Welcome to the Christmas season at SteynOnline. If you're short of gift ideas, we have some bargains galore among this year's Steynamite Christmas specials - and as always we will have a full panoply of seasonal programming in the days ahead.
As I've emphasized since we launched The Mark Steyn Club last year, our regular content will always be free to everyone around the world, but we are admitting Club members to a few experimental features which, in the event they're sufficiently non-incompetent, we may eventually make more widely available. Tales for Our Time is one such - my series of monthly audio adventures, which over the past two-and-a-half years has presented serializations of H G Wells, Scott Fitzgerald, Conrad, Kipling, Kafka and more. To access them all, please see our easy-to-navigate Netflix-style Tales for Our Time home page. You'll notice we also have a special selection from my readings of Christmas stories - from Charles Dickens to O Henry, Louisa May Alcott to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ...oh, and some fellow called Steyn. We've introduced a similar tile format for my Sunday Poems and also for our audio and video music specials - and the latter likewise contains a Christmas section of live performances from The Mark Steyn Show of "White Christmas", "Silent Night", "I'll Be Home for Christmas" and more.
But, ever since my reading of A Christmas Carol (of which more next weekend), seasonal stories have been a special part of our annual Yuletide festivities. As First Day Founding Member Wayne Carmichael wrote of last year's tales:
What a Christmas present this is! Thank you, Mark, and Merry Christmas!
My pleasure, Wayne. For the 2019 festive season I've picked two authors about as different as one can imagine. We begin with a second trip to Anne of Green Gables, whom we first visited last year in the company of Anne fan Michele Bachmann. For me (and also for my little girl, when I first read the book to her as a nightly serial), one of the most touching aspects of L M Montgomery's all-time Canadian blockbuster has always been the relationship between aged taciturn Matthew Cuthbert, the farmer who wanted a boy to help him out, and young garrulous Anne Shirley, the orphan girl he wound up with instead. In his own way, he understands Anne rather better than his sister Marilla does - and so, in tonight's excerpt, an elderly rustic who knows nothing of ladies' fashions discerns just before Christmas that the little girl is ...missing something:
He had come into the kitchen, in the twilight of a cold, gray December evening, and had sat down in the woodbox corner to take off his heavy boots, unconscious of the fact that Anne and a bevy of her schoolmates were having a practice of "The Fairy Queen" in the sitting room. Presently they came trooping through the hall and out into the kitchen, laughing and chattering gaily. They did not see Matthew, who shrank bashfully back into the shadows beyond the woodbox with a boot in one hand and a bootjack in the other, and he watched them shyly for the aforesaid ten minutes as they put on caps and jackets and talked about the dialogue and the concert. Anne stood among them, bright eyed and animated as they; but Matthew suddenly became conscious that there was something about her different from her mates. And what worried Matthew was that the difference impressed him as being something that should not exist. Anne had a brighter face, and bigger, starrier eyes, and more delicate features than the other; even shy, unobservant Matthew had learned to take note of these things; but the difference that disturbed him did not consist in any of these respects. Then in what did it consist?
Matthew was haunted by this question long after the girls had gone, arm in arm, down the long, hard-frozen lane and Anne had betaken herself to her books. He could not refer it to Marilla, who, he felt, would be quite sure to sniff scornfully and remark that the only difference she saw between Anne and the other girls was that they sometimes kept their tongues quiet while Anne never did. This, Matthew felt, would be no great help.
He had recourse to his pipe that evening to help him study it out, much to Marilla's disgust. After two hours of smoking and hard reflection Matthew arrived at a solution of his problem. Anne was not dressed like the other girls!
To hear me read "Matthew Insists on Puffed Sleeves", the first of our 2019 seasonal stories, prefaced by my own introduction to L M Montgomery's tale, Mark Steyn Club members should please click here and log-in.
We launched The Mark Steyn Club over two-and-a-half years ago, and I'm overwhelmed by all those members across the globe who've signed up to be a part of it - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Cook County to the Cook Islands, West Virginia to the West Midlands. As I emphasized at the time, membership isn't for everyone, but it is a way of ensuring that all our content remains available for everyone.
That said, we are offering our Club members a few extras, including our monthly audio adventures. We're very pleased by the response to Tales for Our Time - and we even do them live on our annual Mark Steyn Club Cruise. We'll be presenting another Tale along with live editions of The Mark Steyn Show and much more on next year's Mediterranean cruise.
