Seasons Greetings & A Couple of Creepy Cards by Catherine Hokin

                                               

 1950s card, not a photo of my house

Christmas cards: to send or not to send, that is the

question. I wish I could claim my inability to buy/write/post them stems from a concern for the planet but the more honest reason is forgetfulness when it comes to writing down addresses I don't regularly visit and a love of all things electronic when it comes to communication. Also I never know how to display the last few we get - I can't bear them on strings or cluttering up shelves - it's the only aspect
of Christmas that turns me into the Grinch. I'm down to sending a handful now and, in that at least, it seems I'm on trend. Large companies like Hallmark have seen the amount of Christmas cards purchased each year decrease by a third since 2007 and the drop isn't just in the UK: research from the American Greeting Card Association suggest that Europeans and Canadians now send an average of 11 cards per household per year compared to the staggering 300 posted out by pre-baby boomer families, while Americans (despite the best stationary shops on the planet) only send 8.

 Prang Christmas card with Santa's hotline

The tradition of sending cards goes back to the mid nineteenth century. Producing the first commercial Christmas card is an honour claimed by Sir Henry Cole in 1843 but it was a German immigrant to the USA who started the greetings card industry as we now know it. In 1856 Louis Prang opened a small lithographic business near Boston, by 1866, he had perfected the colour lithographic process and by the 1870s he was publishing a range of deluxe Christmas cards. These were mainly sold in England where the introduction of the halfpenny stamp had made sending cards affordable across a wide range of society but the habit also gained ground in America with Prang's cards taking such a big share of the market (he was printing 5 million cards a year by 1881) that he became known as the father of the American Christmas card. This seasonal success story then takes on more of an It's A Wonderful Life feel: Prang's cards were lavish and expensive to produce, often with 30 colours on one print plus glitter (and occasionally tassels) and he was eventually forced out of business in 1890 as cheap copies flooded the market. His cards are now highly collectible - although not quite as valuable as the first Cole card which sold at auction in 2001 for $35,800. That's one I would have made a bit of space for.

 As with many of our current Christmas traditions, sending cards was something the Victorians leaped on with all the fervour of Tiny Tim spying a roasted goose. According to BBC research, the new greetings card industry produced over 11 million cards in 1880 alone and competitions were regularly held to help feed the demand for new designs. In 1879, card publishers to the royal family Raphael Tuck (who produced as many as 3000 designs a season) held an exhibition at the Egyptian Hall in London, with 500 guineas in prizes. It attracted nearly 900 entrants and was so popular that a second competition, judged among others by Sir John Millais, followed in 1882 with this time £5000 being awarded in prizes. It was Raphael Tuck who introduced novelty cards alongside the more traditional Christmas scenes, including cards that could be turned into ships and horses and soldiers. And then things got really strange...

 Santa's reindeer having an off day

Children riding bats anyone? Beetles dancing with frogs, mice riding lobsters? Children being menaced by snowmen even Stephen King couldn't dream up? The iconography of Christmas - trees, puddings, the jolly old Santa - is there in nineteenth century cards but there are also a host of other influences, from the Germanic Krampus and 'monsters of nightmareland' as Gleeson White (editor of The Studio) called some of the images in 1894, to natural history (a Victorian obsession) and what some historians have catalogued as social messages: dead robins in the snow as reminders of the starving poor. Whatever the reasoning was behind the macabre designs has been lost in the passage of time and it may be that these cards were the oddities not the commonplace - the fact of their collection giving them perhaps more importance now than they had at the time. Today the most popular card sold features three cutesy cherubic angels, including one with eyes that would sit better on a spaniel. Since Hallmark first produced it in 1977, this image has sold 34 million copies.

Do not send me it. These, on the other hand, would take pride of place. Enjoy and Merry Christmas one and all.

 Mummy's on the sherry again

 Doing the Christmas recycling

  The Spirit of Christmas

'Figgy Pudding and Stir-up Sunday' by Karen Maitland

'Making the Empire's Christmas Pudding'

One of the great delights of moving to a rural village is that many of the traditions which have died out in most towns are still maintained, such as carrying flaming tar barrels from pub to pub or getting up before dawn to dance around the Nine Maidens, an ancient stone circle on Dartmoor, having already climbed up freezing boggy hills in the biting wind. Neither custom is for the faint-hearted, but a slightly less strenuous tradition still observed in our village is Stir-up Sunday. This is the day the women of the community get together to make their Christmas puddings.

