A Jane Austen Christmas

Jo Beverley suggests that Christmas was not much celebrated in Regency circles, given that old-fashioned rustic traditions were too gauche for most people. There is little evidence of people singing Christmas carols, though at least one source puts “The Cherry Tree Carol” from this period—at least, it was published in a broadside in this period, the carol may date to the 15th century.

Cherry Tree Carol

Twelfth Night seems to be more celebrated than Christmas was. Jane Austen’s mother makes scant reference to the celebration of the season in a letter from 1786 to Philadelphia Walters, saying only “Every one of our fireside joins in Love and Duty as due in wishing a happy 87 to our dear friends at Seal.”

Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night cake



A letter from Fanny Austen Knight in 1804 describes the conventional pastimes for a Twelfth Night party, including snapdragon (a game in which raisins are placed in a bowl of brandy which is then set alight, the object being you pluck them out without burning yourself), bullet pudding (a strange game related to King’s Cake except with flour and a bullet!), and bobbing for apples (which often took place after the country custom of Wassailing the Orchards). “In the evening we dance or play at cards.” She means a specific set of cards during the Christmas season. In this celebration, each lady drew a card from the box held by a footman to the left of the entrance, and each gentleman drew a card from the same to the right. Then each person would have to maintain the persona of that card for the rest of the evening, with (hopefully) hilarious results. At Fanny’s party in 1804, the characters included Suky Sweetlips, John Thumb, Polly Primrose, Goody Twoshoes, Dorothy Do-little, Margery Mutton Pie, and Johnny Bo-Peep; two years later the characters included a Pilgrim, a Turk, a Jew, a Witch, a flowergirl, a fruitgirl, a haymaker, Harlequin, Clown, and Cupid (I kid you not). Certainly the characters of these cards must have meant a lot more to the revelers of the 18th century than to us now, but all of it came from the King’s Cake tradition. Stationers were employed to create exclusive sheets of character cards; it seems to have been quite a lucrative business.



Balls

Getting to balls in the winter could be an uncomfortable business, so as soon as guests arrived they would eat hot soup and negus (a mix of hot water, wine, and spices). Here is Martha Lloyd’s recipe for hartshorn jelly, a genteel sort of soup-like dish:

Take 4 oz of Hartshorn shavings, one quart of water and boil it dry then put another quart of water and boil it till it will jelly, the whites of two eggs and beat them to a froth with the juice of one lemon and half an orange, a stick of cinnamon and sugar to your taste, run your jelly through a bag and let it stand to be a little cool before you put your eggs to it. Then boil it till it looks clear, or the eggs begin to sink, then run it through the bag until it is quite clear.

Balls must have been popular, as “in a series of editorials on Christmas in the 1780s and 1790s, The Times used the traditional festive lament the attack aristocratic vice, corruption and luxury” (Armstrong 5). We get a glimpse in a letter from Jane to Cassandra on Christmas Eve 1798:

There were twenty dances, and I danced them all without any fatigue. I was glad to find myself capable of dancing so much, and with so much satisfaction as I did; . . . My black cap was openly admired by Mrs Lefroy, and secretly, I imagine, by everybody else in the room.
. . . I wish you a Merry Xmas but no compliments of the season. . . .
Of my charities to the poor since I came home, you shall have faithful account. I have given a pair of worsted stockings to Mary Hutchins, Dame Kew, Mary Steevens and Dame Staples; a shift to Hannah Staples, and a shawl to Betty Dawkins; amounting in all to about half a guinea. But I have no reason to suppose that the Batty’s [sic] would accept of anything, because I have not made them the offer.

Games and Pastimes

Carols don’t seem to have been popular; if there were any, they were sung as hymns at church. There was mumming, wassailing and other various country traditions; a description of one comes from Whitehaven, Cumberland: "The comedians, of which there are many companies, parade the streets and ask at almost every door if the mummers are wanted. They are dressed in the most grotesque fashion; their heads adorned with high paper caps, gilt and spangled, and their bodies with ribbons of various colours, while St. George and the Prince are armed with ten swords.”

Charades were three-act plays each one describing the syllable of a word. They could be played in two ways. Firstly, a relaxed game where everyone stayed seated. Each player would recite their conundrum and the rest had to guess at the word. Or the party would divide into two or more groups, where they would create short one-minute acts to describe the syllables, the last describing the whole word. The word had to be said in the act. From a collection published in 1895 which collects the Austen charades, here is one from her mother Cassandra’s brother James Leigh, who inherited the estate of North Leigh in Oxfordshire from the Perrots.

No. III
In confinement I’m chained every day
Yet my enemies need not be crowing
To my chain I have always a key,
And no prison can keep me from going.

Small and weak my hands I’ll allow,
Yet for striking my character’s great,
Though ruined by one fatal blow,
My strokes, if hard pressed, I repeat.

I have neither mouth, eye nor ear
Yet I always keep time as I sing,
Change of season I never need fear
Though my being depends on the spring.

Would you wish, if these hints are too few
One glimpse of my figure to catch?
Look round! I shall soon be in view
If you have but your eyes on the watch.

In 1800, Queen Charlotte, the German-born wife of King George III and mother of the Prince Regent, placed a decorated yew tree in Queen’s Lodge, Windsor, for the children of leading families. From its branches hung sweetmeats, raisins, almonds, fruits and toys, and illuminated by wax candles. As the children left they could take parts of the treats home with them.

Reverend Holland



Reverend Holland was a West Country parson who kept a diary from 1799—1817. His Christmases were marked rather quietly. He spent Christmas Eve and Day of 1799 handing out charity to the poor parishioners. “The poor came for meat and corn this cold weather and against Christmas Season. Some very thankful and some almost saucy. . . . Much harried by the poor of the parish who come for Christmas Gifts. Many persons rather in affluence came but this is not right because it takes from those who are real objects.” He often found getting to church and delivering the sermon the most taxing part of the day, and nothing else made much of an impression. On Sunday 20 December 1801, he wrote, “I went thro’ the Duty very well but few at Church the day very uncomfortable.” Christmas Day that year was extremely wet and dismal. “The Singers at the window tuned forth a most dismal ditty, half drunk too and with the most wretched voices . . . A day of labour but I have got through it very well I think.” A near contemporary of Holland’s, the Somerset rector John Skinner, seems to have been tormented by Christmas bells.

Evidently not a man of prudish tastes, on December 13th, 1804 Reverend Holland witnessed a school production of Othello which he seems to have enjoyed: “The two Stradlings acted Desdemona and Amelia [sic] and two prettier girls I scarce ever saw insomuch that some said it was pity they should be boys. . . . A boy dressed like an Orange Girl came with a basket to take the ticket and most gave half a crown, I gave half a guinea. We had a very pleasant and satisfactory jaunt and we got into bed before two in the morning.” He also, like the Austens, played cards. Holland did indulge in some gift-giving, as on Christmas Day 1807 when he presented the Clerk of Dodington with “a good black coat of mine, of which he stood in need for he is but a miserable wight.” In turn the Reverend was very pleased when he received from Mrs Dodwell a “handsome Court Calendar bound in Morocco.”

On Christmas Day 1806 the Reverend was relying on his umbrella to get him through terrible weather. Frosty weather preoccupied him during Christmas services in 1808. He seems to have had a custom of giving his servant George a holiday on December 26th (contrary to what we know of most Victorian employers from Hannah Culwick). Balls and celebrations seem, from his account, not to have taken place on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day but primarily between December 26th and January 8th. The letters of Fanny, Jane Austen’s niece, seem to support this. On January 4th, 1806, the family put on a theatrical at Godmersham Park, complete with playbill and servants as audience. In 1808 it seems there was a Christmas Eve ball, at least for Fanny Austen Knight, who wrote the next day that it had had twelve dances. “We then had a game of Hunt the Slipper and ended the day with sandwiches and tarts. I must not omit to say that the little ones dressed up as usual and sang Christmas Carols.” (In late December 1815, Holland describes a Christmas Ball for children.)



Jane Austen Christmas references

Customs



Washington Irving’s influential Sketch-Book described a Yorkshire Christmas from 1810 that starts in a country inn. The protagonist Geoffrey Crayon comes to enjoy Christmas at Squire Bracebridge’s. The servants are allowed and even encouraged to enjoy gaiety during the Christmas season, playing “Hoodman Blind, shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, bob apple, and snap dragon.” At supper, Crayon comments on the decorations, wreaths of holly and ivy and special Christmas candles, followed by a “merry dance.”

