Christmas It is the annual celebration, by Christians, of the birth on 25 December of Jesus Christ, hence the name Christmas.
It is an occasion for most people to spend time with their family and friends, send greeting cards and exchanges presents.
Traditionally the giving of a gift is symbolic of the three wise men giving gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to baby Jesus.
Advent
The arrival of a person or an important event. Here it refers to the month before Christmas and the arrival of Jesus.
Bethlehem The town thought to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
Boxing Day In the UK, December 26 is called Boxing Day. It was traditionally a day to give presents to the poor. Candle A round stick of wax with a central wick which is lit to give light as it burns.
Chimney A vertical structure which extends through the roof of a house and allows smoke to escape from the fireplace. Santa Claus (Father Christmas) He traditionally enters a house through the chimney.
Christmas The annual celebration by Christians of the birth of Jesus Christ on 25 December.
Christmas cake A rich fruit cake covered with marzipan and icing, eaten at Christmas.
Christmas card A greetings card sent to friends and family at Christmas. Christmas carol A joyful traditional song or hymn sung at Christmas.
Christmas Day 25 December, the birthday of Jesus Christ.
Christmas Eve 24 December, the evening or day before Christmas Day.
Christmas tree An evergreen tree which people decorate with lights, tinsel, etc. at Christmas
Cracker A decorated cardboard tube wrapped in paper, that makes a sharp explosive noise ("crack!") and releases a small gift when two people pull it apart.
Egg-nog A traditional Christmas drink in the US made of beaten eggs, milk or cream, sugar and alcohol.
Frankincense Sweet-smelling gum from a tree, burnt as incense : one of the gifts that the three wise men gave to Jesus.
Holly Evergreen shrub with red berries used for decoration at Christmas.
Mistletoe A parasitic plant with evergreen leaves and white berries, traditionally used as a
Christmas decoration. When 2 people walk under the plant, they are supposed to kiss. Myrrh Gum from a tree, used for perfume or incense : one of the gifts given to Jesus by the three wise men. Ornament A decoration which, at Christmas, is hung on a Christmas tree.
Reindeer A large deer with branching antlers found in some cold climates, and thought to pull Santa's sleigh. Santa Claus An imaginary bearded old man, wearing a red suit, who lives at the North Pole and brings presents for children at Christmas. Traditionally Santa Claus travels in a sleigh pulled by reindeers and enters the house through the chimney on Christmas Eve. Sleigh A sledge or light cart pulled by horses or reindeer over snow and ice. Tinsel A glittering material produced in strips and used for decoration at Christmas.
Turkey Large bird very often eaten at Christmas.
Wreath Circular band of flowers or leaves used to decorate the front door of homes at Christmas. Xmas Abbreviation for 'Christmas'.
Iwas a quick ___________ boy ___________too deep for coins All of your straight blind ___________ Wide on my plastic toys And when the cops___________ the fair I cut my long baby ________________ Stole me a dog-eared map And ____________ for you everywhere
Have I found you? Flightless bird, jealous, _______________ Or lost you? American mouth Big bill _____________
Now I'm a fat ____________ cat Cursing my sore blunt ______________ Watching the _____________ poison rats Curl through the wide/white fence cracks _____________ on magazine photos Those fishing lures thrown in the cold and clean Blood of Christ mountain _____________
Have I found you? Flightless bird, brown hair bleeding Or lost you? American mouth Big bill, stuck going down
What is it to be in love with a pathological liar and fantasist? Esther is, and has been for more than twenty years. Lajos, the liar, married her sister, and when she died, Lajos disappeared. Or did he? And Esther? She was left with her elderly cousin, the all-knowing Nunu, and a worn old house, living a life of the most modest comforts. All is well, but all is tired.
Until a telegram arrives announcing that, after all these years, Lajos is returning with his children. The news brings both panic and excitement. While no longer young and thoroughly skeptical about Lajos and his lies, Esther still remembers how incredibly alive she felt when he was around. Lajos's presence bewitches everyone, and the greatest part of his charm—and his danger—lies in the deftness with which he wields that delicate power. Nothing good can come of this: friends rally round, but Lajos's arrival, complete with entourage, begins a day of high theater.
Esther's Inheritance has the taut economy of Márai's Embers and presents a remarkable narrator in Esther, who delivers the story as both tragedy and comedy on an intimate scale that nevertheless has archetypal power. Source: (fantasticfiction.co.uk)
UNDER THE SKIN by Michel Faber
"Isserley always drove straight past a hitchhiker when she first saw him, to give herself time to size him up."
In Michel Faber's suspenseful first novel, Isserley, an unusual-looking woman with strangely scarred skin, drives through the Scottish Highlands both day and night, looking for just the right male hitchhikers. She picks them up, makes enough small talk to determine she's made a safe choice, then hits a toggle switch on her car, releasing a drug that knocks her victims out. She then takes them to the "farm" where she lives-and where the "processing" takes place-a terrifying procedure involving the removal of various body parts.
