Chapter Notes

For ease of reference, the notes referenced in “Christmas: A Biography” have been broken into chapters below. Simply click the + sign to view the notes relating to that chapter. If you prefer, you can download a PDF of all notes by clicking here.

1  ‘there are not Christmases . . .’: C. Day Lewis, ‘Remembering Christmas’, Picture Post, 25 December 1948, cited in Martin Johnes, Christmas and the British: A Modern History (London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), pp. 136–7.

2  That Christmas was once religious: This belief is as prevalent among academics as it is in the popular mind. Junko Kimura and Russell W. Belk, describing Christmas in Japan, always a commodity-driven, secular import from the West, nevertheless open: ‘Christmas celebrations . . .have . . . become quite secular’ (my italics), ‘Christmas in Japan: Globalization Versus Localization’, Consumption, Markets and Culture, 8, 3, 2005, p. 325. The same occurs with Western historians. For example, John C. Hirsh, in his very fine Medieval Lyric: Middle English Lyrics, Ballads, and Carols (Oxford, Blackwell, 2005), writes of a carol of 1504 that it ‘seems almost to resist the idea that Christmas is a religious feast’, whereas, in reality, in 1504, the lyrics were a straightforward secular response to an almost entirely secular holiday (pp. 42–3).

5  There was a census carried out in 6 ce: E. P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1993), p. 87.

6  If Mary gave birth in December: For the details of the sources of the nativity story, I have relied on Paul Frodsham, From Stonehenge to Santa Claus: The Evolution of Christmas (Stroud, History Press, 2008), pp. 57 .

From the second century: Bruce David Forbes and Je rey Mahan, eds., Religion and Popular Culture in America (rev. edn, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2005), pp. 22 .

6  the establishment of Christmas: Forbes and Mahan, Religion and Popular Culture, pp. 25, 29–30.

7  ‘feasting to excess’: Frodsham, From Stonehenge to Santa Claus, p. 90.

According to biblical scholars’ calculations: Frodsham, From Stonehenge to Santa Claus, p. 75.

No convincing evidence of winter solstice: There are many reports of pagan winter solstice festivals, but on examination, most of these are insubstantial ghosts. For example, some Neolithic sites in Britain appear to have been laid out with some link to the winter solstice in their orientation. There are, however, many others from the same era with no discernible connection to the solstice. And from the time these sites were abandoned – around the second millennium bce – until the first and second centuries ce, after the Roman invasion of Britain, there is no surviving indication of the importance of the winter sun. In Iron Age Britain, worship possibly focused on wet places, running water; in Celtic areas, ceremonies clustered around agricultural cycles, not solstices. The only evidence

we have of religious interest in the sun was from St Patrick in the fifth century ce, when he warned that those who worshipped the sun would ‘come miserably and unhappily to punishment’. As with Gregory of Nazianzus’s pronouncement on excessive dancing, it is unlikely that the saint would trouble to warn of the doom awaiting sun- worshippers if he had never seen any. Frodsham, From Stonehenge to Santa Claus, pp. 47–51, warns against reading too much into the scant Neolithic traces that survive, it appears to want to be swayed; Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 5–8, holds out more strongly, although he does cite medieval writings about earlier times as a sort of quasi-evidence.

7n 25th of December was the shortest day of the year: Frodsham, Stonehenge to Santa, pp. 11–12.

‘drunkenness and impious dancing’: The information on the Kalends and Saturnalia is derived from Frodsham, Stonehenge to Santa, pp. 81–4, and Hutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 2–3. Libanius is cited in Clement A. Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan (London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1912), pp. 168–9. The sixth-century church father is often said to be Augustine of Hippo, but Frodsham suspects Cæsarius of Arles may have been the author, p. 83.

8  By the first century, Mithraism: Frodsham, Stonehenge to Santa, pp. 85–91; Hutton, Stations of the Sun, p. 1.

9  ‘when the doctors of the Church’: Sciptor Syrus, cited in Hutton, Stations of the Sun, p. 1.

In 567 the Council of Tours: Frodsham, Stonehenge to Santa, pp. 90 .

The Venerable Bede, in c.730: Scott C. Lowe, Christmas

Philosophy for Everyone: Better than a Lump of Coal (Chichester,

Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), p. 40.
10 today in Scandinavia: Iørn Piø, ‘Christmas Traditions in

Scandinavia’, in Thomas Pettitt and Leif Søndergaard, eds., Custom, Culture and Community in the Later Middle Ages: A Symposium (Odense, Odense University Press, 1994), p. 57.

10 a festival following the harvest: For Bede and the Yule tradition I have drawn on Frodsham, Stonehenge to Santa,
pp. 97 . (although the doubts about Sleipnir’s carrots are my own); Hutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 6–7; Bruce David Forbes, Christmas: A Candid History (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007), p. 11; and Lowe, Christmas Philosophy, pp. 39–41.

10  The older oral tradition: Kathleen Stokker, Keeping Christmas: Yuletide Traditions in Norway and the New Land (St Paul, MN, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2000), pp. 6–8.

11  In the twelfth century: Steve Roud, The English Year: A Month-by-Month Guide to the Nation’s Customs and Festivals from May Day to Mischief Night (London, Penguin, 2006), p. 11.

11 In the Netherlands: Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott, eds., The New Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 182.

11  ‘Here Herod rages’: Cited in Keyte and Parrott, New Oxford Book of Carols, p. 120.

12  Priests and clerks . . . : This fifteenth-century French denunciation cited in Frodsham, Stonehenge to Santa, p. 111.

12 ‘Boy bishops’: Bridget Ann Henisch, Cakes and Characters, An English Christmas Tradition (London, Prospect, 1984), p. 35.