“The party now broke up for the night with the kindhearted old custom of shaking hands. As I passed through the hall on the way to my chamber, the dying embers of the Yule log still sent forth a dusky glow.” He is awoken the next morning by three children singing “Christians Awake” at his door. (Irving’s 1809 Knickbocker’s History of New York referenced St Nicholas as the mythic patron saint of New Amsterdam.)

One of Jane Austen’s favorite books was Robert Southey’s Letters from England, a satirical look at English customs from the view point of a visiting Spaniard (in fact invented by Southey himself). An entry from 1803 highlights the British propensity for sitting all around the fire, instead of “warm your rooms like the Germans . . . and diffuse the heat equally on all sides,” causing some people to roast and some people to be chilled.

Brawn and souse were popular cold meats, venison was for the very wealthy, and turkey was, as we have seen, also very popular. In 1812, Jane wrote to Martha Lloyd asking for an address of an acquaintance, Mr Morton, to whom she wished to send a Christmas gift of turkey. Goose was considered good luck to eat at Michelmas but not especially popular at Christmas. By the Regency, marzipan was a popular treat for special occasions.



Sources
Armstrong.
Beverley.
Hubert.
Jane Austen’s World blog.
Oxford.
Waugh.

A Georgian Christmas

A Middle Class Holiday?

The celebration of Christmas appears to have tapered off slightly in the 18th century. Armstrong explains this by noting that a disproportionate number of families in trade were Protestant Nonconformists. Baptists and Quakers especially rejected the significance of Christmas (for reasons we outlined while talking about the Interregnum). “Before the Victorian period, social commentators agreed that the true spirit of Christmas was to be found amongst the middling sort of people” (47). Certainly a study of middle class families between 1780 and 1850 found Christmas was a period of family gathering and the pledging of loyalties. Nevertheless, enough partying must have been going on to prompt William Romaine in a 1757 sermon on Christmas Day to criticize the gentry for going to balls, masquerades, assemblies, card-tables, operas, plays, and dancing and singing, while the lower class was “rioting” and indulging in “excess.”

It was not a suitable time for administering the Sacrament, thought northern parson Thomas Brockbank in 1709, “people either being abroad or taken up with visitants.” Manuel Gonzales (probably Daniel Defoe under a pseudonym) said “these were days of entertainment among friends and relations.” However, the religious aspect was of course taken very seriously. A Methodist minister, Joseph Benson, who died in 1821, said that for 50 years he had preached at least once, sometimes as many as three times, on Christmas Day. In colonial Williamsburg, where most of the settlers were from Anglican backgrounds, Christmas was spent quietly at home in prayer and reflection, with a trip to church for communion.

Samuel Bamford (1788-1872) recalled from his childhood in Middleton, Lancashire, that the holidays commenced on the first Monday after New Year’s Day, and were memorable for sharing ale and currant loaf between weavers’ and colliers’ families, the watch-night of the Methodists, and the freedom for the children to play outdoors. In 1782, people in Yorkshire were still feasting into Candelmas. Late 18th century wealthy landowners boxed up leftover food from Christmas Day, sometimes adding other gifts as well, and distributed them on Christmas Day. The Boxing Day fox hunt became a well-known tradition until hunting with dogs was banned in England and Wales in 2005.

In colonial Williamsburg, slaves and indentured servants provided the labor for such busy holidays as the 12 Days of Christmas. Household servants and slaves might receive time off later during the year in return for working extra time at Christmas. Similarly, field hands were given extra time off because it was a quiet season for farming (see December 3). Virginians decorated their houses with the same evergreens as their ancestors had in Britain, as the Virginia woods were full of these plants. The Yule log is not mentioned at all in 18th century Virginian records, but “colonial boys followed the custom of ‘shooting in the Christmas’ or firing their guns on Christmas Eve and morning. This practice extended into the 20th century and survives today as Christmas holiday fireworks” (“Traditional Christmas in Williamsburg, 18th Century Christmas Holiday Traditions”). Preparation in the American South for Christmas, at least on 18th century plantations, began early. Slaves had to butcher hogs, render lard, shuck corn, smoke hams, make mincemeat, bring in and arrange firewood. Alcohol, game and sweets had to be procured from somewhere. Philadelphia, despite having a large popular of Quakers, tended to celebrate Christmas in the Anglican way.

Another 18th century custom was kissing under the mistletoe. Alluding back to Celtic Britain, throwing away mistletoe was regarded as unlucky. There was also apparently a limit to the number of kisses a particular bit of mistletoe could yield:

Pick a berry off the mistletoe
For ev’ry kiss that’s given
When the berries have all gone
There’s an end to the kissing.



In 1717, John Rich, manager of Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, transformed the tradition of the harlequinade into what we would now recognize as pantomime. Children would complete handwriting samples and then bring them home during the Christmas holidays to their parents. Known as “Christmas pieces,” examples survive from 7-year-old John Stainton in 1779.

A Georgian Feast

An 18th century Yorkshire Christmas pie was recorded, similar to the old medieval pies. A popular treat in Ireland was roasted butter, which was salted and dredged with fine oatmeal, as a Christmas meal. Lady Grisell Baillie’s Christmas Day menu for 1715 included a first course with “plum pottage with sago and a few fruit” (sago was made from the pith of the Malaysian palm tree). Christmas pudding as we know it first appeared in the reign of George III and is said to have been invented especially for him because of his inordinate love of English puddings. Here is a variation on Christmas pudding which seemed appropriate for this section:

Iced Berry Pudding
• 284 mL carton double cream
• 500g carton good-quality ready-made custard
• 100g / 4 oz golden caster sugar
• 100 mL / 3 ½ fl oz dark rum, plus 1 T extra
• 170g packet dried berries and cherries (or same weight mix of dried cranberries, cherries, blueberries and raisins)
• Sprigs of sugar-frosted bay leaves and little bunches of sugar-frosted red and green
grapes, to decorate
Softly whip the cream in a bowl, stir in the custard. Put in freezer for about 1 ½ hours, until it starts to freeze around the edge. Meanwhile, put the sugar in a pan with 100 mL/3 ½ fl oz rum. Heat slowly to dissolve the sugar, tip in the fruits, and simmer gently for 1 min. Pour into a wide bowl, and leave until cold (about an hour). Add the extra T of rum. Stir the cream and custard with a whisk to break it all up, then stir in the cooled fruit. Pour into a 2 pt pudding basin, cover and freeze overnight until firm (or for up to 1 month). To serve, dip the basin quickly into boiling water, loosen
the sides with a round-bladed knife, then turn the pudding out. Decorate with
frosted bay leaves and grapes.

When Rev. Henry Teonge spent Christmas on board a warship in 1675, officers and men had beef, plum puddings, and mince pies. The competition between goose and turkey as principal fare could be seen from the story of the two peers who for a wager organized a race between flocks of geese and turkeys from Norfolk to London for the Christmas market. The turkeys were faster, but the geese won because they ate as they walked and did not stop for the night.

Marzipan Mince Pies
• 100g / 4 oz plain flour
• 100g / 4 oz self-raising flour
• 100g / 4 oz butter, cut into cubes
• 1 T caster sugar
• Finely grated zest 1 lemon
• 85g / 3 oz marzipan, cut into 24 pieces
• 250g / 9 oz mincemeat (just over ½ jar)
• Icing sugar, for dusting
Makes 12
Preheat the oven to 200C. Process both flours and the butter until the mixture is like fine breadcrumbs. Pulse in the sugar and zest, then 3-4 T of cold water, until dough comes together into a ball.Roll the dough out thinly on a lightly floured surface. Stamp out into 3 ½ in rounds. (Reserve the excess pastry.) Line a 12-hole bun tin, and gather up the edges into folds.Put two pieces of marzipan in the bottom of each pastry case, spoon in a heaped teaspoon of mincemeat. Roll out the pastry trimmings, cut out star shapes and lay on top. Bake for 12-15 mins until crisp and golden. Cool in the tin then remove and cool on a wire rack. Dust with icing sugar.

When did plum pudding oust plum porridge? Some time in the 18th century, apparently. “I always spell plumb-pudding with a b., p-l-u-m-b,” Charles Lamb wrote in 1807, “I think it reads fatter and more suetty.” Twelfth Night cakes had grown very elaborate and were iced and surmounted by plaster figures.

