Though Arthur Conan Doyle sold his first Sherlock Holmes story in 1887 to Beeton’s Christmas Annual, “Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” is the only account of the great detective which deals with Christmas. We learn, in this short piece written for the January 1892 edition of the Strand Magazine, how a battered hat and a Christmas goose lead Holmes to the solution of a mystery, the freeing of an innocent man and the recovery of a giant blue jewel.
A man had rather have a hundred lies told of him than one truth which he does not wish should be told.
To be wealthy and honored in an unjust society is a disgrace.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that it is only a short road that leads from grammatical laxity to cannibalism.
In 567 the Council of Tours proclaimed the twelve days between Christmas and Epihany to be a sacred and festive season. Since then it has been widely accepted as a time of holiday and merriment; in many times and places all non-essential work was forbidden. In German-speaking territories the time is Die Zwölf Raunächte, the Twelve Rough Nights, a time to take precautions against the evil spirits (especially the sky-borne Wild Hunt) with noise, masks and smoke.
The Twelve Days are not calculated in the same way everywhere. In some places Christmas is counted making Epiphany the thirteenth day. In England it is particularly confusing because January 6 is Twelfth Day but January 5 is Twelfth Night.
If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.
The most widely-served Christmas entrée today is the turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, a bird first domesticated in Mexico by the Aztecs and exported to Europe in the sixteenth century by the Spanish. It derives its English name from confusion with the guinea fowl which was imported about the same time by merchants trading with Turkey. William Strickland, a Yorkshireman, introduced the bird into England and, in recognition, was granted a turkey cock on his family coat of arms in 1550. Before too long it was accepted as a seasonal dish: Thomas Tusser in 1573 speaks of it as “Christmas husbandlie fare” but for centuries the goose remained the primary Christmas bird. The bird was raised in great numbers on farms in Norfolk and East Anglia with huge flocks driven to market in London every Christmas — walking on the roads was difficult for the birds who were fitted with special shoes for the journey which could last as long as three months. It was not until the nineteenth century with the advent of rail travel and refrigeration that these drives ceased and were replaced by slaughtering on the farm. In 1851 the British royal family ate their first Christmas turkey which from that time on replaced swan as the seasonal dish.
Americans are the world’s greatest consumers of turkeys since the two great end-of-year festivals, Thanksgiving and Christmas, both feature the fowl whom Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the national bird of the United States — he deplored the bald eagle’s “bad moral character” and claimed the turkey was a “much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America.” Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has presented the President of the United States with a live turkey and two dressed birds at Thanksgiving. The annual presentation signals the unofficial beginning of the “holiday season”; after the ceremony, the National Thanksgiving Turkey retires to a historical farm to spend its declining years in comfort.
The bird is eaten all around the world. In Portugal poultry farmers walk the streets of Lisbon with their their flocks. When a buyer has chosen the turkey he wants, the farmer catches the bird, forces alcohol into it, and briefly releases it. The inebriated turkey soon collapses; its throat is then slit; it is plucked and eviscerated, before being soaked in salt water, perfumed with lemon and bay leaves, for twelve hours. The bird is then hung for twelve hours before being cooked. The Brazilians have a similar love of turkey tenderized from within: they feed the bird a kind of rum called cachaça on Christmas Eve. In the southern United States the custom of deep-frying the bird is growing while in Mexico they eat the bird with a sauce made of chocolate and chili peppers. In Spain they stuff the bird with truffles; in Burgundy they stuff it with chestnuts. In 1969 the Apollo astronauts’ first meal on the moon was roast turkey.
To enter into your own mind you need to be armed to the teeth.
In many parts of the world Christmas is associated with gunpowder: fireworks and firearms have been “shooting in” the holiday for centuries.
One reason for this is the belief that demonic forces can be driven away with loud noises. The ringing of bells, snapping of whips and shouting are all very well but for for real devil-dispersing noise many Germans rely on rifles. In southern Germany marksmen’s clubs in traditional costume gather on Christmas Eve to fire off antique rifles at midnight. In Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps before midnight mass, 60,000 shots are fired in the space of one hour. In the southwestern United States the parishioners of the Church of San Geronimo at Taos Pueblo carry the statue of the Virgin in a procession accompanied by an honour guard of men in ceremonial dress who periodically fire into the air in order to protect the Virgin and chase away evil spirits. In rural areas of Norway shooting in Christmas takes the form of young men sneaking up to farm houses and discharging their guns to give the inhabitants a shock before being invited in for a drink. Every December 8 in Torrejoncillo, Caceres, Spain the youth of the town wrap themselves in sheets, carry the banner of the Virgin and ride through the streets shooting off shotguns to the cheers of the populace. In Ireland it was once the custom to fire a salute from a shotgun at noon on Christmas Eve
An account of Labrador in 1770 reads: “At sunset the people ushered in Christmas, according to the Newfoundland custom. In the first place, they built up a prodigious large fire in their house; all hands then assembled before the door, and one of them fired a gun, loaded with powder; afterwards, each of them drank a dram of rum; concluding the ceremony with three cheers. These formalities being performed with great solemnity, they retired into their house, got drunk as fast as they could, and spent the whole night in drinking, quarrelling, and fighting.” A similar Newfoundland custom was Blowing the Pudding.
Christmas in the southern United States is a more popular time for fireworks than July 4 as can be seen from the numerous displays south of the Mason-Dixon line. The most spectacular are probably in Louisiana where the feux de joie (fires of joy) are a traditional part of Cajun Christmas Eve. Huge wooden structures in the form of riverboats, houses and teepees are set on fire, ostensibly to light Papa Noël’s way to the bayous. During the days of slave-owning, slaves would inflate a pig bladder and then explode it in lieu of fire-crackers.
Fireworks are a part of Christmas celebrations all through Latin America but who would have thought they were once a part of the holiday in Switzerland? One worshipper complained in the nineteenth century about a church service where the Christmas tree was decorated with “serpent squibs” and where it was “difficult for the minister to conduct the service, for at all times, except during the prayers, the people were letting off fireworks.”
Wit is educated insolence.