Joanna Waugh

'Tis the Season

2011-12-01T05:28:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year again! To celebrate, I've gathered all my articles about Regency Christmas. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I've enjoyed researching and writing them over the years.

The Origins of Christmas

St. Nicholas Day

Father Christmas

Sacred Evergreens

Decking the Halls

Christmas Frivolity

Christmas Feast

Christmas M usic

Christmas Gift-Giving

Merry Christmas versus Happy Christmas

The German Christmas Tree

A special thanks to all of you for your continued support and encouragement. I wish each of you a merry Christmas and all the best in the coming year.

Swan Upping on the Thames

2011-07-30T06:36:00.000-07:00

For five days during the month of July, a census is conducted of the mute swans on the River Thames. The flotilla plies the river to count swans and tag cygnets. July is the chosen time for "swan upping" because adult swans are in molt and cygnets are too young to fly, making the birds easier to "drive up" or catch.

The Queen's swan warden oversees this operation. When the birds are spotted, the cry "All up!" is given and rowboats surround the birds. Gradually the swans are nudged toward the riverbank where boatmen jump out and catch them. Each bird is examined for signs of injury or sickness, weighed, measured and tagged, then released back to the river.

History
Mute swans are believed to have been brought to England in the 12th Century. The first written record of royal ownership is 1186 A.D. At that time, swans were a gastronomic delicacy. In 1251, Henry III's Christmas banquet required one hundred twenty five of them.

The first royal swan master was appointed in 1361 A.D. The Act of Swan in 1482 A.D. allowed certain landowners to own them as well, but required each owner pay five marks for the privilege. The landowner cut a unique mark in the bill of his swans. (Click on swan mark image for larger view.) At the height of swan popularity in the 16th Century, nine hundred people were granted "swan marks."

If convicted of illegal possession or killing of a swan, a person was sentenced to seven years hard labor, or transported.

Only three entities currently are allowed to own mute swans -- the Worshipful Company of Vintners, the Worshipful Company of Dyers, and Queen Elizabeth II. These Livery Companies were granted royal charters in the 15th Century. Vintners used to mark their swans with a nick on each side of the beak. The Dyers applied only one nick. Unmarked birds were the property of the Crown. Today, the birds' legs are tagged with identification bands -- the Vintners place a band on each leg, while the Dyers place a band on one leg. The Queen's birds are left untagged.

Livery Companies
There are currently one hundred eight Livery Companies registered in the City of London. Formed as guilds, each regulated wages and labor conditions of their particular trade, much as unions do now. Some continue to do so, but most have evolved into charitable organizations.

Like so much in Britain, there's an order of precedence among the Livery Companies. The two involved in swan upping are the Worshipful Company of Vintners (11th in order of precedence and wearing scarlet shirts during the upping) and the Worshipful Company of Dyers (13th in precedence and wearing navy blue shirts during the upping.) Both Livery Companies date from the 12th Century.

Bell-Ringing Swans

Built in the early 13th Century, the moat around Bishop's Palace in Wells, Somerset sports mute swans taught to pull a bell string for food. (Click on the picture to see a YouTube video of the bell-ringing swans.)

Resources:

The Queen's Swan Marker: Royal Swan Upping 2011
Swan Upping
Swan Upping: The Official Website of the British Monarchy
The City Livery Companies
The City of London Livery Companies

Queen Charlotte's Birthday Ball

2011-04-20T08:20:00.000-07:00

Once Easter was over, it was time for the ton to begin straggling back to London from their estates. But not until the royal family returned did the Season officially begin. And the highlight for any young lady was her presentation at court. After she made her curtsy to the king and queen, she was considered "out" in society.

George III is said to have inaugurated this custom in 1780 when he threw a ball to celebrate Queen Charlotte's birthday. In her book, Old Court Customs and Modern Court Rules, the Hon. Mrs. Armytage wrote:

"It was a point of etiquette that the ladies and gentlemen who meant to attend the court on a birth-day should be presented to their Majesties at a previous levee; a day was settled in the week for that purpose, and several foreigners of distinction, besides young-persons of fashion of both sexes, were presented..."