Martha Lloyd, Austen family friend and cook, had a celebrated Black Butter. Here is a recipe for Black Apple Butter from the Pennsylvania Dutch, from 1734. It would have been eaten at Thanksgiving.

Take 4 pounds of full ripe apples, and peel and core them. Meanwhile put into a pan 2 pints of sweet cider, and boil until it reduces by half. Put the apples, chopped small, to the cider. Cook slowly stirring frequently, until the fruit is tender, as you can crush beneath the back of a spoon. Then work the apple through a sieve, and return to the pan adding 1 lb beaten (granulated) sugar and spices as following, 1 teaspoon clove well ground, 2 teaspoons cinnamon well ground, 1 saltspoon allspice well ground. Cook over low fire for about ¼ hour, stirring until mixture thickens and turns a rich brown. Pour the butter into small clean jars, and cover with clarified butter when cold. Seal and keep for three months before using. By this time the butter will have turned almost black, and have a most delicious flavor.

Sources
Armstrong.
Colonial Williamsburg.
Green.
Pimlott.
Restad.
C. Anne Wilson.

A Doctor Who Christmas

What could be the possible connection, you ask, between Doctor Who and Christmas? Well, admittedly, before 2005, not much. In 1965, one of the episodes of the serial was broadcast at Christmastime, prompting the much-beloved “breaking of the fourth wall” by William Hartnell playing the Doctor, who wishes the viewers “incidentally, a Merry Christmas to all of you at home!” Although the tape itself was wiped, we have a surviving copy of the audio, which some enterprising fans recreated as animation.

The Feast of Stephen

The line has taken on almost mythic status in fandom, with one of my favorite reworkings of the Doctor Who theme, “Mr Dalek’s Bad Wolf Xmas” by Tony Gallichan, incorporating it.

Mr Dalek’s Xmas Bad Wolf

“The Unquiet Dead”

One of the very first stories from 2005, the Ninth Doctor, played by Christopher Eccleston, and Rose accidentally arrive in 1869 Cardiff around Christmastime, where Charles Dickens is giving one of his Christmas Carol lectures. Snow swirls, corpses reanimate by gaslight, Dickens conducts a séance, and a Welsh maid saves the world.

“The Doctor Dances”

In one of the strongest stories of the 2005 series, “The Empty Child” / “The Doctor Dances,” the Doctor finds himself in a very good mood after having saved wartime London from a bomb, reunited a broken family, revived dozens of Londoners who were under a botched nanogene transformation that made them into zombies, and reformed the rakish character of Captain Jack Harkness, ex-Time Agent.

When Rose remarks on his good mood, he makes a strange allusion to the fact that he may be Father Christmas or at least acted like him in the past. Steven Moffat’s suggestion that Santa Claus may be a Time Lord makes perfect sense: To deliver all his presents in one global nighttime, Santa would have to visit 1,500 homes a second, allowing for chimney descents and breaks, and would have to travel at roughly 5,000 times the speed of sound. Easy, when you have a TARDIS! Herbert Palmer (1880-1961) recalled Santa Claus as being “even stranger than God in being able to visit tens of thousands of homes at the same time” (Armstrong 60).

“The Christmas Invasion”

Christmas 2005 began the now-beloved custom of the Doctor Who Christmas Special, which broadcasts on Christmas Day in the UK on the BBC (and now can be seen at almost the same time in other countries). “The Christmas Invasion” was a regeneration episode, introducing the Tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant, for the first time. Like many regeneration episodes, the Doctor spent most of his time in bed before being revived by tea, fighting a duel with the Sycorax, and prevailing because he had a satsuma (a type of small orange, a clementine). There were, of course, Christmas elements, such as outdoor brass band Santas (actually murderous aliens), Christmas trees that tried to kill people, and a final and endearing Christmas dinner bringing together Jackie and Rose Tyler, the Doctor, and Mickey Smith.

A memorable part of this sequence was the opening of Christmas crackers, which are a popular UK tradition. These have roots in the Victorian Christmas. Thomas Smith, London baker and confectioner, visited Paris in 1840 and was impressed by bonbons wrapped in twists of paper. With an eye for business, he created his own version, refining it based on sales, and by 1846 had added riddles or corny Christmas jokes to the inside of the twists of paper. He then added the distinctive “crack” to improve sales, experimenting with different chemicals to produce the desired “crack” in 1860. In 1847 he had officially marketed the first “cracker”—his sons took over the business and it continues into the 21st century.

“The Runaway Bride”

In 2006, the Doctor interfered with the Christmas Day wedding of Donna Noble. In terms of Christmas, it saw the return of the Santa aliens, the “Pilot Fish.” In the UK, when you go to see Santa, you go to his “grotto.” I admit the fact he inhabits a “grotto” threw me for a loop the first time I heard it. Probably not without reason, “grotto” to me connotes mermaids. All a grotto is in this case is a winter wonderland of glitter and fake snow, but for awhile I wondered if Father Christmas had a Deep Sea Theme. That would be in keeping with the “Pilot Fish”!

“Voyage of the Damned”

After “The Runaway Bride,” the Doctor left Donna, who preferred not to travel with him, but in 2007 he would unwittingly meet her grandfather, Wilf, on the streets of London at Christmastime. The Doctor was there after having landed on the futuristic Titanic which, unbeknownst to them, was about to crash into the Earth. The Doctor and friends were being taken on a tour of the quaint Earthling customs by Mr. Copper, an “Earthologist.” Unfortunately, his credentials are faked, as can be surmised from statements like this, “Now human beings worship the great god Santa, a creature with fearsome claws, and his wife Mary . . .” He also explains that Boxing Day is a violent holiday and that the people of Great Britain eat the people of Great Turkey.

The Doctor saves the life of Queen Elizabeth II, who makes a cameo (well, an actress playing her does—this is not the first time in Doctor Who that this has happened!). Thus the Queen is alive to make her famous Christmas Day speech. This tradition began in 1932, when King George V, the present Queen’s grandfather, broadcast a Christmas message over the radio. The speech was written by Rudyard Kipling and it was broadcast from Sandringham, in Norfolk, where the Royal Family spends its Christmas holidays. The monarch’s message is “at the cutting edge of modernity while sending out a seemingly age-old message”; “human warmth, affection, and even foibles in the monarch were suddenly shown to his people” (C:aSH 146). George VI, he of The King’s Speech fame, first made his Christmas speech in 1939 on the eve of war, including lines of a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins. “I said to the man who stood by the Gate of the Year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to youbetter than light, and safer than a known way.’” Then the King added, “May that almighty hand guide and uphold us all.” Queen Elizabeth first made this broadcast on Christmas Day 1952. From 1957 onwards, the message has been seen on TV. It is filmed the week before and is broadcast at 3 pm. I look forward to seeing it for the first time this year.

“The Next Doctor”

“The Next Doctor” very much takes Dickens as its inspiration, being set some time in the 19th century, though possibly in an alternate timeline as the rather unforgettable incident with the Cyber King lurching over the Thames should leave a bit more of an impact in the timeline. Its plot, concerning orphans, workhouses, greed, and corruption, is Dickensian at the very least. The Doctor must try to work out who the Victorian man calling himself the Doctor really is. The setting is much the same in tone as “The Unquiet Dead,” and the Doctor at the end pauses to stay for Christmas dinner.

“The End of Time”

Although set at Christmas, this 2009 Christmas Special is the Doctor’s swansong, involves the Master turning into a giant grasshopper and shooting electricity from his hands, and really doesn’t have much to do with Christmas. It is memorable for the fact the café scene between Wilf and the Doctor was filmed in August at the Kardomah Café in Swansea.

“A Christmas Carol”

Steven Moffat’s first Christmas Special in 2010 featuring the Eleventh Doctor, played by Matt Smith, and his companions Amy and Rory was much more aligned to the Christmas tradition, and it is worthwhile at this stage to look at the filmic adaptations of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in order to appreciate what Moffat did with his version which we do with the help of James Chapman and his essay on the very subject.

The first filmic adaption of ACC was the 1901 Scrooge; or Marley’s Ghost. The 1935 Scrooge was, according to Chapman, “very much a product of the British cinema of its time in its construction of the ideology of consensus” (17). Its American counterpart was the David O. Selznick A Christmas Carol from 1938. It “exemplifies all the expensive production values and technical artistry of a major Hollywood studio at its peak” (18).