Stir-up Sunday is the last Sunday before advent, at the end of November. The name comes the Church of England Book of Common prayer of 1604, in which the Collect for that day begins - 

'Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded …’

Children had their own version of this, for was a tradition for orphans or poor children to go from door to door on this day begging for a portion of the puddings with the song –

‘Stir up, we beseech thee, the pudding in the pot. And when we get home we shall eat the lot.’

Captain of a Destroyer in Scapa Flow

stirring the Christmas Pudding with a 

wooden paddle, December 1942

On Stir- up Sunday all the women bring their ingredients into the church hall and prepare their puddings together, which would once have been a great way for older women to teach new brides the art of pudding making. Each stirrer may make a wish, but if it is to be granted, the puddings must be stirred clockwise in a circle from east to west, which is said to honour the journey the three Wise Men made to visit the infant Jesus.

But in fact, the custom of stirring any kind of food in a clockwise direction has its origins centuries before Christianity. Everything a woman did in the home or in the field had to be done sunwise or deiseil, because the sun was the source of all life. To walk round a building or perform any action in an anticlockwise direction – widdershins – was to work against the sun and strengthen the powers of darkness. It would certainly call down ill-fortune or worse.

There is a tradition in the British Royal Navy that the youngest sailor and the ship’s commander should both be called together to stir the ships Christmas pudding on Stir-up Sunday and that this should be done with a wooden oar or paddle, to symbolise the wooden manager in which the baby Jesus was laid.

The Christmas pudding may have evolved from a medieval dish known 'frumenty' made from cracked wheat, currents or other dried fruit and spices, boiled together with milk or almond-milk or meat stock. This could be served sweet or could have scraps of meat such as beef, mutton or venison added to make a kind of pottage. It was more like a thick soup or stew than a solid pudding. A version was eaten on the fast days before Christmas in preparation for the coming Christmas feast, when it would be made without meat. It was often a frugal way of using up scraps. In the Celtic Christian tradition it was eaten as part of the Christmas feast.

By the end of the 16th century a dish, known as 'plum porridge', consisting of raisins and spices boiled in fruit juices or meat-stock, thickened with breadcrumbs was served as the first course in the Christmas feast. It wasn’t until around 1670, that it became the familiar solid round pudding boiled in a bag, known as 'figgy pudding' or 'plum pudding', the plums being raisins.

The custom of hiding objects in Christmas puddings also has medieval origins in the practise of baking a dried bean into a cake on Twelfth Night, a tradition which was recorded as early as the 1300’s. Who ever found the bean would be crowned king or queen of the final feast of Christmastide and would be able to command their ‘subjects’ to do whatever they wanted to amuse their ‘sovereign’, however bawdy or humiliating. But if the finder accidently split or broke the bean as they found it, they would be obliged to change into the clothing of the opposite sex for the feast. The man would be crowned queen for the night and the woman king.

In later centuries, silver coins were boiled inside the pudding, and if you found one in your slice, it was said you would be blessed with wealth and good fortune for the coming year. Silver, of course, was another one of those superstitions from pre-Christian times, when it was associated with the blessings of the moon. Silver was used to repel evil, demons and monsters. In later centuries this is why they thought some creatures could only be killed with a silver bullet. In certain seafaring communities, such as Hull on the east coast of England, if a trawler man found a silver sixpence in a Christmas pudding he’d carry it in his pocket on every fishing trip to prevent misfortune and ensure a good catch.

Christmas or yuletide was always a time when people would try to discover their fortunes for the coming year by watching how the yule log, a hazelnut or an apple pip burned. Another Christmas custom was to send a girl of marriageable age out to fetch wood from the stack at night in the dark. The next morning, she would count the number of sticks she had gathered. An even number meant she would wed within the year, an odd number that she must wait. And this tradition of Christmas fortune-telling continued with the Christmas pudding. By the Victorian era, in addition to the silver coin, charms were concealed inside the pudding which would foretell the finder’s future. If you received a Bachelor’s Button or an Old Maids Thimble, you’d remain single but be happy during the coming year, but if you found a ring, marriage within the year was certain. A silver wish-bone or horseshoe would bring you good luck and a miniature anchor would pull you into safe, calm waters.