1213 Many Swiss districts: Schweizerisches Idiotikon, Schweizerdeutsches Wörterbuch, ‘Chlaus’, https://digital.idiotikon.ch/idtkn/id3. htm#!page/30687/mode/1up, accessed March 2017. I was

directed to this extraordinary resource by Gabriele Coppetti, and I thank her for that, and also Heidi Gerber for her care and knowledge in translating it for me.

13n By 1752, George II: Horace Walpole, The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, ed. W. S. Lewis, et. al (48 vols., London, Oxford University Press, 1937–83), vol. 9, p. 125; a mere rag: Henry Greville, Leaves from the Diary of Henry Greville, ed. Vicountess Enfield (4 vols., London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1883–1905), vol. 2, pp. 78–9.

14 On Christmas Day 1213: J. A. R. Pimlott, The Englishman’s Christmas: A Social History (Hassocks, Harvester Press, 1978), p. 21.

14 Two hundred years later: William Sandys, Christmastide: Its History, Festivities, and Carols (London, John Russell Smith, [1852]), p. 3.

14 One recipe for a Christmas pie from 1394: Rev. Gordon Huelin, ‘Christmas in the City’, Guildhall Studies in London History, vol. 3, no. 3, 1978, p. 165.

14n This was made for a feast at the Salters’ Company: Philip Massinger, The City Madam, in The Selected Plays of Philip Massinger, ed. Colin Gibson (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 306.

15 Yet the late fourteenth-century poem: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. Simon Armitage (London, Faber, 2007), p. 44. I must confess to a slight confusion over the chronology of the poem at this point. Gawain has travelled, p. 38, ‘until Christmas Eve’; p. 39, the next morning he moves on, which would suggest that it was now Christmas Day. But if he’s eating fish on ‘penance plates’, it’s a fast day, which should mean it’s the 24th, the last fast day of Advent. The next day, p. 49, is plainly Christmas Day, as they enjoy ‘feasting . . . fun, and such feelings of joy . . .’

15 ‘slaughter-time’: Thomas Tusser, Some of the Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (Oxford, John Henry Parker, 1848 [1577]), p. 36.

15–16 In the colder parts of Europe: Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, pp. 202–4.

16 In the twelfth century: The story appears in Geo rey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, Book VI, ch. 12; it is endlessly recited in almost all histories of Christmas in Britain, from the 1730s Round About Our Coal Fire, to John Brady, Clavis Calendaria; or, A Compendious Analysis of the Calendar . . . (London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1812–13), vol. 2, pp. 336–7, and then almost everywhere, as though the story had been handed down on tablets of stone.

16 In one area in France: The following examples appear in Jean-Michel Mehl, ‘Games in their Seasons’, trans. Thomas Pettitt, in Pettitt and Søndergaard, Custom, Culture and Community in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 71–80.

16n Although one folklorist has dryly referred: Roud, English Year, pp. 402–3.

17  In England, legislation permitted holiday gambling: Cited in Frodsham, Stonehenge to Santa, p. 119.

18  And when the tenants come: George Gascoigne, A hundreth sundrie flowres bounde up in one small poesie . . . (London, Richarde Smith, 1573), STC (2nd edn) / 11635.

18  no ‘disguising, nor harpings’: Letter of 24 December 1459, Paston Letters, ed. Norman Davis (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 28.

19  Christmas was primarily a time of ‘feaste . . .’: The dictionary of syr Thomas Eliot knight (London, Thomæ Bertheleti, 1538), STC (2nd edn) / 7659.

20 ‘for delighting the people’: James VI and I, Basilikon Doron (1599), cited in Peter R. Roberts, ‘The Business of Playing and the Patronage of Players at the Jacobean Courts’, in Ralph Houlbrooke, James VI and I (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2006), p. 89.

20  Edward IV’s household included a ‘wayte’: John Ashton, A Righte Merrie Christmasse!!! The Story of Christ-tide (London, Leadenhall Press, 1894), p. 65.

21  both had crowned Bean Kings: Henisch, Cakes and Characters, pp. 38–9.

21  ‘with black visors, not amiable’: John Stow, A Survey of London, written in the year 1598, ed. William J. Thoms ([facsimile of 1603 edition] London, Chatto & Windus, 1876), p. 37.

22  ‘a thing not seen afore in England’: Cited in Frodsham, Stonehenge to Santa, pp. 122–3.

22 ‘a very proper man of personage’: Gray’s Inn records, cited in Henisch, Cakes and Characters, p. 40.

22  one Londoner described the Lord of Misrule: Henry Machyn, The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant- Taylor of London, from A.D. 1550 to A.D. 1563, ed. John Gough Nichols (London, Camden Society, 1848), pp. 28–9.

23  The Inner Temple held a breakfast: From records of the Inner Temple account books, reprinted in D. B. Wyndham Lewis and G. C. Heseltine, eds., A Christmas Book: An Anthology for Moderns (London, J. M. Dent, 1928), pp. 264–6.

24  The expenditure could be extraordinary: Penne L. Restad, Christmas in America: A History (New York, Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 7.

24 in the fifteenth century the City of London forbade: Huelin, ‘Christmas in the City’, p. 164.

24 a banned St Thomas’s Day parade in York: Cited in Jacqueline Simpson and S. Roud, Dictionary of English Folklore (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 402.

24 In Lincoln in 1637: Calendar of State Papers, Domestic. 24n ‘a silly play’: Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed.

Robert Latham and William Matthews (London, Bell &

Hyman, 1970–76), 6 January 1663, vol. 4, p. 6.
24–5 mumming traditions in Scandinavia: Piø, ‘Christmas

Traditions in Scandinavia’, pp. 58–9.

25  In some areas of Newfoundland: Herbert Halpert and 
G. M. Story, eds., Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland (Toronto, University of Toronto Press for Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1969), passim. This study of mumming investigates several communities in depth. I have here merged the customs reported separately in di erent communities to give an overall picture.

