His previous book, Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze, has been translated into Romanian and Chinese. There have been several different film adaptations and reinterpretations of Dickens' story over the years, but which ones manage to capture the yuletide darkness and haunting imagery he initially set out to scare people with? He gave it the title “Christmas in the Cauldron”, and added the words: “Light, life, love” from the Gospel of John. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.

We all know that finding a book which possesses an original, fresh look at some aspect of World War II is a challenge. Read more about the condition New: A new, unread, unused book in perfect condition with no missing or damaged pages. Another of the book’s strengths is Harmsen’s decision to add only minimal personal commentary within the book. What were the gleefully blasphemous British anarcho-punks Crass (who also brought us Christ—The Album) doing making a Christmas record?

His cousins don’t get to play with him in the snow, play boardgames, or help them decipher their toy’s instructions. generally well written but unimaginatively constructed as the author goes through a checklist of locales: Hawaii, the South Pacific, occupied Eastern Europe, Berlin, Britain, etc. I aim to reach a deeper level of understanding of what Christmas meant to people, and what it did to them. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The tradition of Christmas tales, made popular in the 19th century by Charles Dickens, is based on the theme of redemption.

Some solid context as to the war up to that point would have been nice, too, beyond what he sprinkled throughout the chapters. Frankie Lymon’s final Christmas was 1967; two months and two days later, he died of a heroin overdose at 25.One of our best Everett Christmas memories is when he was probably 2 or 3 and opening up his first present and excitedly proclaiming “You got me jammies for Christmas! of 1984, features leather-clad elves and chained-up angels and offers a more extreme alternative to fireside revelry.

Masefield, who wrote only two stories for children – The Box of Delights is a sequel to The Midnight Folk – was a direct influence on JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis, yet the books are far less familiar to children now. He studied history at National Taiwan University and has been a foreign correspondent in East Asia for more than two decades.Ginoli even saw the song as therapy of sorts: “Christmas can be stressful, especially since it’s a ‘family’ time, and I wrote [the song] thinking that it would give certain people hope on a day that sometimes sucks, especially when the person you really want to be with doesn’t fit into certain definitions of family.

Just as my psychiatric career was born out of the toughest time in my life, my football club have come from seemingly hopeless despair to be the richest club in the world sitting 3rd in the premier league this Christmas.

Between 1966 and 1970, the Godfather of Soul made a string of Christmas records, some of them funky (“Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto”), some of them deep (a spectacular soul version of “The Christmas Song”), and some of them totally bizarre.