A Musical New Year, Christmas Cards, and a TV House History

MY NEW YEAR -  31st December - 7th January

NEW YEAR  - I have lived 56 years in Scotland,  have promoted Scotland to visitors for most of my working life, am patriotic (note not nationalistic!), BUT I have never got on with Hogmanay  - I don’t know why, but I cannot get worked up about a date, even less so, when it entails me staying up until midnight.Perhaps it would be different if we were part of a larger family living close by, but G.was working on early shift.

On Old Year’s Night, we watched a fascinating TV  programme on the making of the Royal Ballet’s superb, magical production of “The Nutcracker”.  Of course there was only one thing to do afterwards - put on our DVD and enjoy the whole ballet

The next day, N. and I followed our own ritual by sitting down with a drink and nibbles to watch  the New Year’s Day concert from Vienna and enjoy the music, the dancing and the film profile of the city - bringing  back lovely memories of our Austrian holidays.

The statue of Mozart in Vienna. 

CHRISTMAS CARDS  -  It suddenly struck me when I was taking down the Christmas carts, what a depressing selection there was this year  So many were monochrone and not at all  Christmassy.  Animals abounded - polar bears, penguins, hares, sheep - with only an occasional robin to brighten up the  display, or there were delicate snowflakes or "In the Bleak Midwinter" scenes.  Whatever happened to images of Christmas cheer  - trees & baubles, holly & ivy, candles, Santa Claus,  And of course nativity scenes were few and far between.  Is this all a sign of our age?  

It made me think back to the days when it seemed a shame to bin so many lovely cards, that I compiled them into scrapbooks - first of all to illustrate for  my young daughter the Christmas story and Christmas traditions. Later I created a Christmas Anthology, using the cards to illustrate poems, carols and literature and then a Christmas A-Z.

 

The scrapbooks come out every Christmas to remind me of cards we received over the years. 

TV - The first of a new series, "A House Through Time"  was a natural extension of the popular family history programme "Who do You Think You Are" (WDYTYA).  It explored   the  history of a house in Liverpool through the lives of the people who lived there.  I liked the way the presenter put the emphasis on archival sources, though I did wonder  how many properties the programme researchers investigated before  coming up with this one powerful profile.

OLD FASHIONED ENTERTAINMENT - a fun afternoon with granddaughter playing board games and card games - Family Trivial Pursuits (a Christmas present), Articulate, Cheat, Beggar My Neighbour,  and Uno.   

*************

 Journal Jottings

  recording my everyday life for future family historians