Another Red Letter Day for literature in the English language:

Jonathan Swift, b. 1667. Read “A Lump of Deformity Smitten With Pride.”

Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens, b. 1835. Mark Twain’s Christmas greeting from 1890:

It is my heart-warmed and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage (every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth), may eventually be gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss, except the inventor of the telephone.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery, b. 1874.

Christmas broke on a beautiful white world. It had been a very mild December and people had looked forward to a green Christmas; but just enough snow fell softly in the night to transfigure Avonlea. Anne peeped out from her frosted gable window with delighted eyes. The firs in the Haunted Wood were all feathery and wonderful; the birches and cherry trees were outlined in pearl; the ploughed fields were stretches of snowy dimples; and there was a crisp tang in the air that was glorious. Anne ran downstairs singing until her voice re-echoed through Green Gables.

Winston Churchill, b. 1874. Christmas with Churchill by Gerald Pawle, Blackwoods Magazine, Vol. 314, No. 1898, December, 1973.

Aaron Copland, American composer, b. 1900. We’ll be listening to some of Copeland’s “greatest hits” this week because I really enjoy his music.

Astrid Lindgren, Swedish author, b. 1907. Here’s a mini-unit study on Pippi for homeschoolers and teachers.
And here are some Pippi coloring pages. The website is in Dutch, I think, or Swedish, but the coloring pages are wordless and well-done.

Claude Monet, b. 1840. Read Linnea in Monet’s Garden.
Free unit study on the French impressionists.
Lesson plan: Painting like the Impressionists.

Nancy Tafuri, b. 1946, author and illustrator of Have You Seen My Duckling? Some ideas for extending the learning and fun of this book..

I posted this quiz a couple of years ago on this date, but I think it’ll fly again. Leave your guesses in the comments.

He was born on this date in 1821.

While he was at school, his father was murdered by his own servants at the family’s small country estate.

He graduated from engineering school but chose a literary career.

He was arrested and charged with subversion because of his meetings with a group of intellectuals to discuss politics and literature. He and several of his associates were imprisoned and sentenced to death. As they were facing the firing squad, an imperial messenger arrived with the announcement that the death sentences had been commuted to four years in prison and four years of military service..

While in prison, his intense study of the New Testament, the only book the prisoners were allowed to read, contributed to his rejection of his earlier liberal political views and led him to the conviction that redemption is possible only through suffering and faith.

In 1867, he fled to Europe with his second wife to escape creditors.

He returned home and finished what many consider to be his greatest novel two months before his death in 1881.

Quotes by Mr. X:

“Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.”

“Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what people fear most.”

Quotes about Mr. X:

“…the only psychologist from whom I have anything to learn.” – Nietzsche

“. . . gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss.” – Albert Einstein

“an author whose Christian sympathy is ordinarily devoted to human misery, sin, vice, the depths of lust and crime, rather than to nobility of body and soul” -Thomas Mann

“..the nastiest Christian I’ve ever met”.-Turgenev

“He was in the rank in which we set Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe.” – Edwin Muir

“My husband was to me such an interesting and wholly enigmatic being, that it seemed to me as though I should find it easier to understand him if I noted down his every thought and expression.” -Mr X’s second wife
(My response to Mrs. X’s observation is: aren’t they all? But who would have time or energy to write it all down–and then try to figure it out?)

Finally, I never have been able to decide how to spell his name. So who is it? And what about you? Have you read his novels? What did you think? Do you find him gloomy and sad or interesting and enigmatic–or all of the preceeding? And how do you spell his name?

Three authors were born on this date. All three are listed on my Unfinished List of the 100 Best Fiction Books of All Time. All three wrote for children as well as adults. Can you identify the author for each of the following quotations?

1. “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.”

2. “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.”

3. “The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike…Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.”

4. “. . . it comes to me that if I am not free to accept guilt when I do wrong, then I am not free at all. If all my mistakes are excused, if there’s an alibi, a rationalization for every blunder, then I am not free at all. I have become subhuman.”

5. “When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.”

6. “God has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense.”

7. “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

8. “Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honors!”

9. “A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere–‘Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,’ as Herbert says, ‘fine nets and stratagems.’ God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”

10. “Poor dull Concord. Nothing colorful has come through here since the Redcoats.”

Happy Birthday to Jack, Jo, and Maddy, three of my favorite authors and thinkers.

Another Red Letter Day for literature in the English language:

Jonathan Swift, b. 1667. Read “A Lump of Deformity Smitten With Pride.”

Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens, b. 1835. Death Disk, a short story by Mark Twain, First published in Harper’s Magazine, Christmas 1901.

Lucy Maud Montgomery, b. 1874.

Christmas broke on a beautiful white world. It had been a very mild December and people had looked forward to a green Christmas; but just enough snow fell softly in the night to transfigure Avonlea. Anne peeped out from her frosted gable window with delighted eyes. The firs in the Haunted Wood were all feathery and wonderful; the birches and cherry trees were outlined in pearl; the ploughed fields were stretches of snowy dimples; and there was a crisp tang in the air that was glorious. Anne ran downstairs singing until her voice re-echoed through Green Gables.

Winston Churchill, b. 1874. Christmas with Churchill by Gerald Pawle, Blackwoods Magazine, Vol. 314, No. 1898, December, 1973.