The first postwar version is from 1951, known as Scrooge in the US and A Christmas Carol in Britain. It is itself a very British film, called a “Gothic” Dickens and using filmic techniques of film noir. Scrooge can be argued in this film to represent the British Conservative Party. The chillingly memorable scene when “the Ghost of Christmas Present . . . opens his robe to reveal two starving children (‘This boy is Ignorance, this girl is Want’) it is impossible not to associate this with the Beveridge Report,” which of course led to the formation of the British National Health Service (23).

The first TV version arrived in 1947 on NBC, followed by a plethora on TV, seemingly a new one every year, during the 1950s. Carry On Christmas (1964) and Leslie Bricusse’s Scrooge (1970) are given short-shrift by Chapman. Meanwhile, the animated Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) and The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) are applauded, the latter being called a “postmodern text”! The final postmodern version, if you want to call it that, is Blackadder’s Christmas Carol (1988).

Meanwhile, Moffat’s version shifts the setting from 1830s London to a steampunk planet which looks recognizably Dickensian (from the vaguely 19th century costumes to the streetlamps around which fish and sharks congregate in the sky). The Doctor’s role here can neither be defined wholly as Marley, the Ghost of Christmas Past, or even Dickens himself. He is not trying to reform his version of Scrooge, Kazran Sardick, for moral purposes; he is trying to use manipulation of time to change Sardick’s character in order to save Amy, Rory, and hundreds of others who will be killed by the unreformed Sardick’s actions.

The 1984 version of ACC, filmed in Shrewsbury and starring George C. Scott, “provides a psychological ‘explanation’ for Scrooge’s miserliness in that he was denied affection from his father” (Chapman 28). This is exactly the tack Moffat’s version takes, the Doctor traveling back in time to meet Sardick as a child and countering the influence of his tyrannical father. In the way that the 1984 version critiques Thatcherite Britain, the unreformed Sardick “believes that there is no such thing as society, that responsibility rests with the individual and not with the state” (28). There is a version here of Scrooge’s lost love, Abigail, an un-aging, beautiful and innocent commoner with quite a set of pipes who has been frozen in time to pay debts. The Doctor solidifies his relationship with the boy Kazran; then the Doctor performs the function of the Ghost of Christmas Present by taking the now-teenaged Sardick to the “contemporary” Christmas-ish celebrations of Abigail’s family. In the process of trying to reform Sardick, however, the Doctor experiences the unintended consequences which turns Sardick against him—he allows for Sardick to fall in love with Abigail knowing he will never able to be with her.

The allusion falls apart slightly when Amy performs the function of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, up to a point, by showing Sardick the consequences of his actions should he let everyone in the spaceship above die. Nevertheless, of course, the Doctor’s intervention has paid off; Amy, Rory, and the others are saved, Sardick has become “good” or at least compassionate, Abigail dies but the characters of Dickens merge with the contemporary Santa Claus as the Doctor and his friends ride through the night sky in a sled pulled by a flying shark. I think the Moffat version of ACC completes Armstrong’s statement, “As an imagined ideal, Christmas attained the power to stimulate and intensify a range of emotions, including familial love, benevolence and anticipation, but also loneliness and disappointment” (46).

The Chimes of Midnight

Finally, it is worth mentioning a Doctor Who audio play written by Rob Shearman and featuring the Eighth Doctor, played by Paul McGann, and India Fisher, playing his companion Charley Pollard. This is a beautiful play centered around Christmas celebrations in an Edwardian household, which turn sour when murder is enacted over and over again. The element of time, ghostly messages, nostalgia, and exploitation of the underprivileged all link the play to the Dickensian tradition.

One of the central characters is a scullerymaid who is cast as the scapegoat, whose secret connection to Charley’s childhood is masterfully revealed. Whether he realized it or not, Shearman was alluding to the often awkward fashion in which Victorian and Edwardian servants celebrated Christmas. “Servants were important to the domestic celebration of Christmas because they carried out much, though no means all, of the physical work of Christmas in the home” (Armstrong 78). One of the best authentic voices we have for the period, the maid-diarist Hannah Culwick, notes exhaustion in her diary during Christmastime, with no time to spare for celebration. Most of the time, servants did not get time off to visit their families. On Christmas Day 1872, for example, Culwick wrote, “I often think what a delightful pleasure that must be, going home for Christmas, but I’ve never once had it” (78). A woman in service in Lancashire in the 1900s, Elizabeth Roberts, wrote, “One Christmas I was at Longbridge and Christmas Day come and I was a bit homesick, yo know, and our Christmas Day’s dinner. I washed up and all that, and she said, ‘Has tha finished now?’ I said, ‘Yes, madam,’ so she said, ‘Well if thou get all the paper there, you’ll see a lot of paper there and there’s a big needle there and a ball of string, if you down to the paddock (that was the toilet) sit there and take the scissors and cut some paper up and thread it for the lavatory.’ And I sat there on Christmas Day and I think I cried a bucketful of tears. Christmas afternoon and I was sat . . . sitting cutting bits of paper like that . . . til about half past four when I went in for m’tea. Sitting there on the lavatory seat” (Golby 87).

A grotesque and amusing element of The Chimes of Midnight is the centrality of the plum pudding (characters die by being choked on by plum pudding). “Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without Mrs Baddeley’s plum pudding” the characters repeat mindlessly. I wonder if this is an allusion to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, which carries on a yearly Twelfth Night tradition of the eating of the Baddeley Cake. This was a stipulation from the will of Robert Baddeley, an 18th century actor.

Sources.
Armstrong.
Christmas: A Social History.
Chapman.
Golby.
Green.
Hubert.

Presents

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.” --Jo March, in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women

Gifts Before 1800

In the records of presents in the annals of English record-keeping, there was always an element of the legal or quasi-legal in character. For example, Lord Chief Justice Branston’s gifts at his Essex manor during Christmas 1636 include 32 turkeys, 54 capons, 3 bullocks, a hogshead of claret, puddings, oysters, and a basket of apples; a neighbor gave him a silver dish. Elizabeth I received a satin nightgown from Sir Francis Walsingham in 1579 and a petticoat of sea-water green satin from the Latin Secretary, John Wolley. Lord Burghley sent his sister Anne a spinning wheel in 1567. Oranges stuck with cloves were an extremely popular gift. Sometimes gifts were exchanged on New Year’s Day: rings, gloves, pins, apples, and nutmegs.

Samuel Pepys was scandalized in 1663 that Lady Castlemaine had been given all the presents which had been given to the King. A 1728 ad in Country Journal for “Famous Anodyne Necklaces,” 5/- each or 48 s for a dozen, claimed they made “very proper for a present at Christmas or for a New Year’s gift.” Books in the 18th century were considered a good gift, such as Aesop’s Fables in 1739, and annuals have been popular gifts for children since the 18th century. In the US, the earliest record of gift-giving comes from German Moravian immigrants in the 18th century. “Some received scarves, some a handkerchief, some a hat, some neckerchiefs, and some a few apples” (Restad 65). Meriwether Lewis gave William Clark some hosiery, a shirt, a pair of drawers and socks on December 25th, 1805, while they were at their winter camp on the Columbia River. He received from his men, among other things, a pair of moccasins.

Presents, Presents, Presents

Gift-giving exploded after the 1820s, when commercial advertisements were more prevalent, and after the 1850s, when gift-giving among adults took off. John Pintard wrote in 1830 of “the endless variety of European Toys” he saw in New York (67). An 1842 Bostonian woman was similarly struck. As early as the 1830s, one New York visitor wrote that people were still strolling around the shopping streets at nearly midnight, looking at all the shops had to offer. Merchants advertised even then for the “winter holidays” rather than specially for Christmas. Caroline Cowls Richards wrote in her diary, “They [her grandparents] say when they were young, no one observed Christmas or New Years, but they always kept thanksgiving day” (69).

Gifts between the genders followed differing rules. Husbands tended to give wives sentimental presents like jewelry. George Templeton Strong, toward the end of the 19th century, for example, had decided to cut down on his Christmas spending and would only spend $20 on his wife. However, he became inflamed by a $200 cameo brooch displayed in the windows of Tiffany (he bought it). Wives tended to give husbands personal, practical gifts like handmade slippers. The gift of a gold pen was also highly regarded. According to Harper’s Bazaar of 1896, the presents of the season were silver and leather. As for silver, “At the same time bulky articles are not popular and the prettiest conceits are made to fit comfortably in the waistcoat pocket.” Very fine inkstands were also popular, the high-end ones costing all of $29.00 (!). Paperweights, decanters, tobacco box, lamps, and hymnals were also fashionable in 1896.

