Диана Дуэйн - How Lovely Are Thy Branches

Much of this work was written to Christmas music, as you might imagine. An informal playlist, referring to the chapter titles:

“We Need A Little Christmas” : The song comes from the musical Mame. Here is Angela Lansbury singing the lead vocal on the original 1966 Broadway cast recording, or here in live performance with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir & Orchestra. Or here at Amazon.

“Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow” A classic written by Sammy Cohn and Jule Styne when they were trapped in Hollywood during a heat wave, and covered since then by almost everybody you can think of. The original Vaughn Monroe recording of the old favorite (probably best known these days for turning up at the end of Die Hard) is here. A smooth-but-upbeat Big Band-era, boogie-woogie-ish rendition by Frank Sinatra is here. For something more recent, try Idina Menzel’s cover.

“O Come, All Ye Faithful”: The English-language restatement of the Latin title Adeste Fideles. Hugely popular in both the English and Latin versions. The “Three Tenors” version here contains both. A 1950s-ish cover by Mario Lanza is here.

“O Tannenbaum”: Dissected here in some detail by the participants. German-language versions worth listening to are this one by Andrea Bocelli — in Italian, with different words again — and this one by Nana Mouskouri….For many North Americans, the best-known version is the famous instrumental from A Charlie Brown Christmas, performed by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.

“Bring A Torch, Jeanette, Isabella” (): Traditional, French, and four centuries old, give or take a few decades; possibly better known these days as an instrumental than a vocal (though here is a typical vocal rendition by the Robert Shaw Chorale. One cheerful instrumental cover is this one by Loreena McKennitt.

“In The Bleak Midwinter” (): Relatively new as carols go; written by the poet Christina Rosetti in the 1870s, and set to music by numerous composers including Gustav Holst, who did what’s probably now the best-known setting. Another nice version is this Allison Crowe cover.

“I’ll Be Home For Christmas”: Its original 1943 recording by Bing Crosby (the B side of “White Christmas”) remains a watershed, but many many other artists have covered it over the years. The Frank Sinatra cover is worth hearing, as is the Michael Bublé one.

Some other minor issues:

Bubble lights: See the incredible patent hoohah surrounding the introduction (and shameless pirating) of these lights here.

The fire kink: The special Christmas tree candle holders that Markus goes back to fetch from his home in (somewhere near Freiburg) can be seen here at the website of that superlative online (and offline) German department store, Manufactum:. Older solutions to the candles-on-the-tree problem can be seen here at OldChristmasTreeLights.com

The Winter Solstice lunar eclipse of 2010: The first time the Solstice coincided with a total lunar eclipse since the 1990s: the next such coincidence will not occur until 2094. Details of this eclipse can be found here at Fred Espenak’s excellent website.