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‘Hither page and don my tiara’
Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles Tales of Puritan… well… puritanism, are usually a popular topic of conversation this time of year (especially among certain subsets of the population). Christmas in sixteenth and seventeenth century England was a rather sparse affair with fewer and fewer ‘lords of misrule’ and (ostensibly) more and more ‘cleaning-the-feet-of-the-poor-ers’.…
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8. Frankincense in Early Modern Europe
by Tiéphaine Thomason (@teaphaine) This is the first post in a three-part series for the Doing History Advent Calendar on the history of the senses and the gifts of the Magi. When first drafting this post, I had written something short about the role of frankincense and its scent in early modern churches. Just as…
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More Gravy than Grave
Christmas has always been fabled for its moreish cuisine. From Tudor feats of venison, boar, and beef, to today’s lean gobblers, the feast of St. Christ has been through quite a few meaty reincarnations. Once upon a midnight festive, the sight of arching swans or flamboyant peacocks would have been standard fare at Christmas. This…
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Christmas in the Victorian Workhouse
By Fabia Buescher (fb586@cam.ac.uk) In my previous two posts on Victorian Christmas traditions, I discussed Christmas puddings and Christmas trees, two integral customs of middle- and upper-class Christmas conviviality. Yet, while lavish Christmas dinners and beautiful Christmas decorations filled the middle- and upper-class homes, Christmas in the nineteenth-century workhouse looked very differently. In 1834, the…
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Market Day
At the turn of the hour when the days start lengthening again, the Christmas Markets come! Of all German contributions to Winterval festivities this one is perhaps the most unusual. While Tannenbaums and advent wreathes and a host of Christmas curios have arguably rather ancient origins, the mid-winter market is a decidedly more recent affair.…
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