26  Other rituals were recorded in the British Isles: Roud, English Year, pp. 402–3.

26  In a morality play of 1578: Thomas Lupton, All for Money, STC (2nd edn) / 16949.

27  in 1419, the City of London aldermen: Huelin, ‘Christmas in the City’, pp. 164–5.

27 ‘It is not for men to bee like swine’: Thomas Anyan, ‘A sermon preached at Saint Marie Spittle, April 10 1615’, STC (2nd edn) / 698.

27 groups of hogglers: These hogglers are recorded to have been active in Gloucestershire, Somerset, Devon, Surrey, Sussex, Kent and the Fens of Lincolnshire. They seem to have been particularly active in the south-west of the country. Hutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 12–13.

27 Pope Gregory the Great had noted: Gregory the Great to Abbot Mellitus, 601 ce, cited in Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 51.

2728 One sixteenth-century historian claimed: Stow, Survey of London, p. 37.

28 Another fifteenth-century legend: Alexander Tille, Yule and Christmas: Their Place in the Germanic Year (London, David Nutt, 1899), pp. 172–3.

28 paradise plays: Philip Snyder, The Christmas Tree Book: The History of the Christmas Tree and Antique Christmas Tree Ornaments (New York, Viking, 1977), pp. 11–12; Reval tree: ibid.

28–29 As early as 1419: Bernd Brunner, Inventing the Christmas Tree, trans. Benjamin A. Smith (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2012), p. 3; German ordinances: ibid.

29 By the end of the century: The development of the tree that follows has been gathered from Snyder, Christmas Tree Book, pp. 4, 6, 12, 13; Brunner, Inventing the Christmas Tree, pp. 5, 25.

29  It was later said that Martin Luther: The legend is recounted by, among many others, Restad, Christmas in America, pp. 57–8.

30  Wittenberg, a town with no record: Brunner, Inventing the Christmas Tree, p. 8.

30 The earliest Christmas music: The dating of early carols
is almost impossible, and every expert throughout the centuries has attributed di erent words, lyrics and dates
to each and every survival. I have relied on, in particular, Richard Layton Greene, The Early English Carols (2nd edn, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1977), John C. Hirsh, ed., Medieval Lyric: Middle English Lyrics, Ballads, and Carols (Oxford, Blackwell, 2005); Keyte and Parrott, New Oxford Book of

Carols; and William E. Studwell, Christmas Carols: A Reference

Guide (New York, Garland, 1985).
31 ‘The March of the Kings’: I am grateful to Eme Sipta for

checking the Polish spellings and translations.
31 Lords, by Christmas and the host: Cited in Miles, Christmas

in Ritual and Tradition, p. 36.
31 at the Inns of Court on the feast of St Thomas: Greene,

The Early English Carols, pp. xl–xli.

31  Nowell, Nowell, Nowell, Nowell: Percy Dearmer, Ralph 
Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw, eds., The Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1928), no. 21, pp. 41–3.

32  With the dead come various intercessors: Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, pp. 199 .

32 There was a seemingly endless stream: Charles W. Jones, Saint Nicholas of Myra, Bari, and Manhattan: Biography of
a Legend (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1978),
pp. 309–12.

32 Words associated with them: Throughout, I am grateful to Tobias Hoheisel, who has helped me with German translation. Shaun Whiteside was enlightening on some of these dialect words, and I thank him.

33n There were a few women too: Paul Hawkins, Bad Santas, and Other Creepy Christmas Characters (London, Simon & Schuster, 2013), pp. 56–7.

35 The date of this verse is unknown: The poem is was frequently reprinted in the nineteenth century, always as an ‘old song’, sometimes with a date of 1666. The British Library owns a copy of a broadside printing, in Roxburghe Ballads, Roxburghe 1.406–7, which the University of California English Broadside Ballad archive dates to pre-Civil War England, suggesting ?1619–?29.

35 A cookery book of 1660: Robert May, The Accomplisht Cook, or, The Art and Mystery of Cookery, facsimile of 1865 edition, with foreword, intro. and glossaty by Alan Davison, Marcus Bell, Tom Jaine (London, Prospect, 2012), n.p.

35 the Duke of Buckingham entertained: Felicity Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 56–8, 70 .

35  Lower down the social scale: Heal, Hospitality, pp. 72–6.

36  the Archbishop of York hosted a series of holiday 
dinners: Heal, Hospitality, p. 280.

36 Good bread & good drinke: Thomas Tusser, Five Hundred

Points of Good Husbandry . . . (London, Richard Tottil, 1573),

STC (2nd edn) / 24375.

36  Brawn had headed the list for centuries: Claire Hopley, The History of Christmas Food and Feasts (Barnsley, Remember 
When, 2009), p. 124.

37  some confusion in the Anglo-Norman period: Sandys, 
Christmastide, pp. 32–3.

37  This implausible story: The Times, 26 December 1826, p. 3, 
‘Christmas. The Curious and Ancient Ceremony of the Boar’s Head at Christmas’. The story is repeated, by, among others, Ashton, Merrie Christmasse, Thomas K. Hervey, The Book of Christmas (London, William Spooner, 1837), and William Hone, The Every-Day Book, or, The Guide to the Year . . . (London, William Tegg, 1827).

38  ‘Capons and Hennes’: [Nicholas Breton], Fantasticks: Serving for a Perpetuall Prognostication . . . (London, Francis Williams, 1626), n.p., ‘December’.

38 An eighteenth-century Swiss traveller: This was César- François de Saussure, cited in Pimlott, The Englishman’s Christmas, p. 47.

38 a masque at the Inner Temple: Thomas Middleton, The

Collected Works, ed. Gary Taylor, John Lavagnino, et. al. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2007), ‘Masque of Heroes; or, The Inner Temple Masque’, pp. 1320–30.

