Tag Archives: christmas in connecticut

Christmas is only 19 Days Away!

From my living room window as I write, I can look out across the broad front lawns of our farm like a lovely picture post card of wintry New England.  In my fireplace the good cedar logs are burning and crackling.  I just stopped to go into my gleaming kitchen to test the crumbly brown goodness of the toasted veal cutlets a la {?} in my oven.  Cook these slowly…”  Elizabeth Lane (as played by the versatile and provocative Barbara Stanwyck) sitting in her New York apartment (pretending to be on a farm in Connecticut) typing her column  for the American Housekeeping Magazine in the movie, “Christmas in Connecticut”

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No toasted veal cutlets warming in my oven here (I just had a slice of cold pizza for breakfast), but along with a rich cup of steaming-hot coffee I am enjoying a delicious, slow Sunday morning in the Colorado air where a light, dusty snow is falling softly like grace, covering the winter-scarred landscape with a sparkling beauty in  a gentle silence.  In a pallette of white alone, God manages to cause the somewhat lifeless winter look to awaken in splendor and reveal His mercy-covering nature to a fallen world.

Snow falls like grace and suddenly all things are new again. 

“God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways; He does great things beyond our understanding.  He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth,’ and to the rain, ‘Be a mighty downpour.’  So that all men He has made may know His work, He stops every man from his labor.”  Job 37.5-7 NIV

image found on google: Rocky Mountain Reflections Photography, Inc.  by Andy Cook

25 Days Until You-Know-What!

Christmas in Connecticut

I watched the old, crisp-black-and-white, 1945 “Christmas in Connecticut” last night, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan.  It is official.  I am into Christmas.  And I LOVE this movie (I have for almost 30 years, now).

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Elizabeth Lane

Barbara Stanwyck plays Elizabeth Lane, a writer for a homemaking magazine, and just seeing it again last night made me laugh at myself, for I think I truly have emulated her food-writing style.  It obviously has impacted my romanticism in regards to writing about the “homely arts.”   She is gorgeous and tough, she is smart and sassy.  She is self-sufficient and alluring.  She absolutely sparkles in this sweet and silly old movie. 

And the fur coat?  I have it!  I actually bought the exact same style of coat (made in the 40s) at an antique shop in Sioux City, Iowa in 1987.  I want to be Elizabeth Lane!

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I’m wishin’ that I may

I’m wishin’ that I might

Have the wish that I wish for tonight

Spoiler Alert…may give away some things (hopefully just makes you want to see it)

In the movie she is a city-girl journalist who can’t even boil water, but is forced to play farm wife and mother for her boss who doesn’t know her writing isn’t actually from a farm in Connecticut.  Barbara Stanwyck is elegantly charming and totally lovable enlisting help from the men her life to pull this off: the horribly pretentious, prissy bore of an architect she is engaged to marry and Uncle Felix, the restaurant owner from whom she gets all her recipe copy.  They set out to create the “Elizabeth Lane” persona for her boss, who has invited a war-hero sailor to spend Christmas with them at the farm.

When the hunky sailor shows up, the usually-cool Elizabeth knows she has met her match.

 I adore the script-

Nora:  I’ve never flipped in me life and I’m not gonna start flippin’ now for no man.

Felix:  Nobody needs a mink coat but the mink!

Elizabeth Lane(about her boss):  Every time I opened my mouth, he talked.  I felt like Charlie McCarthy.

And watch for the “Christmas-card” scene.  You know, like in “Holiday Inn,” and “White Christmas?”  There is a moment when they take you to the Connecticut farm and it is snowy and there are sleigh bells and suddenly your heart is just pulled in to the story: this is what every Christmas should be, you feel, as the music rises majestically and you are magically transported to the fire-y hearth and can practically smell the good old Irish stew simmering from the kitchen…

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It’s lighthearted, totally silly, borrowed babies, fake marriages, a nosy and overpowering magazine publisher, a little farcical and one of my all-time favorite Christmas movies.  The really talented cast manages to create some well-defined and lovable characters.  I am telling you, suspend some disbelief and just enjoy a “Christmas in Connecticut.”  It’ll make you smile.  And then we can talk more about it when I won’t be ruining it for you!

The 1945 Trailer

See?  I mean, come on!

P.S.  Believe me when I tell you that the early 90’s remake (Arnold Schwartzeneggar’s directorial debut, I think) was not nearly as wonderful, but it does have the beautiful Dyan Cannon – so that is something, I guess.

Mr. Christmas

I love my Dave.  And he loves Christmas. 

For 28 Christmases now, he has worked hard, planned, created, wrapped, shopped, baked, played, decorated and done whatever else is necessary to create a magical, love-filled, memory-made Christmas for our family.  Christmas mornings at our house are legendary feasts of extravagant indulgence and convivial love banquets of gifts and good smells and laughter and mountains of giftwrap and the music of Christmas and the love of the most incredible husband-father-grandfather.  It isn’t about the money spent, for often there has been precious-little of that, but it’s the thoughtful generosity of spirit, gifts that remind the recipient: you are loved, cherished and appreciated-this is my token of that.  But – wrap all of that in a huge Christmas bow and you have the gift of the season that my husband puts much great effort in to.

You are the original Clark Griswold, honey.  You are George Bailey and Father O’Malley ringing the bells of Christmas.  You are my handsome Jefferson Jones, my lover by tree-light.  You are Kris Kringle and Santa Claus.  You are the man described in “Holiday Inn” in the exchange between Jim Hardy and Miss Linda Mason (Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds).

Linda:  You’re a lot like my father – just a man with a family.  Never amounted to much, never really cared.  But as long as he was alive, we had food to eat and clothes to keep us warm.

Jim:  Were you happy?

Linda:  Very.

Jim:  Well, then your father was a successful man.  I hope I can do as well.

Yes, baby, you are Mr. Christmas.  I love that you are.  I love that you are ever-committed to making merry for all.  I am smiling at how excited you are to be organizing the decorations – getting ready to haul them out in mere days.  You know where everything is and you’re planning, with a twinkle in your eye, to give us yet another wonderful Christmas.

As the Carpenters once sang: Merry Christmas, Darling…Jeanie

From Dickens’ A Christmas Carol~

“…and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.  May that truly be said of us, all of us!  And so, as Tiny Tim observed, ‘God bless us, Every One!'”

NOTE TO SELF: Love the Christmas keeper.

characters above from some of our favorite Christmas movies, including: Christmas Vacation, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Bells of Saint Mary’s, Christmas in Connecticut, Miracle on 34th Street, Holiday Inn

pictured: sweet daughter, Stormie did the graphic for me, from a photo of Dave and a Bing Crosby album.