According to George III: His Court and His Family, presentation at court, "was then most particularly considered the sole introduction to high life..." The Queen "had a powerful weapon to wield; and she wielded it to good purpose, by once proscribing from her society all females of bankrupt or even of ambiguous character--demireps as they were called; never admitting to her public or private parties any lady, however high in rank, if she had on the slightest degree forfeited her claims to general respect."

The young lady being presented required a sponsor, a woman of rank who had already made her curtsy to the king and queen. Virginal white was the proscribed dress color, or pale tones on a white background. The gown itself could be of popular design, but no matter what style of dress, hoops and a feather in her headdress were de rigueur.

Typical was this description of the levee held before Queen Charlotte's birthday ball in 1818:

"Yesterday was the day appointed for the celebration of her Majesty's last birthday, and a drawing room was held accordingly...At one o'clock there was a salute of artillery in the Park and the Tower...An immense multitude of spectators were collected together in spite of the rain and cold. The court visitors were also very numerous; they began to arrive at one o'clock, and continued setting down till past three."

Queen Charlotte's Birthday Ball quickly became an annual event to benefit the Lying-In Hospital at Bayswater. The hospital served pregnant women regardless of marital status. (Until then, maternity hospitals catered only to married women.) As the mother of fifteen, this was a cause close to the queen's heart. The hospital came under her patronage around 1790-1810 and was renamed in her honor in 1813.

Until her death, Queen Charlotte's birthday ball was held in January or February. Eventually, it moved to May--her actual birthday month--but it's unclear when. Certainly by the early 20th Century. In 1958, Queen Elizabeth II ended the custom of debutantes making their curtsy to the queen because, as Princess Margret succinctly put it, "Every tart in London was getting in." That year, 1400 girls were presented over three days. (Factoid: the term debut was used to describe this event during George III's reign, but referring to the young lady being presented as a debutante didn't come into vogue until 1837.) Queen Charlotte's Ball was abandoned in 1976 because of drug use and "louchness" -- improper dress and a lack of personal hygiene among attendees. It was revived in 2009.

Resources:
Queen Charlotte's Birthday January, 1801
Queen Charlotte's Ball
Presentation at Court
Court Dresses
Memoirs of Her Late Majesty, Charlotte, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland by W. C. Oulton; 1819
Notes on the Foundation of Queen Charlotte's Hospital
The London Season and a Curious "Advertisement"
The London Season in 1841
Recalling the Lost Era of Debutantes
High Society: Whatever Happened to the Debs?
Come on Out, Girls
Debutantes of 2010: Backstage at the Queen Charlotte's Birthday Ball

The Devil's Hoof Prints

2011-02-02T08:29:00.001-08:00

Technically, this story falls outside the Regency period, but I found it too irresistible!)

On February 9, 1855, folks in villages throughout south Devon awoke to find strange hoof prints in the snow. The prints were said to resemble those of a donkey, and they wandered single-file through the countryside for about a hundred miles. This was no ordinary trail, however. The marks leaped walls, stopped dead on one side of a haystack only to resume on the other side (the hay was undisturbed). They crossed roofs, appeared to enter and exit a drain pipe, and disappeared abruptly through small holes in hedges. But what most frightened people from Topsham to Dawlish was evidence the prints approached the front doors of many homes.

In a Feb 16^th article, The London Times claimed locals believed they were the hoof prints of Satan.

Villagers tried to follow the trail or trails, but after a few miles gave up. So the source or end never was identified. Tracings of the prints were sent to the naturalist, Richard Owen, who responded in a March 4, 1855 Illustrated London News (Vol 26, p. 214) article. He claimed they’d been created by a badger. (See "Document 11" of Mike Dash's The Devil's Hoofmarks.)

Over the following weeks and months, other creatures were blamed for the mysterious trail. Nevertheless, the conviction persisted that the Devil walked in Devon.

And it appears he returned one hundred fifty four years later, almost to the day.

On March 5, 2009, seventy-six year old Jill Wade found prints in her back garden in Woolsery, Devon. They seem to match the description of those discovered in 1855. Zoologists investigated, but other than postulating they’d been created by a hare hopping on its hind legs, nothing definitive has been determined.

And so the mystery persists.