41  The youth in every place doe flocke: This was written by a German, the Reformation writer Thomas Naogeorgus, in 1555, but was relevant widely enough that it was ‘englyshed’ by the Protestant poet Barnabe Googe in 1570; Thomas Naogeorgus, ‘englyshed by Barnabe Googe’, The popish kingdome, or reigne of Antichrist (London, Henrie Denham, for Richarde Watkins, 1570), STC (2nd edn) / 15011.

42  ‘where we were never more merry’: John Smith, The generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles . . . STC (2nd edn) / 22790, 1624, p. 74.

42 ‘we went on shore’: Mourt’s Relation or Journal of the Plantation at Plymouth, Henry Martyn Dexter, ed. (Boston, John Kimball Wiggin, 1865 [1622]), pp. 66–7.

42  ‘begane to erecte’: William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Charles Deane (Boston, privately printed, 1856), p. 88.

43  ‘in the streete at play’: Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, p. 112.

43 In the 1620s and 1630s: Drawn from Mary Barber and Flora McPherson, Christmas in Canada: The Early Days from Sea to Sea, Spirit of Christmas Past, Spirit of Christmas Present (Toronto, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1959), pp. 3–8; and Leslie Bella, The Christmas Imperative: Leisure, Family, and Women’s Work (Halifax, Fernwood, 1992), pp. 66–7. The figures on

emigration to New England in the next paragraph are from

Bella, p. 66.
44 ‘Be holy in Lent’: ‘The Husbandmans lesson to his sonne’

in William Basse, A Helpe to memory and discourse . . . (1630),

STC (2nd edn) / 13051.3.

44  Even churchmen agreed: Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, cited 
in Michaela Thurner-Uhle, The Representation and Function of Christmas in English Literature of the 19th and 20th Centuries (Hamburg, Verlag Dr Kovacˇ, 2009), p. 53.

45  some apprentices forced their masters to close: Mercurius Aulicus, 24 December 1643.

45 ‘Christmas was kil’d at Nasbie fight’: ‘The world is turned upside down’ (London, s.n., 1646), Thomas 669.f.10[47].

45 greenery was defiantly hung: Huelin, ‘Christmas in the City’, p. 168. My retelling of the Puritan war on Christmas is drawn from a variety of sources, including Chris Durston, ‘Lords of Misrule: The Puritan War on Christmas, 1642–60’, History Today, 35, December 1985, pp. 7–14; Restad, Christmas in America, pp. 7–8; Katharine Lambert Richards, How Christmas Came to the Sunday-schools: The Observance of Christmas in the Protestant Church Schools of the United States. An Historical Study (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1934), pp. 42–3; and Sutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 25 . (the latter being unusual in outlining clearly the Scottish narrative as distinct from the English).

45 John Evelyn found: The Diary of John Evelyn, ed. John Bowle (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985), 1652, p. 151; 1653, pp. 152–3; 1655, p. 167; 1657, pp. 173–4.

47  In 1659 the Massachusetts Bay court: Cited in Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), pp. 13–14, 15.

48  feasted. [his] Tenants’: Ralph Josselin, The Diary of Ralph

Josselin, 1616–1683, ed. Alan Macfarlane (London, The

British Academy, 1976), p. 539.

48  The poet Robert Herrick: For all that follows on Herrick 
in this chapter I have relied heavily on the excellent introduction to Robert Herrick, The Complete Poetry of Robert Herrick, ed. Tom Cain and Ruth Connolly (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013), in particular vol. 1, pp. xv, xxiii . for information both on Herrick’s life and the interpretation of his verse. The poems are all cited using the text of these two volumes. Leah S. Marcus, The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1986), pp. 140 . is also enlightening.

49  another, from Sussex: Hutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 46–7. The suggested linking of ‘howl’ and ‘yule’ in: Bob Bushaway, By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England, 1700–1880 (London, Junction, 1982), p. 157.

49 John Aubrey: Cited in Robert W. Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in English Society, 1700–1850 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973), pp. 26–7.

49  lighting the ‘Christmas Log’: Cited in Roud and Simpson, Dictionary of English Folklore, p. 403.

50  Once more Taylor echoed: John Taylor, The Complaint of Christmas, Written after Twelfetide, and Printed before Candlemas ([?1646]), p. 7; herbalist: W. Coles, The Art of Simpling. An Introduction to the Knowledge and Gathering of Plants (London, Nath. Brook, 1656), pp. 40–41.

51  Ben Jonson’s 1616 Christmas, His Masque: Marcus, Politics of Mirth, pp. 78 .

51 ‘King of good cheer’: Thomas Nabbes, The springs glorie Vindicating love by temperance against the tenent . . . in a maske . . . (London, I.D., for Charles Greene, 1638) n.p.

51 old man behind bars: Anon., The Arraignment, Conviction, and Imprisoning of Christmas: On St. Thomas day last . . . (1645), reprinted in Walter W. Schmauch, The Tryal of Old Father Christmas (Chicago, Walter M. Hill, 1937).

51 the Weihnachtsmann: Brunner, Inventing the Christmas Tree, pp. 23–5.

51  the Christkind: Joe Perry, Christmas in Germany: A Cultural History (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2010), p. 34.

52  So were baked goods: Jones, Saint Nicholas, pp. 316–17.

52 Pepysrecordedthathispatron:Pepys,Diary,4January1661,

vol. 2, p. 5. I am grateful to Ann Goldgar for her help with

this passage.

52  it was rumoured: Cited in Pimlott, Englishman’s Christmas, 
p. 42.

53  Pepys recorded receiving: Pepys, Diary, 23 December 1660, 
vol. 1, p. 321; 2 January 1660, vol. 1, p. 40.

53 ‘their Christmas Boxes were banished’: Taylor, Complaint of

Christmas, p. 6.

