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Dear Friend,

Happy Hannukah, Happy Winter Solstice, Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanzaa! There are so many wonderful traditions that fall around the longest, coldest nights of winter. We love looking at how our favorite artists choose to interpret the season through their art. We hope you enjoy looking through the different images we have here in the newsletter. Thank you for being an important part of our fairy community. We are proud to be one of your favorite places for all things enchanted and fantastical! - Just Another Sunset

 Celebrating the Winter Solstice!

Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year for the Northern Hemisphere, with the least amount of sunlight and longest amount of darkness. It ocurrs around the 21st or 22nd of December. This year, is takes place on Monday, December 21. Many cultures have created traditions around this time of year, usually involving bonfires, candles, yule logs in the fireplace, and other ways of bringing warmth and light to this longest night. The Megalithic Passage Tomb at Newgrange in Ireland was built approximately 5,000 years ago and was designed so that at dawn on the Winter Solstice, a ray of light shines through the roof into a passageway and lights up the inner chamber. The event lasts 17 minutes. In Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, two narrow "daggers" of light make paralellel lines on either end of a spiral carved into the rock. At the summer solstice, one dagger of light appears directly through the center. Similar structures can be found all over Europe, North and South America, Indonesia, Asia, and The Middle East, each one using light to mark important times of the year. Different cultures marked the occasion with their own unique traditions, from celtic wreathes designed to represent male and female and the circle of the year, grand feasts in China, lamps kept lit all night in Romania to ward off evil spirits, to Mistletoe put over the door for good luck. You can create your own solstice celebration with a decorated yule log to burn in the fireplace, strings of lights across your porch or house kept on all night long, or a fire on an outdoor firepit and potluck feast with family and friends.

Celebrate With Just Another Sunset

Full Moon: December 2, 209 "The Full Cold Moon; or the Full Long Nights Moon - During this month the winter cold fastens its grip, and nights are at their longest and darkest. It is also sometimes called the Moon before Yule. The term Long Night Moon is a doubly appropriate name because the midwinter night is indeed long, and because the Moon is above the horizon for a long time. The midwinter full Moon has a high trajectory across the sky because it is opposite a low Sun. " -Farmers' Almanac

Sun Sign: Sagittarius (November 23 to December 21) Element: Fire Planet: Jupiter

Celtic Tree: Elder (November 25 to December 23)

December Birth Stone: Turquoise or Blue Topaz

December Birth Flower: Narcissus

Holidays and Festivals:

Hanukkah: Sundown December 11 Hanukkah is an 8 day Jewish Festival of Lights. After a group of Jews defeated a Greek army, they found that only a small bit of olive oil remained to light the Menorah in their temple. That small amount of oil miraculously burned for 8 days.

Bill of Rights Day: December 15 On this day in 1791, 1o amendments were added to the United States Constitution that guaranteed such rights as the freedom of the press and of religion, the right to bear arms, and the right of due process of law.

Winter Solstice or Yule: December 21 The shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

Christmas: December 25 Commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ.

Boxing Day: December 26 A day to donate to the poor. During the middle ages, the wealthy would fill boxes with food to give to the less fortunate. In modern times, it is a day to fill up boxes with non-perishable food and clothing in good condition and donate those items to charity.

Kwanzaa: December 26 A 7 day holiday celebrating African-American heritage.

A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (Audio): Redux by Charles Dickens read by Jim Dale (New York: Random House Audio, 2003) MP3 Audiobook, 166.3 MB, 3 Hours, Fiction ISBN: 9781400086030, US$19.00

From the Cover: Marley was dead: to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that. And so Jim Dale begins his incomparable telling of the beloved A Christmas Carol, a "little book," as Charles Dickens himself called it, which has been treasured by generations since December of 1843. Listeners of all ages will be enthralled as they meet for the first time - or are reunited with - that miser of all misers, Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge; his cheerful and long-suffering assistant, Bob Cratchit; Scrooge's mysterious visitors on a wintry Christmas Eve, the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Future; and the other characters of this timeless story which is sure to touch a chord in all of us. Let a master reader beguile you with this universal reminder of what the holiday season can and should mean in this unique production of Dickens' classic and ever-timely tale.

My Original Review: 12/11/2006 - 01:00:00 AM

My Review: I read and/or listen to A Christmas Carol every year, and have done so since I was in high school. It's a Christmas tradition with me, and let me say that there can be no better way to experience Charles Dickens' holiday classic than by listening to Jim Dale reading it. Dale (who reads the Harry Potter audiobooks) is simply amazing. With the possible exception of Frank Muller, there is no better audiobook reader, nay, performer than Jim Dale. Dickens' stirring prose comes to life through Dale's skilled performance (even if Scrooge and Co. sound suspiciously like Hagrid and Harry and Co.). In looking back at my previous review (the link is above) I don't know that I could say anything different about this version of A Christmas Carol than I did two years ago (or even a year ago when I read the print edition), so I would direct you to these two reviews with the caveat that if you are having a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit, the best thing you can do is read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Posted by Bryan R. Terry in December 2008 Reposted with his permission

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