to share your adventures and journeys with you. I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas together this year.
Best wishes, ASD
After some hours of happy, unexpected store-wandering this damp cold day, I was simply delighted just now to find the Christmas greeting from YOU!! What a lovely spirit shines through the words, and the wishes are most wonderful. We're all doing well, (especially with the news on Wednesday evening that our family will increase by one wee girl in June---most welcome tidings for our dear son and DDIL). I've been very slow about all the plans and activities for the season, hence todays excursion out with Caro for stocking-stuffers and bits and bobs of goodies for the upcoming several days.
ReplyDeleteWe picked up all sorts of wonderful things---bath pamperings for all the ladies, with dainty manicure sets for our two youngest girls (9 and 12), and small whisks and spatulas and kitchen accountrements for the same---both budding cooks and most interested in kitchen items.
I'm sure we grandly overdid in a nearby store, whose reputed LOW prices had led me to believe that their brands-I'd-never-heard of might be now QUITE quite, somehow, but I was much mistaken. It's immense and grand and immaculate and full of marvelous things---Caro outdid herself getting truffle butters and salamis and fabulous Stilton and Brie and Lox and some gorgeous jarred dark cherries (a flambe in our future, I'll wager).
I must get on with dinner, for chris is on his way---he's been in the same hour-away town these three days running, working on a printer the size of a Volkswagen, and the part arrived today, thank goodness, for that's safely accomplished. I'm always amazed at his expertise and acumen, and always happily relieved when the job is complete, for some of those things cost more than our car.
I must get me to the kitchen (finally immaculate in its own right, and ready for getting ready for tomorrows Christmas Eve dinner (lovely ribeyes on the grill, with a rainbow of tiny potatoes in a butter/sour cream sauce, a Romaine/Vidalia/mandarin salad with a tart vinaigrette, and as a remove from all the chocolates and spices of the Christmas sweets, a fragrant Peach Cobbler from the oven, with ice cream.
That will be with our in-town folks, and then we'll have a quiet brunch on Christmas Day, just us of the house, as we open our presents.
Monday will bring another brunch with the Ohio contingent---five fun and roisterous young folks, stamping in out of the cold and laying waste to pastries and fruit and quiche and tiny warm butter-brushed rolls filled with ham and cheese. We'll have another presents-opening with them gathered around the cocoa bar, before they depart for dinner about an hour south with their other grandparents.
I've just spilled out all the thoughts and plannings of my own small world, not including many phone calls and Skypes and gladdenings of the day by the other five and their families, scattered in four states. Close in Heart, though the miles . . .
And faraway you are, my friend, but no less treasured this blessed season. I look at your own exquisite plannings and arrangings, gold-lit by the sunshine and that tempting fire, and wish wish to sit at that table, numbered amongst your friends. Sumptuous and sublime are your words and your gifts for friendship and blessing us who know you.
Many, many happy moments to come this happy season!
rachel
PS I was also delighted to see that you love the pieces by CM Barker---I did not see the artist's name on your Violet Fairy, but it was so familiar that I thought at first it must have been the work of my own dear friend Myrea Pettit. She is supremely talented, as well, and adds so much to the world of whimsy and fairies and keeping the spirit of joy and imagination alive and well.
My dear Rachel,
DeleteThank you so much for taking time to write to me and send me all your good wishes during the hectic time as you prepare to celebrate Christmas with your family and the grandchildren. It’s meant a lot to me.
I hope you and your family have a wonderful Christmas together this year. I am sure that you will entertain all your friends and families in the most hospitable way and in the inimitable style. They are very lucky to have a wonderful hostess like you.
May your Christmas be filled with warmth and blessings, and good people. I hope you will have a wonderful holiday! And I am very grateful to and for you...my faraway friend. When I have Christmas luncheon with my friends tomorrow, I shall think of you and I am sure that you will be here in spirit. We are facing another unpredictable weather (storm, arrow-like rain and strong gale) tomorrow. So, we shall all be confined indoors, sitting by the fire and thinking of the time when the warm golden sun returns to us and when nature is no longer at a dead pause.
Happy Christmas to you and your family.
Best wishes, ASD
PS. I am so glad to hear that you like the whimsical flower fairy paintings that I put on my dining table by Cicely Mary Barker.