Something/Someone Old

Christmas Edition!

My Something Old this week is Rudolf Nureyev's staging of The Nutcracker Suite from 1968.

I found this footage on YouTube. I had never seen Nureyev dance before. Actually, I'd never seen either of this people dance before, and thought Nureyev's partner must be Margot Fonteyne. But it's actually Merle Park.

This is heart-stoppingly beautiful. I'm awestruck in particular by Park's grace and skill.

Something New

My "new" thing is thirty years old, so not exactly new--but it's certainly new compared to the classic version of The Nutcracker. In the early 90s, Mark Morris was weary of staging the same old Nutcracker and reimagined it in an early 60s suburban setting. I didn't expect to be charmed, but the little girl trying to get into the presents just slays me:

Something Borrowed

Obviously, most American Yuletide traditions are "borrowed" from other countries. Decorating Christmas trees comes from Germany (as does illuminating them, which Germans were doing as early as the seventeenth century!) Leaving cookies and milk out for Santa derives from an old Norse tradition (as I've said often on this blog, Odin has more than a little in common with Saint Nick!). Caroling comes from medieval England. Much later, the English also invented the custom of sending Christmas cards; Henry Cole, the founder of the Victoria and Albert Museum sent the first one in 1848.

But here's one I didn't expect.

Hanging out stockings in hopes of finding them in the morning stuffed with goodies comes from Turkey! The actual historical Saint Nicholas was an Eastern European guy, so I guess it's not that surprising:

Legend says Christmas stockings originated in Turkey sometime in the 4th century...The legend associated with the Christmas stocking is said to date back to the time of Saint Nicholas during the 3rd and 4th centuries in what is now Turkey. According to Smithsonian magazine, Saint Nicholas heard about the plight of a poor widower and his three daughters and wanted to help. He snuck into the house, saw the girls' recently laundered stockings drying by the fire, and filled them with gold coins before going silently into the night.

https://bestlifeonline.com/christmas-traditions-started-abroad/

Turns out the "plight" was that the man was so poor he couldn't provide dowries for any of his daughters without selling one of them into slavery (thereby getting money to marry off the other two). Not doing so would mean a life of unremitting poverty for all of them. Apparently, the father decided it would be better to be poor together than to sell his daughter as a slave. St. Nicholas, who liked to travel through those parts giving away his family's wealth anonymously to the poor, helped the man out. As each girl neared marriageable age, gold coins would appear in their stockings.

While nobody could say for sure that it was Nicholas who put the coins in the stockings or left other gifts during his travels, some noted that these things always appeared after he had made his way through the village.

Over the years, people began hanging stockings “in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.”

https://www.101highlandlakes.com/news/origins-of-christmas-stockings

Something Blue

I know I've shared this before, but I can't resist posting it again. The singer was not Mel Blanc himself, but a singer and voice actor named Denny Brownlee. Mr. Brownlee, thank you so much for some of the best laughs I've ever had.