"Dinner by candlelight" was today's Advent activity. And it was a perfect one after a long, hectic day of multiple activities, including pulling out the decorations and putting up the tree. The kids ran back and forth placing and replacing all manner of holiday items, while Mama diligently worked on the tree (a new, pre-lit artificial one, a surprise purchase this year; our old one was about 13 years old and sloughing lead apparently and the cats can't have a real tree). Instrumental Christmas carols recorded by the musicians of Old Sturbridge Village played in the background.
In one of the holiday tubs was our punched tin lantern, also from Sturbridge Village, and it was this we lit for dinner. Sure, the microwave and stove lights glowed, as did the fridge when we opened it, but the overall effect was still a powerful one. The kids were mesmerized by the light flickering through the little holes and learned all new vocabulary for it--wick, flickering, embers. At first they couldn't see their food, non-traditional leftover Chinese for them, Italian pasta e lenticchie for me, all for Mama. But their eyes soon adjusted. And we talked the whole meal about what life would have been like a long time ago, for pilgrims and pioneers, from morning chores to midday suppers to stories by candlelight.
So, for bedtime stories, I dug up three books we happen to have about winter or Christmas in the olden days, Tomie DePaolo's Early American Christmas and two beginning readers based on Little House in the Big Woods. The first describes the bringing of Christmas traditions to a New England village by the newly-arrived German "Christmas Family," who make bayberry candles, bake gingerbread cookies, and decorate a tree. The second two relate Laura Ingalls Wilder's childhood in Wisconsin with big pictures and short text, specifically a party at her grandpa's house with food and fiddle music. I didn't have time to track down the chapter in Little House on the Prairie, I think, which relates how Mr. Edwards meets Santa on his trek to the Ingalls' and brings shiny tin cups, a candy stick, sugared cakes, and penny. That, along with the opening chapter of Little Women ("'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents!'") are my most vivid literary childhood memories of Christmas.
Maybe we can read those tomorrow night.
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