Resources:

The Devil’s Hoofmarks : Source Material on the Great Devon Mystery of 1855, edited by Mike Dash

Ancient mystery returns as ‘Satan’s hoofprints’ are spotted in Devon back garden; Mail Online, March 16, 2009

The German Christmas Tree

2010-12-01T05:42:00.000-08:00

Introduction of the German Christmas tree to the English court is generally attributed to Queen Victoria. But it was around from at least the early 1700s. In a footnote on p.75 of The Loseley Manuscripts, the editor wrote:

We remember a German of the household of the late Queen Caroline, making what he termed a Christmas tree for the juvenile party at that festive season. The tree was a branch of some evergreen fastened on a board. Its boughs bent under the weight of gilt oranges, almonds, &c. and under it was a neat model of a farmhouse, surrounded by figures of animals, &c. and all due accompaniments. The forming Christmas trees is, we believe, a common custom in Germany: evidently a remain of the pageants constructed at that season in ancient days.

Note: The Queen Caroline referred to here is likely Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II and queen from 1727-1737. Caroline of Brunswick was married to the Prince of Wales in 1795 (George IV) and was queen from January 1820 until her death in August, 1821. However, she was estranged from her husband and lived abroad from 1814 until she died.

Charlotte Papendiek, assistant wardrobe keeper and reader to Queen Charlotte (George III) observed in her 1789 journal:

This Christmas Mr. Papendiek proposed an illuminated tree, according to the German Fashion, but...I objected to it. Our eldest daughter, Charlotte, being only six the 30th of this November, I thought our children too young to be amused at so much expense and trouble. Mr. Papendiek was vexed--yet I do hope and trust the children were made happy.

In his Memoirs of Her Most Excellent Majesty, Sophia-Charlotte, Queen of Great Britain, John Watkins observed that at the beginning of October,1800:

...the royal family left the coast for Windsor, where Her Majesty kept the Christmas-day following in a very pleasing manner. Sixty poor families had a substantial dinner given them; and in the evening the children of the principal families in the neighbourhood were invited to an entertainment at the Lodge. Here, among other amusing objects for the gratification of the juvenile visitors, in the middle of the room stood an immense tub with a yew-tree place in it, from the branches of which hung bunches of sweetmeats, almonds, and raisins, in papers, fruits, and toys, most tastefully arranged, and the whole illuminated by small wax candles. After the company had walked around and admired the tree, each child obtained a portion of the sweets which it bore, together with a toy, and then all returned home quite delighted.

Amelia Murray wrote in her recollections of her mother, Lady Anne Murray (lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte, and later, Mistress of the Robes to Queen Victoria):

Christmas-trees are now common. In the early part of this century they were seldom seen, but Queen Charlotte always had one dressed up in the room of Madame Berkendorff her German attendant; it was hung with presents for the children, who were invited to see it, and I well remember the pleasure it was to hunt for one's own name, which was sure to be attached to one or more of the pretty gifts.

Georgina Townsend, housekeeper at Windsor Castle for 35 years (she died in 1835 at the age of 75) wrote that Queen Charlotte:

The Queen entertained the children here, Christmas Evening, in German fashion, A fir tree, about as high as any of us, lighted all over with small tapers, several little wax dolls among the branches in different places, and strings of walnuts and raisins alternately tied from one to the other, with skipping ropes for the boys, and each bigger girl had muslin for a frock, a muslin handkerchief, a fan, and a sash, all prettily done up in the handkerchief, and a pretty necklace and earrings besides. As soon as all the things were delivered by the Queen and Princesses, the candles on the tree were put out, and the children set to work to help themselves.

Years before she married her beloved Prince Albert, 13-year old Princess Victoria wrote in her diary on Christmas Eve, 1832:

After dinner we went upstairs. I then saw Flora, the dog which Sir John was going to give Mamma. Aunt Sophia came also. We then went into the drawing-room near the dining-room. After Mamma had rung a bell three times we went in. There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees with lights and sugar ornaments. All the presents being placed round the tree. I had one table for myself and the Conroy family had the other.

Resources:

The Loseley Manuscripts, edited by Alfred John Kempe; 1836: footnote p. 75

Court and Private Life in the Time of Queen Charlotte, Vol. 2; By Charlotte Louise Henrietta Papendiek; 1887; p.

