The final verse of "Deck the Halls", omitting all the "Fa-la-las", goes "Fast away the old year passes. Hail the new, ye lads and lasses, Sing we joyous all together, heedless of the wind and weather!"
The coming week is already the new year. I enjoy the mysteries by Lee Strauss about Ginger Gold set in the 1920s. In her blog, Strauss comments:
Can you believe that the 1920s are now officially 100
years ago? My grandfather was born in “the twenties” but now I guess we
can no longer generalize like that. A brand new generation of people are
soon to be born in “the twenties”. Boy do I feel old!
Speaking of the 1920s…
Ginger Gold Mystery #12!
Ginger Gold allows me to live vicariously in the 1920s through her,
and I'm so happy about that. The 12th book is coming in January 2020.
I've been looking back at the 1920s with my newest program, "High Times in the Dry Times" about Prohibition here in Michigan. It looks primarily at how our two year head-start and location led to our providing 75% of the smuggled alcohol. (While preparing it I thought that amount sounded high, but, if anything, it may be a bit low.) A frequent reaction is how much the 1920s sound like today. My reporter persona looks back from the mid-30s, so I have to let the audience draw their own conclusions.
Take a look at January 3, 1920. Unfortunately it isn't easily scanned as even the full page size is not the clearest at Historical Newspapers, but the front page of the Detroit Free Press is packed with deportation, murder, banned substances (in 1920 it was alcohol), racial problems, multi-million dollar robbery, a D.U.I. caused car crash, factory explosion, world news, and more, including, yes, the wind and weather.
I hope you have fun with living vicariously in the 1920s, but suspect you may have celebrated the arrival 2020 with something that was illegal back then.
I'm sure 2020 will have a lot of similar problems, but let's hope it also gives us reason to "Hail the new, ye lads and lasses, Sing we joyous all together" since there's not a lot we can do about the wind and weather.
Everybody keeps saying that Thanksgiving came at the latest possible time this year, making the time before Christmas extra short! In keeping with that, here's a short easy to tell Christmas legend. I told it at the Milford Garden Club as part of my Victorian Christmas program. As the Hired Girl I told as if it was 1902. (Read on for why that date should change to 1903.) I tell how old Queen Victoria just barely made it into the new century, dying January 22, 1901. Today's story was requested by an audience member. I had originally found it in an anthology of public domain stories, but it only said the author was "Aunt Hede." I found nothing about the mysterious "Aunt Hede", but searching everywhere I learned it was originally posted in Kindergarten Magazine, 1903! If I had seen that I might have omitted it, but it clearly is for all ages. I found it included in a great many Christmas anthologies convincing me there is no age limit for appreciating it.
My book starts with barely a paragraph on one page and the rest on the second page. I could scan my book, but the sizing wouldn't be as well done as in this newsletter's front page from "The Chronicles of the Ontario County Historical Society Museum and Research Center" December 2016.
How the Fir Tree Became the Christmas Tree by Aunt Hede, in "“Kindergarten Magazine”, December 1903
This is the story of how the fir tree became the Christmas tree. At the time when the Christ Child was born all the people, the animals, and the trees, and plants were very happy. The Child was born to bring peace and happiness to the whole world. People came daily to see the little One, and they always brought gifts with them. There were three trees standing near the crypt which saw the people, and they wished that they, too, might give presents to the Christ Child. The Palm said: "I will choose my most beautiful leaf, and place it as a fan over the Child." "And I," said the Olive, "will sprinkle sweet-smelling oil upon His head." "What can I give to the Child?" asked the Fir, who stood near. "You!" cried the others. "You have nothing to offer Him. Your needles would prick Him, and your tears are sticky." So the poor little Fir tree was very unhappy, and it said: "Yes, you are right. I have nothing to offer the Christ Child." Now, quite near the trees stood the Christmas Angel, who had heard all that the trees had said. The Angel was sorry for the Fir tree who was so lowly and without envy of the other trees. So, when it was dark, and the stars came out, he begged a few of the little stars to come down and rest upon the branches of the Fir tree. They did as the Christmas Angel asked, and the Fir tree shone suddenly with a beautiful light. And, at that very moment, the Christ Child opened His eyes—for He had been asleep—and as the lovely light fell upon Him. He smiled. Every year people keep the dear Christ Child's birthday by giving gifts to each other, and every year, in remembrance of His first birthday, the Christmas Angel places in every house a fir tree, also. Covered with starry candles it shines for the children as the stars shone for the Christ Child. The Fir tree was rewarded for its meekness, for to no other tree is it given to shine upon so many happy faces. May your own Christmas shine upon happy faces! *******************
This
is part of a series of postings of stories under the category,
"Keeping the Public in Public Domain." The idea
behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the
authors and their immediate heirs were compensated. I feel
strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the
20th century. My
own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public
Domain I decided to share stories from them. I hope you enjoy
discovering new stories.
