Drama and romance at the Duke Of Sherwyn’s snowbound country estate in the English countryside in December. Michael Brandon travels to introduce the woman he loves to family but is shocked when his missing brother, presumed dead for years, arrives at the country estate of the Duke Of Sherwyn where several people are stranded due to a severe snow storm. https://books2read.com/suziloveDS December Scandal, Book 3, Scandalous Siblings Series.
Sending Christmas Cards.
At the end of the winter term, schoolmasters would set their pupils to work on Christmas Pieces, samplers of writing on superior paper with engraved borders, to show parents how they had progressed during the year. By about 1820, the engraved borders were enhanced with color and the children’s pieces became more decorative.
However, the custom of sending cards at Christmas was started in the United Kingdom in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole. Postage had been standardized three years earlier and Cole was a civil servant who had played a key role in initiating Uniform Penny Post. He wanted ordinary people to become more interested in the new ‘Public Post Office’. With his artist friend John Horsley, they designed the first card which was issued from a periodical, Felix Summerley’s Home Treasury, and were sold for 1 shilling each.
The card was lithographed, hand-colored, had three panels and was in a rustic frame of carved wood and ivy. The outer two panels showed people caring for the hungry and the naked. The centre panel showed a family of three generations having Christmas dinner, although the temperate classes strongly objected to the idea of a child being given a glass of wine with dinner.
New railways carried more post, and a lot faster, than a horse and carriage so the Post Office offered a Penny stamp. Cards became even more popular when they could be posted in an unsealed envelope for one halfpenny. Christmas cards became truly popular when printing improved and cards could be produced in large numbers, around 1860. By the early 1900s, the custom had spread over Europe and especially in Germany.
Early cards usually pictured Nativity scenes, but in the late Victorian times, robins and snow-scenes became popular because the postmen wore red uniforms and were nicknamed ‘Robin Postmen’. Snow-scenes were also popular because they were a reminder of the very bad winter of 1836.
Snow scenes reflected the snowy and often harsh northern hemisphere winters when opening and reading Christmas cards was an enjoyable family experience. In 1860, Charles Goodall & Son, a British publisher of visiting cards, began mass producing cards to be used for visits during the Christmas period. These Christmas and New Year’s visiting cards were decorated with simple designs such as a twig of holly or flowers.
Sales of cards grew and designs and sizes changed. The first cards were meant to appeal to the masses and encourage them to send large numbers by post, so rather than focus on religious images, they showed sentimental or humorous images of family and children, fanciful designs of flowers, fairies, or reminders of the approach of spring. Religious themes of nativity scenes, children looking at the manger, or angels and candles remain popular to the modern day.
Cards could be shaped like bells, a fan, a crescent, a circle, or a diamond and were folding, decorated with jewels, iridescent, embossed, and carried either simple Christmas and New Year greetings or had verses and carols written in them. The next year, Mr W.C.T. Dobson produced a sketch symbolizing the ‘Spirit of Christmas’ which sold many more than the previous thousand and the novelty caught on.
Many artists became famous for their annual illustrations that became postcards and cards. Printing technology became more advanced in the age of industrialisation and the price of card production dropped. With the introduction of the halfpenny postage rate, the Christmas card industry industry increased until in 1880 11.5 million cards were produced.
“Bells are musics laughter.” By Thomas Hood (1799-1845), British poet and humorist.
Bells hold a long time association with Christmas. In Victorian times, carol singers used small handbells to play the tune of the carol. Sometimes there were bells without singing – Church bells are rung after sunset to signal the start of the Christmas Eve service, the first of Christmas. In England, the bellman goes round at midnight ringing his bell, and rattling off a stanza or two, for the gratuity which he confidently anticipates; while watchmen, firemen, rate-collectors, postmen, chimney-sweeps, street scavengers, the errand-boys of your baker, butcher, poultry merchant, and green-grocer, even to the hired singers in the churches all expect their Christmas-box. In Victorian times, carol singers used small hand bells to play the tune of the carol and sometimes there were bells without singing. Church bells are rung after sunset to signal the start of the Christmas Eve service, the first of Christmas.
