On Display at Blume
Christmas days : 12 stories and 12 feasts for 12 days / Jeanette Winterson
These tales open a portal into the spirit of the season, when time slows down, and magic starts to happen. From trees with mysterious powers to a tinsel baby that talks, philosophical fairies to flying dogs, a haunted house to a disappearing train, Winterson's innovative stories encompass the childlike and spooky wonder of Christmas, perfect for listening to by the fire with loved ones or while traveling home for the holidays.
Born of a virgin? : reconceiving Jesus in the Bible, tradition, and theology
As part of his exegetical investigation of the New Testament texts, Lincoln considers the literary genre and distinctive characteristics of the birth narratives as ancient biography. Further, he delineates how changes in our views of history and biology decisively affect any traditional understanding of the significance of an actual virgin birth, and he explores what that means for the authority of Scripture and creed, along with implications for Christology and for preaching and teaching from the birth narratives.
Merry Christmas! : celebrating America's greatest holiday
Viewing Christmas through the media of mass culture--engravings and lithographs, magazine fiction, pictorial ads, news photos, cards, and movies--Marling tells us how the beloved Christmas tree grew out of a much-reprinted image of Queen Victoria and her family gathered around a decorated fir; how Santa Claus lost his provincial Dutch character and turned into the jolly old soul we know; how Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol borrowed from Washington Irving's imaginings of what Christmas must have been like in Merrie Olde England; and how the holiday, balancing between the private and public realms, conferred a central and defining role on women.
The public work of Christmas : difference & belonging in multicultural societies
Christmas is not a holiday just for Christians anymore, if it ever was. The essays gathered here examine how cathedrals, banquets, and carols serve as infrastructures of memory that hold up Christmas as a civic, yet unavoidably Christian holiday. At the same time, the authors show how the public work of Christmas depends on cultural forms that mark, mask, and resist the ongoing power of Christianity in the lives of Christians and non-Christians alike.
The spotted pony : a collection of Hanukkah stories
Eight stories, with a "shammes" story for each, to be read on the eight nights of Hanukkah. Includes: Ibn Ezra and the Archbishop / The Kabil's Donkey / Leviathan and the Fox / The Wonderful Shamir / Did the Rabbi Have a Head? / The Caliph and the Cobbler / When Hershel Eats / The Spotted Pony.
Seven candles for Kwanzaa
This unique African-American holiday commemorates the strength of family ties, respect for ancestors, commitment to the growth of community, and gratitude for life's bounties.
Spirit child : a story of the Nativity
A tale first published in 1984 retells the story of the first Christmas in the terms Spanish missionaries used to tell the Aztecs about the birth of Jesus. An ALA Notable Children's Book.
Pancho's Piñata
The tale of Pancho and his piñata is so old that no one knows whether or not it is true. Yet to this day, on Christmas Eve, the children of San Miguel gather beside the old cactus in the village square to free gifts from a piñata. At midnight, when the church bells ring out, the brilliant Christmas star sends down showers of light. Some say that if you look closely, you can see the form of a small angel with paper wings in the center of the light.
We Celebrate Hanukkah
Explains the origins of Hannukkah, describes the customs and traditions associated with the holiday, and shares recipes, stories, poems, and games
Mexican nativities - Nacimientos Mexicanos
An art book exploring Mexican Nativities in various media. Authors: Andrés Henestrosa, Griselda Álvarez, Claudia Cantú Romandía, Jorge Noriega, Louisa Reynoso, Olga Sáenz, Luz María Trejo
The Christmas pig : a fable
King Jonjo Mayo the First is in a bind. Every Christmas, he commissions an artist to paint a traditional nativity scene to be dramatically revealed after midnight mass. This year, though, the date is mere weeks away, and he still has not yet found his painter. The king decides to take a chance on a peculiar, mute boy whose artistic genius and clairvoyance are rumored throughout the kingdom. Nobody knows if the child is up to the task, but the king's Christmas tradition—and Benjamin himself—might just be saved by a Christmas miracle that comes in the form of a very special pig, who is rather peculiar herself.
Nativity poems
Joseph Brodsky, who jokingly referred to himself as "a Christian by correspondence," endeavored from the time he "first took to writing poems seriously," to write a poem for every Christmas. He said in an interview, "What is remarkable about Christmas? The fact that what we're dealing with here is the calculation of life--or, at the very least, existence--in the consciousness of an individual, a specific individual." In Nativity Poems, six superb poets in English have come together to translate the ten as yet untranslated poems from this sequence. The results are a remarkable sequence of poems about time, eternity, and love, spanning a lifetime of metaphysical reflection and formal invention.
Christmas in Plains : memories
Jimmy Carter remembers Christmas in Plains, Georgia, the source of spiritual strength, respite, friendship, and vacation fun in this charming portrait. In a beautifully rendered portrait, Jimmy Carter remembers the Christmas days of his Plains boyhood—the simplicity of family and community gift-giving, his father’s eggnog, the children’s house decorations, the school Nativity pageant, the fireworks, Luke’s story of the birth of Christ, and the poignancy of his black neighbors’ poverty.
A redbird Christmas : a novel
Deep in the southernmost part of Alabama, along the banks of a lazy winding river, lies the sleepy little community known as Lost River, a place that time itself seems to have forgotten. After a startling diagnosis from his doctor, Oswald T. Campbell leaves behind the cold and damp of the oncoming Chicago winter to spend what he believes will be his last Christmas in the warm and welcoming town of Lost River. Once you experience the wonder, you too will never forget A Redbird Christmas.
White Christmas : the story of an American song
When Irving Berlin first conceived the song "White Christmas," he envisioned it as a "throwaway" -- a satirical novelty number for a vaudeville-style stage revue. By the time Bing Crosby introduced the tune in the winter of 1942, it had evolved into something far grander: the stately yuletide ballad that would become the world's all-time top-selling and most widely recorded song. In this vividly written narrative, Jody Rosen provides both the fascinating story behind the making of America's favorite Christmas carol and a cultural history of the nation that embraced it.
The first Christmas : what the Gospels really teach about Jesus's birth
In The First Christmas, two of today's top Jesus scholars, Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, join forces to show how history has biased our reading of the nativity story as it appears in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. They explore the beginning of the life of Christ, peeling away the sentimentalism that has built up over the last two thousand years around this most well-known of all stories to reveal the truth of what the gospels actually say. Borg and Crossan help us to see this well-known narrative afresh by answering the question, ""What do these stories mean?"" in the context of both the first century and the twenty-first century.