A Hard Candy Christmas: Advent 2023, DAY 18

In 1993 the Hershey Company changed the chocolate and peanut butter holiday game with the introduction of the Reese's Christmas Tree. My stocking was filled with 3 or 4 of these the year they debuted and since it's Christmas morn inception I was hooked.

Reese's Christmas Trees don't taste differently than a Reese's peanut butter cup. However the ratio of chocolate to peanut butter is clearly in the favor of the peanut butter lover. A Reese's cup has solid ridges of chocolate and the top shell is quite dense. With the Reese's Christmas tree (as well as the Halloween pumpkins), there's an even coating of softer chocolate covering a mass of gritty rich peanut butter. No thick chunks of milk chocolate here folks. And for someone who loves their Reese's frozen, it's much easier on the teeth.

There's been a bit of a controversy with the Reese's Christmas Trees. In years passed, customers have complained about the shape of the tree in years past with reports that it looks more scatological in nature than a lush evergreen. Reese's has admitted to the previous design flaws . But really I've not noticed any sort of change that made these candies look more like a Frasier fir. I really don't care how it looks. As long as there's more peanut butter than chocolate, I will continue to devour Reese's trees for my annual holiday eats!

Oh, and another thing! Don't try to pass off a white chocolate Christmas tree on me. They're just as poor a substitute as that hideous white artificial tree my mom used to have and they should both be condemned as crimes against Christmas!

The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)

I make it a point to enjoy some version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. The story has been a seasonal favorite of mine ever since I saw it performed by ducks, beagles and a mouse in Mickey's A Christmas Carol all the way back in 1983. For this year's version, I not only got a retelling of the Dickens' classic, I also caught a glimpse at the life of the famed British writer. 

It's 1843, London. After the success of the highly popular Oliver Twist 4 years prior, Dickens has issued a trio of works, all duds. The writer is buried under mountains of debt due to burning his financial candle at both ends. Forced at an early age into working at a factory when his family are thrown into a debtors prison, Dickens swears never to live in such poverty ever again. So while renovating a lush mansion with his wife and multiple children, the writer also gives generously to many social causes and charities. However, with the failed novels, Dickens' source of income has all but dried up.

The writer gets inspiration for a ghost story set at Christmas from a series of random events, including stumbling upon a funeral in which nobody came to pay their respects and the hiring of an Irish maid whose family traditions with Christmas intrigues Charles. There's only one problem with a book set at Christmas: in 1840s England, the holiday isn't really all that big of a thing and no publisher wants to publish the book.

Determined he's got a hit on his hands, Dickens decides to self publish the book. It's a desperate move that could see him and his family in debtor's prison should it fail. Plus in order to get the book into stores in time for Christmas, he's only got about 6 weeks to get it published. But first, he's got to write the thing!

The first couple of chapters flow easily. He imagines his characters interacting with him on a daily basis, letting the plot's course evolve naturally. It's when faced with blow-back at the death of a very popular character in the book does Dickens encounter writer's block. Added to the creative impasse is the trauma Charles encounters when his mother and father come back into his life. Now as his characters demand an ending, the writer learns that Scrooge isn't so much based on people he's met in his daily life; he is Scrooge!

As Dickens writes what will become known as A Christmas Carol, the characters he creates recite large passages of the book. I found myself quoting the book along with Scrooge, Bob Cratchit and others. This shocked me. I've always thought it's odd that characters in movies and TV can quote these lengthy passages of Shakespeare and other classics. Apparently, I can quote A Christmas Carol. Who knew?

The Man Who Invented Christmas seems to have not been a hit when it debuted in theaters back in 2017. It only netted about $10 million dollars worldwide. Coco, Justice League, and Murder on the Orient Express dominated the November box office. Throw in December's lineup with films like Pitch Perfect 3, one of the rebooted Jumanji films and The Last Jedi, this little Christmas movie didn't have a chance. Jump ahead 6 years and I came across this airing on a movie channel on Dish. I remember that my wife expressed interest in the movie when she saw the trailer back then. I was also interested. So, I DVR'd it and watched it over a cold and rainy weekend! The verdict- I LOVED IT!

While I had thought for some reason Steve Coogan was playing Charles Dickens, the film managed to really catch my interest. Dan Stevens was very good as the troubled writer. Yet when I think of Dickens writing this book, I don't visualize him being so young. Christopher Plummer was fantastic as Scrooge. Though I feel like an opportunity was missed not having Sir Patrick Stewart taking on the role, based on his annual theatrical performance of the work as a one man show. Jonathan Pryce is once again marvelous. (Note: he sure is in a lot of movies I like!) This time, he's Charles' father, who struggles with the loss of reputation and pride from his time in debtor's prison. 

