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An Elephant and a Drunk Priest – Itinerant Entertainment in the Streets of an Eighteenth-Century Port City
by Tiéphaine Thomason The plywood tables and plastic chairs of the reading room in the municipal archives of Nantes have the feel of a secondary school classroom. Located at 1 rue d’Enfer (‘1 hell street’), the archive nonetheless boasts a handful of fantastic archivists and colourful police records. These records show a persistent concern with…
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Victorian Vegetarians: Nineteenth-Century Christmas Puddings (veggie edition)
By Fabia Buescher (fb586@cam.ac.uk) Christmas in the nineteenth-century was, as it is today, a time for celebrating, laughing and eating together. To such conviviality, a lavish Christmas dinner couldn’t go amiss. The Victorian Christmas tables were filled with mince pies, Christmas puddings and roasted meat, including turkey, beef and goose. Yet not everybody chose to…
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A Nazarene Christmas
Be David Martin (Bluesky: @davidmartin8293.bsky.social) The bell tolls the hour and the murmuring crowds shuffle into the grand porticoes of St. John’s Cathedral. Twinkling string lights illumine the way, punctuated by bushy, glowing Christmas trees, all aflutter in the warm midnight air. Soon enough, the the scent of cashew nut- strewn fruitcake and milky coffee…
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The Christmas Book Flood, or, ‘That’s Why Bookworms Go To Iceland’
By Chris Campbell Scandinavian customs have grown in popularity year-round, but always seem to be particularly prevalent at Christmas. Whether hygge, from Denmark,inspires us to create a warm and cosy atmosphere with friends and family, or fika, from Sweden,tempts us to pause and relax on a wintry morning with (another) coffee and cinnamon bun, the…
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When Saturn met Jagan
By David Martin (Bluesky: @davidmartin8293.bsky.social) “They form the great Juggernaut saturnalia, so widely celebrated. Tens of thousands of persons, of all classes and ages flock to attend them… In former times many were in the habit of increasing the general happiness by throwing themselves under the wheels of the Juggernaut car.” So wrote an unnamed…
doinghistoryinpublic.org 