Victorian Christmas Crafts Berlin Embroidery Pattern

Children also exchanged presents amongst themselves and were impressively generous in giving presents (not of great value, except sentimentally) to their parents. Popular presents for children were small Noah’s Arks, dolls, spinning tops, and, of course, books. By 1881, according again to Harper’s Bazaar, furnishings for doll houses, very elaborate and intricate, were fashionable. Walking animal dolls, alphabet blocks, models of the Brooklyn Bridge, miniature wooden animals, as well as “telephones, telescopes, printing-presses, tool-boxes with a scroll-saw added to them, rubber bar balls, drums, trumpets, sleighs with real white Angola robes, bicycles, and leaping horses are the attractive things for boys.” In 18th and 19th century Virginia, however, gifts were always given from social superiors to social inferiors, never vice versa. “Children, the poor and slaves might receive some small luxury like a book, sweets, gloves or a few coins” (“Traditional Christmas in Williamsburg, 18th Century, Christmas Holiday Traditions”).
Toward the end of the 19th century, the array of gifts was stupendous: a “silver slop basin,” the complete works of Robert Burns, a writing-desk, a work-box, pen wipers, match boxes, gold spectacles, a camel’s hair scarf were all noted down by diarists; not to mention “gimcracks,” useless novelty gifts. Restad argues that not only were economics the source of this bounty; “Christmas presents became an important language through which to express, maintain, and differentiate a hierarchy of personal association” (126). By the 1880s, elaborate wrapping had been influenced by the “drama of surprise” with labels provided by Wells Fargo that read “DO NOT OPEN UNTIL XMAS.”

Presents from Austen

A St Nicholas verse by Jane Austen attached to a gift of a little gingham needle bag made for a departing friend in January 1792 went like this:

This little bag, I hope, will prove
To be not vainly made;
For should you thread and needles want,
It will afford you aid.

And, as we are about to part,
‘Twill serve another end:
For, when you look upon this bag,
You’ll recollect your friend.

Emma Austen Leigh, Jane Austen’s niece, kept a record of her gifts from 1813-1821. Here are some highlights which give good insight into the kinds of gifts a middle class young woman might receive as she was growing up, and from whom she could expect to have presents.

1815
Mamma – a mariner’s compass
Aunt – a silver vinagrette
Augusta – a gold twisted ring
Miss Ramsey – a leather purse

1816
Mamma – a gold chain
Aunt – a coral broach [sic]
Miss Ramsey – a nitting [sic] box her own drawing on the top
Augusta – China candlestick
Fanny – a silk box. The winters made by her

1819
Mamma – a fur Tippet
Aunt – a Belgian leather workbox
Charles – a rosebud broach [sic]
Eliza – a peacock feather screen, her own making
Charlotte – a pair of Ruffles, ditto.
Drummond – a memorandum book, ditto.
Maria – a pincushion, ditto.

1821
Aunt – a rosewood jewel box
August – an ivory opera glass
Fanny – a blue bead necklace, she strung
Eliza – a penknife
Charlotte – a white satin pincushion
Belinda and Harriot – a splendid hair bracelet and clasp, their own hair
Charles brought me from abroad
A blue, gold and silver turban
Genoa and French flowers
Lyons lavender colored silk gown
Belgian silk scarf
French worked muslin handkerchief
Steel buckle
Cut coral necklace and earrings and coral cameo ring and coral head fringes
Vienna enamel cross and fastenings
Moscow turquoise set in a ring at Vienna
Vienna mother of pearl trunk
Tartarian or chinese scent bag
Biscuit figure of a good girl from Dresden
Quantity of Petis Gris, or squirrel furs
Silver chains and dangler
Music

In Spain and South American countries, the Three Kings bring presents. In Italy, a kindly old witch called La Befana gives children sweets if they’ve been good, or coal if they’ve been bad. In her legend, the Three Kings stopped at her home on their way an invited her to with them to see the Christ Child. But she had recently lost her own child and was too upset to see another baby. But as they were leaving she changed her mind and followed them on her broomstick, but never found them again. In Russia either Babouschka or Grandfather Frost bring gifts; in Scandinavia, it’s a tribe of gnomes, one of whom is named Julenissen.

Previously in the section on France we noted that the Anglo-Saxon figure of Santa Claus did much to diminish the importance of regional figures of the same type, and Mark Connelly argues in an essay in his book about filmic Christmas, “Cinema has done more than any other medium to promote this message [Santa as an American] and ensure its ascendancy over other interpretations” (116). In this essay, he looks at depictions of the American Santa Claus in the two versions of Miracle on 34th Street and (an admittedly beloved Christmas film to yours truly), The Santa Clause. (I personally think Connelly’s interpretations can be taken with a pinch of salt as he seems to have misconstrued much of the obvious meaning of the latter film!)

The Santa Clause

Connelly notes that in both versions of Miracle on 34th Street, the original from 1947 and the remake from 1994, the actor playing Kris Kringle has been British. The films arguably take the characters and make Santa an honorary resident of New York City. “The film shows the genuine Santa, living in New York, comforting a little foreign girl by showing a great heart and a great desire to do the right thing by the children of the world” (118). Restad notes that Miracle on 34th Street seems to rehash familiar themes rather than adding anything new. “Kris Kringle’s line in the movie, ‘Christmas isn’t just a day. It’s a frame of mind,’ could have easily come straight out of William Gilmore Simm’s southern story, ‘Maize in Milk,’ written in the 1840s” (166).

Connelly makes the good point that faith is important in these films and that the Santa Claus characters espouse the tenets of Christianity, love and selflessness, but with a figure “who has become increasingly secular” (120). All these films, with their connections on the one hand to big American department stores and to massive Elf-generated toy factories in the other, show themselves to be very different in tone to A Christmas Carol. A modern audience needs a “large slice of material happiness” (121). But a “modern” audience has probably existed since before there were films. By Christmas 1898, for example, the (British) Draper’s Record urged all shoppers to buy early to make life easier for beleaguered shop assistants. In late November 1923, according to the (London) Times, the Queen was setting a good example by starting her Christmas shopping early. In 1888, J.P. Robert unveiled his first Santa’s Grotto (see December 16) in his department store. By 1923, “the shop windows everywhere this Christmas show a great advance over former years in the matter of setting and display” (C:aSH 193).

A Christmas Story – department store scene

link Buffalo, NY department store windows

Newcastle (in northern England) probably can claim to be the home of the domestic department store. By Christmas 1909, police had to be called to Swan and Edgar shop in London because the crowds at the windows on the corner of Great Marlborough Street and Regent Street had entirely blocked the road. It was Selfridge[i] who invented the phrase, “only X more shopping days to Christmas.”

Returning to The Santa Clause, the boy Charlie has more understanding and therefore more power than his dad, Scott Calvin. “The flip side of the debate over faith and innocence in these movies is the nature of American society as capitalist, consumerist, acquisitive organism” (122). The 1947 Christmas on 42nd Street seems to include a warning that too much commercialization is a bad thing, and this before the Baby Booming ‘50s! Nevertheless, The Santa Clause for one satirizes the ultra-modern psychoanalyst and “gifts, presents, toys and generosity run wild in these movies, it is a vision every kid will fall in love with” (127).



Sources
Connelly.
Crèches.
Forgeng.
Green.
Pimlott.
Hubert.
Restad.
Turner.

[i] Selfridge’s is a department store chain here.

The Christmas Tree

The fir tree was put into a great tub filled with sand... The servants, and the young ladies also decked it out. On one branch they hung little nets, cut out of colored paper; every net was filled with sweetmeats; golden apples and walnuts hung down as if they grew there, and more than a hundred little candles, red, white and blue, were fastened to the different boughs. Dolls that looked exactly like real people—the Tree had never seen such before—swung among the foliage, and high on the summit of the Tree was fixed a tinsel star. It was splendid, particularly splendid. "This evening," said all, "this evening it will shine.”
--Hans Christian Andersen

The First Christmas Trees

The first Christmas trees were decorated with apples, as a symbol of Man’s Fall in the Garden of Eden. They were therefore called Paradise trees. In the Middle Ages, the Paradise tree was assembled on the feast day of Adam and Eve, 24th December. Possibly the earliest depiction of a Paradise tree is from 1521, a German painting showing a process of musicians accompanying a horse-riding holy man—a bishop or perhaps St Nicholas—parading through a town. One of the men is holding a tree decorated with what looks like apples (having not seen the painting myself, I wonder if instead it could be the golden balls from the St Nicholas story?). Alsace, too, had a tradition of Paradise trees. A candlelit fir was erected in a London street in the 15th century. Perhaps the first recorded mention of a Christmas tree is from a diary in Strasbourg in 1605. This one was decorated with paper roses, apples, sweets, and gold foil. The people of Latvia also claim to be first with the Christmas tree erected in Riga in 1510. Men in black hats held a ceremony in front of the tree, before burning it (!). Trees were recorded at the beginning of the 17th century in Sélestat, France, adorned with golden apples. We have reference to lighted trees in the correspondence of the Princess Palatine and the Duchess of Orléans.