Memoirs of Her Most Excellent Majesty, Sophia-Charlotte, Queen of Great Britain, by John Watkins; 1819; p.463

Recollections: 1803-1837,by Amelia Murray; published 1869 p.61

Queen Victoria: A Personal History by Christopher Hibbert, Da Capo Press;2000; footnote on p. 158

The Girlhood of Queen Victoria: a selection from her Majesty’s diaries Vol 1, published 1912; p. 61

Celebrating Horniness

2010-10-13T07:12:00.000-07:00

October 18th is St. Luke’s Day. Legend has it that, on this date sometime during the 12^th century, King John passed through the village of Charlton near Greenwich while hunting. He stopped at a mill to rest and was captivated by the absent miller's beautiful wife. When the husband returned unexpectedly and caught the two dallying, he threatened to kill them. King John made a bargain: in exchange for their lives, he granted the man ownership of the land between Charlton and the bend in the Thames at Rotherhithe. With it came the right to hold a fair at Charlton every St. Luke’s Day.

So how did the festival become associated with horns?

St. Luke is represented by the horned ox. (See: Symbols of the Four Evangelists.) Furthermore, from the mid-15^th century onward, horns had a sexual connotation, most likely a reference to stags in rut. For a man “to wear the horns” meant to be cuckolded. (The word cuckold derives from the Old French word for the cuckoo, cucu. Cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests.)

The bend in the river at Rotherhithe was known as Cuckold's Point. A pole with ram's horns atop it stood there until at least the late 17th century. On St. Luke's Day, revelers sporting antlers and blowing on ram's horns would gather at the Point and riotously make their way to Charlton.

Daniel Defoe described the Horn Fair as a yearly collection of mad people. “[T]he mob…take all kinds of liberties, and the women are eminently impudent…as if it were a time that justified the giving themselves a loose to all manner of indecency without any reproach…”

Harper's New Magazine reported in 1888: "While Horn Fair is not so famous in literature as is Mayfair or the Fair of St. Bartholomew, it is worthy of a place in profane history on account of its noise, drunkenness, ribaldry, and riot. Nothing was sold at Horn Fair but horns and things made of horn, unless it were gingerbread as tough as horn, and the worst strong drink that was ever brewed or distilled, or ever quailed from horn. It was frequented by a most motley crew; rabble from tho East End of London and from the City proper; men and women in smock-frocks and new white caps from the country round about, who came to drink the lusty, lusty horn, and to dance and gape and brawl and fight; with a liberal smattering of belles and gallants from Westminster, who had a passion in those days for riot, no matter how rough and unrefined it might be."

Many believe the festival actually is rooted in Celtic tradition. Whatever its lascivious origins, the event was stopped by the Greenwich Council in 1873. One hundred years later, it was revived as a family event that is now held in June.

Resources:
Charlton
Rotherhithe
Cuckold's Point
Charlton Fair
The Horn Fair of London: London's First Carnival?
Harper's New Magazine, Vol. 77; 1888; p.990
Travels in England, by Paul Hentzner
A Tour Through the Island of Britain Vol. 1, by Daniel Defoe; 1762; p.129-131
The sign of the cuckold
Charlton's Horn Fair Parade Revived

Shoes in the Wall

2010-05-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

One of the more unusual customs I’ve run across is the placing of worn shoes in the walls of buildings when they are constructed. Concealed shoes have been found in churches, cottages, manor houses, public buildings and castles. The Romans likely brought the custom to Britain. Food and drink sacrifices (and sometimes more gruesome offerings) were buried in the foundations of their own buildings.

In Britain, worn shoes have been discovered walled up over windows, doors, or in chimneys, but also in staircases and under floorboards. The oldest known concealed shoe was found in the wall of Winchester Cathedral’s choirstalls. It was put there in 1308. Recently a cache of shoes from the 17th-19th century was discovered in the walls of Liedberg Castle in Germany.

Shoes are a symbols of good luck. (Think of the old bridal poem, “something old, something new…and a silver six pence in her shoe.”) To put them near windows and doors indicates they were meant to prevent evil from coming inside.

concealed shoes from Pershore, Worcestershire

The notion of shoes as protectors dates to the 14th century when John Schorn, rector of North Marston, Buckinghamshire is purported to have cast the devil into a boot.

