Lunch Break: Victorian Christmas
by LauraLoo
This is also a repeat from last year – too good to watch just once. Merry Christmas everyone – and Happy Birthday Jesus! <3
My Favourite Time of Year is a traditional style Christmas song which was written by Leigh Haggerwood. After three years of trying to persuade the record companies to back the project, he decided to do it himself. He gathered together 36 musicians which he collectively called The Florin Street Band and recorded the song at Trevor Horn’s studios in London.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H10f2w7T5CU[/youtube]
Email LauraLoo with your Lunch Break suggestions.
Dec.24, 2011 12:00 pm |
Video of the day |
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
that movie A CHRISTMAS STORY will probaby be on all day 2mrow. that movie was filmed 10 minutes away from my house. i may go visit. the house is still set up with the leg lamp in the window;)
Mention of the Victorian era reminds me of an interesting question: Do we live in what is, relatively speaking, a LOW ABORTION era?
After all, in the Victorian era, products were advertised in the newspapers as “not to be taken by women in the family way” — and believed to be really targeted to that market.
Years ago, the prospect of being an “unwed mother” was greeted with panic. It meant certain disgrace. Today the “single mother” is depicted as someone to be pitied for her burdens but admired for undertaking them. Are women today LESS apt to abort than in the past?
hi denise merry christmas!
Merry Christmas, Hether, Jill, Jack and everyone!
I hope you appreciate my poem.
Best wishes,
Denise Noe
Why Christmas Comes In The Cold
By
Denise Noe
In almost any context, cold
represents lack of feeling;
winter, the heart without love–
as dead as the branches of
a fruit, flower, and leaf-denuded tree.
Yet in the time of bitter cold,
Christmas comes a-caroling
when its message of generosity
could not possibly be more bold,
insisting we find the love
held within December’s frigidity.
A nearby town has a Victorian Christmas every year with carolers (sp?) dressed in traditional clothing, and various small food venders from local organizations (the kettle corn is the best!). Also, I just wanted to drop in & say Happy Holidays to everyone!
yes may everyone have a wonderful christmas and holidays! and yes denise i did like your poem. i write some myself;)
Merry Christmas everyone!
We of a Scandinavian heritage are about to open our presents. Because we’re closest to the North Pole, of course, and Santa gives us first dibs.
I don’t exactly know why this holds true down here, too. But I’m not complaining! :)
Denise Noe, abortion was rare in earlier times. Most of those ‘not to be taken’ by pregnant women, even if used on the ‘down low’ to attempt an abortion didn’t really work that well. Before the advent of antibiotics abortion was a *very* risky proposition, and illegal. So 1st you had to find someone to do it, not get caught, not get an infection, and finally, actually have it work. In the U.S. they say 1 in 4 women will have an abortion, in other countries, like Russia or Armenia, the average women will have multiple abortions. Also, there was less of a stigma related to abandoning children to churches and orphanges then than now. By any reasonable count our current time has more abortions, and more abortions per capita then in any other time period. It can be said, however, that we have *much* lower infanticide rates. In many time periods/culture killing a newborn was socially similiar to abortion today, legal, somewhat frowned upon, but considered to be the mother’s choice. There are any number of societies who reutinely killed any deformed infant, or infant out of wedlock, or one that was illtimed, or just as a sacrifice. so I don’t know that the intentional murder rate of the conception to 3 year old is as high as it has been in some times/culture. But our conception to birth rate certainly is the highest.
Thank you, Jespren, for your answer. I know there is a book called “Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History” that I haven’t read but which is supposed to make some of these points, including that “abortifacients” of past times just didn’t work that well and often just succeeded in making the girl or woman who took them sick.
It seems that we have not yet come anywhere near dealing in an adequate manner with problem pregnancies. I grew up in the 1970s and when someone commented about me if I was “all right” mentally, my mother would say, “Of course if she was more like other girls she might get a boyfriend and get pregnant.”
For Christmas, I sent my father a copy of the film “Splendor in the Grass.” I’ve always strongly identified with what happened to Deanie in this movie and how her mind was torn apart by the contradictory messages she received. I also think it contains a deep truth: the “bad girl” has the abortion, the “good girl” has the mental breakdown.
Merry CHRISTmas everyone and God bless you all!!
Wishing all joy and peace this Christmas and a New Year filled with good health and happiness to all and your families. Special Christmas Blessings and a heartfelt thank you to Jill for your blog; all moderators and most especially to my SNM sister in Christ, Carla.
Do any of you have a special interest in the Victorian era? I write regularly for “The Hatchet: A Journal of Lizzie Borden and Victorian Studies.”
It seems to me that social conservatives tend to have a special affection for two periods: the Victorian era and the 1950s. Although I’m not a social conservative, at least not across the board, I also have some affection for these time periods.
Denise Noe, most of my interest lays earlier in history, as I’m primarily a medieval and renaissence person, but the Victorian age is a natural extension so, I am interested in the period and have garnered a lot about it. Although really about the only thing I like about the Victorian age over earlier periods is either non-English (like India during the time period) or the clothes. Some of my favorite women’s come from that era.
That should be “favorite women’s garments” but it won’t let me edit it.
Isn’t it interesting that two pre-eminent murder mysteries — that of Britain’s Jack the Ripper and America’s Lizzie Borden — are from the Victorian period?
As I said, if you’re interested in the Victorian era, come over and see us at “The Hatchet.”
Denise, not really, anything before then wouldn’t have had much chance of being recorded and anything after that period, the criminalistics were developed enough to make head way. Victorian era had enough knowledge to recognize Jack the Ripper as a pattern killer (for pretty much the 1st time), but not enough to catch him.
Denise,
I really liked the tv movie of Lizzie Borden with Elizabeth Montgomery. Jack the Ripper has been in dozens of science fiction and Sherlock Holmes tv/film stories.
You may enjoy Doctor Who, if you get BBC America. He seems to visit Victorian Era Britain all the time. As do many BBC/PBs shows.
I think we’re just charmed by the clothes and manners. It wasn’t so pleasant behind the scenes.
Hans Johnson says:
December 29, 2011 at 12:18 am
Denise,
I really liked the tv movie of Lizzie Borden with Elizabeth Montgomery.
(Denise) One of my regular essays for “The Hatchet,” which are called “Denise Noe’s Lizzie Whittlings,” was about Elizabeth Montgomery. That “Whittling” discussed the film at length. There may be a wee bit of irony in that she became best known for playing witch Samantha Stevens and Lizzie defense attorney asked the jury to show that “witches are out of fashion in Massachusetts.”
Yes, we’re charmed by the clothes and manners. There was a seamy side but that is true in all societies — it may have been more ironic in an age that so emphasized moral rectitude as the Victorian age did.