Three beautiful things from this past week:

1. Susan invites me to join their family for the annual tuba concert at the Kennedy Center. This year, it’s held in the concert hall, rather than the atrium, which means we are literally surrounded by tubas, sousaphones, and euphoniums on all sides. Also, it’s very exciting when they ask kids in the audience to help out with “Jingle Bells” and their daughter heads up on stage.

2. My coworker and I brave the cold to go out for a bowl of soup and to catch up on how our holiday prep is going.

3. My Secret Santa (arranged by The Broke & The Bookish) package arrived and is full of anticipatory pleasure: it contains a dozen wrapped items for me to open over the coming days. (I’ll share them all with you later on…) Thanks, Gina, for so much fun!

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world recently?

Welcome to Day 15 of the Virtual Advent Tour!

Today, we had back to raidergirl3 at an adventure in reading for a seasonal cookie recipe that sounds delicious.

Thanks, raidergirl3, for taking part in this year’s tour!

Check back here tomorrow for the next stop on the Virtual Advent Tour. And if you’re interested in taking part in the tour, badges, details, and sign-up info can be found here. We’d love to have you participate.

Welcome to Day 14 of the Virtual Advent Tour!

Charlie Brown: “My trouble is Christmas. I just don’t understand it. Instead of feeling happy, I feel sort of let down.” Lucy: “You need involvement. You need to get involved in some real Christmas project.”
~ A Charlie Brown Christmas

• If the news out of east Aleppo, Syria, has you despairing for the citizens being massacred (particularly now that yesterday’s cease fire truce has been violated), consider donating to the White Helmets, a non-governmental volunteer force who are doing rescue and recovery work in rebel-controlled areas. (The latest edits to Wikipedia claim there is some controversy surrounding whether the White Helmets are as positive a force as they claim to be; I leave it to you to decide whether this claim has merit.)
• Doctors without Borders/Medecins sans Frontieres is an international community of medical aid workers. They serve those ” affected by armed conflict, epidemics, healthcare exclusion and natural or man-made disasters.” (N.B. to knitters: The Yarn Harlot keeps a running tally of donations from yarnie folks.) U.S./Canada/International
• The Red Cross helps folks in the event of disaster, be it as local as an apartment fire that displaces a single family to natural disasters that wreak havoc on millions. (Yes, they have ridiculous, bigoted rules for donating blood that haven’t been updated since the worst of the AIDS epidemic, but the good they do in the other aspects of their work can’t be denied.) U.S./Canada/International

Tonight I want to tell you the story of an empty stocking. Once upon a midnight clear, there was a child’s cry. A blazing star hung over a stable, and wise men came with birthday gifts. We haven’t forgotten that night down the centuries. We celebrate it with stars on Christmas trees, with the sound of bells, and with gifts. But especially with gifts. You give me a book; I give you a tie. Aunt Martha has always wanted an orange squeezer. My uncle Henry could do with a new pipe. We forget nobody, adult or child. All the stockings are filled. All that is except one. And we have even forgotten to hang it up. A stocking for the child born in a manger. It’s his birthday we’re celebrating. Don’t let us ever forget that. Let us ask ourselves what he would wish for most. And then let each put in his share: Loving kindess, warm hearts, and the stretched out hand of tolerance. All the shining gifts that make peace on earth.
~The Bishop’s Wife

• It seems to be too late to donate gifts to Toys for Tots in most places this year, but here’s an option for some folks: Be an Elf: If you live in one of 15 metro areas around the U.S., you can head to the post office and answer a child’s letter to Santa. Deadlines vary, but some are as late as the end of next week.
• First Book puts books and other educational resources in the hands of low-income kids who might not otherwise own any books.
• Finally, consider a donation to your local library. In addition to offering traditional materials, such as books, periodicals, and reference materials, libraries offer classes, story times, community meeting space, job resources, and digital media, as well as rudimentary services (and daytime shelter) for low-income and homeless members of your town.

Where do you send your holiday donations at this time of the year?

Check back here tomorrow for the next stop on the Virtual Advent Tour. And if you’re interested in taking part in the tour, badges, details, and sign-up info can be found here. We’d love to have you participate.

Welcome to Day 13 of the Virtual Advent Tour!

Today’s post comes from Rudi at randomduck, who shares some of his favorite alternative holiday video and tv parodies.

Thanks once again, Rudi, for taking part in this year’s tour!

Check back here tomorrow for the next stop on the Virtual Advent Tour. And if you’re interested in taking part in the tour, badges, details, and sign-up info can be found here. We’d love to have you participate.

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from The Broke and the Bookish asks about the Top Ten Books We’re Looking Forward to for the First Half of 2017:

(Natalie Lloyd and Jasper Fforde both purportedly have books being published in 2017, so obviously if their novels come out, they’ll jump high up on my list. Pending that…)

1. Becky Albertalli’s The Upside of Unrequited
2. Deanna Raybourn’s A Perilous Undertaking (2nd in the Veronica Speedwell series)
3. Adam Silvera’s History Is All You Left Me
4. Steve Sheinkin’s Undefeated: Jim Thorpe and the Carlisle Indian School Football Team
5. Jennifer Chambliss Bertman’s The Unbreakable Code (follow-up to Book Scavenger)
6. Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s The Inexplicable Logic of My Life
7. Roxane Gay’s Difficult Women
8. Ashley Poston’s Geekerella
9. Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay
10. Elizabeth Wein’s The Pearl Thief (prequel to Code Name Verity)

How about you? Any upcoming titles you’re particularly looking forward to?

Welcome to Day 12 of the Virtual Advent Tour!

Today marks the halfway mark of the Virtual Advent Tour. Thanks to everyone who has shared a post thus far. I’ve really enjoyed reading them all and sharing some small part of our holidays together.

May I suggest you give yourself a hot top on your coffee or grab a fresh cuppa before clicking through for today’s visit? Writer Áine Greney recollects her first Christmas in the United States and takes us back in time to the mid-1980s and a small city in upstate New York for Spinning the Bottle at Christmastime in America.

Thank you, Áine, for today’s post and joining us once more for this year’s tour!

Check back here tomorrow for the next stop on the Virtual Advent Tour. And if you’re interested in taking part in the tour, badges, details, and sign-up info can be found here. We’d love to have you participate.