The scene of the newborn Christ, the Virgin Mary, and often shepherds and the Magi is familiar to most of us.
The Nativity Scene was first represented in the fourth century, carved on early Christian Roman sarcophagi.
Angora wool does not come from sheep. Angora is harvested from a domesticated rabbit of the same name. The wool is white, black, blue, or fawn. The rabbits are sheared every three months; each one yields about 12 ounces of wool annually. These rabbits first appeared in the eighteenth century in France.
Soft-shoe was one of two distinct styles of tap dancing developed in the late nineteenth century. Easy going and smooth, it required soft-soled shoes. In contrast, the fast, energetic buck-and-wing employed wooden soled shoes. The two styles merged by 1925, with metal taps added to the toes and heels.
Born Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry in 1902, the black actor Stepin Fetchit got his stage name from a racehorse on which he bet and won a large sum of money. The name has since become a term of derision among blacks for someone subservient to whites. Fetchit died in 1985.
The word vaudeville originally referred to a type of light, comedic song that originated in Vau-de-Vire in Normandy, France. It came to mean the whole program of songs, dances, comedy, and other acts once popular in theaters across America. Vaudeville was introduced to the United States in 1865 with the opening of the Opera House,…
In Scottish auld lang sync literally means “old long ago.”
The first collaboration between George and Ira Gershwin was the Broadway musical Lady Be Good in 1924. It included the songs “Fascinating Rhythm” and “Oh Lady, Be Good.”