Easy to read view of what a young gentleman did, wore, and lived in Jane Austen’s times, or the early 1800s or Regency Era. Young Gentleman’s Day Regency Life Series Book 2 by Suzi Love. #RegencyEra #amwriting #JaneAusten books2read.com/suziloveYGD


Easy to read view of what a young gentleman did, wore, and lived in Jane Austen’s times, or the early 1800s or Regency Era. Young Gentleman’s Day Regency Life Series Book 2 by Suzi Love. #RegencyEra #amwriting #JaneAusten books2read.com/suziloveYGD
Writing Regency Era Fiction Or Nonfiction? Need more information on Older Gentleman’s Day in early 1800s, or Jane Austen’s Regency Era. A lighthearted overview of an older gentleman’s clothing, social life, and responsibilities in the early 1800s. Take a look at where an older man went, what he wore, and how he managed the family’s finances and his estates. Older Gentleman’s Day Regency Life Series Book 3 books2read.com/suziloveOGD
In 1931 Coca-Cola decided they wanted a more “wholesome” depiction of Santa, and contracted illustrator Haddon Sundblom to give him a makeover. Sundblom (1899-1976), who created expressive paintings of the magical Mr. Claus for the Coca-Cola Company over a period of 33 years. In 1931, Coca-Cola employed illustrator, Haddon Sundblom, to create a happier image of Santa Claus and he drew a new advertisement each year.
Annual Coca-Cola advertisement created by the remarkable illustrator Haddon Sundblom. Clement Moore’s 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” may have describe the jolly old elf in detail, and Thomas Nast’s 1881 caricature of Saint Nick may have brought the image of Santa into focus, but not until the middle of the 20th century did one artist perfect the image of Santa and make it stick.
That artist was Michigan-native Haddon Sundblom (1899-1976), who created expressive paintings of the magical Mr. Claus for the Coca-Cola Company over a period of 33 years. Though he was not the first artist to create an image of Santa Claus for Coca-Cola advertising, Haddon Sundblom’s version became the standard for other Santa renditions and is the most-enduring.
CHRISTMAS
The word has been around for centuries, with some dictionaries putting it in the late Old English period and others to the 12th century. Old forms include cristes masse and christmasse, meaning the festival (mass) of Christ. It replaced other pagan midwinter festivals when the church tried to persuade Romans to convert to Christianity.
XMAS
This abbreviation annoys a lot of people but it isn’ t simply modern shorthand. X was used to represent the Greek symbol chi, which is also the first letter in Christ. This has been used since Roman times.
DECORATE
The word means to adorn and is from the 16th century, but the seasonal meaning of to deck with ornamental accessories dates from the 18th century. The word originates from the Latin decoratus (beautify).
TINSEL
It was first seen in the expression tinsell saten which means strips of shining metal used for ornament. It also describes things that are showy and worthless. It is believed to have come from the Anglo Norman with ancestors in Old French.
Christmas: Words We Still Use Today #Christmas #holidays #Traditions #Customs books2read.com/suziloveHOCP Share on XThe Lord of Misrule was generally a peasant, or sub-deacon, and the revelries followed the Pagan tradition of Saturnalia and was a time of drunkenness and wild partying. The Church’s festival with a Boy Bishop, the leader of children’s festivities in choir schools, was similar, but was abolished by Henry VIII in 1541, restored by the Catholic Queen Mary, but again abolished by Protestant Elizabeth I. On the Continent, the Council of Basle suppressed it in 1431 but the custom was revived in some places from time to time, even as late as the eighteenth century. After the death of Edward VI in 1553, the English court stopped appointing a Lord of Misrule.
From A Survey of London by John Stow: Reprinted from the text of 1603.
‘…in the feaste of Christmas, there was in the kings house, wheresoeuer he was lodged, a Lord of Misrule, or Maister of merry disports, and the like had yee in the house of euery noble man, of honor, or good worshippe, were he spirituall or temporall.’