I'm truly thrilled that one of the most popular of our Steyn Club extras these last two years has been our nightly radio serials. If you've enjoyed them and you're looking for a Christmas present for a fellow fan of classic fiction, I hope you'll consider our special Club Gift Membership. Aside from Tales for Our Time, The Mark Steyn Club does come with other benefits:
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The chance to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with yours truly (such as Wednesday's);
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show, Mark's Mailbox, and our other video content;
~My video series of classic poetry;
~Booking for special members-only events such as this year's Mark Steyn Christmas Show and my conversation with Douglas Murray;
~Priority booking for the above-mentioned Third Annual Mark Steyn Club Cruise from Rome to Gibraltar, Barcelona and Monte Carlo with Michele Bachmann, Conrad Black and my other guests;
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~and the opportunity to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget that special Gift Membership. As soon as you join, you'll get access not only to Christmas at Green Gables but to all the other yarns gathered together at the Tales for Our Time home page.
One other benefit to membership is our Comment Club privileges. So, whether you favor this Christmas vignette or not, feel free to comment away below. And do join us tomorrow for the second of our seasonal tales by L M Montgomery.
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37 Member Comments
How could publishers at first have passed on the irrepressible Anne? Within a few pages of Anne of Green Gables her vivacious bright spirit jumps off the page.
My grandfather, who survived mustard gas in World War One, was a fan of Anne of Green Gables or I might never have read it for two reasons: if he hadn't survived I would never have been born, and if he hadn't spoken well of it, I would likely have continued to dismiss it as some book for young girls. Eventually I did read it as a young man to see what all the fuss was and found it a great read, easily able to stir emotions, though verging sometimes on sentimentality, perhaps due to the author's own battered emotions revealed in Mark's introduction, but not without ironic awareness of the limits of unchecked emotion as in the humorous episode of the floods of tears over the departure of the favorite teacher.
I also appreciated the cello and piano arrangement here of Hail Thou Ever Blessed Morn.
My experience with Anne of Green Gables was similar to yours; a family vacation when I was in my early 20's ; my folks bought the set of books for my younger sisters, but I read them all in about four days there on the beaches of red clay PEI .. I'm not sure which volume it was in, but the story of the baby with the croup came to my mind time and again when my own children were ill.
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Thank you, Mark, for reading an excerpt from Anne of Green Gables! The whole series is excellent. The author captures the intensity of childhood so well, like Anne imbibing too much elderberry? wine. Maybe not the best example. Or in a later book, Anne's children spend the night with a pack of rough kids. The reader really feels emotion right along with the characters. Thank you again for reading a girl's book! Much as I love Rudyard Kipling, Montgomery is a fun change.
What about an animal story from James Herriot or "Every Night Josephine" by Jacqueline Susann?
"I knew I had to live up to those puffed sleeves!"
Along with the selection from "Little Women", this is a perfect Christmas tale. And the animated reading is brought to life by the introduction: It's sad to think that L M Montgomery lived vicariously through Anne's much happier life with Matthew and Marilla.
What a great choice for a Christmas reading. I also read the book to my little girl, I think we started after we visited the "Green Gables" site on PEI when she was four.
One has to admire Matthew's unfailing kindness and decency, but I liked even more the gradual transformation of Marilla. Age and spinsterhood have hardened her, making her stern, unemotional, inflexible. Something about Anne cracks the carapace and begins the transformation to the mother she was always intended to be. I looked up the passage where for the first time she comes to Anne's defense:
"Marilla opened her lips to say she knew not what of apology or deprecation. What she did say was a surprise to herself, then and ever afterwards. "You shouldn't have twitted her about her looks, Rachel.""
Maybe not quite up to Huck Finn's "All right then, I'll GO to hell!" But a brave statement nonetheless.
Anne of Green Gables is another of my sister's childhood literary obsessions. She even vacationed once on Prince Edward Island to see the house. I am sure she enjoyed all the other attractions while she was there.
When you are talking about mince, do you mean the spiced, dried fruit or hamburger? You never know with Commonwealthers and surprises can be unpleasant.
Thanks for letting me abuse my Comment Club privileges. It's a gift that keeps on giving.
Mark replies:
"Mince"? Dried fruit of course, Walt. Good heavens, is there any other kind?
I hear, you, Walt.. they're known as "fruit mince pies" by the hicks among us.
Mark replies:
Ah, but that's because, when it comes to the other kind, Kate, Australia is the meat-pie capital of the world.
Good point, Mark. I guess "real men don't eat fruit mince pies" is our version of the quiche thing. But they are my father's favourite food when the temperature soars at this time of year.
