Christmas reading

[regshoe]

Final checks on my Yuletide fics are done! Not long now...

Besides that, today I have made slightly haphazard plans for the dinner I'm cooking tomorrow, listened to the carols from King's College on the radio (beautiful as ever) and I've been reading some festive books from favourite authors.

Christ Legends by Selma Lagerlöf (1904; translated by Velma Swanston Howard, 1908). A collection of short folktale-style stories about the life of Jesus—the first few stories are set around the Nativity, then there are some from later on. They're written with the same lovely fairytale-ish style as much of Lagerlöf's writing, and it works really well here—the imagery and style of folk-Christianity can be so interesting, and there were moments in these stories that reminded me of the folk song-Christmas carols I like. Favourite detail: at the Creation when God was making birds, ...the colours in our Lord’s paint pot gave out, and the goldfinch would have been without colour if our Lord had not wiped all His paint brushes on its feathers.

Village Christmas by Miss Read (1966). A charming little Christmas story! Miss Read herself doesn't appear in this one—instead it's about two spinster sisters, long-time residents of the village of Fairacre, who have to deal with unconventional new neighbours and eventually discover the value of neighbourly friendship during a crisis at Christmas.

And now, hopefully, my reading for the next few days will be Yuletide fic :D

Comments

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

I do love King's College carols, too. Even the ones I don't know. Interesting reads!

[regshoe]

Yes, I always enjoy hearing both the new-to-me carols and the familiar classics—always such lovely arrangements!

[hyarrowen]

Village Christmas is lovely. The illustrations are spot-on, too. Those books are great comfort reads.

[regshoe]

They certainly are :) The version I read wasn't illustrated, sadly, although I've managed to find one illustration on archive.org which is very nice!

[theseatheseatheopensea]

Ohh, Lagerlöf's book sounds exactly like my kind of thing! The bit you quoted is lovely and makes me smile, I just love that the myth/legend of how birds get their colours pops up in so many different ways and in different cultures--it made me think of the story as I know it: God (or Inti, in his native/indigenous personification) first paints the flowers, all nice and colourful... but the birds all have brown/earth colours, and they want the pretty, bright colours too... so He makes it rain and creates a rainbow "with the colours of his smile" where the birds can dive into, and choose the colours they'd like...

[regshoe]

Haha, something so beautiful as birds' plumages clearly needs a memorable story to go along with :D That's another lovely one. And that sort of slightly whimsical folktale is the sort of thing Selma Lagerlöf writes about so well, I think.