Preparation

Only a few decorations are up in our house.
Preparation also means finishing. You have to end
something to start something!
Class tomorrow will be the last one at my house.  Winding up Rasselas of the dictionary author: Samuel Johnson. H. E. Marshall has a lovely narrative of this author in English Literature for Boys and Girls which we have been reading out loud. Or look at this lovely Google Book with illustrations. 
Midterm is on Thursday. Charlotte Mason style.

From Samuel Johnson's Dictionary: 1755 

Chrístmas. n.s. [from Christ and mass.] The day on which the nativity of our blessed Saviour is celebrated, by the particular service of the church.

Séraphim. n.s. [This is properly the plural of seraph, and therefore cannot have s added; yet, in compliance with our language, seraphims is sometimes written.] Angels of one of the heavenly orders.
To thee cherubim and seraphim continually do cry. Com. Pr.
Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand. Is. vi. 6.
Of seraphim another row. Milton.

To Loll. v.a. To put out: used of the tongue exerted.
All authors to their own defects are blind;
Hadst thou but, Janus-like, a face behind,
To see the people, when splay mouths they make,
To mark their fingers pointed at thy back,
Their tongues loll’d out a foot. Dryden’s Persius.
By Strymon’s freezing streams he sat alone,
Trees bent their heads to hear him sing his wrongs,
Fierce tygers couch’d around, and loll’d their fawning tongues. Dryden’s Virgil.
By the wolf were laid the martial twins;
Intrepid on her swelling dugs they hung,
The foster-dam loll’d out her fawning tongue. Dryden.

Remembering this line from Hamlet  this Advent:

So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.