Symbol:  Advent Calendar

Carol:  O Holy Night

Movie:  It's a Wonderful Life - 1946

Literature & Poetry:  A Reading from Louisa May Alcott's Christmas Treasury, "The Quiet Little Woman"

Christmas Around the World:  Denmark

Sophia:  In Denmark, Christmas is when the mischievious elf Nisse can have his fun by playing jokes on the people.  The families will leave him a bowl of rice pudding or porridge to keep his tricks within limits.  When the children eat the pudding, there would be a magic almond in someone's pudding, and whoever got the almond would receive a prize.  In Denmark, they have a tradition called the Christmas Plate when rich Danes give plates of fruit and biscuits as a present to their servants.  Their Santa Claus figure is called Julemanden.  The main Christmas celebration is on the 24th of December.  The movie "It's A Wonderful Life" was a very good movie.  The way everyone dressed was much more formal.  The carol "O Holy Night" is a very nice carol.  I've downloaded the song by Celtic Woman.  We went to see "A Christmas Carol" in Providence, RI.  It was a very good play, it was scary and funny.  In a small town in Germany, their Town Hall has twenty-four windows.  On the first of December, they put pictures in all the windows and open them one by one.  The Advent Calendars I have are very nice ones.  One is a Playmobil Calendar that has boxes with little pieces that go to the display on our table.  The other one has little doores that you open and see a work of art in each window.  I love them both.

Check out Gengenbach's Rathaus, or Town Hall, here.

Pamela