Curse of the Slippers of Papillion Hall

In the early 18th century, David Papillon kept his Spanish mistress a virtual prisoner in the east attic of Papillon Hall in Leicestershire. She died mysteriously, and her date of death and place of burial went unrecorded.

In 1903, during a renovation of the attic, the skeleton of a woman was found in the walls. Believed to be the bones of that long ago Spanish mistress, the story goes that her former lover murdered her because she was a witch but that, before she died, she evoked a curse. If her slippers ever were removed from the property, ill fortune would befall the owner.

Each time the Hall was sold, the lady's slippers were given to the new owner. There were a few times, however, when this custom wasn't followed--with disastrous results. (To read more about the curse, and to learn the whereabouts of the slippers today, click on the link below.)

This story dovetails with the commonly held belief that bad luck will follow if a concealed shoe is removed from its resting place during renovations. Homeowners should either place them back when repairs are completed, or substitute another shoe.

Resources:

Concealed Shoes in Buildings, by June Swann, keeper of the shoe and boot collection at Northampton Museum
Concealed Shoes and Garments
The Slippers of Papillion Hall
Historians Puzzle over the Meaning of Centuries-Old Shoes in Castle Wall
Shoes in the Wall
Common Ridings and Beating the Bounds

Mothering Sunday

2010-03-07T06:43:00.000-08:00

March 14th is Mothering Sunday in Britain, the equivalent of Mother’s Day in the US.

Until the mid-17th century, the fourth Sunday in Lent was known as Refreshment Sunday or Laetare Sunday. (Roughly translated, laetare means "delight" or "joyful.") For that one day, the Church relaxed its Lenten fasting rules in honor of the biblical story about the Feeding of the Five Thousand (Miracle of the Five Loaves and Fishes).

During the Middles Ages, the Church required that, at least once a year, people returned to their local or "mother" churches -- the one in which they were baptized. The fourth Sunday in Lent became the date upon which this was commonly done and the pilgrimage was referred to as going "a-mothering."

Gradually, the secular habit of honoring mothers was grafted onto the religious observance. It began as a region custom in the western counties, and slowly spread to the rest of Britain.

The first known reference to Mothering Sunday is found in the 1644 diary of Richard Symonds:

"Every mid-Lent Sunday is a great day in Worcester, when all the children and god-children meet at the head and chief of the family and have a feast. They call it the Mothering-day."

Mothering Sunday became the one day a year that people "in service" were allowed to return home for a visit. Children would bring their mothers small gifts, flowers, and a simnel cake.

According to Rebecca Edridge in 1822 --

“…members of the same family go to visit the oldest female of their line…The venerable matron on that day sits enthroned, the Queen of the festival.”

Old family stories were told and games played before the cowslip wine and cake were passed out.

Simnel Cakes

Simnellus was a kind of fine wheaten bread the Romans ate during their spring fertility rites. Since at least the time of Edward the Confessor, bakery goods were made on specially occasions from simnel. It was so highly prized that the canon, David de Aqua, willed land in Hertfordshire for its cultivation when he died in the late 12th century.

There are several legends about the origins of simnel cakes. According to one, a married couple -- Simon and Nell -- argued about whether to boil or bake the cake. (They did both.) In another, it was said the cake was invented by Henry VII's baker, Lambert Simnel. The later story is unlikely because Robert Herrick mentions simnel cake in his 1648 poem, To Dianeme: A Ceremony at Gloucester:

I'll to thee a simnel bring
'Gainst thou go'st a mothering
So that, when she blesseth thee,
Half that blessing thou'lt give to me.

Resources:

Mothering Sunday by G.D. Rosenthal; Project Canterbury

Mothering Sunday; The Gentleman’s Magazine Library 1731-1868; p. 31

Mothering Sunday, The Scrinium by Rebecca Edridge Vol II; 1822; p.17

Traditional Simnel Cake Recipe

Recipe for Cowslip Wine, Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management; Chapter 37: Beverage Receipes; p.1817

Simnel Cake, Practically Edible: The Web's Biggest Food Encyclopedia, 2010

The Outfit for the Profession of an Austin Canoness at Lacock, Wilts. in the Year 1395, and Other Memorabilia, By the Rev. W.G. Clark Maxwell, M.A., F.S.A.;The Archaeological Journal Vol LXIX No. 273 Second Series Vol. XIX No. 1;By British Archaeological Association, Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland; March, 1912; p. 122

Diary of the Marches of the Royal Army During the Great Civil War kept by Richard Symonds; Edited by Charles Edward Long, Trinity College, Cambridge; 1859; p. 27

Hesperides #684: To Dianeme: A Ceremony in Gloucester by Robert Herrick; The Hesperides & Noble Numbers Vol II; Edited by Alfred Plllard; Aberdeen University Press; 1898

Wilt thou be mine, Love--aye or no?

