A Splendid New Christmas Book
Christmas Cake
To Mrs K____, On Her Sending Me an English Christmas Plum-Cake at Paris
by Helen Maria Williams (1761-1827)
What crowding thoughts around me wake,
What marvels in a Christmas-cake!
Ah say, what strange enchantment dwells
Enclosed within its odorous cells?
Is there no small magician bound
Encrusted in its snowy round?
For magic surely lurks in this,
A cake that tells of vanished bliss;
A cake that conjures up to view
The early scenes, when life was new;
When memory knew no sorrows past,
And hope believed in joys that last! —
Mysterious cake, whose folds contain
Life’s calendar of bliss and pain;
That speaks of friends for ever fled,
And wakes the tears I love to shed.
Oft shall I breathe her cherished name
From whose fair hand the offering came:
For she recalls the artless smile
Of nymphs that deck my native isle;
Of beauty that we love to trace,
Allied with tender, modest grace;
Of those who, while abroad they roam,
Retain each charm that gladdens home,
And whose dear friendships can impart
A Christmas banquet for the heart!
The Great Fruitcake Toss
Home
/ Uncategorized / The Great Fruitcake Toss
Every year since 1995 Manitou Springs, Colorado has held a Fruitcake Toss competition. Contestants are judged on distance, accuracy, balance, and taste. They may bring their own fruitcake or rent one from the organizers; propulsion can be achieved by hand, mechanical or pneumatic devices, or three-man slingshots. Leftover cakes (preservative free) are donated to a local animal farm.
Père Fouettard
Père Fouettard, or Père Fouchette
Father Switch, from Fr. fouet, birch rod. A companion to the gift-bringer in France, he carries switches with which to threaten bad children and gives advice as to which children to reward. His usual costume is a dark-coloured robe and a scraggly grey beard. The basket he wears on his back is to carry away bad boys and girls.
Childermas
Aside from the Coventry Carol, literary treatments of Childermas, or the Feast of the Holy Innocents, is rare. Here is a poem by Cornish poet Charles Causley (1917-2003) dealing with the massacre of the boy babies of Bethlehem by King Herod described in Matthew 2: 16-18.
La Fee des Etoiles
La Fée des Etoiles or the Star Fairy was a character added to Quebec Christmas lore by the Dupuis Frères department store in Montreal in the 1920s. Dressed in a gorgeous gown, wearing a tiara, and waving a star-tipped wand, she was conceived of as a sidekick to Père Noël, Father Christmas. She would accompany him on his float during the annual parade and hand out little treats to children at the store during shopping hours.
By the 1950s she was popular enough to be given her own float, appear on radio and television and portrayed by famous French-Canadian women such as athletes and actresses.
The Restroom Door Said Gentlemen
A cheeky parody of the classic Christmas carol:
The restroom door said gentlemen, so I just walked insideI took two steps and realized I’ve been taken for a rideI heard high voices, turned and found the place was occupiedBy two nuns, three old ladies and a nurseWhat could be worse?Than two nuns, three old ladies and a nurse
The restroom door said gentlemen, it must have been a gagAs soon as I walked in there I ran into some old hagShe sprayed me with a can of mace and smacked me with her bagI could tell this wouldn’t be my dayWhat can I say?It just wasn’t turning out to be my day
The restroom door said gentlemen and I’d would like to findThe crummy little creep who had the nerve to switch the signs‘Cause I got two black eyes and one high heel up my behindNow I can’t sit with comfort and joyBoy, oh boyNow I’ll never sit with comfort and joy
Christmas and Digestion
Good husband and huswife now chiefly be glad,
things handsome to have, as they ought to be had.
They both do provide, against Christmas do coom,
to welcome their neighbor, good chere to have soom.
Good bread and good drinke, a good fier in the hall,
brawne, pudding and souse, and good mustard withall.
Biefe, mutton, and porke, shred pies of the best,
pig, veale, goose and capon, and Turkey well drest:
Chese, apples and nuttes, jolly Caroles to here,
as then, in the countrey is counted good chere.
– Thomas Tusser, “Five Hundredth Pointes of Good Husbandry”, 1572
Old Christmas Returned
A seventeenth-century English ballad links the holiday to charity and urges the upper class to be generous at Yuletide. Such ballads would been printed up (thus the term” broadside ballad”), put to a popular melody, and hawked in the streets by minstrels singing it out.
The title is “Old Christmas returned, or Hospitality revived; being a Looking-glass for Rich Misers, wherein they may see (if they be not blind) how much they are to blame for their penurious house-keeping, and likewise an encouragement to those noble-minded gentry, who lay out a- great part of their estates in hospitality, relieving such persons as have need thereof.”
Who feasts the poor, a true reward shall find,
Or helps the old, the feeble, lame, and blind
All you that to feasting and mirth are inclined
Come here is good news for to pleasure your mind,
Old Christmas is come for to keep open house,
He scorns to be guilty of starving a mouse:
Then come, boys, and welcome for diet the chief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.
The holly and ivy about the walls wind
And show that we ought to our neighbors be kind,
Inviting each other for pastime and sport,
And where we best fare, there we most do resort;
We fail not of victuals, and that of the chief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.
All travellers, as they do pass on their way,
At gentlemen’s halls are invited to stay,
Themselves to refresh, and their horses to rest,
Since that he must be Old Christmas’s guest;
Nay, the poor shall not want, but have for relief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.
A Christmas Eve Superstition
Augustus Hare (1834-1903) was an English writer and painter of the Victorian era.
In his autobiography The Story of My Life (aka Peculiar People) Hare recounts a troubling incident on Christmas Eve 1866:
When the Mother and Lea were both ill last week, our Italian servants Clementina and (her daughter) Louisa groaned incessantly; and when Clementina was taken ill on the following night, Louisa gave up all hope at once, and sent for her other children to take leave of her. This depression of spirits has gone on ever since Christmas, and it turns out now that they think a terrible omen has come to the house. No omen is worse than an upset of oil, but, if this occurs on Christmas Eve, it is absolutely fatal, and on Christmas Eve my mother upset her little table with the great moderator lamp upon it. The oil was spilt all over her gown and the lamp broken to pieces on the floor, with great cries of ‘O santissimo diavolo’ from the servants. ‘Only one thing can save us now,’ says Louisa; ‘if Providence would mercifully permit that someone should break a bottle of wine here by accident, that would bring back luck to the house, but nothing else can.’