I really enjoyed the film. Though it only has 1 real scene occurring during Christmas, this is very much a Christmas movie. A Victorian Christmas movie! Full of some of the best scenes from A Christmas Carol! And it was based on a 2008 book by Les Standiford. One of which I look forward to making it a part of next year's tradition of further exploring the world of a Victorian London Christmas invented by Charles Dickens!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

A Hard Candy Christmas: Advent 2023, DAY 17

 Today's post brings back some fond memories of a small town Christmas. My Grandmama was born in a town in Eastern North Carolina called Middlesex. It was such a small, out of the way place that in the 1980s and 90s, it seemed like the rest of the world had passed it by. 

Middlesex's only grocery store was an IGA that still used the original signage and displays from when it opened in the 1950s. The local pharmacy carried generic comic books from publishers I had never heard of as well as wrestling mags promoting superstars I'd never seen on TV before. The video store carried Betamax videos in a world that had gone VHS. As for the general store, it had a wooden plank floor that could have doubled as dirt with all the dried red clay carried in from the boots of generations of farmers. 

Side view of that old General Store with a modern mural added.

The owners of these small businesses might not have had a lot. Yet their efforts to decorate for the holidays were more impactful to me than any CEO's mansion on Madison Avenue. Anemic gold garland and unraveling red satin balls hung from the ceiling of each small store. Dime store decorations of plastic reindeer with ballerina-like legs lined the service counters. The bank had faux wrapped presents underneath an even less realistic artificial tree lined with a strand of the tiniest colored lights ever crafted. Only 5 of the lights ever blinked. And then there was my favorite store in Middlesex: the general store.

Just like every other shop in Middlesex, the general store was owned by a distant relative of my grandmama's. I think he was a cousin of her's. Only the windows of the general store were decorated for Christmas. Fake snow edged each corner. The latest sleds, a teddy bear or two and a plastic Santa Claus head were the only indications that December 25th was soon approaching. But it was the display case that drew my attention for our annual pre-Christmas visit to Middlesex. After visiting her mother at her childhood home and then her sister who worked at the bank, my Grandmama took me over to the general store for there amazing assortment of penny candy.

Dozens of old fashioned candies filled the glass display case next to the register. I've already talked about the ribbon candy I would foolish buy, thinking it tasted a whole lot better than it looked (in case you missed that post, it didn't.) A couple other things I like to buy will appear in future postings. Of those candies, one of my all-time favs were the Chocolate Covered Peanuts. And these peanuts weren't just covered with a thin layer of confection, these things were double-dipped! Each peanut was lightly dusted with salt. That saline tang was the perfect contrast with that rich milk chocolate. 

Despite being called penny candy, everything behind the candy counter at the Middlesex General Store was 99 cents a pound. Each year, I was allowed to buy a dollar's worth of candy. I usually got a quarter pound the ribbon candy, a quarter pound of other hard candy and 4 bits worth of chocolate covered peanuts. All filled in a single brown paper bag. Being family, the owner of the store always gave me a little bit extra with the chocolate covered peanuts. 

Going from Middlesex back to Raleigh, NC seemed to take forever. Especially back then when a lot of those time-saving highways had yet to be paved. I would make a huge dent in my inventory of chocolate covered peanuts. Oddly enough, I always had enough ribbon candy to choke a horse. I see that question about if you could tell yourself as a kid one thing, I think my advice would be to 'Skip the ribbon candy. Stock up on chocolate covered peanuts!'

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum

A while back my wife and I partook in a novel Advent activity. We took turns reading The Autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff Guinn. It told of a number of historical characters that helped give rise to the modern day legend of Santa Claus. I understood the relevance of Clement Moore, the author of the epic poem A Visit From Saint Nick. I even understood why President Teddy Roosevelt was included what with his influence on the popularity of the Teddy Bear and the story of how one of his sons wanted a live Christmas tree but Roosevelt being a stanch conservationist was against it. Those figures were ones I understood why they were considered great allies of Kris Kringle. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out the addition of L. Frank Baum.

Baum is most famously known for writing The Wizard of Oz and its subsequent sequels. I had known from a hard cover graphic novel I found at a local thrift store that Baum had penned a short story farce called A Kidnapped Santa Claus. But surely this wasn't enough of an influence on Father Christmas to warrant him inclusion into Santa's life story. 