Gunner H. S. Haddow of 15th Scottish Division

in Holland proudly announcing the arrival of

the Christmas Pudding, December 1944

In some areas, of Britain it was the tradition for each household to make 13 small puddings, the last, the Judas Pudding, had to be given to a beggar who must carry it away from the house, taking away any bad luck for the year. Another custom was to retain a small amount of Christmas pudding and add it to the following year’s mixture, so that the pudding was never finished. This ensured that the family would never go hungry. So, if you haven’t made your pudding yet – it’s time to stir up!

A VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS - Mary Hooper

This is an excerpt from VELVET. It is Christmas in London, 1900. Velvet, an orphan, has been asked by her new friend Lizzie to share her family’s Christmas Day...

"Velvet managed not to open Charlie’s present until Christmas morning. When she did, she was disappointed - which was extremely wicked and ungrateful of her, she knew, but she couldn’t help thinking that Charlie’s mum must have chosen
the gift within: a pink-and-green flower corsage for an outer coat, made of felt and not at all fashionable. She’d been hoping that the box might contain a
pretty hair decoration with which to keep back her curls, or even a little silver necklace to enhance the Sunday-best dress that she intended to wear to
Lizzie’s house that day. But what was she thinking of, she admonished herself, for if it had been a costly piece of jewellery or something similar, then she
would have had to return it. A girl couldn’t accept a gift like that from a male friend unless they were engaged - and it wouldn’t do to give Charlie ideas. He was a sweet boy and she liked him very much, but he wouldn’t make a husband for her. He was part of the past which she intended to leave behind.

At Lizzie’s house she was delighted to find that the family kept a good Christmas, the sort she’d never had before. In the doorway hung a kissing ball of ivy and mistletoe, and in the hall the Christmas tree was liberally decorated with candles, gold foil and ivy ribbons. She felt shy at first, but was welcomed so warmly into the family that before long she was joining in
everything - even the raucous singing games around the piano – as if she’d
known them all for years.

Mr Cameron, Lizzie’s pa, was a source of amazement to Velvet. Whereas her father had always seemed to be teetering on the edge of a display of bad temper, Lizzie’s pa was a
happy-go-lucky chap who whipped off his jacket and waistcoat to show his daughters how to dance the hornpipe, and made paper hats for their dogs. When they sat down at the table and Lizzie’s ma discovered that she’d forgotten to put the stuffing in the breast of the roast goose, Velvet went cold, fearing a terrible row, but Mr Cameron had roared with laughter and called his wife a
flibberty-gibbet, then kissed her and said he wouldn’t have her any other way.

After the goose came a flaming plum pudding containing small silver charms: a
boot, a coin, a top hat, a dog, a lucky horseshoe and a ring. Velvet got the
tiny horseshoe (she decided that Lizzie’s kindly mum had arranged it that way)
and everyone made much of the fact that this was the best token to have and
that the coming year was bound to be very lucky for her. After the meal there
was charades, with forfeits if you didn’t get the right answer in a certain
number of minutes, then blind-man’s buff and – as the afternoon grew more
boisterous - a game with a Ouija board which Lizzie’s sisters played most
enthusiastically, getting in touch with all sorts of “spirits” but failing to
get anything sensible out of them. HSTRETYZZ said one in reply to a question
about his name, WERPRSIT said another when asked where he came from.

At tea time everyone had a barley sugar stick from the tree, a slice of iced fruit
cake and a bon-bon, and when Velvet pulled hers with Lizzie’s mother she was
delighted to discover within it a tiny pair of nail scissors, a paper hat and a
joke (My dog has no nose. How does it smell? Dreadful) which for some reason sent everyone into near hysterics.

Complimenting Mrs Cameron on the wonderful fruitfulness of the cake, Velvet, looking around the table and
feeling very happy, wondered if her mother and father had ever had good times together. She decided they had not, for – from as far back as she could remember - her father had been an impossible man to please. Why, only last Christmas she’d made an effort to create a little cheer, buying a ham for their Christmas dinner and studding it with cloves, and her father had sniffed it, said that he hated cloves and thrown the whole thing to the floor.

He’d taken exception to the way she’d decorated the room, too, and tossed the evergreens outside saying they were a pagan tradition which he would not tolerate (although he was certainly not a religious man)."