In this upside-down world that Faber has so strikingly created, animals are human, and humans are known as "vodsels." Isserley, at one time a beautiful "human" covered in fur with a long tail, is now a foreigner in the "vodsel" world, sent there to collect as many victims as possible. And what becomes of the men she collects is just the beginning of an even more sinister secret. In this world, looks are extremely deceiving; it's what's Under the Skin that truly counts. A disturbing, yet thought-provoking metaphor for a society run amok, this ferociously creative fiction debut will linger in readers' imaginations long after they've passed the last hitchhiker on the highway.
Source: (fantasticfiction.co.uk)
GREY SOULS by Philippe Claudel
This is ostensibly a detective story, about a crime that is committed in 1917, and solved 20 years later. The location is a small town in Northern France, near V., in the dead of the freezing winter. The war is still being fought in the trenches, within sight and sound of the town, but the men of the town have been spared the slaughter because they are needed in the local factory. One morning a beautiful ten year old girl, one of the three daughters of the innkeeper, is found strangled and dumped in the canal. Suspicion falls on two deserters who are picked up near the town. Their interrogation and sentencing is brutal and swift. Twenty years later, the narrator, a local policeman, puts together what actually happened. On the night the deserters were arrested and interrogated, he was sitting by the beside of his dying wife. He believes that justice was not done and wants to set the record straight. But the death of the child was not the only crime committed in the town during those weeks. More than one record has to be set straight. Beautiful, like a fairy story almost, frozen in time, this novel has an hypnotic quality.
Novel: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden Film: Memoirs of a Geisha by Rob Marshall
Sayuri's story begins in a poor fishing village in 1929, when, as a nine-year-old with unusual blue-gray eyes, she is taken from her home and sold into slavery to a renowned geisha house. Through her eyes, we see the decadent heart of Gion--the geisha district of Kyoto--with its marvelous teahouses and theaters, narrow back alleys, ornate temples, and artists' streets. And we witness her transformation as she learns the rigorous arts of the geisha: dance and music; wearing kimono, elaborate makeup and hair; pouring sake to reveal just a touch of inner wrist; competing with a jealous rival for men's solicitude and the money that goes with it. But as World War II erupts and the geisha houses are forced to close, Sayuri, with little money and even less food, must reinvent herself all over again to find a rare kind of freedom on her own terms.
Memoirs of a Geisha is a book of nuances and vivid metaphor, of memorable characters rendered with humor and pathos. And though the story is rich with detail and a vast knowledge of history, it is the transparent, seductive voice of Sayuri that the reader remembers.
Source: (bookbrowse.com)
Novel: Smilla´s sense of snow by Peter Hoeg Film: Smilla´s sense of snow by Bille August A stunning literary thriller in the tradition of Gorky Park and the novels of John Le Carré.
Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen is the daughter of a Danish doctor and an Inuit woman from Greenland. Raised in Greenland, she lives in Copenhagen and, as befits her ancestry, is an expert on snow. When one of her few friends, an Inuit boy, dies under mysterious circumstances, she refuses to believe it was an accident.
She decides to investigate and discovers that even the police don''t want her involved. But Smilla persists, and as snow-covered Copenhagen settles down for a quiet Christmas, Smilla''s investigation leads her from a fanatically religious accountant, to a tough-talking pathologist, to the secret files of the Danish company responsible for extracting most of Greenland''s mineral wealth. Finally, she boards a ship with an international cast of villains - and a large stash of cocaine - bound for a mysterious mission on an inhospitable island off Greenland.
Source: (chapters.indigo.ca. Doubleday Canada)
Novel: The Green Mile by Stephen King
Film: The Green Mile by Frank Darabont
The book is a first-person narrative told by Paul Edgecombe, who worked as a Cold Mountain Penitentiary block supervisor on death row, nicknamed "The Green Mile", in 1932. It switches between the events that occurred there, and Paul in the "present" as an old man in a nursing home writing the story, and his "special friend" Elaine Connelly reading it.
The story centers on John Coffey, a 6'8" black man who is convicted of raping and murdering two small white girls. He is notable because of his size and strange behavior. Besides Coffey, there are two other prisoners on the cellblock during the main period the book focuses on: Eduard "Del" Delacroix, a Cajun arsonist and murderer who is cowardly and weak-minded, and William "Wild Bill" Wharton, a wild and dangerous multiple murderer who is determined to make as much trouble as he can before he is executed. Looking back, Paul also describes his experiences with a Washita Cherokee murderer named Arlen Bitterbuck, nicknamed "The Chief", and Arthur Flanders, nicknamed "The President", an insurance executive who killed his father to perpetrate insurance fraud. The story also features Mr. Jingles, an unnaturally intelligent mouse who appears early in the novel and befriends Del. The mouse learns various tricks and appears to follow commands. Del insists that the mouse whispers things in his ear.
