Tuesday, December 25, 2018

It's Christmas! Warmest wishes to all...

HALLIE EPHRON: On this Christmas morning, the Jungle Red Writers wish you all a delicious, stress free day with good food, family, friends, and whatever brings you joy. Take a time out, toast yourself, and just be.

Here's a picture I took at our local mall just after Thanksgiving when they were setting up Santa. Not a single child had come through yet.


And a Christmas card from my sweet husband.


Leaving you with my favorite lines from Dylan Thomas's wondrous "A Child's Christmas in Wales." Read it aloud to yourself.

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards."

18 comments:

  1. Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas filled with all the blessings of the season . . . .

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  2. Merry Christmas, dear Reds - may it be delicious and cozy.

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  3. Yes, Merry Christmas to all and especially to the Reds who provide me with such wonderful books to read and great conversations every day!

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  4. Merry Christmas to you and your's! Thank you all so much for the gift of words, ordered and organized in a way that delights my soul! Merry Christmas!

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  5. Merry Christmas to all. Thanks for the delicious amuse bouche of poetry, Hallie.

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  6. Happy Christmas to all of you! Thank you all for the joy you bring through your writing!

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  7. Shalom Reds and fans. Merry Christmas. In addition to Dylan Thomas, you can find on Spotify, Ronald Coleman playing Scrooge in Dickens’ story. And also look for Charles Laughton in a reading of Mr. Pickwick’s Christmas.

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  8. And watch The Man Who Invented Christmas! Truly a holiday movie for writers... you will LOVE it!

    Thank you for the Dylan Thomas, Hallie—and for everything!

    Love love love you all!

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  9. Merry Christmas To You All!

    Authors, you have my permission to take the day off:-)

    DebRo

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  10. Merry Christmas to all you dear Reds and to the community that has grown up around them here. I consider the time I spend visiting with all of you here a real blessing in my life. Thank you, also, for those lovely, lyrical lines from Dylan Thomas.

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  11. Merry Christmas all and the happiest of holidays! We're having a short sleeves Christmas. 70 degrees right now.

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  12. Merry Christmas from the snowy northwoods of Wisconsin!

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  13. Merry, merry. Hoping you all have a wonderfully calm and relaxing day, full of love and laughter.

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  14. Merry Christmas to all!

    I had a generally stress free day. I went to see a movie, then to dinner at a friend's house and dessert at a family friend's house. But it wasn't stressful at all, just kind of rolled along.

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