It's actually this short novel, published in 1902 that made L. Frank Baum one of the utmost contributors to the modern Santa Claus. It tells of how a neglected little babe is found by faeries, raised to respect the magical creatures of nature and makes it his life goal to gift all the children of the world with gifts every Christmas Eve. 

In this story, there's no living at the North Pole. The names of his reindeer are vastly different from Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and the rest. Heck, Santa isn't really even a jolly old fat man. Though he does eventually grow a beard.

Clement Moore's 1809 poem which is now colloquially known as 'T'was the Night Before Christmas', did introduce St. Nick to the United States. But other than that poem, little was really known about the Yule time gift giver in America. Baum noticed this and sought to create an origin story that took away any religious references and replaced it with a more pagan beginning with the baby being blessed throughout his life by mystical woodland beings. 

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus does take a lot of elements from Clement Moore and gives a backstory to them, which humanizes the character instead of canonizing Claus. Take the origin of the stockings. According to the Catholic Church, the real life influence of Santa was one who placed a dowry into the leggings of a trio of young poor girls, that were drying by a fire. In Baum's story, the accidental placement of some gifts into some wet socks ends up becoming a real time saver for Claus, who has only 24 hours to deliver toys around the world annually. Things like how parents use Santa as a threat to keep naughty children in line, how he becomes deemed a saint, and his relationship with Christmas time are all out of necessity or word of mouth. Anything remotely religious is not tied in with the 'true' story of Claus.

Maybe that lack of Christianity is why Signet books chose storyteller Max Apple to write an afterword about this book. Apple is Jewish and admits that as a child he hated Santa because Christmas being a gentile holiday makes the character unapproachable for him and other children of the Tribe. Max Apple writes that if he knew that Baum's Santa was created as being the most furthest religious character imaginable, other than Wiccan or pagan, the writer would have delighted in annual visits from Santa Claus as a lad.

It was an enjoyable read. Definitely a different sort of holiday character from what Coca-Cola and Rankin/Bass have created over the past 100 years. Speaking of Rankin/Bass, this story was made into that stop-motion production company's last original work in the mid-80s. No wonder some segments of this book seemed familiar to me despite having never read the book. And if the chapter in which Santa is kidnapped by evil creatures who hate children seems familiar, that's because Baum recycled that story into A Kidnapped Santa Claus, which is a far more bleaker romp that this book.

A short enough read that families could break this down into chunks over the course of a frosty December. Some of the language is a tad outdated. But it's something the whole family can enjoy just once or as a new holiday annual tradition.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

A Hard Candy Christmas: Advent 2023, DAY 16

The focus of today's Advent is a candy that I looked forward to because of it's unique flavor profile. Made from a blend of chocolate and carob, these candies bear a distinctive malt flavor which I absolutely love. I'm talking about Sixlets.

Created in 1960 by the highly underrated Leaf company, these candy shell coated treats have many theories as to their name. Some think it's because of the 6 colors that the candy originally came in: red, green, yellow, orange, brown and blue. They must have discontinued blue because A) I don't remember it and B) current photos on the Internet only have the first 5 colors in the assortment. Others believe that it's because they were originally sold in a 6 pack cellophane tube in vending machines; a half dozen for only a penny.

The way I received Sixlets as a kid was inside of a plastic tube in the shape of a candy cane. Many a Christmas morning, I found one of those Sixlets candy canes hanging from our tree. I also would get on filled with M&Ms. But I preferred the Sixlets. I never really knew why until I was researching candies for this Advent. I love a chocolate malted and based on what I learned about the Sixlet blend of chocolate and carob, which is a dark brown bean pod with  molasses overtones, from the Mediterranean, it all makes sense know why I like the Sixlets candy canes versus the M&M variety.

These days, Sixlets candy canes are filled with a Christmas mix of red, green and white. In my youth, the canes were filled with the autumn looking colors. If you were to offer my the holiday mix, I'd eat them. I'd probably even enjoy them. But no matter how you presented it to me, if just wouldn't be the same.

Archie Christmas Spectacular 2023 #1( Family Comic Friday)

It took a few extra days, but the holiday comic book that I look forward to the most every year finally arrived! This year's Archie Christmas Spectacular introduces a trio of new characters to the Archie universe. Jangles and Sourplum are the antithesis of the good magical Christmas characters Jingles the Elf and Sugarplum the Fairy. When their boss Grumpus kidnaps the good sprites, he orders Jangles and Sourplum to destroy the Christmas festivities being organized by Archie and the gang at Riverdale High.

