December 2021
Gear up for the holidays by starting at your library. Resources on holiday traditions & folklore, special recipes, decorating ideas & crafts, music & movies, favorite children’s stories, and much more can help make your next celebration truly memorable.
Classic holiday movies, such as It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, and Holiday Inn, are available in the libraries’ audiovisual collections. Beloved children’s movies – such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, The Hanukkah Magic of Nate Gadol, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and The Nutcracker – also add to the festive season.
A wide variety of holiday music is also available on CD or digital download. From the classical sounds of Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel, or traditional versions by Plácido Domingo or Luciano Pavarotti, to more eclectic renditions by Michael Bublé, Mannheim Steamroller, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, or Pentatonix, FBCL has a variety of musical selections to add to the holiday spirit.
If you would like to create new traditions for your own family, get some great ideas from Meg Cox’s book, The Book of New Family Traditions. The book Holiday Symbols & Customs provides details on traditions for more than 320 holidays around the world. Jenny Rosenstrach’s book How to Celebrate Everything offers recipes and traditions for a wide variety of holidays and special occasions.
Robert St. John has ideas about “the new celebratory cuisine of the South” in his cookbook, Deep South Parties: How to Survive the Southern Cocktail Hour Without a Box of French-onion Soup Mix, a Block of Processed Cheese, or a Cocktail Weenie. You might discover some delicious ideas for new culinary creations in Eric Copage’s book, Fruits of the Harvest: Recipes to Celebrate Kwanzaa and Other Holidays.
If you’re a DIYer, the library can help you discover festive holiday touches that you can create yourself. Get ideas for super-simple tablescapes from Christopher Lowell, The Hassle-Free Host. In her book Beautiful Winter, floral designer Edle Catharina Norman shares ideas for using seasonal materials and flowers to put together entrancing and easy-to-assemble home projects – from festive garlands to fun table décor. Learn how to create whimsical paper shapes with Florence Temko’s book Origami Holiday Decorations for Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. If finding gifts has you stumped this year, check out Danny Seo’s book, Upcycling Celebrations: A Use-What-You-Have Guide to Decorating, Gift-Giving, and Entertaining.
You can also explore some of the seasonal winter crafts demonstrated by our FBCL staff on our YouTube channel!
Relive memories of holidays past! Fans of radio theater -- popular in the 1930s & 1940s -- can recreate the cozy intimacy of gathering around the radio for special holiday stories by checking out recordings of those same shows from the library. Check out Radio’s Greatest Christmas Shows on CD, and listen as Jack Benny describes the challenges of Christmas shopping on a shoe-string budget, hear Red Skelton tell the story of the Little Christmas Tree, and catch many other holiday radio stories from yesteryear. From our hoopla digital collection, download Classic Radio’s Greatest Christmas Shows for even more festive radio tales!
For those of you who are more into the “Festivus” spirit, check out hoopla digital’s ebook, Miserable Holiday Stories: 25 Festive Failures That Are Worse Than Yours, by Alex Bernstein, for a good chuckle.
Whether you are recalling fond memories of holidays past or creating new traditions for a lifetime of memories to come, start today at the library!