At
the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates
projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an
audience. Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing
of Public Domain stories will not occur that week. This is a return to
my regular posting of a research project here. (Don't worry, this
isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future
storytelling to an audience.) Response has convinced me that "Keeping
the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other
postings as often as I can manage it.
Other
Public Domain story resources I recommend-
There
are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for
folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's
database, Yashpeh,
the International Folktales Collection. I have long
recommended it and continue to do so. He has loaded
Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so
you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression
you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
You may have noticed I'm no
longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his
offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking
specific types of stories. There's another site, FairyTalez
claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales,
folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for
phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
Between those two sites, there
is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait,
there's more!"
The
email list for storytellers, Storytell,
discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional
suggestions:
-
Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible
through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's
wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google
search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ . It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016 and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
-
World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com
doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her
way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for
finding new books and stories to love and tell.
You're
going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT
go to the Internet Archive
Wayback Machine to find some of these old links. Tim's
site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a
full-time job. In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that
Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she
could no longer maintain it. Possibly searches maintained it.
Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim
Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old
Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library
(something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine. It
took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally
in December of 2006 it appears!
Somebody
as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website
is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.
I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can
be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that
becomes the only way to find them.
You
can see why I recommend these to you.Have fun
discovering even more stories!
A lot of people have their Christmas tree up, but I'll bet that, no matter how much trouble it may have caused, it was nothing like today's story of "The Peterkins' Christmas Tree."
The illustration to the left comes from a website called Garden Therapy; Better Living Through Plants and the article there on "How to Make a Nine-Foot Grinch Tree" . Of course that refers back to the Doctor Seuss story about How the Grinch Stole Christmas! including that long tree which the Grinch's poor dog, Max, pulled up the mountain. (The book's Wikipedia link gives some interesting inside views about it.) If you go to the article on making one, you will see not only how to do it, but various versions of it.
My reason for muddying the storytelling waters here with a decidedly not Public Domain tale (even though it's become a major Christmas tradition in many formats) is the way it clearly touches the ceiling, a ceiling complete with the mitered corners put in place by a carpenter.
The Peterkins did precisely that, calling a carpenter to literally raise the roof -- or at least the ceiling -- to accommodate their tree. Back on November 23rd I gave the first glimpse of the Peterkins with their story of "Why the Peterkins Had a Late Dinner." I've never told that story, although maybe in the future I will. Today's story, however, will once again be part of my Victorian Christmas program when I tell as the Hired Girl. This year I've particularly had the program spotlight the botanical aspects of Christmas in my stories because I'm telling to a Garden Club, but this story is from 1880 and would have definitely been popular around the turn of the century when my Hired Girl persona would look back on the way the holiday changed due to the influence of old Queen Victoria who barely made it into the 20th century by dying on January 22, 1901.
I gave a hint of the Peterkins with their own Wikipedia article which said:
The Peterkins were a large family who were extremely intelligent, but
didn't have a lick of common sense among them. Whenever they were
confronted with a problem that had a simple solution and a complex one,
they unerringly went for the complex one--the simple one never occurred
to them. They were usually rescued by their neighbor, the Lady from
Philadelphia, known for her wisdom; which usually amounted to the plain,
commonsense solution that had been staring them in the face and which
any normal person would have seized on immediately.
I also gave various links about the author and her famous relatives and ancestor, but if you have the least bit of curiosity look up the New England Historical Society article about Lucretia Hale's inspiration! It's somewhat like Doctor Seuss (Theodore Geisel) confessing about his creation of the Grinch. I find it's always fun to know how an author or any kind of artist lets something lead to a creative work.
I believe strongly in keeping these stories in the Public Domain, but also recognize they need people remembering them. In the 1960s the book was republished and a whole new audience discovered them. I've not seen Elizabeth Spurr's The Peterkins' Christmas, as a picture book illustrated by Wendy Anderson Halperin, but the book information says Spurr adapted it. I've also just discovered the 11/23 posting of "Why the Peterkins Had a Late Dinner" has been similarly adapted by Spurr and Halperin as a "companion book", The Peterkins' Thanksgiving. **********************
This
is part of a series of postings of stories under the category,
"Keeping the Public in Public Domain." The idea
behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the
authors and their immediate heirs were compensated. I feel
strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the
20th century. My
own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public
Domain I decided to share stories from them. I hope you enjoy
discovering new stories.
