Top to bottom:  Favorite Christmas Songs and Stories, Illustrated  by Dellwyn Cunningham, Grosset & Dunlap 1953.  Chrismas in the Bell Shop, Hallmark Book circa 1962.  Angels & Berries & Candy Canes, Hilary Knight.  Harper & Row, 1953.  Christmas is a Time of Giving, Joan Walsh Anglund.  Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961.

Apparently Dellwyn Cunningham was the originator of what we have come to know as the turducken. I prefer his Churkendoose.  It’s a funnier word.

A little, little vintage book of Hilary Knight’s from the  Christmas Nutshell Library stands in for the rawwther disappointing modern re-issue of Eloise at Christmastime.  It’s just too shiny for words, I simply can’t have it,  and wouldn’t $60 for a vintage copy be better spent on rhinestone tennis shoes for Skipperdee, my goodness, and sooooo many plum puddings for Nanny, fa la la la la?

Here is a poem.  I made it up myself.  It is a little Joan Walsh Anglund, if I do say so myself.

Christmas is some place
we want to go –
where we eat off good china
and make things
out of paper doilies,
and someone thinks
we are special enough
to wrap in bright paper
and tie up in a bow, and
under the tree
we find our delight
is the gift others
were hoping to see.