SYBIL'S STORY BOOK CORNER: An Irish Tradition...

Oh, Children!!...so many of you have said, "Please Mummie! Don't stop telling us stories of your Christmases from around the world!".... and I have said, "OKAY!".... Here's a charming tradition from Ireland where some of Mummie's funny relatives come from. On Christmas Eve at about 2 in the morning, children wait up to hear the sound of jingling bells and a knock on the door. Sometimes, it's a very loud knock, even pounding...and then some mumbling, or yelling...or yelling and singing. Or someone jingling bells... or keys, and yelling a song in a very grumpy voice. And maybe breaking things out on the front porch! When it finally stops, children peek out the window to see St. Nicholas, often accompanied by his friend Old Sooty McAshburn sleeping!! ... or at least lying quietly face down!! They've brought toys and sometimes candies or even funny drinks for all the good children to have. And when the children are sure that St. Nick and Sooty won't wake up, they tip toe carefully outside and quietly get the treats and dash quickly back inside and bolt the door. Of course, many older children don't believe in St. Nick or Sooty. They claim that it's just Daddy and a nice neighbor man dressed up having fun... and that when they fall down they have to "sleep off" their fun. What do YOU think, Children??

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SYBIL BRUNCHEON’S STORY BOOK CORNER: Holiday Traditions AROUND THE WORLD!! ... PRIPYAT!

Hello, Children from around the world! Are you all writing your special gift-wishes to Santa Claus, Pere Noel, Mr. & Mrs. Weasel, Quetzalcoatl, Cthulu, Zizz X#56Hhsuzsi, or Nan-Cy Boy O’Reilly??? …what!? I haven’t told you about Nan-Cy Boy O’Reilly yet??....well, that’s another story for another time! But today, I want to tell you about the magic Yule trees of the Ukraine. That's where we get the funny little guitar called the Uke-relele. Can you say, "You-Cray-Lay-Lee"??

Our Ukrainian friends who live in a nice little town called Pripyat had a Christmas adventure many years ago….can you say “Prip-Yat”?? It means “Glows-in-the-dark”. Well, one day, all the papas and mamas (or батьки і матері, as the little ones call them!) went into the woods on December 24th or The Feast of the Talking Forest to gather the special Christmas trees for the Holiday. The tradition was that the elders of the villages would sing special songs and dance around the trees to ask the tree-spirits for their blessing before they were cut down. If the tree-spirits gave their blessings, then there would be mild whispering winds through the air almost like music and the squirrels and little birds would bring nuts, berries, lost coins, and stolen costume jewelry, and the grown-ups would know that the coming year would be full of health, prosperity, and good omens.

That night hundreds of trees were cut down and dragged through the dark to cozy homes with toasty fireplaces and waiting children, singing loudly, clapping their hands, dancing and leaping, and breaking things. The trees were brought into all the front rooms, stood up and braced into waiting pots of fresh mountain water and spiced cider with cloves and raisins “to make them happy”, and decorated with candles and beautiful handmade ornaments, many of which dated back for generations in each household to ancestors fondly remembered in stories, songs, and crayon drawings.

Then, as the custom dictated, every family member would approach the tree and kneel with a special gift and a poem of thanks and love written especially for the tree on that occasion. All the gifts would be laid at the foot of the beloved tree, in dedication to its arrival in the household, and to ask that it would tell Santa to leave special presents for its household and the sweet children it watched over. Then everyone would scamper off to bed, laughing, singing, bragging about who would get what presents, and giving one last wink and a wave to the tree as it stood silently in the great room lit by firelight and the cheer of the Holiday.

Oh, Children! Oh, dear sweet Children!! Imagine what people thought on Christmas Day when they ran down the stairs as the sun just began to clear the horizon line at 2 in the afternoon!! There were NO presents of any kind! NONE!...because Santa had been prevented from getting within a 200 mile radius of little Pripyat….and there were fighter jets chasing him away with bad missiles…and even guns and shouting over loudspeakers! But that wasn’t the worst of it! Oh NO! For not only were there NO presents. The trees themselves had grown! YES!! GROWN!! Many of the sweet trees had now reached the ceiling with their topmost branches. The Holy Christmas stars were now pressed against the plaster, breaking it in places, or bending the points off of the fine heirlooms that grandpas had made with their own wrinkled hands.

And that was only the beginning….as each day went by, the trees grew taller and taller…some of them began to sprout new and oddly shaped limbs with strangely colored pine needles that looked like faces or toes, and smelled like grandma’s old socks… or her underpants. By the 6th day of the Holiday week, many trees had broken through windows and doors, had eaten food out of the larders and pantries, and even chased pets and stepped on them. By the 12th and final day of the celebration, most homes were now abandoned to roving gangs of gigantic, grotesque “tree-things” that set fires, urinated in public places, pinched ladies bottoms, and told overly long jokes with no punchlines. And THAT was the terrible/wonderful Christmas present that everyone got from Chernobyl. Tell me, Children, how many of you would like to visit exciting places like Pripyat someday???

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Mummie Makes A Holiday!!....

MUMMIE MAKES A HOLIDAY!!!... okay, so we're all trying to come up with ideas to make this rather specific Winter a little more fun and friendly, right?? ...and I just KNOW that many of you read my suggestions in my blog of rekindling and working at your friendships, going to theatre, museums, cafes with friends, taking up a hobby, making your home more cheery, doing your Spring cleaning NOW to invite new energy and perspective into your life, and definitely, DEFINITELY GETTING OUT OF THE HOUSE! Do NOT be a shut-in in the cold weather!!

Well, now I've decided that we need something even more powerful and exciting to help doom the gloom! I pulled down the old Sunoco station calendar and did some math!! If the first day of Winter is around December 21st, and the first day of Spring is around March 20th, that gives us 90 days between the two... yes, the days are getting longer and the nights are shorter starting on the Winter solstice, but that definitely is not enough to sustain all of us shivering masses yearning to breathe free! SO!... if we divide 90 by two, we have 45 days, and we count forward from December 21st, I believe that gives us February 3rd... am I right?? Okay, here's my proposal! We need another Holiday or festival to look forward to... sort of a Mid-Winter's Night Dream, if you will. A date when we know that (even though February is boring and seemingly endless despite its shortened stature!) we can feel that we are technically "over the hump" of Winter.

And let's not stop there! Let's make it a progressive festival like Hanukkah!... maybe a whole week or so. How about 11 days?? But unlike Hanukkah, we don't make the FIRST night the important one! We make the last night the culmination of a celebration of life, light, laughter, and love!! Why look at that!! That means Valentine’s Day would be the end of it all, and finally have some “oomph” behind it as opposed to that anemic semi-holiday of Cupid, arrows, cheap perfume, and those stupid red-hots and flavorless candy hearts with dumb slogans written on them! (“Be MINE”, indeed!!!)

SO!... let's set our calendars to February 3rd! I'm taking suggestions for traditions that we need to observe, celebrate and manifest in our newly fashioned Holiday. And we need a name for it... and a decorative theme from the crafts and interior design crowds!! Are there any songwriters out there?? Mel Tormé, Irving Berlin, Franz Gruber, and Henry VIII are all dead so let's come up with some new songs that will become "standards"... And we need traditional recipes from the foodies, nightly gift suggestions from the compulsively acquisitive, newly fabricated "ancient tales and poems" from the ingeniously literary (and drunk!), and a spirit of "play" from the young at heart. The cynics and so-called "grown-ups" can remain huddled over by the sad little sputtering fire that keeps them company in their nattering... The rest of us can keep each other cozy the way children do when they have only a cardboard box, a blanket, some crayons and their imaginations...

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