Tuesday Cuppa Tea, Gingerbread Christmas Tea Dunoon and Miss Read

Happy sunny Dec. 12th! Hooray! We love the sun...we don't see it too terribly much in December here so it is wonderful!

I am joining Tuesday Cuppa Tea with Antiques And Teacups, Gingerbread Christmas Tea with Plumed Pen and the other tea related blogs at the bottom of the post.

I have another Christmas design tea mug by Dunoon  to share today. This one I found at an estate auction. The mug is long discontinued and dates to 1990. It is stoneware and was made in Scotland, not England. But I love the nostalgic Christmas design.

I mentioned in a post a few days ago that Miss Read, a favorite author, had done only 2 Christmas volumes...and then I remembered...No Holly For Miss Quinn.

The story surrounds a career woman planning to paint her home instead of celebrating Christmas coming to the rescue of a beloved and overworked brother who's wife is ill. Miss Quinn comes to look after their children and learns some lessons about giving and loving. It is a lovely book with the usual wonderful illustrations by. J. Goodall that we have come to love.

The book has even influenced a pianist to write and record a song. This is from Enya in her album Shepherd's Moon :

And, lastly a Christmas cross stitch from the 1970s...one of the first Christmas pieces I did.

 
Please join the other blog parties and enjoy the holidays!

 

Ruth ~ http://antiquesandteacups.blogspot.com/
Tuesday Cuppa Tea

Martha~  http://www.marthasfavorites.com/ 
Teacup Tuesday 
Terri~  http://artfulaffirmations.blogspot.com/ 
Teacup Tuesday

Wanda Lee~  http://silkenpurse.blogspot.com/ 
Teapot and Tea Things Tuesday 
Pam~  http://breathoffreshair-paperbutterfly.blogspot.com/ 
Teapot and Tea Things Tuesday 
Wanda Lee~  http://theplumedpen.blogspot.com/ 
Tea For Two and Wednesday Tea For Me and Thee

Trisha~  http://sweetology101.blogspot.com/ 
Tea Party Tuesday

Lady Katherine~  http://ladykatherineteaparlor.blogspot.com/ 
Teatime Tuesday

Sandi  ~  http://sandimyyellowdoor.blogspot.com

Teatime Tuesday

Kathy~  http://blissfulrhythm.blogspot.com/
Victoria - A Return to Loveliness

Bernideen’s ~ http://bernideensteatimeblog.blogspot.com

Friends Sharing Tea Wednesday

Thursday Teacups And Tea Things, Miss Read Christmas Tales Dunoon Christmas Mug

Hi there. It's Thursday Teacups And Tea Things. Thanks for joining me. I am also joining Teacup Thursday with Miss Spenser and Vintage Thingie Thursday with Coloradolady.

I love Christmas mugs...at times I have had 20 or more around the house, but tend to give them away with goodies for my tea drinking friends. But we stocked Dunoon mugs in our antique & tea items shop for years, because we loved the quality. I'm drinking my morning cuppa in one at the moment, but I'll share that one another day. ANYWAY, I recently found this one. The mug is by a favorite Dunoon artist Sue Scullard and goes back to 2001. But the design is so cute. I love the framed windows with all the Christmas goodies inside!  So this is my teacup for today.

To see more of this mug or other Christmas china or Dunoon mugs, click on the photos.

If you have followed my blog for long, you will know that I love Miss Read, the pseudonym of a teacher who wrote a large series of books about several small, rural schools in the small villages in the Cotswolds, England spanning the end of Queen Victoria's reign to World War II. They are a joy and a wonderful window into, really, a vanished England, the one related to my by my family and my husband and his family. The England they knew which is very hard to find now.

Although there are Christmas sections in many of her books, she did 2 exclusively Christmas themed books. This one, Christmas Tales,  was published in 1995. I read it every year. It is 2 stories in one book. Village Christmas which is the story of a baby born in the small village of Fairacre to a new family having difficulty fitting in with old fashioned village ways, and the child's impact on the village.

The other story is called The Christmas Mouse and is about a small boy runaway and his encounter with an elderly spinster at Christmas and other village situations and nostalgic looks back to another century and customs. The book...as all Miss Read stories are...charming, touching and uplifting. The illustrations are wonderful.

It's the sort of book that is part of my annual Christmas reading list. I sit with a lovely Christmas cup of tea in a Christmas mug and just indulge in the pleasure of good literature about the season. Ahh....what can be better???

 

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Happy Thanksgiving, Miss Read Books And English Harvest Festival

A very happy Thanksgiving to you all! This is a Thanksgiving angel on my mantle.

Signifying the abundance of the harvest season. In England, although they don't celebrate Thanksgiving as such, their is the Harvest Home or Harvest Festival with links to a pagan past. The adopting of the old agrarian festival into mainstream church life began in 1843 when a Rev. Robert Harkins celebrated Harvest Festival at his Anglican church in Morwenstow, Cornwall. The festival has gotten attached to Michaelmas Day, around Sept. 28-Oct. 4th in the church calendar.

One of my favorite chroniclers of mostly vanished English village life is Miss Read, who has a series of books...I think I have collected them all..about several school teachers in Cotswold villages from the Victorian era to the World Wars. In the 20th century many rural schools were supported or maintained by the church and participated in church festivals.

The Harvest Festival was an important part of the Cotswold villages still so close to the seasons and agricultural roots of the area. The children had the job of decorating the church with produce from their farms and gardens and took great pride in doing so. Harvest loaves are baked as well.

From Over The Gate by Miss Read published in 1964:

For most of us in Fairacre our Harvest Festival is a well-loved and well-supported institution.  It is, after all, a public thanksgiving for the fulfilment of a year's hard work in the fields and gardens, and a brief breathing space before tackling the next year's labours.

Mr. Roberts, the local farmer, gives a mammoth Harvest Home supper in his biggest barn, at this season, but naturally it is the farm workers and their friends who attend this jollification. The service at St. Patrick's caters for the whole village....

The children...decorate the prews and other alloted portions of the church and we guard our privilege jealously. On Saturday the ladies of the village come with armfuls of flowers and greenery to do their share, but they always find that the children have done their part first.

Usually we tie little bunches of corn (Yanks, that's wheat to you!) to the pew heads, and arrange marrows, shiny apples, onions, giant potatoes and any other contributuion which will not whither or fade, along the ledges and window sills which we know by ancient custom are 'ours'.

 

So from my house to yours, my decorated front door to yours, Happy Thanksgiving and may a heart of thankfulness and peace for our many blessings fill your day.

Ruth