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Christmas Round-up 2

Two years ago I did a Christmas round-up post of Christmas themed posts on the blog, plus some  of my festive favourites. You can read that here: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2016/12/christmas-round-up.html

This year I'm doing a follow-up post for Christmas 2018. Post contains spoilers. :)

First up here are my Christmas posts from the last two years:


Lindsey Stirling's Carol of the Bells: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2017/12/weekly-music-video_13.html

K-pop Christmas! (no Christmas songs apart from TWICE's release, but just some K-pop songs for the holidays):  https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2017/12/k-pop-christmas.html
 
Christmas Music and Films: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2017/12/christmas-music-and-films.html

Christmas Music: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/12/christmas-music.html

Hello! WM- Timing video (K-pop): https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/12/weekly-musi-video.html


Now here's some more Christmas entertainment inspiration. :)

Books

The Mistletoe Bride and other Haunting Tales by Kate Mosse

I got this book for Christmas a few years ago. The title story is based on an English legend about a Christmas bride who plays hide and seek on her wedding day and chooses a chest to hide in, but then finds herself trapped inside. 

Other stories include The Drowned Village, inspired by a Breton folktale, Le Fille de Melisande,  a sequel to the opera Pelleas et Melisande by Debussy, and The Revenant,  a ghost story set in Fishbourne, West Sussex. ( I remember going to the Roman Fishbourne Palace when I was at school!).

Ghost stories are associated with Christmas for some reason (maybe because winter is a dreary season and we like to be safe by the fire, enjoying festivities!). So these stories are good to read this time of year.


Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M.R. James

If you also like a good ghost story, at Christmas then you'll probably like some M.R. James! I featured this in the Hallowe'en Inspiration post in October and thought it would be good to include here as well.

This is a collection of stories by English scholar and writer M.R. James whose books were published in Edwardian times and into the 1920s and 30s. Includes Canon Alberic's Scrap-book, The Mezzotint (a mezzotint is a type of print), Number 13 and Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad. I bought this for a cheap price in Steyning's Cobblestone Walk a few years ago. It's one of my favourite ghost story books.

I've also just bought his Collected Ghost Stories (it has a few that are in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary but lots that I don't have). It should come after Christmas.

M.R. James' stories have also been made into some good TV dramas (see below for more).


TV

Inside No. 9- The Devil of Christmas

Inside No. 9 is a British TV series by two of the creators of the dark comedy show The League of Gentlemen, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith. It's along the same lines as that show, with weird, offbeat comedy, but TLOG is more twisted!

The Devil of Christmas is Episode 1 from Series 3 and is a behind the scenes look at an old TV horror film called The Devil of Christmas, where Julian (played by Steve) and his family travel to a ski resort in Austria. They hear tales of Krampus, the Devil of Christmas from the caretaker Klaus (Reece). The director talks us through the making of the film, but there's a shock twist at the end of the documentary! Rula Lenska plays Steve's mum Celia.

Check out the preview below:



Note: If you are a "League" fan, I recently discovered that a new series came out a year ago! I don't remember hearing anything about it last Christmas, but it's available on download, so I recently watched the new episodes. :)


Whistle and I'll Come To You (2010)

In 2010 the BBC did a TV version of M.R. James' Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad starring John Hurt. It was shown on Christmas Eve. This version is a bit different to the story, which is about a professor on holiday by the seaside, who finds a whistle and has some ghostly experiences after blowing it.

In this one James Parkin is retired and has just put his wife Alice (Gemma Jones) in a care home (she has some form of dementia, I think). He then goes to stay at a hotel they used to visit. It's out of season being winter and he goes for solitary walks on the beach, where he finds a ring which has a Latin inscription that says, "Who is this who is coming?" This sets off a series of strange events.



I remember this being quite creepy.

Avoid the next section if you don't like spoilers! :)


While in the book, Parkin is being haunted because he took something that didn't belong to him, in this version the haunting seems somehow connected to his wife and the fact that part of her is aware of what's going on around her still. She seems to feel that her husband has forgotten her.


Whistle and I'll Come to You (1968)

I've just found out that there is also a 1968 BBC version which was part of the Omnibus series and starred Michael Hordern as Professor Parkin(s). You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bimXZp52PI4*
 
Update 20/12/24: You can watch a review of the episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1i4ZEA9mSc


This TV drama inspired more adaptations of M.R. James' stories as part of the series
A Ghost Story for Christmas, featured below.


*19/12/19: Video is now gone.


A Ghost Story for Christmas

This was a series of TV films featuring ghost stories, which originally ran from 1971 to 1978 and more were made from 2005 to 2013. Both Lost Hearts and The Ash Tree are showing this Christmas Eve. (I've read both stories but never seen the TV versions, so look forward to watching.)
 
Note: There was also another series called Ghost Stories for Christmas, where M.R. James' stories were  narrated by actor Christopher Lee.

Stories shown include A Warning to the Curious (similar to Oh Whistle, but in this case it's an old crown that's found), The Ash Tree (a family are possibly cursed due to their ancestor's dealing with a witch), A View from a Hill (a man finds a pair of unusual binoculars),  Number 13 (there are some strange goings on in a hotel), Oh Whistle, and I'll Come to You and The Tractate Middoth (an obscure library text appears to be haunted).

Other authors' works were also also televised including Charles Dickens' The Signalman, J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Schnaken the Painter (have never head of this but it sound good), The Haunted Airman by Dennis Wheatley (probably most well known for his occult fiction books, including The Devil Rides Out which was made into a film starring Christopher Lee), and Henry James' The Turn of the Screw.
 
I haven't seen many of the older ones, mostly the newer episodes.  Here's a trailer: 




This Christmas Eve there is also a new BBC ghost story The Dead Room, written  and directed by Mark Gatiss, another League of Gentlemen star. It stars Simon Callow as a veteran radio presenter who believes a recording studio is haunted.  I remember reading a story based in a recording studio in The Haunted Book by Jeremy Dyson (co-creator of TLOG but I think this is different. It's on BBC4 (UK) at 10pm.

Read more about The Dead Room here: https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2018-12-21/the-dead-room-christmas-2018-mark-gatiss-bbc4-ghost-story-cast-plot-trailer-maida-vale-filming-location/



Music

I'll finish off with some music. :) Here is JoJo's new cover of Mariah Carey's Miss You Most (At Christmastime):


And here's the original by Mariah, which is from her first Christmas album Merry Christmas (1994):




Hope you like the post! Merry Christmas! Wishing you a lovely winter/holiday season and Christmas, or whichever festival you celebrate. :)


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