18 12, 2023

A Charles Dickens Christmas

By judythemorgan|2023-12-17T20:45:03-06:00December 18th, 2023|Holidays|0 Comments

These words are from an 1843 Christmas novella written by Charles Dickens. His Christmas short stories include: “The Chimes”, “Cricket on the Hearth,” “The Battle of Life,” “Haunted Man,” and his most read, “A Christmas Carol”

“A Christmas Carol” was by far the most popular having never been out of print. It’s also been adapted many times to film, stage, opera, and other media.

Dickens divided his novella into five chapters, labeled “staves” or song stanzas or verses, in keeping with the title of the book.

The short tale of Ebenezer Scrooge’s strange night visitors continues to send a message that cuts through all the trappings of the season and straight into the heart and soul of the holiday.

Dickens defined Christmas as

“a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

This description became known as the “Carol Philosophy” and Dickens strove to live accordingly for the rest of his life.

Charles Dickens has probably had more influence on how we celebrate Christmas than any single individual in human history … except the One whose birth we celebrate.

Wouldn’t honoring Christmas by “opening shut-hearts and thinking of others as fellow sojourners on the same path” be an excellent way to celebrate this holiday season and begin the new year?

~~ This will be our last post for 2023. New blogs will begin again after the holiday season.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

15 08, 2022

And then came Cribbage

By judythemorgan|2022-08-13T08:41:53-05:00August 15th, 2022|A Writer's Life, Writer's Life|1 Comment

All the boiling hot, humid days where we live have forced us to spend more time than usual inside. We’ve read, we’ve taken siestas, but mostly we’ve stayed inside and played games.

We dusted off the Scrabble game and ordered a current Scrabble dictionary. You can read the blog about Scrabble and the Heat here. Our games are challenging and competitive The outcome often depends upon who draws the Q, Z, or J tile. Our vocabularies have grown.

Wanting a game to challenged our math skills, we rediscovered Cribbage. Our granddaughter taught us years ago but we’d forgotten the details and we didn’t have a game in our game cabinet stash.

We ordered a Cribbage board from Amazon. While we awaited its arrival, we learned about the game and watched how to play it on YouTube videos. The game seemed complicated, but we did agree that we needed a challenge.

The history of Cribbage is fascinating. The game has been around since the 1600s and the way it is played has not changed. Charles Dickens’s description in The Old Curiosity Shop helped with its popularity in Victorian England. The game is played worldwide now.

We also learned Cribbage is a favorite on American submarines. The O’Kane Cribbage board of Rear Admiral Dick O’Kane is carried aboard the oldest active submarine of the United States Pacific Fleet.

Cribbage vocabulary is even more fun than its history.

Hands consist of a deal, the play, and the show. You earn points for pairs, runs, and straights until the play totals thirty-one or a player plays his last card. Points of 15 or 31 are scored with pegs on the snake-like board design called streets. Games are played to 121. All the adding and analyzing is great for our brains.

Cards are cut to decide who deals the six cards. You discard two cards from your hand for your crib.

The unused card pile is cut again and the top card is used to total points for a hand, and if it’s a Jack, the dealer scores two points for his heels or his nibs.

Then you have your muggings and Lindbergh’s, and always a pone or opponent.

Cribbage has a non-profit organization The American Cribbage Congress, dedicated to making the game fun and fair for people of all ages.

And best of all, the fast-playing game keeps us entertained on hot days.

I’m thinking it’ll work as well on chilly winter days too.

6 12, 2017

Christmas Vocabulary – Bah, Humbug!

By judythemorgan|2017-12-03T15:44:13-06:00December 6th, 2017|Wednesday Words|1 Comment

Christmas comes with its own vocabulary. I thought it’d be fun to share the origin and meaning of some of the more popular phrases like this one.

Who wants to hear this phrase, which means disgust for the Christmas season?

Not me.

The phrase comes from Charles Dickens’ mean-spirited main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, who made the expression famous in A Christmas Carol.

We used to be hear those words around our house whenever the Christmas storage boxes came out and then the phrase reappeared when we undecorated and refilled the boxes back up.

One year when all the children we still at home and I was getting lots of bah, humbugs, I found the delightful little door knocker pictured above.

You press the ring, and it says bah, humbug in such a funny voice that you can’t keep from laughing aloud. Wish you could hear it I promise you would giggle.

I hung Scrooge in a prominent place and established the Bah, Humbug Rule. Instead of voicing the words, you had to press the knocker.

Infectious laughter quickly replaced the grumpy words.

Poor Scrooge got lots of use while all the children were home not so much because they felt disgust for the holiday, but more to share the laughter. That first year, I think we had to replace the batteries twice.

I continue to hang him every year for the same reason. He brings back fond memories and he makes me laugh.

28 12, 2016

Honoring Christmas

By judythemorgan|2016-11-27T20:39:19-06:00December 28th, 2016|Holidays, Wednesday Words of Wisdom|0 Comments

Today’s words of wisdom come from the novella Charles Dickens wrote in December 1843.

Dickens also published two other Christmas stories, but A Christmas Carol was by far the most popular having never been out of print. It’s also been adapted many times to film, stage, opera, and other media.

Dickens divided his novella into five chapters, labeled “staves” or song stanzas or verses, in keeping with the title of the book. The short tale of Ebenezer Scrooge’s strange night visitors continues to send a message that cuts through all the trappings of the season and straight into the heart and soul of the holiday.

Dickens described Christmas as “a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

This description became known as the “Carol Philosophy” and Dickens strove to live accordingly for the rest of his life.

Wouldn’t honoring Christmas by opening shut-hearts and thinking of others as fellow-sojourners on the same path, not another race of creatures, be an excellent way to end this holiday season and begin the new year?