{"id":1634,"date":"2023-12-19T21:34:10","date_gmt":"2023-12-19T21:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/premesso.com\/?p=1634"},"modified":"2023-12-21T20:07:50","modified_gmt":"2023-12-21T20:07:50","slug":"circum-mundum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/premesso.com\/?p=1634","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Around the World"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Every year during my childhood, our post box was graced with an 80 page volume of one of the World Book\u2019s Christmas Around the World<\/em> series, a gift, I think, from my globetrotting grandparents. Although somewhat dated and with some breathlessly misleading information (the Spain entry insists that Spaniards eat loads of turkey for Navidad<\/em>, but that it\u2019s stuffed with garlic and glazed with olive oil, and the Washington volume seems to describe a city that hasn\u2019t existed for a good century or so, and possibly never did), they\u2019re still wonderful glimpses into the habits of other countries at Yuletide. At the very least they inspire curiosity, which I\u2019d like to think has something to do with why I can vouch for how Christmas is passed in the locales of at least five of the books on the below list. I hunted in vain for a decent list online, and failing to find one, decided to post the below, which I\u2019ve verified with family members who still have the books. I have a few of them in my possession myself (pictured).\u00a0 It seems the series went on for another decade, till at least 2003, when probably \u2014 like so many other good things in the past \u2014 someone decided that the internet did a better job with \u201cinformation.\u201d But those who had these colorful volumes know the truth. A reader who knows the series very well writes in to note that the books “also arrived with an advent calendar, small ornament, and recipe cards. A family could celebrate Christmas around the world!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n