53  When Pepys paid his shoemaker: Pepys, Diary, 19 December 
1663 and 25 December 1667, vol. 4, p. 426 and vol. 8, 
p. 589.

54  Pepys’s Christmas dinner: Pepys, Diary, 25 December 1662, 
vol. 3, p. 293.

54  The first major cookbook in English: May, The Accomplisht Cook, n.p.

55  With this went music: [Breton], Fantasticks, n.p.

56  Now that the time is come wherein: Cited in [Henry 
Vizetelly, ed.], Christmas with the Poets: A Collection of Songs, Carols, and Descriptive Verses, Relating to the Festival of Christmas . . . (London, David Bogue, 1855)112–14.

57  ‘so we’l be higly pigly’: Cited in Edward Bliss Reed, ed.,

Christmas Carols Printed in the Sixteenth Century, including Kele’s

Christmas carolles newely Inprynted (Cambridge, Harvard

University Press, 1932), pp. xxxv–xxxvi.
57 ‘to Drunkenness, Gluttony, & unlawful Gaming’:

Schmauch, Tryal of Old Father Christmas, p. 15.
57 ‘begot i’ the Christmas Holydaies’: William Davenant, The

Witts. A Comedie (London, Richard Meighen, 1636) STC

(2nd edn) / 6309.
57 ‘the time of the whole year’: Cited in David Parker,

Christmas and Charles Dickens (Brooklyn, AMS Press, 2005),

59.

57  In 1635, just before the Civil War: Henisch, Cakes and Characters, pp. 47–8.

58  ‘as free as an open house at Christmas’: Richard Brinsley 
Sheridan, A Trip to Scarborough. A Comedy (London, G. Wilkie, 
1781), p. 63.

58 Small tenants were now wined and dined: Heal, Hospitality,

162 .
58 the ‘true bred Gallant’: Schmauch, Tryal of Old Father

Christmas, p. 60.
58 Pepys went to church: Pepys, Diary, 25 December 1661,

vol. 2, p. 238.

58  court records in Scotland: Henisch, Cakes and Characters, 
pp. 51–2.

59  The Scandinavian equivalent of the English hobby-horse: 
Piø, ‘Christmas Traditions in Scandinavia’, pp. 61–2, 63–7.

59  In Switzerland the gift-bringer: Schweizerisches Idiotikon, 
‘Chlaus’.

60  Fill up your cups: This was first cited in Notes and Queries in 
1859, as a seventeenth-century custom, which it may have been. Cited in Henisch, Cakes and Characters, pp. 17–18.

60 ‘on Twelve-Day we cry’d’: Cited in Henisch, Cakes and Characters, p. 49.

60 The first recipe we know of for a bean cake: Henisch, Cakes and Characters, pp. 133–4.

60n Pepys owned a copy: Helen Leach, Mary Brown and Raelene Inglis, The Twelve Cakes of Christmas: An Evolutionary History, with Recipes (Dunedin, NZ, Otago, 2011).

61 ‘every action . . . proper’: Matthew Stevenson, The Twelve Moneths, or, A pleasant and profitable discourse of every action, whether of Labour or Recreation, proper to each particular Moneth . . . (London, Thomas Jenner, 1661), p. 4.

61n ‘a most admirable Slut’: Pepys, Diary, 21 February 1664, vol. 5, p. 55.

62 ‘In the evening we were merry’: William Byrd, The Secret Diary of William Byrd of Westover, 1709–1712, ed. Louis B. Wright and Marion Tinling (Richmond, VA, The Dietz Press, 1941), 24 December 1709, pp. 122–3.

62  Some, like Landon Carter: Landon Carter, The Diary
of Colonel Landon Carter . . . 1752–1778, ed. Jack P. Greene (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1965),
31 December 1774, vol. 2, p. 909.

63  The Puritan minister Increase Mather: Increase Mather, ‘Testimony against prophane customs, namely health drinking, dicing, cards, Christmas-keeping, New Year’s gifts . . .’, ed. William Peden (facsimile of 1687 edition, Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 1953), p. 44.

63 ‘I Con, they Pro’: Cited in Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas, p. 31.

63 but not the holiday itself: It is Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas, p. 26, who makes this careful distinction.

63 the illegitimate birth rate: Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas, p. 22.

63  as one almanac . . . another defined it: Both almanacs cited in Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas, pp. 18–20.

64  earlyeighteenth-centuryNewAmsterdam:Restad,Christmas in America, pp. 9–10.

64 The diary of Elizabeth Drinker: Elizabeth Drinker, The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker, ed. Elaine Forman Crane, with Sarah Blank Dine, Alison Duncan Hirsch, Arthur Scherr, Anita J. Rapone (Boston, Northeastern University Press, 1991).

64  ‘the Balls, the Fox-hunts, the fine entertainments’: Philip Vickers Fithian, Journal and Letters of Philip Vickers Fithian, 1773–4:
A Plantation Tutor of the Old Dominion, ed. Hunter Dickinson Farish (Williamsburg, Colonial Williamsburg Inc., 1957), pp. 34 .

65  In 1702, in Williamsburg: Both the incident in Virginia, and Horace Greeley’s footnoted account, can be found in Nissenbaum, Battle, pp. 113–14.

65 In New France, it had been assimilated: Barber and McPherson, Christmas in Canada, pp. 7–8.

65 In several parts of Switzerland: Schweizerisches Idiotikon, ‘Chlaus’.

65  In Sweden Christmas was ‘shot in’: This is cited in Tre Tryckare, Christmas in Sweden 100 Years Ago, trans. Anne Bibby (Gothenburg, n.p., 1965), p. 56, with the suggestion that it is an older custom, but without firm dating.

66  In England, too: John Wallis, The Natural History and Antiquities of Northumberland . . . (London, W. and W. Strahan, 1769), vol. 2, p. 28.

