I’m back as today’s host for the Virtual Advent Tour. Now that my tree-trimming party is out of the way, the next things on my holiday prep agenda are sending out Christmas cards and working on the Christmas cd/mix I make every year. To help set the tone for the week, I thought today I’d share with you some of the Christmas songs that made last year’s playlist:
I am of an age and familial temperament that the Muppets are a crucial part of any Christmas celebration.
I like to include musical acts that are personally relevant to me in any given year, and last year that included Sharon Jones, who died. Rudi and I were lucky enough to attend her Christmas concert when it came to D.C. in 2015 and it remains one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Period. She had so much life and joy in her and she said that she’d rather go down singing than not.
Every year I have a slush playlist where songs that don’t make the cut for any given year but that I want to keep considering end up. Antje Duvekot’s song had been bumped from year after year, partly because I wasn’t sure that lyrics that included the word “thong” were family-friendly enough. But after last year’s political battle, any feminist anthem Christmas song, which this certainly is, was going to seem more than appropriate enough.
I thought this big band version of a classic Christmas song was funny.
This was the very last track I fit into the mix in 2016, having only heard it on the All Things Considered annual Christmas special on our drive north.
I hope you enjoyed this music on Monday stop on the Virtual Advent Tour and that you’ll come back tomorrow to see who’s got a holiday post to share.
Today is Advent Sunday, the fourth Sunday before Christmas and officially the first day of the Advent season according to the Western Christian church.
To celebrate the day, Jo Kay of Beyond Strange New Words offers some of her favorite winter reads.
Jo Kay has been participating in the Virtual Advent Tour since 2011, so it’s great to have her back again this year!
Thanks for stopping by. We hope to see you again tomorrow for another Virtual Advent Tour post! (If you think this seems like a fun thing to do, there’s still time to join in on the merriment. Just leave me a note in the comments.)
This is Nancy’s first time doing the Virtual Advent Tour, so I’m particularly excited she’s able to join us in the fun!
Here are a few other Advent-themed events from around the internet:
Drops is doing their knitting Advent calendar again this year. Get a new free holiday pattern every day!
Riveted has expanded their free online reads program to a full 25 days. Each book will be available for members of their site (which is free to join) for 24 hours for you to read. (Tomorrow’s book is Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down, a taut verse novel, which you could likely read in less than a couple hours.)
Happy December 1, and welcome to the first day of the 2017 Virtual Advent Tour!
Today’s host is me!
Part of my holiday tradition these days involves going out on Small Business Saturday (the Saturday after Thanksgiving) to support local businesses wherever I am.
This year, my best friend, Karen, and I were in Putnam, Connecticut, that afternoon, where we discovered the town’s businesses had put together gingerbread houses/structures/engineering marvels. They all smelled wonderfully of ginger and clove and sugar and looked delicious, and some of them were remarkably creative:
(Created by a realtor)
(I really liked the Oreo grand piano in this one.)
(Someone clearly put a lot of work into this one.)
(This one was at the local bike shop.)
(My photography skills left something to be desired here.)
(This one is my favorite, but again, my camera and I weren’t up to combating the glare. Located in the window of the local comic book and record shop, this Transformer is at least two feet fall. Seriously impressive engineering here, even if there had been a mishap at some point.)
That’s it for today. Below you can find the schedule for the rest of the month as I have it thus far. (I have a couple emails out to a few other people right now.) If you’d like to join us by posting a holiday-themed blog post, we’d be delighted to have you. Just leave a comment to let me know you’d like to participate! Also, if you are participating, feel free to grab the badge at the top of this post. (It’s 400 px wide. I also uploaded a 200px one. Let me know if you want something in a different size.)
And be sure to stop back tomorrow for a new and wonderful Advent door to open!
Today marks the middle of November, so it seems like a good time to announce that I’m going to run the Virtual Advent Tour once again.
In case you aren’t familiar with the concept, on each December morning leading up to Christmas, I’ll point you to a post at someone’s blog in which they share some aspect of the holiday season — akin to the treat or scene you get opening the door on a traditional Advent calendar. I believe this marks the 10th year a full 24-day tour has run (a mini two-week version ran in 2006 before expanding the following year and in 2014 the tour was on hiatus).
While the concept skews Christian, the tour is inclusive and open to anyone who celebrates holidays of any kind during the month of December and wants to share them with us. Tell us what you do for Hanukkah. Explore how you observe the principles of Kwanzaa. Air your grievances for Festivus. Talk about the importance of the changing seasons for the Solstice. Share your favorite Christmas menu. We love reading about all kinds of holiday traditions and celebrations!
Would you be willing to share a winter holiday post one or two days next month? You’d know the date(s) ahead of time (and can request a specific one if you’d like), your post can be as simple or as complex as you’d like, and there’s no need to tell me what you’re going to write about in advance. Folks have shared favorite holiday charities, recipes, religious events, songs, books, local events, memories, and old and new traditions, to name just a few topics from years past. All that I ask is that you have your post published by midnight your time the evening before the date(s) you pick.
If it sounds fun and you’d like to participate, please leave me a comment on this post telling me what date(s) you’d like. I’ll update this post as people claim days and will work on a badge for this year in case people want to use it.
Thanks in advance for making this such an enjoyable December tradition!
Last month I took part in the bookish holiday Secret Santa event that The Broke and the Bookish, #TBTBSanta, runs every year.
Gina of Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers was my awesome Secret Santa. As you can see, she was remarkably generous, offering me gifts to open 12 days in a row. I do love surprises:
Paddington arrived with 12 numbered parcels. While I was oohing and aahing and hunting for package #1, Paddington raided the cupboards, since he was feeling a little peckish from his journey.
Once he was feeling like his normal, growly self, he gave me a hand with opening the presents.
The packages contained all sorts of goodies, from cute Japanese stationery …
… to adorable stickers, which Paddington thought we should immediately use on the Christmas cards.
There were a lot of books! Paddington loves a good story and is spending much of his time getting caught up on some fun books:
Eventually he started inviting others in the household to join him for story time:
(I could totally have edited out the vacuum cleaner, but a) real life and b) then you’d have missed Corey lying there on the floor, waiting to hear what’s going to happen next.)
Thank you so much, Gina! This was a wonderful package and I had such a fun time opening every single gift. I can’t wait to start reading! Now I just have to choose which book to begin with!
(And thank you to Jamie at The Broke and the Bookish, who organizes this international gift exchange each year. It really is a blast!)