Christmas: 1803 December The Bellman #Christmas #holidays #RegencyEra #Customs books2read.com/suziloveHOCP Share on XThe Bellman
The Bellman stands full face, shouting with wide-open mouth and ringing his hand-bell.
In his left hand he holds out his verses headed by a little figure of Napoleon wearing a huge tricorne and holding a gigantic sword:
‘This little Boney-says he’ll come At merry Christmas time,
But that I say is all a hum Or I no more will rhyme
Some say in Wooden house he’ll glide, Some say in air Balloon,
E’en those who airy schemes deride. Agree his coming soon.
Now honest people list to me, Though Income is but small, I’ll bet my Wig, to one Penney, He does not come at all.’ Hand-colored etching and aquatint.
Via British Museum
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.
How did they celebrate Christmas in Bridgerton and Jane Austen times? Historical information about the traditions of Christmas through the centuries, including the religious aspects, decorations, games, food and plays. History Of Christmases Past has lots of information and images about Christmas through the centuries, including religious aspects, decorations, games, food and plays. Historic images show how some traditions have changed while many have remained the same through the centuries. books2read.com/suziloveHOCP
Christmas: Typical Christmas Food Eaten By the Bridgerton and Jane Austen Families. #Christmas #Food #JaneAusten #Bridgerton
On the Christmas menu was generally mince pies and perhaps a goose or a piece of beef, depending on the family’s wealth and status. Mince pies were not made of fruit mince as we do now, but of offal or meat such as bullock’s tongue cooked with spices, orange peel, and wine and then used to fill pastry cases.
Another Christmas specialty was a Yorkshire Christmas pie which would be filled with turkey, goose, a hen, or perhaps woodcocks, partridge, or pigeons. And after the main courses, came the Plum Pudding, mixed on Stir-Up Sunday according to each family’s recipe and then boiled in a cloth.
Christmas Mince Pies.
‘The following is a valued receipt that has been handed down in a Cornish family for many generations,
and the hand-writing of the receipt book will vouch for its antiquity.
‘A pound of beef-suet chopped fine;
a pound of raisins do. stoned.
A pound of currants cleaned dry.
A pound of apples chopped fine.
Two or three eggs.
Allspice beat very fine, and sugar to your taste.
A little salt, and as much brandy and wine as you like.
An ancient Cornish custom at Christmas.”
A small piece of citron in each pie is an improvement.’
From: 1833 Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern by William Sandys.
Mince meat pies, or Christmas or Twelfth Night pies, were always part of Christmas feasts. Originally the mince pies were oblong or oval but in the 1600’s, the pies became circular, although were quite large and could weigh up to 20 lbs. In London, they could be brought out on Lord Mayor’s Day which was the 9th of November.
Timeline of Mince Pies via Minced Pie Club.
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.
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 XChristmas pudding originated as a 14th century porridge called ‘frumenty’ , made of beef and mutton with raisins, currants, prunes, wines and spices. Often more like soup, it was eaten as a fasting meal in preparation for Christmas festivities. By 1595, frumenty changed into a plum pudding thickened with eggs, breadcrumbs, dried fruit and flavoured with beer and spirits. It became the customary Christmas dessert around 1650, but in 1664 the Puritans banned it as a bad custom. In 1714, King George I re-established it as part of the Christmas meal, having tasted and enjoyed Plum Pudding.
“In December, the principal household duty lies in preparing for the creature comforts of those near and dear to us, so as to meet old Christmas with a happy face, a contented mind, and a full larder; and in stoning the plums, washing the currants, cutting the citron, beating the eggs, and mixing the pudding, a housewife is not unworthily greeting the genial season of all good things.” Via 1861 Beeton’s Book of Household Management.
The Sunday closest to St. Andrew’s Day was Stirring-up Sunday, and the day to prepare the family’s Christmas pudding. The eldest member of the household or a visitor would give the first stir and charms were stirred into the pudding. A ring meant a coming marriage, a button was bachelorhood, a thimble meant spinsterhood, and a sixpence was good luck. Puddings were steamed in a pudding bag and stored in a cool place until Christmas Day.