We have read how the evergreen tradition of magic was important to the Celts. In order to make it their own, Church officials perpetuated the legend of St Boniface. He was a monk and schoolmaster from Devon living in the 7th and 8th centuries. In Geismar, Germany, he preached the gospel at the behest of Pope Gregory II. The story goes that he came upon a group of pagans worshiping a sacred oak tree, who were then going to prepare a blood sacrifice of a baby. The saint came to the rescue, grabbing the axe and chopping down the tree instead. He saw that from the roots of the felled tree a fir tree grew. Sometimes this story is linked to the 7th century Wilfrid of York. One source gives the much less brutal story that St Boniface connected the triangular shape of the fir tree with the Trinity. The same source claims there were Christmas trees hung suspended from the ceiling by the 12th century in Europe!

The Victorian Tree

An engraving from 1806 from Strasbourg, called Le sommeil de l’enfant, la nuit de Noël shows a small tree suspended from the ceiling. Certainly in Germany the tradition of the Christmas Tree was deeply engrained by the close of the 18th century; Strasbourg, apparently a hub of Christmas tree activity, saw the formation of Christmas markets at the beginning of the 15th century. At these markets, you could find all of Christmas needs—food, presents, decorations, and utensils. Bakers made gingerbread you could bring home and use as decorations on your tree.

During the Georgian period in Britain, German court officials had brought their tree traditions with them, but because the foreign traditions were looked down upon at court, the trees did not catch on, despite the patronage of Queen Caroline. The popular decorations—tinsel, wire ornaments, candles—had been manufactured in Germany and East Europe since the 17th century. Each person had a small, tabletop tree with their presents put underneath the table. (An engraving from 1870 shows fashionable Parisian women and children decorating a tabletop tree with toys.)

Christmas 1841: one of Prince Albert’s many contributions to Britain culminated in his introduction of the Christmas tree to the celebrations at Windsor Castle. He wrote to his father, “This is the dear Christmas eve on which I have so often listened with impatience for your step, which was to convey us into the gift-room. Today I have two children of my own to make gifts to, who, they know not why, are full of happy wonder at the German Christmas-tree and its radiant candles.” The trend caught on quickly, with all fashionable people in the UK following suit. (The tradition had already been introduced in the US by German immigrants, as early as 1747, but also grew in popularity by the 1850s.) The large trees were decorated with lighted candles, candies, and fancy cakes hung from the branches by ribbon and by paper chains. (Fire was always a hazard; during Dickens’ time, it was advised that one person in the family should have the job of professional candle-watcher, always with his or her eye on the tree lights. Despite this, accidents were all too common.)

The sapin de Noël of France was introduced universally in 1837. In the US, trees ranged greatly in size and could cost a few cents or up to more than half a dollar. Until the 1890s, when Christmas tree holders were invented, medium-size trees were placed in small tubs which were filled with stones, coal, or anything that would keep the tree straight. Then moss was strewn over the tub. Small trees were usually pasted to a board carpeted with moss (big on this moss, weren’t they?). An engraving from an 1876 Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine shows the smaller presents on the tree with the larger ones propped up at the base of the tree.

In the 1850s, Lauscha began producing glass garlands of beads which were readily available in Germany but were not available for export to Britain. However, the Rauschgoldengel was a common sight—the “Tinsel-angel” at the top of the tree. By the 1880s, people crammed everything they could onto the tree, and by the 1890s they were, in von Staufer’s words, “a child’s joy to behold!” By 1880 in the UK, Woolworths was producing mass market ornaments. After the death of Victoria in 1901, trees became less visible. A brief vogue for Goose Feather trees arose because Christmas tree frenzy in Germany had topped many of the trees! In the 1930s a Dickens revival took place which of course influenced the decoration of the trees.

Decorating the Tree

In Victorian times, when the tree was being selected, the lady of the house was gilding and silvering nuts and ornaments. Children would help by making paper chains. Fruit and popcorn chains were popular in the US (but apparently were never heard of in Britain!). Hard candy tied in squares of colored tissue paper was hung from branches. Paper flowers and sometimes real roses were placed near the top of the tree. Chains of stars, hearts, and other shapes were strung together on pasteboard and covered with gilt paper. When paper was covered with a coating of gum tragacanth or mucilage and then sprinkled with diamond dust (finely powdered glass) it created a nice sparkly effect. Fairies were cut out of the fashion plates of Godey’s or such magazines; legs and skirts were elaborately and imaginatively created by using trimmings and gilt as well as tartalan. Cornucopias were made out of gilt or colored paper and filled with sweets. Pine cones were gilded by using the same paint used on radiators! Even in these days, it was considered most elegant just to trim the tree with candles. Purists! American Victorian Mrs Abby Woolsey estimated it would take over one hundred candles to light her tree properly.

Putz

The Pennsylvania Dutch and Moravian communities in the US during the 19th century created the putz or Christmas village, a miniature Christmas village created around the base of the Christmas tree. Certainly it would seem this custom shares its roots with the French/Neopolitan crèche or the 18th century berceaux (see December 5). Children of the community would organize to go out on an expedition weeks before Christmas to search for natural items, such as moss, lichen, and rocks, to add to their putz. According to Haug, “It is probable that on Christmas Eve, 1741, when Count Zinzendorf named the Moravian settlement on the Lehigh, Bethlehem, a Putz adorned the little log building in which he and his brethren were first assembled.” A mountain scene complete with lake and waterfowl would first be created. Houses, fences, and livestock were then added to the scene. In the community of Bethlehem, PN, the Simon Rare & Co. wax candle company had been making candles since the 18th century, and it was from here the putz would acquire its atmospheric lighting. It was then the tradition for people to go sightseeing the putzes on Christmas Eve. Eventually it became so popular it spread outside the Moravian community.

And Then . . .?

The first Christmas tree market in the US was born in 1851 when Catskill farmer Mark Carr hauled two ox sleds of evergreens into New York City and sold them all. Christmas tree farms flourished in the Great Depression because nurserymen couldn’t sell their evergreens for landscaping, so it made more sense to cut them up. The lighting ceremony for the Christmas tree at the White House was broadcast as early as 1925 (on radio??). Britain adopted from the US the practice of Christmas trees in public places.

Is it more environmentally friendly to buy a real tree or a plastic, artificial one? Well, we know that it’s better to get a living tree, but in case you were still unsure, plastic takes longer to biodegrade so it’s still better to get a live tree.

Unique Christmas Trees

Sources
Green.
Crèches.
Haug. X2
Lawless.
Restad.
Robson.
Von Staufer.
Weston Thomas.

Snowplay

From Robert Southey’s Letters from England:

I looked out the window, everything was white, and the snowflakes like feathers floating and falling with as endless and ever varying motions as the dance of mosquitos on a summer evening. And this mockery of life was the only appearance of life; and indeed it seemed as if there could be nothing living in such a world. The trees were clothed like the earth, every bough, branch, and spray; except that side of the bark which had not been exposed to the wind, nothing was to be seen but was perfectly and dazzlingly white; and the evergreens in the garden were bent by the load. White mountains in the distance can give no idea of this singular effect.

Snowflake Origami Instructions

Snow Science

What is snow? “Snow consists of ice crystals in the atmosphere which grow large enough to fall and reach the ground” (LaChapelle 3). There are two kinds of snow, that which falls from the sky (precipitated snow) and that which is produced by changes within deposited snow (metamorphosed). Of this latter, two are rime and hoar frost, which are ice crystals.