66 Although the plays varied: Herbert Halpert and G. M. Story, eds., Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland (Toronto, University of Toronto Press for Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1969), pp. 57–9.

66n Early twentieth-century folklorists: Hutton, Stations of the Sun, is commendably bracing on the non-existence of early forms of this play, pp. 78–80.

67 In Salem in 1679: The subsequent court case, and therefore the details of the evening, appear in Nissenbaum, Battle,
p. 16, although the suggestions regarding mutual immigrant incomprehension and the place of origin of the mummers are my own.

67  ‘the lowest blackguards’: Samuel Breck, Recollections of Samuel Breck, with Passages from His Note-Books (1771–1862), ed. H. E. Scudder (Philadelphia, Porter & Coates, 1877), pp. 35–6.

68  among the Norwegians of the Upper Midwest: Kathleen Stokker, ‘Julebukk: Christmas Masquerading in Norwegian America’, Norwegian-American Essays, ed. Knut Djupedal et al., Norwegian-American Studies Seminar of the Norwegian-American Historical Association (Oslo, Norwegian Emigrant Museum, 1993), pp. 28–9.

68 In southern Pennsylvania: Phyllis Siefker, Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Men: The Origins and Evolution of Saint Nicholas, Spanning 50,000 Years (Je erson, NC, McFarland & Co., 1997), pp. 17–19.

68 One historian has found records: This reading is found in Robert Dirks, The Black Saturnalia: Conflict and its Ritual Expression on British West Indian Slave Plantations (Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 1987), pp. 167 , 171.

68 ritualized mumming known as John Canoe: Dirks, Black Saturnalia, pp. 4–8.

69  In 1706 Lady Wentworth: J.P. Cooper, ed., Wentworth Papers, 1597–1628 (London, Royal Historical Society, 1973), p. 59.

70  As Pepys had done in the seventeenth century: Pepys, Diary, passim. There are too many references to note them all.
A sampling: the college servants appear in vol. 1, pp. 45; vol. 1, pp. 117–18; vol. 1, p. 120; others in vol. 5, pp. 96 .; vol. 6, pp. 103–4; vol. 8, pp. 99 ., etc.

70 ‘Past one of the clock’: Pepys, Diary, 16 January 1660, vol. 1, p. 19.

70 ‘when you’re safe in bed’: There is a 1680 broadside in the Bodleian, STC Wing (2nd edn) / M1376A. The British Library has a large selection of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century bellman’s addresses, shelfmark 1875.d.8.

70  The same custom was followed in New England: Nissenbaum, Battle, pp. 40–42; Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 112–13. Schmidt regards the broadsides’ appearance in Puritan- dominated districts as a product of how common they were; it is my suggestion that their acceptability was predicated on their connection to the new year, not Christmas.

71  ‘the Boy who makes my Fire’: Fithian, Letters and Diaries, pp. 39–40.

71 Fithian was tipped by his employer: Thomas Dublin, ed., Immigrant Voices: New Lives in America, 1773–2000 (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2014), p. 51.

71 ‘By the Lord Harry’: Jonathan Swift, ‘The Journal to Stella’, The Works of Jonathan Swift, ed. D. Laing Purves (Edinburgh, William P. Nimmo, 1871), p. 259.

71 In 1767 a group of London bakers: The 1767 bakers’

broadside is in the British Library, shelfmark Cup.651.e.(20.). The newspaper advertisements can be found, inter alia, in The Times on 2 January 1795, 22, 24, 26, 29, 30 December 1795, 20 December 1798 and 24 December 1799; they appear as late as 2 January 1880 in the Bridport News, and 12 December 1925, is in the Garlic Collection, Trowbridge Museum. The latter two are cited in Bushaway, By Rite, p. 258.

71n in 1743 a witness at a trial: Old Bailey Proceedings,
14 January 1743, reference number: t17430114–29, www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?name=17430114, accessed 11 August 2016.

72 ‘keep drunk all the Christmas Holy-days’: Boston Evening- Post, 25 August 1735, p. 1.

72 ‘Rioting and Drunkenness’: The Observator, 25–28 December 1706, [p. 1].

72 Christmas ‘in the old fashioned way’: Joseph Banks: The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks, 1768–1771, ed. J. C. Beaglehole (Sydney, Public Library of New South Wales with Angus & Robertson, 1962), vol. 2, p. 449.

72  seasonal drunkenness: Aberdeen: The Times, 5 January 1785, p. 2; murder: ibid., 15 January 1791, p. 3; drunk and disorderly: ibid., 29 December 1831.

73  A fur-trader in northern Ontario: Cited in Bella, Christmas Imperative, p. 67.

73 Christmas is a-coming Boys: Cited by Nissenbaum, p. 25, who dates it to c.1740s, and states that ‘Yankee Doodle’ was not a song, but a ‘variable cluster of verses . . . about backcountry manners’.

73 ‘held sacred by good eating and drinking’: London Magazine, 1754, xxiii, p. 535.

73–4 From Henry VIII’s reign until 1772: This tradition

continued under the aegis of a courtier who held the title of Groom Porter until it was abolished in the reign of George III. An outline can be found in Mike Atherton, Gambling: A Story of Triumph and Disaster (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 2006), Chapter 4, passim.

74 ‘When Bess was England’s Queen’: The Times, 8 January 1785, reprinted with the play’s revival, 21 November 1787, p. 4.

74  the fictional Sir Roger de Coverley: Mary A. Weaver, ed., The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, from the Spectator (Boston, Houghton Mi in, 1928), ‘Sir Roger Comes to Town’, Spectator 269, 8 January 1712, pp. 145–6.

