'Twas The Night Before Christmas

'Twas the Night before Christmas was first published anonymously this day (Dec 23) 1823 in The Troy Sentinel, New York City.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

A Christmas Fairytale

I was listening to a World Service broadcast early this morning and heard a fascinating story about Eowyn Ivey, a young writer in Alaska. She works in a bookshop part time, and one day was putting a Russian fairy tale Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden) onto a shelf. Snegurochka goes with Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost - pictured in my post on Sunday Dec 18) in Russian folklore. She opened the book, found herself drawn into the story, and was inspired to write a novel. She abandoned the project she had been working on for five years, and within a few months had completed 100 pages of her story. She met a book agent for a two minute 'pitch' slot at a writer's conference in Homer, Alaska who asked to see the book so far, and to cut a long story short now has a prospective best selling book deal http://www.eowynivey.com/snowchild.shtml. Her book is being 'trailed' with a charming short animated clip online - see http://lettersfromalaska.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/the-snow-child-book-trailer/ What a wonderful story for Christmas! I have ordered a copy of the book which comes out in the UK on Feb 16 2012.

Update on planning for our MBE May 2012 event

There was a programme subcommittee meeting yesterday to progress plans for MBE's May 26/27 2012 event Beyond The Garden Gate. Thanks to Marilyn, our MBE project manager, we will soon have a seasonal greeting as our new home page on our website, with mentions of the events we have planned. In another part of the wood entirely, a fascinating series on BBCR4 on word derivations yesterday revealed the connection between 'pooling' resources and 'scooping the pool'. They come from an old French gambling game involving throwing stones at a chicken (a 'poule'). The kitty that was won by the player who scored a hit became known as the 'pool'. Hence also the reason that the game similar to billiards is also known as 'pool'. Who would have guessed?

The Meaning of Fife

The Dumfries-based landscape artist Charles Jencks has designed a massive land art installation for a disused quarry in Fife, entitled The Meaning of Fife. Rightly or wrongly, I tend to disapprove of feeble puns, especially if they are attached to colossal works of public art. The piece itself - details are in the public domain - maps the Scottish diaspora in Canada, the USA, Australia, China, south America and so on. There are interesting meditations on maps in the essays of Jorge Luis Borges the blind anglophile Argentinian writer of genius. According to Wikipedia: His work embraces the "character of unreality in all literature".^[3] His most famous books, Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (1949), are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes such as dreams, labyrinths, libraries, animals, fictional writers, religion and God. His works have contributed to the genre of science fiction as well as the genre of magic realism, a genre that reacted against the realism/naturalism of the nineteenth century.^[4][5][6] In fact, critic Angel Flores, the first to use the term, set the beginning of this movement with Borges's Historia universal de la infamia (A Universal History of Infamy) (1935).^[7] Scholars also have suggested that Borges's progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination.^[8] His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil. When my library is unpacked, which I hope will be early in 2012, I will track down the conceit in which Borges imagines a map-maker who eventually devises a map that is the same size as the territory it seeks to record.

Getting Ready for Christmas

I finally felt like getting ready for Christmas today. I texted my decorator and he came straight round. He likes to be left to get on with it his way, so I made myself scarce and sat in my bedroom by the window reading Will Self's Walking to Hollywood. Harry's signature decorating style includes the rather postmodern draping of my furniture in table cloths of various sizes and colours. He likes tinsel and fairy lights, but not - unaccountably - Ruby the veteran Reindeer (who sings and jiggles her head around when her batteries are in) or Ded Moroz - Grandfather Frost - the yellowing Russian folk figurine of even earlier date.

Authors v Book Festivals

Two articles about book festivals, book signings and book events generally caught my eye this week: one was in the Winter 2011 issue of The Author magazine, by Simon Hoggart, parliamentary sketchwriter of the Guardian, and another, by gardener and garden writer Anne Wareham, was in today's Dec 17 2011 Daily Telegraph. Simon Hoggart's piece begins: 'The worst literary festival I ever attended...' and continues describing a whole catalogue of snubs, parsimony on the part of organisers and - crucially - failure to sell more than a handful of books at a variety of book festivals, including Edinburgh. Anne Wareham's piece lists a whole year's worth of travel to promote her book, including an even worse catalogue of humilations and pointless excursions to bookshops for signings where nobody came, and 'appearances' where nobody asked any questions. According to Simon Hoggart, what makes up for these shortcomings are two nights with his partner at the organisers' expense in beautiful surroundings (such as Keswick) and delicious meals with the other interesting people- such as other writers. Interestingly, this is what Anna Pavord cited in her message accepting an invitation to be part of our May 26/27 2011 Beyond the Garden Gate event: what a treat it was to be wined and dined with other authors at a Scottish castle at a book event in the Borders. All this gives one pause for long, hard thought. Simon Hoggart winds up with: Festivals are fun, and for real writers (as opposed to us journalists) they're a chance to get out of the lonely study and meet other writers. But they couldn't exist without us, and it's about time the performers laid down a few reasonable but clear ground rules.' I have been offered the hospitality of The Author's columns to write a reply in their next Spring 2012 issue on behalf of book event organisers, so watch this space.

Why Am I Still Here?

I commend to you Why Am I Still Here? by the under-appreciated Welsh biographer and man of letters Roger Lewis. Lewis's sequel to his best-selling Seasonal Suicide Notes combines irascible commentary on everyday life, arranged by month January-December, interspersed cleverly with short paragraphs about his family. The family sketches, including of a series of extraordinary aunts, are illustrated by grainy black and white photographs of his subjects, as in W G Sebald. That the sign of greatness in writing is the capacity occasionally to make one bark with laughter, or at least smile, is the theme of an interesting essay by Sam Leith in the exceptionally interesting Winter 2011 issue of The Author, the quarterly magazine of the Society of Authors. Roger Lewis writes in the same issue, deploring the crowd mentality of commissioning editors in a line of descent from 'Grim Cambridge don, F R Leavis' ,who - mistakenly in Lewis's view - promoted the notion of consenus in judging literary merit. One does not have to agree with all Lewis's opinions to appreciate his distinctive voice, backed by a lifetime immersed in life and literature. For instance, he revels in Rules, my late father's favourite eating -house on the southern fringe of Covent Garden, which I consider a bit of a tourist trap, too tarted- up since its glory days of moth-eaten red velvet banquettes and dusty hunting prints. Never mind.