Staying in the seventeenth century, where we found ourselves for yesterday’s advent calendar fact, we’re off to hear another Christmas carol today. Not a bad way to spend Christmas Eve Eve, after all! The Christmas carol we’re concerned with on this penultimate day of our Advent Calendar posts is one of the classics, which has … Read more
Our last few posts have concerned the Christmas presents that a couple of important American writers received from friends or family: specifically, the odd presents William Faulkner insisted on being given, and the rather splendid and life-changing present Harper Lee received. The earliest known use of the phrase ‘Christmas present’ is rather older than either … Read more
Our exploration of noteworthy facts involving Christmas presents and American writers continues today. Yesterday we revealed the odd items which were the only Christmas presents William Faulkner would accept from his family. Today, we look at how a generous Christmas gift led to one of the most popular and enduring works of twentieth-century literature being … Read more
Yesterday we looked at one of the most important Christmas-themed works of twentieth-century American literature. Today, we’re sticking with twentieth-century American writers and moving on to the subject of Christmas gifts. William Faulkner (1897-1962), author of The Sound and the Fury (1929) and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, was quite an easy … Read more
Yesterday we looked at an important literary influence on the American Christmas tradition, from the nineteenth century. Today, one of the most important twentieth-century literary contributions to Christmas, courtesy of a children’s writer whose books have sold over half a billion copies worldwide (but whose name most of us are still mispronouncing). The writer we’re … Read more