Paul and the other guards are antagonized throughout the book by Percy Wetmore, a sadistic guard who enjoys aggravating the prisoners and tries to kill Mr. Jingles on more than one occasion. The other guards have to be civil to him despite their dislike of him because he is the governor's nephew. However, when he is offered a place at the nearby Briar Ridge psychiatric hospital as a secretary, Paul thinks they are finally rid of him. However, Percy informs Paul and his colleagues that he will not leave until he is "put up front" (allowed to supervise an execution), so Paul hesitantly allows him to run Delacroix's. Percy is supposed to soak a sponge in brine and tuck it inside the electrode cap to be strapped onto Del's head (to draw the electricity to the brain to kill faster and with less pain), but his resentment of the man leads him to deliberately omit this step. As a result, when the switch is thrown, the electric current causes Del to suffer an agonizing death and literally fry in the chair.
Over time, Paul realizes that there is something special about John Coffey: he possesses mystical healing abilities. These powers heal Paul's urinary tract infection and brings Mr. Jingles from the brink of death after Percy attempts to kill him by stepping on him. Paul also realizes that Coffey is very empathic and sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others around him and all over the world. The guards drug William Wharton, put a straitjacket on Percy, and lock him in the padded restraint room. They then smuggle John out of the prison and take him to Warden Hal Moores' residence, where he cures his wife's deadly brain tumor with his magical abilities. When they return to the Mile, Percy is released from the restraint room and agrees to move to the Briar Ridge secretarial job straightaway. However, as he is leaving, John passes the "disease" which he took out of the warden's wife onto Percy. Percy goes mad and shoots Wharton to death, then falls into a catatonic state from which he never recovers. He is later transferred to Briar Ridge, but as a patient rather than a secretary.
Although Paul eventually discovers that John was innocent of the murders (which were actually the work of William Wharton), John elects to die anyway to escape the cruelty of the world. Near the end of the book, it is revealed that those healed by John gain an unnatural lifespan. In the end, Mr. Jingles lives to be at least 64 and dies of old age at Paul's nursing home and Paul reveals to the reader how his wife died. Paul also states that he is 104 years old and wondering just how much longer he will live. The book ends with this quote:
"We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long."
To some, the name Alejandro Amenábar sparks instant interest. But if it does not, let me refresh your memory. In 1997, he wrote (with Mateo Gil) and directed the Spanish film Open Your Eyes -- which North American audiences know better by its ultra-strange U.S. remake Vanilla Sky. 2001 marked his English film premiere, the eerie Nicole Kidman thriller The Others (the only feature Gil hasn't co-written). And then in 2004, he went back to Spanish filmmaking with the Javier Bardem-starring Oscar winner The Sea Inside. Now he's grabbed the likes of Rachel Weisz, Max Minghella, and Oscar Isaac for a film that doesn't journey through facial reconstruction, ghosts, or euthanasia. It's a gorgeous, thought-provoking Roman epic called Agora.
The film focuses on one of the most impressive female figures in history – Hypatia, a leading thinker in the Rome-governed Alexandria, considered to be the first notable woman of mathematics. She studied philosophy and astronomy, and both pagan and Christian students from far and wide came together to study under her. "For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more."
The film opens in 391 A.D. Alexandria. The streets are boiling with strife and clashes of faith as Christianity gains power, and men like Ammonius (Ashraf Barhom) make grand speeches and perform "miracles" to sway the disenfranchised commoners. Meanwhile, inside the walls of the Library of Alexandria, Hypatia struggles to extinguish the religious turmoil of her students whilst also staying free of romantic interest. Her slave Davus (Max Minghella) loves her, but cannot tell her, while her student Orestes takes every chance to make his love for her known – even after being rebuffed by her menstrual rags.
When a Roman is killed during one of Ammonius' speeches, "proving" his God's power on hot coals, everything changes, setting off a never-ending stream of desperate violence mixed with overwrought feelings of entitlement. Back and forth, the two sides fight -- each is desperate for something, whether that be the Christians' desire to gain power or the pagans' desire to keep theirs -- and both feel too entitled to make any concessions. The death of the Roman leads to bloody retaliation in the streets, and ultimately, the destruction of the Library and the knowledge it contains, as well as the life Hypatia has always known. Even Davus leaves her to join Ammonius.
Fast forward to many years later, and the same battles continue. However, now almost everyone, including prefect Orestes, is Christian. Now the religious turmoil is focused on the Jews, as well as women and children. Hypatia's rights and political influence are no longer secure, and this leads to her horrific and heart-breaking end. On paper, it stretches the bounds of horrific violent acts, but even watered down for the big screen, it packs a gut-wrenching punch you can't avoid.
It would be easy to say that this is an anti-Christian film, but to do so is utterly oversimplified and inaccurate. Beyond Hypatia's desire for all faiths to exist peacefully, no one side is all good or bad. Both the pagans and the Christians have their moments of honor – the quests for knowledge from the former, and the feeding and care of the masses for the latter – while also partaking in heinous violence; it is this balance that drives the film.
The production design, score, look, and momentum of the film are all grand to the extreme, but the path of Hypatia's story and the fall of Roman Alexandria are perfectly balanced. The gorgeousness and epic feel doesn't seep into the story and drive a path of twists for the sake of cinema.
