Christmastide, Wintergram, & Seneca
How to Extend Christmas and the "Punctuation of Posting"
What the heck is this thing called Christmastide⁉️ 🎄+🌊=❓
Merry Christmastide, Sugarplums!
Why, you may ask, are you wasting my precious holiday time when there are presents under the tree awaiting a good opening?
Well, newsletters that are released on Mondays do not cease releasing, even when Monday falls (like a snowy dream) on Christmas Day.
Yes, newsletters fall, too, in beautiful festive flakes. ❄️❄️❄️
Besides, it’s time to learn what Christmastide is—pulled out my trusty word bible here to see what Merriam-webster says:
the festival season from Christmas Eve till after New Year's Day or especially in England till Epiphany.
Some of you silly Santas may ask, when and what is Epiphany in such said context? Well, let me just tell you:
January 6 observed as a church festival in commemoration of the coming of the Magi as the first manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles or in the Eastern Church in commemoration of the baptism of Christ.
So, let us relish in Christmastime and celebrate Christmastide—the English version of it.
Anything to extend the joyous holiday season, right? Because merriment should not end. December 25 through January 6th: Christmastide.
I like it 🎄🎄🎄 . 🎄🎄🎄 . 🎄🎄🎄 . 🎄🎄🎄 a lot.
Instagram is full of Wintergrams & these are some of my favorites
Not that Instagram is the platform of high art. But it can be used to appreciate art.
I follow so many artists and lit journals, I have started to enjoy how my feed fills each day with beautiful craft, in both words and images.
With a poem on a page, part of the art of it is in the way it reads. The way it lies on a page: line breaks, white space, all of it—it’s the artists' choice on how to deliver it to the reader.
For this reason, I will include some of my favorite wintergrams below and also include the artist’s accompanying post/message.
I’ll even leave the format exactly as they present it, including tags, emoji, and spacing—for these are the “punctuation of posting,” and perhaps should be seen as part of this modern way of sharing and browsing art, as part of the art itself.
En-joy.
My Bullfinches Christmas card is available now on the @rspb website! A pack of 10 is just £5 and proceeds support their work for wildlife.
Scroll to see the original rough sketch.
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#birdart #bullfinch #christmascard #winterillustration #illo #illustration #natureillustration
Charley painted this in 1954 for @hallmark Associated American Artists collection. Titled “Unscheduled Stop”. Gouache on artist board.
Incredible Winter Evening, ink & Acrylic on museum board, 28cm x28cm, Lavenham Contemporary.
A cartoon by @christopherweyant, from 2010. #NewYorkerCartoons
Two souls amidst the winter night / 2023 / limited edition of prints available
I am taking my Christmas tree home.
#christmastree #christmas #tree #illustration #mouse
December 🏠
#illustration #artwork #december #winter #illustrationartists #pintura #painting #ilustração
✨Now available ✨ 'Winter Walk' is available from my online shop (link in bio). This is a four stage multi-block and reduction print, in a limited edition of 20 prints. Thanks so much for looking ✨
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#printmaking #prints #reductionprint #reliefprint #printmakerspost #printmakersofinstagram #linocut #linoprint #linogravure #linograbado #handprinted #getimprinted #handcrafted #shopindependent #winter #snow #seasonal #festive #dogwalker #greatoutdoors
A cartoon by @steinbergdrawscartoons, from 2019. #NewYorkerCartoons
What I’m reading—Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
Like an elf on the shelf, I’ve discovered my Letters from a Stoic possesses magical abilities. Each night, as long as I don’t touch it during day, it moves from one location to another. So I have to use chopsticks to read it. It’s very daunting.
Ok, tidings of bad jokes aside.
I read this in high school. And I couldn’t resist this little hardback Penguin Classic when I saw it at Bagatelle Books in West Asheville as a little coffee table, display book.
Seneca was a masterful epistler (letter writer). So if you want to get into the art of letter writing, check him out. Mad unspoken rizz: him.
Some believe his letters were “essays in disguise.” He was not just a stoic, he was a satirist, too.
Much of what he writes makes me giggle inside. For example:
From Letter XXVII
‘So you’re giving me advice are you?’ you say. ‘Have you already given yourself advice, then? Have you already put yourself straight? Is that how you come to have time reforming other people?’ No, I’m not so shameless as to set about treating people when I’m sick myself. I’m talking to you as if I were lying in the same hospital ward, about the illness we are both suffering from, and passing on some remedies. So listen to me as if I were speaking to myself.
“So listen to me as if I were speaking to myself”— 🤣😂😆
Weekly Word
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Eggnog 🥛
The following is an excerpted extended definition and origin story of eggnog taken from a Merriam-Webster article titled 9 Christmas Words with Surprising Histories
Fog-drams i' the' morn, or (better still) egg-nogg, / At night hot-suppings, and at mid-day, grogg...
Those words are from a pastoral poem by Jonathan Boucher in his Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words (written circa 1775) and were said to be "drawn from the life, from the manners, customs and phraseology of planters … inhabiting the Banks of the Potomac, in Maryland." Boucher defines fog-drams as "drams resorted to on the pretence of their protecting from the danger of fogs" (or, in other words, "drinks to clear your head") and egg-nogg as "a heavy and unwholesome, but not unpalatable, strong drink, made of rum beaten up with the yolks of raw eggs." Boucher was a clergyman and philologist who intended his glossary to be a supplement to the dictionaries of Noah Webster and Samuel Johnson, and in the case of eggnog, his intentions are appreciated. He may have provided us with the first use of eggnog in print.
The nog in eggnog is of unknown origin, but we know that the word has been used since the 17th century for a strong ale, especially one brewed in Norfolk, England. We raise a glass to Humphrey Prideaux, a "Sometime Dean of Norwich," for using it in a letter dated 1693 to John Ellis, a "Sometime Under-Secretary of State," providing us with a clue to when the word was first used.
This is how we do eggnog in our house:
And speaking of … Christmastide beverages—
We revisited the Burial Beer Co. mural of Sloth and Tom Selleck and they are adequately accessorized for Christmastide:
Thanks for reading ya filthy animals.
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