Not sure where this fits, but I grew up in southern West Virginia and my mother made actual mince meat pies, which involved aging the beef with whiskey or brandy (?) in a big vat for several weeks (?) before Christmas. It seemed to me the beef was already roasted. Then it's mixed with fruit and apples and aged some more, and then it becomes several pies. And this was the real mince pie! Sorry Mark, and anyone else who prefers vegan mince.
I admit though, it was not a favorite of mine, but I never told my mother!
Long ago mince meat contained ground beef or venison or lamb and suet.
When I was in Junior High I used to skip school at least three days a year to go to the library and read what I wanted to read for a day. As long as my grades were good the Principal was okay with it
One day I read a medieval cook book. In it was an 11th century recipe for mince made with dried fruit such as currants, raisins and plums, chopped with ground cooked beef, venison or lamb and suet, mixed with spices such as nutmeg, cinnamon, ground cloves and mace, then some alcoholic beverage was mixed in. There was some other recipe for something called 'fruit soup' that involved dried fruit, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace and cloves mixed with wine or whatever alcoholic beverage you had access to.
These recipes were a way to store fruit for winter months when it wasn't plentiful. A little suet, beef, fruit, spices and alcohol go a long way in a dark month when no blossoms or harvest are to be had.
From your comment, Kitty, I think we would make grand neighbors in Steynville, Middle Earth. I especially like your initiative in thinking of a good reason to skip school. Why did I never think of it? We used to play school anyway on the side of my brick house until my dad realized the chalk did not come off the red bricks too easily. That closed my one-room schoolhouse down for good.
Elizabeth, you and Kitty had the same thing in mind in terms of the original (Crusader) mince pie... popularised by idolatrous Catholics (according to Wikipedia).
Love reading these personalised comments... Nicola Timmerman has even shared her family recipe!
PS. Mark baked a pie for Martha Stewart at Christmastime a few years back. Just wow!
Well, I've always known them as mince-meat pies (because of suet as an ingredient, I suppose), and, properly made, are my favorite pie of all time. The exotically spiced aroma of warm mince-meat pie, fresh from the oven, is one of those archetypal sensations that evoke childhood Christmas for me, and my sweet mother, working so hard to make everything perfect for us. God bless us, every one.
Great to see you back in the comments in time for Christmas, Paul!
Yes, childhood memories of Christmas are never far off with cooking aromas and other sensory reminders (... the perfume of jasmine flowers and the sound of Julie Andrews' exquisite singing voice, for me).
Your mother and mine are the same!
To help retrieve the mince pie discussion from the rabbit hole!...and make suggestion for a future reading? One of my favorite Christmas stories is Mr. Pickwick's Christmas, from the Pickwick Papers. In that, the fat boy "appropriates to his own use and summarily devours a particularly fine mince pie that had been carefully put by for somebody else." I believe this occurred during the mistletoe segment of the story.
Comfort and joy!
Mark replies:
That is an excellent suggestion, Elizabeth. We will certainly take you up on it.
Was she still in the Big House? Did he bake a file and hacksaw into it?
Oh, yes, Elizabeth, "The Pickwick Papers" by all means. Wonderful suggestion!
I would be so blessed to have you for a neighbor!
Kate, "...the perfume of jasmine flowers..."--ah, Christmas time Down Under. Is it warm there now, or already hot? At my one and only Christmas in the neighborhood of the equator, I recall someone managed to scrounge (from heaven knows where) a very scrubby, scrawny and extremely demoralized little Christmas tree. Like us, it was far from its home on the snowy slopes.
1. I think it was way before then, but I'm sure Mark would have been happy to oblige (based on his well-known views about her incarceration).
2. Yes, hot here - but we still have the traditional decorations, Martha Stewart style.
This tale has really touched my heart today, Mark. Thank you for choosing this one. I was trying to think back, way back, in time to early Christmases. My mom sewed and she made me a lovely green, pink and white plaid taffeta dress for the holidays. It had some little bit of lace around the neck, a generous sash for a full bow in the back. At the waist, the skirt was nicely gathered and the flounce was enough it could spin out a little if I pretended I was a little ballerina. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever set my eyes on especially after wearing a pale, plain grey uniform jumper with plain white blouse every day for school for eight years. Now I'm trying to remember if the sleeves were puffed, but I can't quite picture them. My mom just had an old peddle Singer machine. I don't think she sewed much after that. She lived to bake. Nicola just reminded me that she loved baking mincemeat pies around Christmas. Nothing came already prepared in a jar back then. I almost think I can remember my first taste of the brandied filling before the pie was baked. Mmmmm! Nothing tasted so good. Merry Christmas to all in the Mark Steyn Club. This membership is one of the finest things that has happened for me in ages.
