Icelandic Christmas folklore depicts mountain-dwelling characters and monsters who come to town during Christmas.  The stories are directed at children and are used to scare them into good behavior. The folklore includes both mischievous pranksters who leave gifts during the night and monsters who eat disobedient children.  The figures are depicted as living together as a family in a cave.  Grýla is a giantess with an appetite for the flesh of mischievous children, whom she cooks in a large pot.  Her husband Leppalúði is lazy and mostly stays at home in their cave.  The Yule Cat is a huge and vicious cat who lurks about the snowy countryside during Christmas time (Yule) and eats people who have not received any new clothes to wear before Christmas Eve.  The Yule Lads are the sons of Gryla and Leppaludi.  They are a group of 13 mischievous pranksters who steal from or harass the population and all have descriptive names that convey their favourite way of harassing.  They come to town one by one during the last 13 nights before Yule.  They leave small gifts in shoes that children have placed on window sills, but if the child has been disobedient they instead leave a rotten potato in the shoe.  These Christmas-related folk tales first appear around the 17th century and display some variation based on region and age.  In modern times these characters have taken on slightly more benevolent roles.  Find a list of Yule Lads, and their use in popular culture at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Christmas_folklore#Yule_lads   

Louis Armstrong - The Night Before Christmas  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upuUV_TdmtM    5:36   

Corona, Queens, is an unassuming New York City neighborhood.  Nearby is the stainless steel Unisphere from the 1964 World’s Fair, and three miles west is Flushing’s Main Street, with its crowded dim sum parlors.  Corona, though, feels like a suburb wedged into the city, and it’s here, on a quiet residential block, with modest century-old detached homes with small cement porches and aluminum siding, that you’ll find one of the country’s great unheralded design museums:  the jazz trumpeter and bandleader Louis Armstrong’s miraculously preserved house, where he lived from 1943 until his death in 1971, at age 69.  M.H. Miller  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/20/t-magazine/louis-armstrong-home-queens.html   

Othello - The most famous literary reference to the willow is probably William Shakespeare's Willow Song in Othello.  Desdemona, the heroine of the play, sings the song in her despair.  You can hear an example and see the musical score and words on Digital Tradition.  Many composers have set this song to music, but the version on Digital Tradition is one of the oldest.  The earliest written record of The Willow Song is from 1583 and was written for the lute, a stringed instrument like a guitar but with a softer sound.

Hamlet - Shakespeare uses the mournful symbolism of the willow in Hamlet.  Doomed Ophelia falls into the river when the willow branch on which she is sitting breaks.  She floats for a while, buoyed by her clothing, but she eventually sinks and drowns.

Twelfth Night - Willows are also mentioned in Twelfth Night, where they symbolize unrequited love.  Viola is dwelling on her love for Orsino when she, dressed as Caesario, replies to Countess Olivia's question about falling in love by saying "make me a willow cabin at your gate, and call upon my soul within the house."

The Lord of the Rings - In J. R. R. Tolkien's beloved fantasy series The Lord of the Rings, Old Man Willow is an ancient tree with an evil heart.  The tree actually harbors a thirsty, imprisoned spirit.  Old Man Willow sees men as usurpers because they take wood from the forest, and he tries to capture, then kill the hobbits Merry, Pippin, and Frodo.  In another scene, Treebeard, who befriends the hobbits and is the oldest tree in the forest, sings a song about "the willow-meads of Tasarinan."

Harry Potter Series - If you're a J. K. Rowling fan, you'll remember that the willow is an important character in the Harry Potter book series.  The Whomping Willow is a tree with attitude that lives on the Hogwarts grounds and guards the entrance to a tunnel that leads to the Shrieking Shack where Professor Lupin goes when he turns into a werewolf.  Thomma Lyn Grindstaff  https://garden.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Weeping_Willow_Tree_Facts  See also http://callmetaphy.blogspot.com/2011/07/symbol-of-weeping-willow-in-gravestone.html

December 24, 1818 – The Christmas carol "Silent Night" by Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber was first performed in a chapel in Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria.

December 24, 1871 – Aida, one of Giuseppe Verdi's most popular operas, made its debut in Cairo, Egypt.

Jenny Eugenia Nyström (1854–1946) was a painter and illustrator who is mainly known as the person who created the Swedish image of the jultomte on numerous Christmas cards and magazine covers, thus linking the Swedish version of Santa Claus to the gnomes and tomtar of Scandinavian folklore.  See graphics at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Nystr%C3%B6m

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2473  December 24, 2021