Word: songful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...have been issued a bit cavalierly - self-referential cinema, as it was called, could easily turn self-reverential - but it spawned some fascinating films, including Paul Mazursky's Alex in Wonderland, Woody Allen's Stardust Memories and above all Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, a collision of song and dance, skyrocketing neurosis and open-heart surgery, energy and entropy. Nine hit Broadway three years later, with Raul Julia declaiming Maury Yeston's songs in Tommy Tune's black-and-white, beyond-chic production...
...1800s, the hot toy was the naked, china Frozen Charlotte doll, modeled on a girl who went out to a party one winter night without her wrap because she wanted everyone to be able to admire her pretty dress; by the time she arrived, the popular folk song went, "Fair Charlotte was a stiffened corpse/ And word spoke nevermore." How charming. In 1889 a puzzle game called Pigs in Clover, which involved tilting balls through metal rings, was such an addictive obsession among children and adults alike that President Benjamin Harrison was ridiculed for playing it when he was supposed...
...similarly ancient one. In England, the word wassail - derived from the Old Norse ves heill meaning "be well, and in good health" - came to mean the wishing of good fortune on your neighbors. No one is quite sure when the custom began, but it did give us the song, "Here We Come-A-Wassailing" - sung as carolers wished good cheer to their neighbors in hopes of getting a gift in return. ("A Wassailing" also evolved into the popular "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" - its last verse, "Bring us some figgy pudding" stems from the wassailers' original intent...
...first to print "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," "The First Noel" and "Hark! the Herald Angels Sing." "Joy to the World" first appeared in the Anglican Church hymnal Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861. Composed by Isaac Watts, known as the "father of Englsh hymnody", the song actually wasn't written exclusively for singing at Christmastime. Charles Wesley's "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" was originally "Hark! How All The Welkin Rings!" (Welkin means sky or heaven, and came to mean making a loud sound...
Singing "White Christmas" is fine if you're Bing Crosby or you're safely ensconced in front of a fire in a mountain hideaway somewhere. But hum a few bars of the song at the Eurostar terminals in Paris and London these days and you may get dirty looks. As difficult as it is to believe, snow is what apparently caused the breakdown of the Eurostar train network over the weekend that left service indefinitely suspended - and an ever-growing number of people stranded, their holiday plans in disarray...