During the late medieval and early Tudor periods in England, Lord of Misrule, also called Abbot Of Misrule, or King Of Misrule, was appointed to manage the Christmas festivities held at court, in the houses of great noblemen, in the law schools of the Inns of Court, and in many of the colleges at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford.
His reign lasted anywhere from 12 days to 3 months and his role was to direct the masques, processions, plays, and feasts. Although this was mostly a British custom, in ancient Rome from the 17th to 23rd of December, a Lord of Misrule took on the guise of Saturn for the feast of Saturnalia and the ordinary rules were changed so that masters became slaves and the offices of state were held by slaves. The Lord of Misrule presided and could command anyone to do anything. Our contemporary Christmas holidays seem to have originated from this idea of festive holidays.
The custom began in December 1551 when the Duke of Somerset, Edward VI’s uncle Edward Seymour, was in the Tower of London awaiting execution. He sent a note to the Master of Revels to appoint George Ferrers as Lord of Misrule. Ferrers was a courtier and poet who later contributed to A Mirror for Magistrates, described by Scott Lucas as a “compendium of tragic monologues” by a series of historical personages.
Scotland had the Abbot of Unreason (suppressed in 1555) as their equivalent to the Lord of Misrule and scholars believe both ideas came from the “king” or “bishop” who presided over the earlier Feast of Fools.
Santa Claus The origin of Santa Claus begins in the 4th century with Saint Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, an area in present day Turkey. By all accounts St. Nicholas was a generous man, particularly devoted to children. In the Western world, where Christmas is characterized by the exchange of gifts among friends and family members, some of the gifts are attributed to a character called Santa Claus. He is also known as Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, St. Nikolaus, Sinterklaas, Kris Kringle, Joulupukki, Weihnachtsmann, Saint Basil and Father Frost.
In the 4th century, Saint Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, Turkey, was a kind and generous man who was particularly devoted to children. His kindness and reputation for generosity gave rise to claims he that he could perform miracles and devotion to him increased. Thousands of churches across Europe were dedicated to him and some time around the 12th century an official church holiday was created in his honor. The Feast of St. Nicholas was celebrated December 6 and the day was marked by gift-giving and charity.
Father Christmas, who predates Santa Claus, was first recorded in the 15th century and then associated with holiday merrymaking and drunkenness. In Victorian Britain, his image was remade to match that of Santa and France’s Père Noël (Papa Noël) evolved the same way and eventually began using the same Santa image.
Today’s version of Santa Claus was created by the German-American cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902), who drew a new image of the character annually, beginning in 1863. By the 1880s, Nast’s Santa had become the one now know and in the 1920s, this image was used in most advertising. But it was the early to mid Coca Cola advertising that cemented the idea of Santa Claus as a jolly man with a white beard and wearing a red suit. He was portrayed as drinking a coke and smiling happily. Many famous artists started doing yearly illustrations of Santa Claus that were used for magazine covers and Christmas postcards.
First made in 1850 by a London sweet maker called Tom Smith who decided it would a fun idea if his sweets and toys opened with a crack when their fancy wrappers were pulled in half. In early 1830, Tom Smith started work in a bakers and ornamental confectioners shop in London, selling sweets such as fondants, pralines and gum pastilles. He worked hard and took particular interest in the wedding cake ornaments and decorations, experimenting and creating new, more exciting and less crude designs in his spare time. Before long he was successful enough to leave and start up his own business in Goswell Road, Clerkenwell, East London. On a trip to Paris in 1840, he discovered the ‘bon bon’, a sugared almond wrapped in a twist of tissue paper. He brought the ‘bon bon’ to London and they sold extremely well, but in January demand virtually ceased and once again he was reliant on sales of cake and table decorations and ornaments.
