The Advent Calendar of Literature: Day 9

A little digression into the world of advertising for today’s Christmas-themed advent calendar fact. As we mentioned in yesterday’s post, there is a common idea that Coca-Cola ‘invented’ the modern Santa Claus, with the red and white robes being an invention of the soft drinks company – because these were, and are, the colours of … Read more

The Advent Calendar of Literature: Day 4

Yesterday we had a Christmas nativity fact, concerning the curious origins of T. S. Eliot’s Christmas poem ‘Journey of the Magi’. Today, another nativity story, but this time, concerning a perhaps unlikely nativity play. For today’s pick of our favourite Christmas facts we’re moving forward from Eliot’s poem written in the 1920s, to the dark … Read more

The Advent Calendar of Literature: Day 2

As we saw in yesterday’s Christmas literature post, the first commercially available Christmas cards were sent in 1843, the same year as Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was published. In that post we also revealed the humorous origins of the robin redbreast on the front of Christmas cards. Now, presumably quite soon after Christmas cards appeared … Read more

The Advent Calendar of Literature: Day 1

We’ve been running this blog now for two years. When we posted our first literary blog post, on 1 December 2012, we set out to publish a short post every day, or almost every day. To mark the second birthday of Interesting Literature, we would like to present ‘The Advent Calendar of Literature’. Every day … Read more