Today is Nollaig na mBan--Women's Christmas--here. Traditionally, it was a day for women to have a day off, socialize, and let the men do all the work around the house, after the women had worked so hard to create Christmas for their families. Today women might still go to pubs and restaurants where there may or may not be special programming for the day. This is also considered the last day of the festive season and it's considered bad luck to take down the Christmas decorations down before today. I have read that Women's Christmas is more widely celebrated in some southern counties, but I've seen at least one ad for a Women's Christmas event at a venue in Co Donegal and indeed a young woman commented to me this evening that today is Nollaig na mBan and that her colleague should not have started taking down the Christmas decorations yet, so obviously it's still a thing here to some degree.
Today's spine poem celebrates Nollaig na mBan.
Wise Women,
Weird Women.
An Irish Christmas Feast
Wise Women is a book of photographs of elder women with a bit of life story included by Joyce Tenneson. Weird Women is a collection of short stories written and published between 1852 and 1923, and An Irish Christmas Feast is a collection of short stories by John B. Keane.
I hope you have something to celebrate today, too, wherever you are and no matter how small.
6 comments:
Visting Bill's site now and then I do also have a glimpse at your blog. Today, after all, I thought I should at least leave a little com(pli)ment. Herewith done. ;-)
The banana bread-recipe you recently posted reminds me of that it's time to bake two loaves again, for a change.
Two loaves, because like my friend Stan I use to give one loaf to friends or neighbours.
Well, and of course my heart rose like a falcon up to the sky when I noticed that I stumbled upon a bookworm. ;-) There might even be a revival of spine poems, which I use(d) to call cover stories.
And now enjoy the final hours of Nollaig na mBan.
The peace of the night.
Thanks for stopping by, Sean. Yup, this is definitely a bookworm sort of home :-) The spine/cover poems are fun to come up with.
have a lovely weekend and happy bread baking!
I love your choice of books for the spine poem! I liked the blurb for Wise Women so I ordered it.
Thanks, Vicki! It's fun to think about the books I have in this way.
Wise Women is a lovely book. I hope you find it so too!
I'm a day late but Happy wishes for Nollaig na mBan--Women's Christmas :)
I'd not heard of this before so an interesting read, thank you.
Love your spine poem ... you are good at putting these together.
Happy weekend wishes.
All the best Jan
Thanks, Jan! I gave myself a day off :-)
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