Today is the second Sunday of Advent and the final night of Hanukkah.
Our host for today is my partner, Rudi of Random Duck, who has something a little … different … to share today, with some interesting Catalan Christmas traditions. I don’t know where he finds these things…
Stop back tomorrow for something that’s likely to be less corporeal, but also less funny, behind the next Virtual Advent Tour door.
Category: christmas/holiday season. There is/are Comments Off on virtual advent tour 2018: day 9.
Happy Saturday, folks! We’re entering the second week of December today, which feels rushed to me, honestly. Wasn’t it just Halloween?
Today I’m playing host again and, after reading an article in my favorite local news website, DCist, earlier this week, I decided to head to Georgetown this afternoon to capture a local tradition of which I’d been unaware.
Every year since 2006, the David M. Schwarz Architects has built Gingertown, a planned gingerbread community. They release an urban planning document and invite other architects, urban planners, engineers, and contractors to design a building for it. They provide the gingerbread, frosting, and candy, as well as the site plan (which does specify that certain lots must be reserved for certain types of buildings, such as a mill or a tavern.
Teams, who earlier put in bids for specific lots and submitted a charitable entry contribution, have three hours to construct their building before judging commences.
This year the theme for the village was medieval, so in addition to some lots that were available for general construction, required buildings in Gingertown included Gingerella’s Castle, St. Cadbury’s Cathdral, Bazooka Barracks, and Bubblegum Bandit Camp.
(Below is the album slideshow, which you can navigate. I’d also encourage everyone to click through to Flickr to look at some of the building details, since the shots here are really too small to do any justice to the skill and whimsy that went into each building.)
This was a great village, where the cobblestones were cocoa pebbles cereal, bridges were pretzel rods, and jellybeans were waterways. The city did seem to have a dragon infestation, since I counted at least two definite dragons on roofs and a couple other rooftoppers that I think were dragons. I suppose even the best planned communities has some unforeseen problems. I cannot express to you how wonderful the foyer of this office building smelled. It was comparable to being in a room where gingerbread is baking.
After this weekend, the buildings will be separated and shipped off to various local charities, who will also benefit from the funds raised by participants. This really seems like a holiday win for everyone.
May your day be as sweet as mine was. I’ll see you back here tomorrow.
Welcome to day seven of this year’s Virtual Advent Tour!
We’ve made it a full week, friends, and I hope that your holiday celebrations continue apace. My tree is up and mostly decorated and I’ve started my shopping, which will continue this week. Tonight, I had a huge hankering for my grandmother’s cranberry bread, which she always made this time of year (and the recipe for which I shared during last year’s tour), so I suspect that will be on this weekend’s agenda.
Today’s host is Judith of Reader in the Wilderness, one of our first-time participants this year. She has a great post on her favorite Christmas reads of the past five years, which recalls the Virtual Advent Tour’s origins in the lit-blogging community. Please stop by her post and make her feel welcome!
I’ll see you back here tomorrow for our next calendar door!
Happy St. Nicholas Day! I hope you’ve all been good this year and receive only treats overnight in your shoes!
Today’s guest host is longtime Virtual Advent Tour contributor, raidergirl3, who has been a part of it since the beginning. (You can see her history of contributions here.) Today she shares why December 6th is such an important date in Canadian history.
Stop back tomorrow for yet another stop on the Virtual Advent Tour. (And if you’re interested in joining us, we still have some dates available for writers!)
Season’s Greetings! We’re already several days into Hanukkah, are officially into the Christian Advent season, and narrowing down on the end of the year. I hope you’re making the most of it, regardless of what you’re celebrating!
Speaking of celebrating, Nan at Letters from a Hill Farm is doing just that today and has a post full of family joy!
In the meantime, in honor of the third day and fourth night of Hanukkah today, I thought I’d share a video with you from a cappella group Six13:
Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks about our top ten list of cozy, wintry reads. Unsurprisingly, I’m going to focus my list on Christmas reads. (Readergirl3 also narrowed her topic similarly and we have a bunch of the same books in her list.)
Here are 11 of my favorites (once I got going, I ran long…)
Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales beautifully captures the nostalgia surrounding the holidays. If you can find the audio of Thomas reading it himself, it’s worth a listen. Similarly a staged reading of the text also makes for an enjoyable evening.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. Also has, as I recall, a decent 1980s made-for-tv adaptation.
The Birds’ Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggins: An overly melodramatic Christmas picture book about a sick girl and her neighbors from the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
The Polar Express, a picture book by Chris Van Allsburg, tells of a boy’s test of his faith. I first read this in French in high school, and it’s a beautiful read-aloud in any language.
My True Love Gave to Me, edited by Stephanie Perkins, gives you a dozen YA love stories in a range of genres from some of the top authors writing for teens today. Not all 12 stories were loved, but I could appreciate even the ones I didn’t.
Speaking of which, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! gives you three interrelated Christmas stories from John Green, Lauren Myracle, and Maureen Johnson.
For many years, I did not enjoy Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but for the past decade or so, I’ve finally grown into it. I’m currently waiting on an audio version read by Jim Dale from the library.
Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas is the source material for the original cartoon and the subsequent movies and may be one of the few times in history where the book and the adaptation are equally good.
It’s been nearly a decade since I read Connie Willis’ Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, but I’d totally read the sci-fi Christmas-themed collection of stories again (or, at least, most of them).
A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg gives you everything you expect from a Flagg novel — lots of laughter, Southern charm, and quirky characters. I don’t know if Southerners enjoy her writing, but this Northerner sure does.
Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, is a sweet YA romance set in New York City and features one of my favorite grandfather characters in recent memory. Plus, it told me that I could find copies of the OED at The Strand if I were willing to shell out for one.
How about you? What’s on your list of cozy, wintry reads?