Anxious to stimulate sales, Tom placed a small love motto in the tissue paper and encouraged his regular customers to take supplies. Tom took a risk and concentrated on developing it further, while still running the wedding cake ornament and confectionery business. The majority of ‘bon bons’ were sold at Christmas so Tom thought up ways to capitalize on this short, but very profitable, season. It was the crackle of a log as he threw it on his fire that gave him the flash of inspiration which eventually led to the crackers we know today. A ‘ crackle’ added excitement to his novelty ‘bon bon’ so he experimented to find a compound which gave a satisfactory bang. He perfected his chemical explosion to create a ‘pop’ caused by friction when the wrapping was broken and the trade jumped at Tom Smith’s latest novelty.
He quickly refined his product by dropping the sweet and the ‘bon bon’ name, calling his new crackers Cosaques, but he kept the motto and added a surprise gift. Delighted at his overnight success, Tom took his cracker abroad but an Eastern manufacturer copied his idea and delivered crackers to Britain just before Christmas. So Tom designed 8 different kinds of cracker, working his staff day and night and distributing stocks in time for Christmas. He lived to see the new branch of his firm grow to swamp the original premises in Goswell Road and the company moved to Finsbury Square in the City of London where it remained until 1953. When he died he left the business to his three sons, Tom Henry and Walter. A few years later, a drinking fountain was erected in Finsbury Square by Walter Smith in memory of his mother, Mary, and to commemorate the life of the man who invented the great British Cracker.
His three sons developed the cracker designs, contents and mottoes. Walter Smith, the youngest son, introduced a topical note to the mottoes which had previously been love verses. Special writers were commissioned to compose snappy and relevant maxims with references to every important event or craze at the time from greyhounds to Jazz, Frothblowers to Tutankhamen, Persian Art to The Riviera. The original early Victorian mottoes were mainly love verses. Eventually these were replaced by more complicated puzzles and cartoons, and finally by the corny jokes and riddles which characterise our crackers today.
Walter also introduced the paper hats, many of which were elaborate and made of best tissue and decorative paper on proper hatmakers stands and he toured the world to find new, relevant and unusual ideas for the surprise gifts, such as bracelets from Bohemia, tiny wooden barrels from America, and scarf pins from Saxony. Some were assembled in the factory, like the thousands of tiny pill boxes filled with rouge complete with powder puff.
A six foot cracker decorated Euston Station in London, and in 1927 a gentleman wrote to the Company enclosing a diamond engagement ring and 10 shilling note as payment for the ring to be put in a special cracker for his fiancee. Unfortunately he did not enclose an address and never contacted the Company again; the ring, letter and 10 shilling note are still in the safe today. In the early days, there was a large variety of specialist boxes, including Wedgwood Art Crackers from original designs by permission of Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, and designs such as Japanese Menagerie crackers containing the latest novelties from Japan, including animals, birds, reptiles and mottoes in Japanese.
Crackers were created for the War Heroes, Charlie Chaplin, The Wireless, Motoring, The Coronation and even the Channel Tunnel in 1914. Exclusive crackers were also made for members of the Royal Family and still are to this day. During the Second World War restrictions were placed on the production of cracker snaps.
The Ministry of Defence commissioned Tom Smith to fold and tie bundles of three to six snaps together with special string and regulation knots. These bundles were then used by soldiers in training as, when the string was pulled, they mimicked the noise of machine gun fire. After the war, vast quantities of these surplus cracker snaps were released back into the cracker trade. As the demand for crackers increased, Tom Smith merged with Caley Crackers in 1953 taking over their headquarters and factory in Norwich, East Anglia.
Tom Smith Group Limited currently hold a royal warrant from: HM QUEEN ELIZABETH II Ê 1906: Tom Smith were granted their first Royal Warrant by the then Prince of Wales which entitled them in 1909 to become members of the Royal Warrant Holders Association. 1910: In December, the reigning monarch, King George V granted Tom Smith his warrant as suppliers of Christmas Crackers. Tom Smith still holds the honour of producing special crackers each year for the Royal Household.
In the countries that now use them, a cracker is set next to each plate on the Christmas dinner table and a colourful party hat, a toy or gift and a festive joke falls out when the cracker is pulled in half with a loud bang! The party hats look like crowns, supposedly to symbolise the crowns worn by the Wise Men.