At
the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates
projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an
audience. Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing
of Public Domain stories will not occur that week. This is a return to
my regular posting of a research project here. (Don't worry, this
isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future
storytelling to an audience.) Response has convinced me that "Keeping
the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other
postings as often as I can manage it.
Other
Public Domain story resources I recommend-
There
are many online resources for Public Domain stories, maybe none for
folklore is as ambitious as fellow storyteller, Yoel Perez's
database, Yashpeh,
the International Folktales Collection. I have long
recommended it and continue to do so. He has loaded
Stith Thompson's Motif Index into his server as a database so
you can search the whole 6 volumes for whatever word or expression
you like by pressing one key. http://folkmasa.org/motiv/motif.htm
You may have noticed I'm no
longer certain Dr. Perez has the largest database, although his
offering the Motif Index certainly qualifies for those of us seeking
specific types of stories. There's another site, FairyTalez
claiming to be the largest, with "over 2000 fairy tales,
folktales, and fables" and they are "fully optimized for
phones, tablets, and PCs", free and presented without ads.
Between those two sites, there
is much for story-lovers, but as they say in infomercials, "Wait,
there's more!"
The
email list for storytellers, Storytell,
discussed Online Story Sources and came up with these additional
suggestions:
-
Story-Lovers - http://www.story-lovers.com/ is now only accessible
through the Wayback Machine, described below, but Jackie Baldwin's
wonderful site lives on there, fully searchable manually (the Google
search doesn't work), at https://archive.org/ . It's not easy, but go to Story-lovers.com snapshot for October 22 2016 and you can click on SOS: Searching Out Stories to scroll down through the many story topics and click on the story topic that interests you.
-
World of Tales - http://www.worldoftales.com/ - Zalka Csenge Virag - http://multicoloreddiary.blogspot.com
doesn't give the actual stories, but her recommendations, working her
way through each country on a continent, give excellent ideas for
finding new books and stories to love and tell.
You're
going to find many of the links on these sites have gone down, BUT
go to the Internet Archive
Wayback Machine to find some of these old links. Tim's
site, for example, is so huge probably updating it would be a
full-time job. In the case of Story-Lovers, it's great that
Jackie Baldwin set it up to stay online as long as it did after she
could no longer maintain it. Possibly searches maintained it.
Unfortunately Storytell list member, Papa Joe is on both Tim
Sheppard's site and Story-Lovers, but he no longer maintains his old
Papa Joe's Traveling Storytelling Show website and his Library
(something you want to see!) is now only on the Wayback Machine. It
took some patience working back through claims of snapshots but finally
in December of 2006 it appears!
Somebody
as of this writing whose stories can still be found by his website
is the late Chuck Larkin - http://chucklarkin.com/stories.html.
I prefer to list these sites by their complete address so they can
be found by the Wayback Machine, a.k.a. Archive.org, when that
becomes the only way to find them.
You
can see why I recommend these to you.Have fun
discovering even more stories!
If you're a triskaidekaphobe (fearing or hating the number 13 and, especially, Friday the 13th), this year's December, Friday the 13th, gives you a double reason to Look Out! for the Yule Lads Are Coming! They always start one at a time on the 12th, each joining his brothers, and continuing through Christmas, finally leaving one at a time through the 12 Days of Christmas.
Who are they?
They began as a 17th century tradition meant to keep children being good for
Christmas. It changed over time to 13 Santa-ish characters leaving
small gifts and playing pranks.
A storyteller I remember from back in the days of Flint Area Story Tellers, Stephanie Brewer, every year at this time would bring out little rustic troll figures and share the Icelandic tradition of the Yule Lads. She's been gone, telling in the Great Beyond for several years now, but I've looked to find some of those troll figures for several years to share their story. Hers were not the figurines sold for a set at $249 USD. (Definitely beyond my budget.) Thanks to the internet I now know much more, including a more affordable way to present them. I searched Wikipedia; the Icelandic promotional site called The Big Picture from Inspired by Iceland; an Icelandic online news magazine - ; an unusual blog called Cryptoville.com; an archived webpage on poet Jóhannes úr Kötlum; his publisher Griffla's Facebook page; and Griffla's own webpage for Christmas Is Coming.