Now I remember they called them "treadle machines" not pedal machines and certainly not "peddle" machines unless one meddled with the pedal as I often used to do which caused the strap to come off the wheel!
Me too! I'm so grateful to Mark for gathering so many good people here. I find myself wishing we all lived in the same town. I'd have everyone over for coffee or tea and ginger pie or pecan pie or something good. It would be so much fun!
Fun, Kitty! I would buy a house there. Steynville, (any country), Earth! We could both do some serious pie baking. I never had a ginger pie! I'm working on perfecting my gingerbread men for Laura right now!
Fran, I think Mark will have to have a live, on-camera cooking/ baking segment as part of his next Christmas show!
Well, if he doesn't, Kitty, I suggest a Christmas pie bake off between us some Christmastime.
My Mom had one of those treadle machines. I am told that when I was a toddler, at a time when the current Queen was still Princess Elizabeth, I reached up and by chance got a finger right under the needle, then stepped on the treadle and ran the needle right through the finger. My recollection is I took it like a man, never cried or whimpered, and when finally freed I nonchalantly said, "It's just a scratch."
Mom had a different recollection, she said my shrieks caused the dog to run away for a week, stopped the hens from laying and the cow from giving milk, and nearly caused the mass evacuation of the little village two miles away. Pretty sure my recollection is correct. You know how mothers exaggerate.
The sewing machine is still in the family. My sister has it, when we visit she covers it with a tarp so I won't suffer flashback trauma.
Oh, Kate! Sorry, I thought you were Kitty for a second. Well, I had too much early Christmas out here in LA with my granddaughter. Couldn't get her to go to bed tonight. Actually Christmas started a month ago in Montreal, I'm seeing candy canes and Rudolph flying with sleighs inside my closed lids.
I believe you, Dave. I've done the same thing once but with an industrial sewing machine with nobody around to assist. One of the children theater companies in town asked me to make a huge canvas for their annual "Spooktacular" set one Halloween. I pieced it in record time with seven wide painters' canvas drop cloths. Sewing my finger into the seam wasn't supposed to be part of any scene. It sends you into a minishock and it's more like a pitiful moaning gasp you emit. It doesn't so much hurt as produces an uncomfortable intense pressure and the sight of a needle sticking out of a finger attached to a thread attached to a machine is not something you see every day but nothing else is a priority like getting it out. The shock does momentarily take your breath away but you do regain composure to pull it out preferably the way it went in. I gave the machine away to an upholsterer in town, and gave up the thought of fabricating much else after that. I like to make things but I realized machine sewing was for the pros. I've been hand sewing ever since. Takes longer but it's soothing on one's nerves.
Well, Fran, you reap what you sew.
Haha! A harvest of blunders!
Amen! And get Nicola to show him (and us) how to make her recipe for mince pies!
So looking forward to this! Matthew is so sincere and kind-hearted. Gil too. They're not just characters but very real people.
This is perfect! Can't wait for future offerings. It's amazing that with such a difficult early life LM still managed to be more educated, literate, and thoughtful than most of what is passed for art today. And without calling constant attention to "self" or "me" in the process.
Somewhere out there I believe this still exists, and I hope can thrive in small, unnoticed ways, if we can finally observe the artificiality of social media, and if we're willing to work hard at something outside ourselves.
Keep this coming...and Merry Christmas!
Mark replies:
Thank you, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth has captured my sentiments, too, in her comments. I love the "manners" taught and exhibted by the characters in these stories... the respectful, articulate communication between children and adults, and the values reflected in those interactions. Thank you, Mark, for the choices you've made for your Christmas Tales and for keeping the cultural values they represent in our consciousness.
L.M. Montgomery reminds me of another famous Canadian writer Gabrielle Roy who is best known for The Tin Flute (Bonheur d'Occasion) and less depressingly of Children of My Heart about her experiences teaching in a one room schoolhouse on the Manitoba prairies.
Tough women unlike the snowflakes of today.
I just renewed my Club membership to continue to enjoy your attempts to renew our interest in our cultural heritage. I will be stubbornly making mince tartelettes again this year even though I am the only one in the family who really loves them, the legacy recipe of my British mother.
Mark replies:
Well, if you need to unload any, Nicola, mince pie is one of my quintessential tastes of Christmas.