Another British company strongly associated with the cracker business was Batger and Co. Like Tom Smith, they sold a wide variety of crackers in highly decorated boxes and once again many were themed or in commemoration of a special event. Batger’s Gretna Green Crackers for the famous place for eloping lovers where couples in the Regency period ran off in a carriage to Scotland to be married at the blacksmiths forge at Gretna Green.
Crackers were an incredibly expensive luxury at the time costing from 14 shillings to 30 shillings a box. Others were Peerless Crackers and Mead and Field Crackers. Cabaret Girl from the Peerless series of Christmas crackers, from 1933, which promises that each cracker contains ‘both a juvenile costume and fancy hat or cap, amusing joke or riddle, a good snap.’
Games
At Christmas time, households had guests to stay and games were played to either fill in the time inside when the weather was too bad to venture out with sleds or skates, or to keep tradition. Blind man’s bluff, forfeits, and snap dragon were all played.
A list of some entertainments for Christmas…From The book Of Christmas by Thomas kibble Hervey. “jugglers, and jack-puddings, scrambling for nuts and apples, dancing the hobby-horse, hunting owls and squirrels, the fool-plough, hot-cockles, a stick moving on a pivot, with an apple at one end and a candle at the other, so that he who missed his bite burned his nose, blindman’s buffs, forfeits, interludes and mock plays :” — also of ” thread my needle, Nan,” ” he can do little that can’t do this,” feed the dove, hunt the slipper, shoeing the wild mare, post and pair, snap dragon, the gathering of omens….
Snap Dragon A favorite game was Snap Dragon, often played on Christmas Eve. Raisins were put into a large, shallow bowl and brandy was poured over them and then ignited. Lights were extinguished to increase the eerie effect of the blue flames playing across the liquor. The object of the game was to reach through the blue flames and grab as many raisins as possible from the flaming brandy and pop them into your mouth. The risk of burning yourself increased the excitement.
Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language in 1755 describes the. game as “a play in which they catch raisins out of burning brandy and, extinguishing them by closing the mouth, eat them”. According to an eighteenth-century article in Richard Steele’s Tatler magazine, “the wantonness of the thing was to see each other look like a demon, as we burnt ourselves, and snatched out the fruit.”
Snap-dragon was played in England, Canada, U/S.A, and probably other countries with British backgrounds. The words snap-dragon and flap-dragon can refer to the game, the raisins used in the game, or the bowl with brandy and raisins.
The first reference to Snap-dragon as a game is in Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1811. “Christmas gambol: raisins and almonds being put into a bowl of brandy, and the candles extinguished, the spirit is set on fire, and the company scramble for the raisins.” Snap-dragon as a Christmas parlour game was mentioned in 1836 in Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers and in 1861, in Anthony Trollope’s novel Orley Farm. Lewis Carroll, in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There in 1871 describes “A snap-dragon-fly. Its body is made of plum pudding, its wings of holly-leaves, and its head is a raisin burning in brandy.”
Agatha Christie’s book Hallowe’en Party describes a children’s party during which a child’s murder causes Hercule Poirot to be brought in to solve the case and at which Snap-dragon is played at the end of the evening.
A song went with the game….
“Here he comes with flaming bowl,
Don’t be mean to take his toll.
Snip! Snap! Dragon!
Take care you don’t take too much
Be not greedy in your clutch.
Snip! Snap! Dragon!
With his blue and lapping tongue
Many of you will be stung.
Snip! Snap! Dragon!
For he snaps at all that comes
Snatching at his feast of plums.
Snip! Snap! Dragon!
But Old Christmas makes him come
Though he looks so fee! Fa! Fum!
Snip! Snap! Dragon!
Don’t `ee fear him, be but bold.
Out he goes, his flames are cold.
Snip! Snap! Dragon!
Legend has it that during the 17th century, craftsmen created straight white sticks of candy in the shape of shepherds’ crooks at the suggestion of the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany. The treats were given to children to keep them quiet during ceremonies at the living creche, or Nativity scene, and the custom of passing out the crooks at such ceremonies soon spread throughout Europe.
