A Christmas Celebration

Sam Elder

$10.00

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SKU:: 471
Condition:: Very Good
Format:: Hardcover - Bound in padded green cloth, 48 pages
Publisher:: Harper & Row, 1984
Edition:: First Edition

Accompanied with colorful illustrations in Victorian style, this delightful little Christmas book is a compilation of Christmas essays, letters, poems, carols, paintings, prayers, and recipes. It would make a great addition to any classic Christmas book collection.

Description

Accompanied with colorful illustrations in Victorian style, this delightful little Christmas book is a compilation of Christmas essays, letters, poems, carols, paintings, prayers, and recipes. It would make a great addition to any classic Christmas book collection.

Compiled by: Sam Elder

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A Christmas Carol is Charles Dickens's best-known work and a beloved classic of nineteenth century literature. Published in 1843, it was the first of five books that Dickens wrote specifically to promote the spirit of charity and generosity that we associate with the Christmas holidays.

A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Classics brings together all five Christmas books that Dickens wrote between 1843 and 1848, including The Chimes, A Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man--stories that Dickens hoped would, as he wrote, "awaken some loving and forebearing thoughts" in his readers. Through these immensely popular tales Dickens's name became synonymous, in the minds of his audience, with the warm tidings of the Christmas season.

This volume also collects "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton," an early sketch that was Dickens's model for A Christmas Carol. And it includes another fifteen stories, three written in collaboration with Wilkie Collins, and all published in the Christmas issues of the two magazines Dickens edited between 1850 and 1870, Household Works and All the Year Round. These works also celebrate the virtues of home, hearth, and holiday cheer.

Although associated with Christmas-time, the stories collected in A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Classics transcend their time and season and can be enjoyed all the year round. — Quick view Add to Cart

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The Christmas Almanac is the ultimate Christmas book. Part reference, part anthology, part cookbook, part history book, part songbook, part shopping guide, part crafts, and part trivia book, this hefty volume with 200 color illustrations belongs on every family’s shelf. Each of eight chapters is a combination of elements based on its particular theme. They include:

• Classic Stories–from The Fir Tree by Hans Christian Anderson to Eleanor Roosevelt’s Christmas at Hyde Park

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• Recipes–American standards such as Sugar Cookies and Cranberry Sauce; classic recipes from around the world; Christmas drinks; and entertaining ideas

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Since it was first published, more than seven million people have been touched by the magic of The Christmas Box, a holiday classic that is as beloved in our time as A Christmas Carol was in Dickens's.

When Richard Paul Evans wrote The Christmas Box, he intended it as a private expression of love for his two young daughters, Jenna and Allyson. Though he often told them that he loved them, he didn't feel that they could ever really understand the depth of his feelings until they had experienced the joy of rearing their own children, and by that time their relationship would have changed forever. In writing The Christmas Box, he hoped that at some time in the future they would read the book and know of their father's love.

As Evans began to write, he was amazed at the inspiration that flowed into his mind and heart. He completed the moving story of a widow and the young family who comes to live with her in less than six weeks, and bound twenty copies to give as Christmas presents to family and friends. In the following weeks, those twenty copies were shared and passed along from family to family, from friend to friend, and what began as a tale for two little girls became a message of miracles, hope, and healing for people throughout the world. — Quick view Add to Cart

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Have a happy Christmas in the English countryside with a volume of three heartwarming holiday tales from Miss Read.

As frost sparkles on cottage roofs and smoke rises from chimneys, the English village of Fairacre is a perfect vision of Christmas joy — but even in this cozy community, celebrations of the season do not always go as expected. In this enchanting holiday collection, Miss Read shares three of her most beloved and memorable Christmas tales.

In Village Christmas, the Emery family is preparing to celebrate their first Christmas in Fairacre, having moved from London just three months before, and to welcome the birth of their fourth child. When the unexpected happens on Christmas morning, their new neighbors, the elderly Waters sisters, are fortunately nearby to lend a hand.

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In No Holly for Miss Quinn, a family emergency disrupts Miss Quinn’s plans for a quiet and fuss-free holiday. She agrees to look after her brother’s three young children while their mother is ill and soon finds herself swept away by holiday traditions, the infectious enthusiasm of the children, and the surprising arrival of someone from her past.

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Americans who complain about the modern-day commercialization of Christmas may be surprised to discover that dissatisfaction with the way the holiday has been observed is by no means a new phenomenon. In 1659 the Massachusetts General Court declared the celebration of Christmas to be a criminal offense. What the Puritans were trying to suppress was a season of excess rooted in the ancient agricultural cycle – rowdy public displays of eating and drinking, mockery of established authority, aggressive begging, and boisterous invasions of the homes of the wealthy. In The Battle for Christmas, Stephen Nissenbaum shows how in the early nineteenth century, with the growth of cities, these Christmas-season carnival revels became even more threatening as they turned into gang violence and even riots.

Attempting to get Christmas out of the streets, a group of New Yorkers – Washington Irving among them – led a movement to transform it into a new style of celebration that would take place within the secure confines of the family circle, and be concerned especially with the happiness of children. We learn how two classic texts helped refashion the holiday: Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" and Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. And we are shown the child-centered Christmas epitomized by the family gatherings and gift-exchanges of the Sedgwick family in nineteenth-century Massachusetts and New York.

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"Happy are the Christmases that are shared with cats!" proclaims the renowned artist Lesley Anne Ivory. And she should know. Her delightful, whimsical, and enchanting paintings of kittens, cats, tabbies, short-hairs and long-haired critters have long made the holidays special for young and old alike.

Here, in this wonderful collection, Lesley Anne Ivory's cats investigate the shimmering snow, temptingly decorated Christmas trees, fairy tale castles, golden gifts, candies, villages, and windows filled with mystery and charm.

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Capture the beauty and wonder of Christmas, as seen through the sweet, mischievous eyes of the cats and kittens we love. Capture the special feelings of Christmas with Lesley Anne Ivory's unique paintings.

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It has been said that Christmas brings out the best in everyone, and this has been especially true of mystery writers who seem to have been inspired to their best work by the holiday season.

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