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There is a lot of mention of food in "A Christmas Carol."

Charles Dickens was quite popular touring the country doing readings of "A Christmas Carol."

If you missed mine, the Secret Museum Reading Series at the New York Public Library invited Neil Gaiman to read from the reading prompt Dickens wrote for himself. He did so.

The Jonathan Winters version, also using Dickens's script, is still a staple of National Public Radio's seasonal programming, though it's only available online in Windows Media or RealPlayer formats, which is a nice Dickensian touch for the digital age.

There is a lot of mention of food in "A Christmas Carol."

A few Christmas songs and stories while we wait for 2017 to finish burning down around us.

A few Christmas songs and stories while we wait for the year to finish burning down around us.

And if you'd like see a few more Christmassy posts, here they are.

Happy Holidays, everyone. Stay safe.

Every year the Battle of Germantown, October 4, 1777, is reenacted (on the closest convenient Saturday) in Philadelphia. Speeches made, movements described, muskets and a random cannon fired, and when the choking smoke clears, grilled sausages and donuts, with beer or lemonade. The Cliveden estate hosts Revolutionary soldiers and t-shirted tourists, lounging on the grass under the trees, like a time portal has been left open and things are leaking.

In recent years, there has been a move to reconsider how accurate to make this, given that there are actual guns and real shootings in Philadelphia, and some of the neighbors have started to find this a bit traumatizing. Or perhaps they always did, but they were tired of being dismissed as party poopers.

When and how Americans began the practice of battle reenactment is unclear; it pre-dates renaissance fairs, which might have actually been inspired by a cross between reenactments, nomadic Grateful Dead tour followers, and hobbits, but that's another story.