By: Maralee McKee, Manners Mentor
A weekly curation of manners posts and more from all around the web. These are links I love and think you will too. Enjoy your perusal!
- Many of the origins of our Christmas traditions are based partly on history and partly on folklore. However, thanks to a very popular man with 1000 people to write holiday letters to, we know all the details of the first Christmas card including when and from where the first card was mailed, and even what it looked like. In fact, there are several still in existence. See it for yourself, along with a card that First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy painted in 1963 for Hallmark. It’s beautiful!
- From Business Insider Magazine here are eleven etiquette mistakes that modern gentlemen never make. This is a wonderful article to print and leave out for your Sweetie to just “happen” to see. 😉 And if you’re raising sons, you’ll want to know these manners to help train them up well. Actually, nine of the eleven manners apply equally to girls and ladies as they do to boys and gentlemen, so this is a great article for all of us! PS: Can you guess which two of the eleven etiquette rules don’t apply to girls and ladies?!
- Getting yourself and others in your home up, ready, and out the door to go to church can be exhausting. Sometimes, it’s so hard that it doesn’t seem worth the effort. At least that’s how it has felt for me more Sundays than not. And if you don’t have a church home, finding one sometimes (usually!) takes visiting several to find the one where you feel at home. In addition to praising God along with fellow believers, Ruth Soukup shares other surprising benefits of attending church, including ten reasons we need a place to worship. The readers’ comments on this post are fantastic! You don’t want to miss what Mireia wrote on December 3. She shared how her thinking about the importance of going to church has changed. Her story lines up with what I’ve experienced in my faith journey. Maybe you’ll feel a connection too.
- It’s Christmas, and what I’ve recently discovered is that at Christmas I need a little (or a lot) of time spent with Mary Berry! She’s the delightful, gracious, kind host of ABC TV’s The Great American Baking Show. Unlike other competition shows and reality television, this one is full of contestants cheering one another on, compassionate (but serious) judges, and amazing dessert creations. I don’t care for cooking shows. However, Ms. Berry has won my heart! She’s formally of The Great British Bakeoff (the show’s finale episode was watched by more people in Great Britain than any other show since 2012). And oh my goodness, what I wouldn’t give for even one piece of just about any dessert on the show!
- We can all probably hum or sing a little of the beloved German Christmas carol Silent Night. Although it’s hundreds of years old, it wasn’t widely known until World War I. It all changed one night on the battlefield when the song rose up and soldiers came out of their foxholes. For a few precious hours on Christmas, in the midst of all-out war, there was peace on Earth! It’s a story worthy of Shakespeare and more beautiful than his best sonnet!
Christmas Etiquette on The Blog
Blessings,