75  In 1743 Walpole described: Walpole, Correspondence: ‘a thousand times’: 26 December 1743, vol. 18, p. 367; ‘I have stuck no laurel’: 26 December 1748, vol. 20, p. 16; ‘making one’s servants drunk’: 15 January 1788, vol. 34, p. 1.

75 James Woodforde, a generation younger: James Woodforde, The Diary of James Woodforde, 1759–1802 (17 vols., Castle Cary, Parson Woodforde Society, 2002–7), ed. R. L. Winstanley. The various groups and individuals can be found at: 26 December 1764, vol. 2, p. 286; 29 December 1764, vol. 2,

205; 1 January 1772, vol. 5, p. 5; 21 December 1772, vol. 5, p. 94; 24 December 1772, vol. 5, p. 95; 30 December 1778, vol. 8, pp. 100–101; 28 December 1785, vol. 11, p. 96; 27 December 1787, vol. 11, p. 262; 2 January 1792, vol. 13, p. 97; 28 December 1795, vol. 14, p. 234; Nancy in Norwich: 29 December 1789, vol. 12, pp. 104–5; 29 December: vol. 12, pp. 220-21; apothecary’s party: 1 January 1765, vol. 3, p. 62; weary of visiting: 11 January 1769, vol. 4, p. 3; serenading the folks: 23 December 1778, vol. 8, p. 98. I am grateful to Martin Brayne, chairman of the Parson Woodforde Society,

who kindly supplied a missing volume, and helped me find

my way through a thicket of diary references.
76 ‘Gooding’, sometimes called mumping: Ashton, Merrie

Christmasse gives the dialect names, p. 45; Roud, The English Year notes that it was not connected to St Thomas’s Day until the late eighteenth century. Woodforde, however, began to give out money on the day as early as 1764, when he called it ‘customary’: 21 December 1764, Woodforde, Diary, vol. 2, p. 204.

76  Throughout his four decades in Norfolk: Woodforde, Diary: the fifty-five men: 22 December 1800, vol. 16, p. 263; economic reality: 21 and 26 December 1795, vol. 14, pp. 232, 234; the poor men in his kitchen appear almost annually from 25 December 1772, vol. 5, p. 95; his clerk regularly from 25 December 1777, vol. 8, p. 215; his maid Sukey, 27 December 1778, vol. 8, p. 241; an example of the repeated menu, and the shilling, 25 December 1778, vol. 8, pp. 99–100; beer, 25 December 1784, vol. 10, p. 305.

77  ‘The benefactors’ served the working classes: The Times, 6 January 1787, p. 3.

77  In his early days as a young curate: Woodforde, Diary: Christmas dinner as a curate, 25 December 1764, vol. 2, pp. 205–6; Oxford: 25 December 1773, vol. 5, pp. 195–6; turkey, e.g., among others: 29 December 1789, vol. 12, pp. 223.

78  In 1747, Hannah Glasses’s: [Hannah Glasse], The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy . . . ‘by a Lady’ (3rd edn, Dublin, E. and J. Exshaw, 1748), Yorkshire Christmas pies: p. 146; plum porridge: p. 127.

79  ‘old-fashioned’: The Times, 22 December 1787, p. 3.

79 ‘Upwards of 30,000 Turkeys’: The Times, 26 December

1788, p. 2.

79n Turkeys did not travel well: Gavin Weightman and Steve Humphries, Christmas Past (London, Sidgwick and Jackson, 1987), pp. 125–9.

80  ‘Old Square Toes was Cuckold’: Isaac Cruikshank, ‘Twelfth Night’, 1794, British Museum, 1861,0518.995.

81  the Twelfth Night practice of ‘nailing’: Francis Place, The Autobiography of Francis Place, 1771–1854, ed. Mary Thale (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 64.

81  ‘This is called a twelfth cake at London’: The book is James Jenks, The Complete Cook, and the recipe was one of Hannah Glasse’s, modified; cited in Leach, et. al., Twelve Cakes of Christmas, p. 50.

82  a mere handful of references: The few I have located are as follows. In 1743, in a trial transcript, a servant in Dublin was asked to recall the dates her mistress was in town two years previously. She is prodded – were there fireworks, etc.? – in order to date the events, and she remembers that ‘my Lady was there one Twelfth Night . . . I remember there was a twelfth Cake’. (The Trial of Mrs. Mary Heath . . . for Perjury, Dublin, S. Powell, 1745). There are two advertisements in the Norfolk Chronicle, one from 1777, one in 1787. In 1797 Mother Shipton’s Legacy, or, A Favourite Fortune Book, published 
in York, had a series of questions about the future, one of which was ‘Shall I have any Twelfth Cake this Christmas?’ And the final reference that I have located in the century was in the Stamford Mercury in January 1799, when it reported that some residents of an almshouse had been give a ‘feast’, a shilling ‘and a sixpenny twelfth-cake to take home’.

82 ‘all the household and family’: Polidore Virgil, The Works of Polidore Virgil, English’t by John Langley (London, Simon Miller, 1663), p. 152.

82 ‘a king of the bean’: Jane Grey and Philip IV: Henisch, Cakes and Characters, p. 31.

82 ‘with their curled pates’: Revd William Scott, ‘O Tempora! O Mores! or, The Best New year’s Gift for a Prime Minister’ (Philadelphia, Benjamin Towne, 1774), p. xii. This was first published in London the previous year, with, on the title page, the proud announcement that ‘TWO HUNDRED’ copies had been ordered ‘by a Gentleman for one of our NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES’. Presumably this edition was the result.

82 Planters from William Byrd: Byrd: Cited in Restad, Christmas in America, p. 19; Carter: Diary of Landon Carter, vol. 1, pp. 137, 344; Virginia custom: Cited in Henisch, Cakes and Characters, p. 207.

82n the death of Robert Baddeley: Baddeley originated, among other parts, the moneylender Moses in the original production of Sheridan’s The School for Scandal (1777).