I'm actually friends on Facebook with the writer of this all-new holiday story, Tom DeFalco. I actually claim this friendship instead of marking it as just following a celebrity because in the past we've both gifted each prizes on Candy Crush. Recently he shared an early glimpse of the new characters on his FB page. I thought that Jingles and Sugarplum were being redesigned and I hated it. Once I realized that artist Holly G! was creating their polar opposites, I actually began to dig what the artist and DeFalco were attempting to pull off.

That opening story was just too short. At only 5 pages, it's just not enough room to really dive into the motivation of the Grumpus character. He claims to have a past beef with Archie and his pals and I recognize the villain's lair from previous Halloween stories. I feel like the story of the Grumpus is far from over. Sadly, I also feel like I'll have to wait a whole year for next year's Christmas annual for the conclusion.

The artwork was inconsistent if you ask me. The Archie's are drawn in their traditional style with dark thick lines. However, Jingles and Sugarplum are illustrated in very thin lines, lacking definition. Plus the new villains are really pointy to the point of being Gothic Manga and their poses are too stiff. I used to wonder why all the characters in a comic book were always crafted in a similar art style whereas in real life everyone is different. Well, thanks to this story, I understand now that an uneven art style just doesn't look right.

This spectacular has 2 additional stories. Two of them are classics starring Jingles, Sugarplum as well as Santa's only daughter, Noelle. Another tale has Jingles assisting a Riverdale youth with a reputation of being a jinx. The final adventure has Archie and Jughead getting into trouble when they take Jellybean and friends to the mall to see Santa. Not sure why that last story is devoid of one of those magical Christmas characters. It too makes the total read of this special a bit uneven.

For the past dozen or so years, these annuals have been priced at the bargain price of $2.99. Well apparently Scrooge is in charge of marketing and pricing with this edition now priced at $3.99. I understand inflation happens. But for that extra fee, I expect the all-new opener to be longer than it was or for there to be 2 new holiday romps instead of so many reprints. Especially since 2 of those older stories were just featured in the Archie's Christmas Wonderland treasury that dropped earlier this year.

I had a lot of fun with this annual. It just lacked consistency in the art and I was shocked by the new sticker price. Grumpus might be a cranky version of Krampus, but nowhere near as evil. This should be a Christmas present that all ages will enjoy. It just lacks some of the quality and charm of editions past.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

A Hard Candy Christmas: Advent 2023, DAY 15

For Today's Advent, even though you might have been nice all this year, you're all getting coal. One of the things I always got a kick out of was finding coal in my stocking. And I got coal in many different ways. 

The first coal candy I remember getting was this block of hard licorice candy. It came in a tiny bucket like my grandparents would use to bring firewood in with, as well as dumping the ash with. The candy also came with a tiny hammer. Kids got to take their aggression out on this hunk of rock with the hammer, which was actually made of metal, before breaking the coal into bite sized pieces that ended up turning your tongue blue instead of black! This stuff should have come with protective eye-wear because if you gave the candy a hard enough whack, it's send shards of it shooting in every direction!

The next sugary treat based on coal that I remember as a kid was the Coal Mine Naughty Nugget Bubble Gum. It came in a tiny red sack that looked just like Santa's. On the bag was a cartoon image of Santa dressed as a miner. Inside were these teeny tiny little bits of jet black little pebbles of candy coated gum. Made by ESPEEZ, the company website says that the flavor of the gum is 'fruity'. I'll have to take their word for it as I can't recall what they tasted like. But I do recall being a fan. The only drawback was that in order to make a decent sized bubble with the gum, you had to put the entire pack of coal in your mouth. That's because half of each piece of coal was the sugar coating that dissolved. A great novelty but not sufficient for those of us who loved to blow bubbles with our food.

The third coal candy I recall having as a kid are Palmers Double Crisp Coal. These pieces of coal were actually little lumps of chocolate wrapped in pure black foil. The filling contained a goodly amount of crisped rice. Instead of a burlap sack, you would get a small red net plastic bag containing about a dozen pieces.

While in the 80s getting coal candy for Christmas was a novelty, nowadays, it's almost become universal. Zots, Sour Patch Kids, Tic Tacs and dozens of independent confectioners produce some sort of candy for naughty boys and girls--- of all ages! Even Archie McPhee made a coal candy cane. Though I'd be careful of those as they probably tasted like soot. 

The good thing about the 3 coal candies I remember getting as gag gifts from Santa is that all 3 are still being made to this day. And yes- they were gags gifts as I've never gotten an actual lump of bituminous coal rock from Santa or anyone else for that matter! It's strictly the edible variety for me!