The Wikipedia article gives you a chart with each lad's characteristic and date of arrival and departure. It also mentions something not in the poem, "Christmas Is Coming", the ancient tradition of the family having a huge, vicious Yule Cat who eats people not having new clothes for Christmas! This is explained as a farmers' incentive "for their workers to finish processing the autumn wool
before Christmas. The ones who took part in the work would be rewarded
with new clothes, but those who did not would get nothing and thus would
be preyed upon by the monstrous cat." A milder form of activity is "merely eating away the food of ones without new clothes." For more on the Yule Cat, including that illustration, go to Cryptoville.com's article on "Iceland's Killer Christmas Cat" including a poem all his own again by Jóhannes úr Kötlum.
I've finally found a way to tell about the Yule Lads using these illustrations from The Big Picture, which can be made larger and taken one at a time.
I've no idea who this modern artist was. I did send off an email requesting permission to use their webpage. I received an email from Inspired by Iceland that began
Takk fyrir skráninguna.
Við höfum móttekið beiðni þína.
Bestu kveðjur,
Inspired by Iceland
Fortunately that was followed by its English translation
Thank you for being in touch with us. Your inquiry has been
received. Best regards, Inspired by Iceland
Please note: this email was sent from a notification-only address
that can't accept incoming emails. Please do not reply to this
Well! I may need to take down the composite illustration here depending on what they require. I hope not, but my telling about the Yule Lads now has an illustration for each individually.
To be perfectly honest a story needs a plot and the poem doesn't have a lot. In the 17th century it began as "Poem of Gryla" and was about their "hideous...mother of the gigantic Yule Lads who are a menace to children." As often happens in really old folklore, bad children were eaten. The King of Denmark objected to that. Over time their characteristics changed, finally in 1932 the Icelandic poet, Jóhannes úr Kötlum, made a poem that has been a best selling book, Christmas Is Coming, for his publisher, Griffla, when it was translated into English by Hallberg Hallmundsson and illustrated by Tryggvi Magnússon. Publishers aren't always willing to grant reprint rights, so for more information on Kötlum, Hallmundsson, and Magnússon go to Griffla's own webpage for Christmas Is Coming where you may order it or you can buy an e-book of the poem on Amazon.
The closest to a plot you receive in the poem we now have is that Gryla, their mother gives them "ogre milk", but Inspired by Iceland isn't afraid of the part that the Danish king rejected, saying
She is a dreadful character, described as part troll and part animal and
the mother of 13 precocious boys (the Yule Lads). Grýla lives in the
mountains with her third husband, her thirteen children and a black cat.
Every Christmas, Grýla and her sons come down from the mountains: Grýla
in search of naughty children to boil in her cauldron and the boys in
search of mischief. She can only capture children who misbehave but
those who repent must be released.
and the father with the very Icelandic name of Leppaludi, described in the poem as a "loathsome ilk" (rhymes with that ogre milk) and described by Inspired by Iceland as not evil but lazy. He also seems to have no other part in the story, so he seems to be an optional character. As you can see, the story has changed over time. The Reykjavík Grapevinesummarizes it
Iceland’s leading authority on Christmas, Árni Björnsson, explains that
folktales naturally change. “When the Yuletide lads are first mentioned
in the 17th century, they are child-eating trolls,” he says. “Then two
hundred years later, in the 19th century, they aren’t really trolls
anymore, but they are still ugly. They don’t eat children, but they
still steal food.” Then finally, in the 20th century, they are still
mischievous, but they begin leaving small gifts for kids who put their
shoe in the window.
There's more to the story behind the change, which the Grapevine does a great job of showing how it included a clash with the Christmas cultures of Denmark and Germany.
To catch the introductory section from Kötlum's poem before the Yule Lads appear, go to Archive.org and in the search box enter http://notendur.centrum.is/sjbokband/joh.html/yulelads00.html, then choose the year 2007, finally clicking on December 22. You can also see and hear the original Jóhannes úr Kötlum poem on YouTube, complete with the book's original illustrations (even though it took a graphic from what I posted above). Another way is on Griffla's Facebook page, if you scroll down to December 11, 2017, it gives you a Yule lad per day, just as they traditionally appear.
The librarian in me also loves the Icelandic tradition of the Christmas Book Flood ensuring a book for everyone to enjoy. You may be sure I followed that tradition even though I didn't know it was also Icelandic! My family should expect it by now.
Something else I hope you will join me in gifting is a small donation to Wikipedia and to Archive.org as they are a great resource we'd hate to lose.
This next week I'll be telling as the Hired Girl for a Victorian Christmas program, also my Michigan Prohibition program, High Times in the Dry Times, so enjoy celebrating the holidays in whatever way works for you.
