Hello booklovers,
Advent has arrived, as has the Felixstowe Book Festival advent calendar… let the excitement commence! To begin our ‘carol-a-day’ celebrations, Jan, one of our wonderful committee members, brings us In the Bleak Midwinter.
Jan writes…
In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
‘This carol was published as ‘A Christmas Carol’ in 1872 in the American magazine ‘Scribner’s Monthly’. The editor had met poet Christina Rossetti and asked her to write a Christmas poem for the magazine. Long before it came to be known by its famous first line, it was set to music by the composer Gustav Holst, accompanied by the tune known as ‘Cranham’.
This melancholy and evocative carol imagines the Nativity in a snowy Northern landscape a whole world away from the more temperate climate of the Middle East. What a marvelously descriptive setting for a carol or indeed for the winter season itself.’
See you tomorrow for your next advent treat – happy caroling!