2010-01-27T07:19:00.000-08:00

In 1819, the poet Charles Lamb wrote of February 14th: [T]his is the day upon which those charming little missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and intercross each other at every street and turning. The weary and all for-spent twopenny postman sinks beneath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own. It is scarcely credible to what an extent this ephemeral courtship is carried on…to the great enrichment of porters, and detriment of knockers and bell-wires.

Lamb was speaking of a custom that dates to at least the 15th century. The oldest known valentine written in English was discovered among the Paston Letters in the British Library. Margery Brews penned it to her fiancé John Paston in 1477:

Right reverent and worshipful and my right well-beloved valentine, I recommend me unto you full heartedly, desiring to hear of your welfare, which I beseech Almighty God long for to preserve unto his pleasure and your hearts desire.

Prior to that discovery, the oldest valentines in British possession were those of Charles, Duke of Orleans. Orleans wrote more than sixty to his wife in France over the course of his twenty-five year incarceration in the Tower of London following the Battle of Agincourt in 1415:

Wilt thou be mine? dear Love, reply--
Sweetly consent or else deny.
Whisper softly, none shall know,
Wilt thou be mine, Love?--aye or no?

Many examples of Victorian valentines have survived, but what did the earlier ones look like?

Usually homemade, they were hand-painted and decorated with lacy paper, ribbons, gold leaf, satins, silks and exotic feathers. Enterprising publishers took advantage of the craze by printing chapbooks of verses. Publications like The New English Valentine Writer by J. Turner (1784), and Every Ladies Own Valentine Writer by J. Roach (1797) addressed all levels of intimacy and even provided responses to their own poems.

1790 puzzle purse valentine

According to Mr. Lamb: In these little visual interpretations, no emblem is so common as the heart—that little three-cornered exponent of all our hopes and fears…it is twisted and tortured into more allegories and affectations than an opera hat." Some were on the "finest gilt paper with borders--full not of common hearts and heartless allegory, but all the prettiest stories of love from Ovid and older poets...

In 1667, Dr. Samuel Pepys wrote: This morning, came up to my wife's bedside, I being up dressing myself, little Will Mercer to be her Valentine; and brought her name writ upon blue paper in gold letters... Two days later, Pepys visited Mrs. Pearse and was given a valentine by her little girl. But here I do first observe, he wrote, the fashion of drawing mottos as well as names, so that Pearse, who drew my wife, did draw also a motto...'Most courteous and fair'...

In her article for Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1901, Millicent Olmsted provides a glimpse at a particular style with which we all are familiar--the cut paper valentine. According to Ms. Olmsted, they were folded and delicately cut with saw-tooth edges, then opened and filled in with written sentiments. The one shown here is very old, ragged, yellow and limp. It was sent to Permillia Wainright in New Jersey, and bears on the back of it her initials and the date, 1783. During the decades, the valentine has fallen to tatters and has lost a narrow outer ring that bore the inscription: "Round is the ring that has no end. So is my love to you, my friend."

(Olmsted goes on to describe a puzzle purse valentine from 1790. To see what it looked like, click on Nancy's Puzzle Purse Valentine in the resource list below. The one Ms. Rosin shows from 1816 fits Olmsted's description. To read the verses, click the Boston Evening Transcript link to Come Be My Valentine, or refer to Olmsted's Cosmopolitan article.)

Other popular valentine designs:
acrostic -- first letter of each verse spells a vertical word
pinprick -- holes were pricked in a pattern with a needle or pin
stencil
rebus -- pictures drawn to convey a word, like an eye for the word "I"
loveknots

It seems odd that, in all Jane Austen's letters and stories, she never refers to Valentine's Day. Most Janeites believe Frank Churchill's gift of a pianoforte to Jane Fairfax in Emma occurred on February 14th, but Austen doesn't say so. Perhaps her opinion of valentines more closely resembled that of Elizabeth Bennet in Pride & Prejudice:

"I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!"
"I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love," said Darcy.
"Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away."

