The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year, by Linda Raedisch. Llweellyn Publications, 2020 (12^th printing)

I picked up this book, thinking it would be about Christmas ghost stories, and, hopefully, tell some of those stories. It does talk about the British practice of telling ghost stories at Christmas, but it’s really a collection of folk tales and practices, mainly from the more notherly areas of Europe. Elves, of course- although not quite the ones we think of today in respect to Christmas, Christmas beasties like horses and cats, goblins, tontum, witches, Santa Lucia, Yule logs, first-footing, plants and how they became standard Christmas décor, and, my favorite part and something I’d never heard of, vampires and werewolves associated with the dark days! There are even some related crafts and recipes included.

The author tries to stick absolutely everything she learned about Christmas/Yule/Solstice traditions into the book; because of this, the entries are very short and nothing is gone into in real depth. I found that very disappointing. There is, however, a good bibliography in the back so that the reader can go on to learn more about the subjects that take their interest. The book is a bit uneven; there were a couple of sections that I skimmed over after a while, but mostly it’s a fast, if somewhat disjointed, read. Four stars.

Magic Lessons, by Alice Hoffman. Simon and Schuster, 2021

 

The pre-prequel to “Practical Magic”, this book takes us to the 1600s and the life of Maria Owens. Abandoned at birth, she is found and raised by the local witch in rural England. She proves to have great talent for magic, as well as being taught to read and write. When her adoptive mother is killed by a witch hunter, Maria finds her birth mother- also a witch. When her father makes a surprise reappearance, the three of them flee the area. They tell Maria she cannot stay with them, and she finds herself on the way to the New World, although not in the way that she thinks is happening. Maria ends up having a lot of adventures on her way to Salem, and they don’t end when she finds her way there. She ends up pronouncing a curse, that will keep any Owens from finding love for long- and also learns that love is, in the end, all that really matters.

While not quite as good as “Practical Magic” (nothing is), it’s a book I liked much better than I liked the middle book, “Rules of Magic”. It is a stay-up-all-night-reading-it book. Five stars.