‘The legends of the candy cane are many, including that the cane was shaped like a “J” for Jesus, the three red stripes symbolized the Holy Trinity, the hardness of the candy represented the Church’s foundation on solid rock and the peppermint flavor reflects the use of hyssop, an herb referred to in the Old Testament.’ via Encyclopedia Britannica
In celebrations of Saint Nicholas Day, candy canes are given to children as they are also said to represent the crosier of the Christian bishop, Saint Nicholas; crosiers themselves allude to the Good Shepherd, a title associated with Jesus. Some people explain the symbolism of a striped cane as white representing Christ’s purity, red the blood he shed, and the three red stripes the Holy Trinity.
In the mid 1600s, sugar roses were added but weren’t popular so plain white canes remained until red stripes were added around 1890. In 1847, a German immigrant living in Wooster, Ohio, U.S.A. looped candy canes that he brought with him from Europe over the boughs of his Christmas tree.
In 1919, Bob McCormack of Albany, Georgia, made candy canes for family, friends and local shopkeepers. The canes were bent by hand as they came off the assembly line into the ‘J’ shape of a shepherd’s crook, so breakage was often over 20 percent. In the 1920s, a cherubic child in a red-and-white hat sold peppermint candy cane to Albany natives in an advertisement for Bob’s candy company. McCormack was the first manufacturer to wrap his candy in cellophane. Bobs moved to a larger facility in the 1930s so that it could expand its product lines and was one of the few candy companies to remain solvent during the Great Depression.
As the economy improved, people bought more sweet treats, but Bobs Candy was then leveled by a tornado and, as the company had no tornado insurance, they had to rebuild on their own. By August 1940 the company was back in business and employed McCormack’s three children.
During World War II (1941-45), when sugar was rationed, coconuts were in short supply, and pecans were expensive, Bobs took advantage of a plentiful local product—the peanut—and sold peanut-butter crackers and vacuum-packed peanuts. During the 1950s, Bobs began making money with such innovations as break-proof packaging, moisture-proof candy wrappers.
In 1952, Bob McCormack’s brother-in-law, Catholic priest Gregory Keller, invented the Keller Machine which automated the process of twisting soft candy into spiral striping and then cutting them into precise lengths as candy canes.
Harding Keller invented the Keller Machine around 1950 for his brother-in-law Bob McCormack. The machine twisted and cut stick candy, allowing for the mass production of the company’s signature candy canes and other items. – Courtesy of Farley’s and Sathers Candy Company, Inc.
First, candy sticks cut to the desired length enter the machine. Each stick is bent individually, but the machine has a system of multiple grippers and rollers to continually bend the sticks, one after the other. As each stick enters the machine, it is positioned in a gripper which holds the straight portion of the cane with the part to be bent protruding out. Each gripper has on one side a curved die which the protruding end will be bent over. The candy stick is first bent to a right angle as it is moved past and put into contact with an inclined face. The patent application describes two potential versions of the mechanism which complete the bending process.
The first version of the mechanism has a chain around two sprockets on which are mounted bending rollers. Each bending roller is attached to a cam which rides along another inclined face to move the roller along the protruding surface of the cane to complete bending it around the die. In the second version, the chain and sprockets are replaced by a wheel on which the bending rollers are mounted. In modern candy cane production, the sticks are wrapped in cellophane before they are bent.
By the middle of the century, Bob’s company – originally the Famous Candy Company, then the Mills-McCormack Candy Company, and later Bobs Candies, had become one of the world’s leading candy cane producers.Bobs Candies was sold to Farley’s and Sathers in Spring 2005. Farley’s and Sathers merged with the Ferrara Candy Company which continues to make candy canes under the Bobs name.
By the middle of the century, Bob’s company – originally the Famous Candy Company, then the Mills-McCormack Candy Company, and later Bobs Candies, had become one of the world’s leading candy cane producers.
Christmas Greetings Internationally.