Resources:

Valentine's Day, Essays of Elia, Charles Lamb, 1819
Love's Labour Found, BBC News, February 14, 2000
Two Letters from Margery Brews to John Paston in February 1477, The ORB:On-Lone Reference Book for Medieval Studies
Victorian Valentines: Part 1, Candice Hern, February 1,2003
Valentine Puzzle Purses, Origami Resource Center
Nancy's Puzzle Purse Valentine
The Diary of Samuel Pepys, the Globe Edition with introduction and notes by G. Gregory. Smith, London 1905, MacMillan and Co. Ltd., p. 465
Chapbooks: Definition and Orgins
Valentine Writers, Victoriana Magazine
The Festival of Love by Millicent Olmsted, Cosmopolitan: A Monthly Illustrated Magazine, Vol. XXX; November 1900-April, 1901; Millicent Olmstead, p. 372-380
"Come Be My Valentine", Boston Evening Transcript, March 20, 1899; p. 7
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1918; p.44

Merry Christmas versus Happy Christmas

2009-12-09T05:59:00.000-08:00

I've always been intrigued why the British say "Happy Christmas" and we in the US say "Merry Christmas." An internet search revealed that, prior to the 1830s, “Merry Christmas” was the more popular salutation. The term “Merry Christmas” dates to at least 1565, when it appeared in The Hereford Municipal Manuscript:

And thus I comytt you to god, who send you a mery Christmas...

The phrase “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year” appeared in a 1699 letter from Admiral Frances Hosier to Robert Smith, a storekeeper at the Deptford dockyards in Woolrich, England. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol solidified the phrase in 1843 when, at the end of the story, Ebenezer Scrooge wished Cratchet, “A merry Christmas, Bob!”

In terms of oral tradition, “Merry Christmas” was around in the 16^th century West Country carol, “We wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”

A little tougher to track is “Happy Christmas.” It isn’t an entirely British phrase, however. In 1823, New Yorker Clement Clark Moore wrote the classic Christmas poem, A Visit From St. Nick/Twas the Night Before Christmas which concludes with:

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

(It is interesting to note that, in some later editions, the phrase was changed to “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.” For what reason, no one is sure.)

By the late 19^th -- early 20^th centuries, “Happy Christmas” had become the more popular phrase in England. Perhaps for the same reason Queen Elizabeth II prefers it. “Merry Christmas” implies drunkenness and a bubbling over of festivity.

The association of merriment with Christmas can be found as far back as Sir Thomas Elyot’s 1548 Dictionary:

.…as the vulgare people saie, Reste you mery.

That sentiment is echoed in the Christmas carol, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” first published in William Sandys’ Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern in 1833.

The word “merry” didn’t start out associated with revelry. It derives from the Anglo-Saxon word myrige which meant pleasant and agreeable rather than jolly. Or perhaps Happy Christmas gained in popularity for the simple reason that greetings in general begin with the word “happy” – happy birthday, happy holiday, happy new year. To say “Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year” just doesn’t roll off the tongue quite like the other. But as a stand-alone phrase, "Happy Christmas" is consistent with long-standing salutatory customs.

The First Christmas Card

As the above image demonstrates, the first commercial Christmas card sported the phrase, “Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year.” It made its appearance the same year Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published. Sir Henry Cole, a British civil servant who had no time to pen personal greetings to family and friends, commissioned the English painter, John C. Horsley to create the triptych card. One thousand of them were printed in black and white, then hand-colored. (Horsley’s card was based on the 18^th century custom of schoolboys creating “Christmas pieces” for their families. This elaborately decorated stationery sported written messages that showcased the boys’ penmanship.)

But no matter which phrase you prefer—the one another Cole by the name of Nat so aptly crooned in 1946:

Although it’s been said

many times, many ways,

Merry Christmas to you.”

Or the great John Lennon sang in 1971:

And so happy Christmas

we hope you have fun

The near and the dear ones

The old and the young…

Wishing you and yours all the best of the season. And God bless us, every one!