All precipitation starts as water vapor in the atmosphere. Whenever a parcel of air is sufficiently cooled, some of the water vapor condenses to form clouds. They may be water droplets or ice crystals. Most precipitation begins as ice particles. Under certain conditions, cloud droplets coalesce or ice crystals grow until they begin to fall. Snow crystals begin as ice particles which have formed around condensation nuclei (dust particles or minute crystals of sea salt). If formed in an atmosphere with an excess supply of water vapour (supersaturated air), they will continue to grow. If they fall through a cloud composed of supercooled water droplets, they will collect a coating of rime. Each water molecule consists of one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms. Hydrogen atoms provide bonds which hold together in a crystal lattice. This generates solid forms with hexagonal symmetry in one plane. Between 27ºF and 32ºF (-2.8ºC and 0ºC), for example, crystals take the form of six-sided plates. Below that, needles form.

On the basal plane, the plane of the crystallographic a-axes, there are three of these axes, each separated by 60° from the next. At a right angle to this plane is the crystallographic c-axis. Perfectly symmetrical snow crystals are in the minority. Frequently the crystals get coated with rime. Newly formed snow crystals have very unstable shapes. Even the most intricate snow crystals tend to become rounded particles of ice. This is a snowflake—the word snowflake is a general term that can refer to a single ice crystal, a small cluster of them or a large aggregation that forms when crystals “collide and stick in midair, falling to earth in a flimsy puffball” (Libbrecht). Most snow crystals are tiny, but huge ones do exist. Recent research has shown that unusually large snowflakes, two to six inches wide, fall regularly, but many go un-witnessed and it is hard to authenticate them. For example, the Guinness Book of World Records gives a storm in January 1887 in Fort Keogh, Montana, as evidence of the largest recorded snowflakes. A rancher nearby measured the flakes at 15 inches wide.

According to Dr. Libbrecht of Caltech, a snowflake expert, the laws of physics suggest no obvious restrictions on the size of large flakes, but wind can easily break down fragile snowflakes of any size. (Note that top speed for the average snowflake can reach 1.7 meters per second.) Scientists are still learning about the way atmospheric conditions reflect the formation of snow. For example, in the daytime, thick clouds full of snow crystals reflect sunlight, keeping things cool below; however, at night, the clouds keep the heat in.

The infinite amount of snowflakes that have fallen and will fall seems to assure us that no two snowflakes are, actually, exactly alike. David Phillips, the senior climatologist with Environment Canada, has estimated that the number of snowflakes that have fallen on Earth over the course of time is 10 followed by 34 zeros.

Snowflake Photos

Snow Facts

• The world’s largest snowman was built in Bethel, Maine in 2008. It was a actually a snowwoman at 122 feet tall.
• In the US, New York State cities receive the most snowfall, with Rochester and Syracuse leading with 93 and 115 inches per year respectively.
• Almost 187 inches of snow fell in seven days on Thompson Pass, Alaska, in February 1953.
• Practically every location in the US has seen snow, even areas in Florida.
• The greatest snowfall officially reported at the Phoenix, Arizona by the National Weather Service Office was one inch.
• Prior to 2009 and 2010, snow-heavy years in Britain included 1991 (on the night of February 7th, 25 cms fell in London); 1981-2 (when transport systems went berserk and prevented commuters from getting to work for two days straight; some homes in Somerset were without electricity for five days); 1962-3 (when blizzards affected most of the UK and London had 12 inches of snow); 1946-7 (one of the snowiest winters in British history); and 1925, when six foot walls of snow greeted people trying to dig themselves out, and a radio hoax was perpetrated.
• For weather-observing purposes, the intensity of snow is characterized as 1) light when the visibility is 1 km; 2) moderate when the visibility is less than 1 km but not more than ½ km; and 3) heavy when the visibility is less than ½ km.
• Funagata, Japan, has a climate of extremes, where days in winter are short and cold, but temperatures soar in the summer. In 1987, officials of the farming community in northern Yamagata Prefecture started looking for creative ways to use their abundant snowfall as a source of clean energy. Beginning in 1990, they began experimenting with snow-cooled storehouses for preserving farm produce. Rice stored for one year tastes just as good as newly harvested rice. Funagata officials have also constructed an experimental air-cooling system using an underground “icehouse.”



Baltimore Snowballs

There’s No Business like Snow Business

Some collected poems about snow.

. . . like mattresses inside abandoned mini-bars
where, deep within the vales of blue snow,
loneliness has built her secret palaces
that glitter like the tears of billionaires
nobody will ever find their way to:
the corridors are long,
the stairs are icy,
the lifts controlled by grubby-looking angels
who spend their days alone on distant landings
crushing heads between the closing doors.
Selima Hill

Vivaldi – Winter

THE VOICE-MIRROR
Blank white page of Ty Newydd in the snow,
then, two trails of footprints across the lawn:
a poem or a story soon begins to grow,
tiny bird-claw messages like scratching of thorn.
The half-circle, half-cone of the bay-window,
so far from the toy-town of Portmeirion,
the frames are five negatives of a photo,
images just waiting to be born.
Inside, by a crescent-chair, is the voice-mirror,
The very place where Lloyd George died:
his tones living one second after,
a sound like the back-flow of the tide.
Each word you read from there
becomes a crystal, floating through air.
Mike Jenkins

THE SNOW MAN
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Wallace Stevens

SNOWFLAKES
And did you know
That every flake of snow
That forms so high
In the grey winter sky
And falls so far
Is a bright six-pointed star?
Each crystal grows
A flower as perfect as a rose.
Lace could never make
The patterns of a flake.
No brooch
Of figured silver could approach
Its delicate craftsmanship. And think:
Each pattern is distinct.
Of all the snowflakes floating there –
The million million in the air –
None is the same. Each star
Is newly forged, as faces are,
Shaped to its own design
Like yours and mine.
And yet… each one
Melts when its flight is done;
Holds frozen loveliness
A moment, even less;
Suspends itself in time –
And passes like a rhyme.
Clive Sansom

Snowplay

Sources
Broad.
Gammel.
Keefer.
LaChapelle.
National Snow and Ice Data Center.
“Snow Britain.”
“Snow Poems and Poetry.”
Roach.
UNEP.

Nogs, Grogs, Punch and Tea

Mulled wine has been lauded since the 5th century C.E. for its warming qualities. To mull means to “heat and spice.” Could it be from a Middle English word, mollen, which means “to moisten” or “to crumble”? Mulled wine and beer used to be heated by plunging a red hot poker from the fire into the liquid.

Medieval people enjoyed Ypocras/Hipocris/Hippocras, a drink named after Hippocrates, and generally accepted as a magical elixir. Henry III had two sesters of wine with zedoary (an herb from India and Indonesia, which tastes like ginger), two with nutmeg, and two with cubebs (a seasoning from India which is kind of like pepper) as part of his Christmas cellar of 1244. Here is a recipe for Ypocras.

Ypocras
• 1 bottle sweet red or white wine
• 1-2 cups honey
• 1 T each of ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, white pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and caraway seeds
• A cheesecloth
Bring the wine and honey close to the boil in a pan, skimming off the scum as it rises to the surface. Taste and add more honey to sweeten, if desired. Take off the heat and stir in the spices. Leave it to sit for 24 hours, while covered. During this time the spices will form a thick residue at the bottom of the pan. Now, using a ladle, decant the wine into a second container, straining it through 2-3 layers of cheesecloth, while trying to leave as much of the spice residue in the pan as possible. Store for 1 month before serving—the older it is, the better it tastes!

By the 1550s, recipes for mulling Clarrey/clarree/claree appeared. Both are mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale. The word comes from the Latin vinum claratum. Here is a recipe for Clarrey:

Clarrey
• 1 bottle inexpensive, sweet white wine
• 1-2 cups honey
• 1 T each of cinnamon, galingale (substitute ginger), and cardamom
• 1 t white pepper
• 1 cheesecloth
Bring the wine and honey close to the boil, then reduce the heat and skim off the scum as it rises. Taste and add honey for sweetness as required. Remove from the heat, stir in all of the spices, and then cover and allow to sit for 24 hours. As with the Ypocras, after this time you will need to use a ladle to transfer the liquid into another container, passing it through a strainer lined with 2-3 layers of cheesecloth to remove the spices. Again, leave behind as much as possible of the spice residue that will have
formed in the bottom of the pan. Bottle it and store for 1 month before serving. A good Clarrey is one that has been aged for a year or even longer.

Bishop’s punch—known as “bischopswyn”—is in some countries drunk on December 6th for St Nicholas’ Day. Here is a recipe.

