Anthony Trollope’s Two American Civil War Christmas stories: The Widow’s Mite & The Two Generals

Jo (Maya Hawke) in the 2017 British TV serial version of Little Women: opening Christmas scene anticipating the war to come Gentle friends and interested readers, For this Christmas I researched into two of Trollope’s little or lesser-known Christmas stories, especially his two American civil war Christmas “The Widow’s Mite” and “The Two Generals.” I […]

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“The irony of A Christmas Carol reboots in the age of billionaires”

A Whole Lot of Humbug (New York Times) Dear friends and readers, This NBC review of two new movies for the Christmas market is superb and ironic; at moments nearly scathing: Anibundel offers a sort of history of Dickens’s story in commercial terms (how many sold), a concise synopsis, and then these two new rewrites […]

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The Christmas special: All Creatures Great and Small, 2021 (last year)

All Creatures Great and Small, Christmas episode, 2021 (closing scene … ) Friends and readers, A long while ago, a new subgenre emerged — it may have occurred before TV, but certainly with TV: the Christmas special. At first the kind was a variety show, comedy and songs, with our weekly host/hostess, but didn’t take […]

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What do we mean by a Christmasy story? & C. S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed

Dear friends and readers, Last night meaning to read a Christmas story by Anthony Trollope, I was deterred by Amazon. Amazon strikes again. On my stoop I found one of their harassed employees had left C.W. Lewis’s A Grief Observed, and, finding the book irresistible, read it through instead of Trollope. And naturally a blog […]

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19th Century Christmas Stories: Chekhov’s mood pieces, an Oliphant tale of the “unseen,” & in Trollope’s Orley Farm

Christmas at Noningsby Friends and readers, As is our wont for too many years than I like to count, Christmas week on TrollopeandHisContemporaries@groups.io (we have now resided on five different platforms) we took time out to read a few Christmas or ghost stories and watch a few Christmas or New Year’s movies. I realize I’ve […]

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Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale & the Disney Mary Poppins Re-booted 50 years on

One of the many whole family scenes in Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale (2008) Mary Poppins Returns (2018) Friends, Over these few Christmas days I watched two new (to me) Christmas movies, read three Christmas stories I’ve never read before, and renewed my acquaintance with a series of Christmas chapters in a strong masterpiece of Victorian […]

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Trollope’s Christmas stories: “Christmas at Thompson Hall” and “The Widow’s Mite”

John Millais, “Christmas Story-Telling,” “Christmas Supplement,” London News, 20 December 1862 In his Autobiography Trollope put himself firmly on record as resisting not just the commercialization of Christmas, but the way a cultural conformity of imposition leads people to pretend to Christmas feeling, resulting in meretricious art: he uses memorably negative images and metaphors to […]

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Christmas in the Poldark world

Demelza (Eleanor Tomlinson) singing, after Christmas dinner (2015 Poldark, episode 4) Someone — a Latin poet — had defined eternity as no more than this: to hold and possess the whole fullness of life in one moment, here and now, past and present and to come — last chapter of Ross Poldark) Friends and readers […]

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John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s And so this is Christmas & The Christmas Angel

Dear friends, It’s said they recorded this in 1971 when the war in Vietnam was not over: the US gov’t was bombing hospitals in Vietnam; they thought, What could they do about it? they decided to sing and record a song in which they pretended “the war is over:” A hundred and ten years ago, […]

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Christmas wishes — Lennon’s Happy Xmas the war is over (we wish)

A winter scene: George Bellows (1882-1925), Hudson River, A windy winter afternoon (1926) I wish all those who come to our blog a merry merry Christmas and peaceful good year to come. From Longfellow: ‘Christmas Bells’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play,        And wild and […]

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