Bishop’s Wine
• 1 bottle red wine
• 1 orange stuck with cloves
• 1 cinnamon stick
• Peel of 1 lemon
• Sugar to taste
Place the clove-stuck orange in a large pan; add the red wine and leave to steep for half a day. During this time the wine will take on the flavours of the orange and cloves. Then you need to add the other ingredients together and simply warm the whole lot through half an hour before serving.

Glögg is the Scandinavian version of mulled wine and is drunk in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Estonia, and is served with raisins, almonds, and gingerbread biscuits. Here is a version of glögg.

Glögg
• 1 bottle red wine
• 25 g / 1 oz dried orange zest
• 25g / 1 oz cinnamon sticks
• 20 cardamom seeds
• 12 cloves
• 200 g / 8 oz blanched almonds
• 200 g / 8 oz raisins
• 225 g / ½ lb brown sugar
• 70 mL / 2 ½ fl oz brandy
• A cheesecloth
Bring the wine close to the boil in a pot. Put the orange, cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves in the cheesecloth, tie it into a bundle and boil it in the pot for 15 mins. Add the almonds and raisins, and cook for another 15 mins, before moving the pan from the heat. Add the brown sugar and brandy, then stir them in. Then remove the spice bundle. Serve hot.

Wassail comes from the Old English waes hael, which means “be whole,” or “be healthy.” In Saxon times, the lord of the manor would shout the greeting. The others would respond with drinc hael. Then the lord would take a swig from a large wooden bowl (the wassail bowl or cup) before passing it to the next most senior member of the household. By Tudor times, wassailers had become a menace. The threat from “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” (“we won’t go until we get some”) had sinister undertones. The crab apples from Shakespeare show the importance of apples in Wassail. On Twelfth Night, the Wassail was held outside around the apple trees. In more recent times, this was celebrated by people discharging their shotguns into the air. In Surrey, the apple tree trunks were whipped! Here is a version of Wassail and the delightfully-named Lamb’s Wooll, which would have been drunk by the well-to-do in Shakespeare’s England.

Wassail
• 6 cups ale
• 1 cup sugar
• Pinch of cinnamon
• Pinch of ginger
• Pinch of cloves
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 6 beaten eggs
• 4 roasted apples
Heat the ale in a saucepan, add the sugar and spices and bring almost to the boil. Take it off the heat and gradually add a little of the hot mixture to the beaten eggs. Return it to the saucepan and cook, this time stirring constantly until the mixture has thickened slightly. Put the roasted apples in a punch bowl (which must be heat proof) and pour the mixture over them.

Lamb’s Wooll
• 6 bottles brown ale
• 1 cup sherry
• 450 g / 1 lb light brown sugar
• 2 roasted apples, sliced
• 1 lemon, sliced
• ½ t ginger
• ½ t cinnamon
• ½ a nutmeg
• 2 slices toasted white bread
Heat one bottle of ale. Put the sugar in a large heat-proof bowl and stir well. Grate the half a nutmeg into the sugar-ale mixture, add cinnamon and ginger, then the sherry and the rest of the ale. Leave to stand for several hours. Before serving, finish it off with the sliced lemon and apples and float pieces of the toasted bread on top.

Jane Austen’s World blog mentions syllabub, a concoction of cream and alcohol that resembles egg nog. Originally it was created by milking a cow directly into a bowl of hot wassail. The idea was to let the mixture sit and settle for an hour, so that the newly-milked, er, milk could form a solid crust. With the possible addition of more cream on top of that, the syllabub could be consumed, the solid portion with a spoon and the liquid portion drunk as normal. (Samuel Pepys mentioned syllabub on at least three occasions in his diary.) Gradually, throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, it came to be a more solid entity, mixing sherry or brandy, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, and double cream.

Here is an 18th century recipe for syllabub from John Francis Collingwood and John Woollams.

A Syllabub Under a Cow

Having put a bottle of red or white wine, ale or cyder, into a China bowl, sweeten it with sugar, and grate in some nutmeg. Then hold it under the cow, and milk into it until it has a fine froth on the top. Strew over it a handful of currants cleaned, washed, and picked, and plumbed before the fire.

Pepys’ diary on syllabub


Historic Egg Nog Recipes from US of yore

Synonymous with a Victorian Christmas is Smoking Bishop. In his notes for the 1907 edition of A Christmas Carol E. Gordon Browne describes this Christmas punch:

“The drink is made by pouring red wine, either hot or cold, upon ripe bitter oranges. The liquor is heated or 'mulled' in a vessel with a long funnel, which could be pushed far down into the fire. Sugar and spices (chiefly cloves, star anise, and cinnamon) are added according to taste. It is sometimes called 'purple wine' and received the name 'Bishop' from its colour.”

Here are some other wintry concoctions.

Mulled Cider
• 1 L / 2 pints still cider
• 2 small eating apples
• 4 cloves
• 140 mL / ¼ pt water
• 50 g / 2 oz soft brown sugar
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 t ground ginger
• 2 tangerines
Stick the apples and two of the cloves each and then bake. Heat the cider and, at the same time, heat the other ingredients (minus the orange) until all the sugar has dissolved and then simmer for 5 mins. Place the baked apples and tangerine pieces in a heat-proof punch bowl, strain the spiced water into it and lastly add the hot
cider.

Old-fashioned rum with a twist
For each drink:
• 1 fl oz honey or golden syrup
• 2 fl oz aged rum
• Ice cubes
• 1 fresh mint leaf
• Pared lime rind, to garnish
Put the honey and 1 T rum in a Rocks glass. Stir the mixture until the honey has melted into the rum. Add the ice cube and mint leaf and stir until the ice has nearly melted. Add another T of rum and another ice cube. Stir until the ice cube has partly melted. Add the rest of the rum and 1 more ice cube. Stir the drink 15 times or so and then fill the glass to the top with ice cubes. Take a piece of pared lime rind, crack it over the glass to release the oils from the skin, and serve.

Spiced fruit cocktail
For each drink:
• 1 pear
• 1 tsp plum jam
• 1
pinch ground cinnamon
• 2 fl oz Cognac
• 2 fl oz apple juice
• Ice
cubes
• A few drops lemon juice
Peel and slice the pear and place in the
bottom of a cocktail shaker. Add the plum jam and ground cinnamon and muddle
down (ie take the handle of a wooden spoon to crush the hard ingredients). Add
Cognac, apple juice, and some ice. Shake and strain the mixture, add a few drops
of lemon juice, and serve.

Hot pear cup
Cut ½ apple into slices and stud each slice with a couple of cloves. Place the slices in a large pan, add 1 ¾ cups pear cider, 1 vanilla pod, 1 large piece of pared lemon rind, 5 fl oz brandy, 1 cinnamon stick, 2 T of honey, and bring to the boil. Simmer gently for 10 mins then serve in four glasses.

Winter whisky sour
Stud 4 lemon slices with 3 cloves each. Place in a pan with 1 piece of pared lemon rind, 2 tablespoons of maple syrup, and 14 fl oz water. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and leave to infuse for 5 mins. Divide 4 fl oz whisky and the 4 lemon slices between 4 glasses. Discard the lemon rind, add the infused water, and serve.

Here is a Teetotal Wassail.

A Teetotal Wassail
• 3 L / 6 pts apple juice
• 1 ½ L / 3 pints peach juice
• ½ cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
• 1 large orange
• Cloves
• 6 cinnamon sticks
Stick the orange with whole cloves (roughly half an inch apart) and bake it in the oven. After half an hour take it out and puncture it in several places with a fork. Place the orange with the other ingredients in a large pot and cover. Bring the mixture to the boil before simmering for half an hour. Pour the hot mixture into your heat-proof punch bowl, adding the orange and cinnamon sticks. (This recipe makes around 30 servings).

And a boozy Christmas dessert.

Beaumes-de-Venise Jelly
• 700 mL / 1 ¼ pt Muscat de Beaumes de Venise or other sweet dessert wine
• Gelatine powder
• 50g / 2 oz caster sugar
Pour half of wine into a small pan, sprinkle over powdered gelatine and allow to soak for a few minutes until spongy. Stir in the sugar. Heat the mixture without allowing it to boil, stirring until the gelatine has dissolved completely. Remove from the heat, stirring the rest of the wine. Cool.
Pour the cool, but still liquid, jelly into wetted individual glasses and chill until firm.



Sources
Green.
Jane Austen’s World Blog.