84 many traditions previously practised: These could be found in books like Bourne, Antiquitates Vulgaris, which were advertised in the popular press, e.g., Newcastle Courant,
12 January 1723, p. 10.

84 ‘all covered with Rosemary’: Pepys, Diary, 23 December 1660, vol. 1, p. 321.

84  ‘the Word out of a Bush’: Spectator, no. 283, 14 January 1712, p. 124.

85  a new custom with an ‘ancient’ history: For this reading I have followed Hutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 5–6.

85 ‘a Christmas Candle, whose good name’: Francis Quarles,

Divine Fancies Digested into Epigrammes . . . (London, John

Marriot, 1641), Book II, no. 96, p. 107.
85 ‘My large Wax Candle’: Woodforde, Diary, 25 December

1785, vol. 11, p. 95 is the first mention; then it recurs on 25 December 1790, 25 December 1791 (this is the source of the citation, ‘as usual for one Hour’, vol. 13, p. 95), 25 December 1799 and 25 December 1800.

85  references to the custom in Yorkshire: It is Roud, English Year, pp. 376–7, who notes the Yorkshire nineteenth- and twentieth-century mentions after Woodforde, but he overlooks the sixteenth-century references, and John Brand in the eighteenth century.

86  chopped down ‘by ignorant zeal’: William Winstanley, The new help to discourse, or, Wit, mirth, and jollity (London, Printed by T.S., 1680), n.p.

86 ‘Glastonbury thorns [who] bloom’: Walpole, Correspondence, 8 December 1775, vol. 23, p. 148. The volume’s editor notes that the legend appeared in Thomas Hearne, The History and Antiquities of Glastonbury, published in 1722, a copy of which was owned by Walpole.

86n British tax year: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov. uk/20140109143644/http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/faqs/ general.htm, accessed 25 September 2016.

87 greenery more generally: The Observator, 25–28 December 1706, n.p. The next appearance I have found is John Cleland, ‘On the Origin of the Musical Waits at Christmas’ (London, L. Davis and C. Reymers, 1766), p. 96. No doubt many more interim uses will appear.

87 ‘bits of coloured ribbons: Notes and Queries, 5th ser. vol. 8, p. 48, describing a Derbyshire construction.

87 Parson Woodforde purchased holly: Woodforde, Diary, 24 December 1788, vol. 8, p. 99; 24 December 1784, vol. 10,

305; 24 December 1796, vol. 15, p. 106; and 24 December

1800, vol. 16, p. 264.

87  The names for the tree: This is the summary of Perry, 
Christmas in Germany, p. 32, although his careful analysis 
covers many more regional and social variations.

88  ‘fixed up like altars’: Snyder, Christmas Tree Book, pp. 13–14, 
18; Brunner, Inventing the Christmas Tree, pp. 16, 19, 41.

88  ‘an illuminated tree, according to the German 
fashion’: Charlotte Papendiek, The Memoirs of Charlotte Papendiek (1765–1840), ed. Michael Kassler, in Memoirs of the Court of George III, eds. Michael Kassler, Lorna J. Clark, Alain Herhervé (London, Pickering and Chatto, 2015),
p. 102.

89  ‘and under it was a neat model’: Alfred John Kempe, ed., The Loseley MSS and Other Rare Documents . . . (London, John Murray, 1836), p. 75.

89 ‘several small pyramids’: Nancy Smith Thomas, Moravian Christmas in the South (Winston-Salem, NC, Old Salem Museums and Gardens, 2007), p. 35.

89  The Jesuits created the first: Don Yoder, Afterword, in Alfred L. Shoemaker, Christmas in Pennsylvania: A Folk-Cultural Study (Mechanicsburg, PA, Stackpole Books, 2009 [1959]), p. 177.

90  Putzen in German: See pp. 3–4 of ‘The Moravian Christmas Putz’ by Richmond E. Myers in The Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, vol. 6 (Allentown, Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, 1941).

90 ‘This afternoon Herman took apart’: Cited in Thomas, Moravian Christmas in the South, p. 35.

90 A New Version of the Psalms of David: This was expanded in 1696, revised again in 1698, and again in 1700.

90n ‘It is hardly credible’: John Brand, Observations on Popular

Antiquities, Including the Whole of Mr. Bourne’s Antiquitates

Vulgares . . . (Newcastle, J. Johnson, 1777), pp. 183–5.

91  chapbooks, broadsides and other cheap publications: The chapbooks are discussed in Keyte and Parrott, New Oxford Book of Carols, intro. passim; they are also the scholars who discuss the possibilities of the 1864 printing, p. 437. However, the idea that the 1710 broadside may have been more recent, or might not have existed, is my own.

92  ‘tune books’ in Protestant New England: Nissenbaum, Battle, pp. 34–5.

92  Christmas music was developing independently: Studwell, Christmas Carols, passim.

93  ‘as good mince pies: Cited in Shoemaker, Christmas in Pennsylvania, pp. 3–4.

93 cookies were, in New York City: Hopley, History of Christmas Food, p. 208; the author’s background: Amelia Simmons, American Cookery (2nd edn, Albany, 1796), from the introduction by Karen Hess in the facsimile reprint (Bedford, MA, Applewood Books, 1996), pp. x–xi. I am grateful for advice on food history to Barbara K. Wheaton, Pamela Cooley and Peter G. Rose, and, especially, to Bee Wilson, who shares her knowledge so generously.

93 ‘New Year was . . . most boisterous’: John Pintard, Letters from John Pintard to His Daughter Eliza Noel Pintard Davidson, 1816–1833 (4 vols., New York, New York Historical Society, 1940–41), vol. 2, p. 382.

93 Christmas markets: Germany: Oliver Haid, ‘Christmas Markets in the Tyrollean Alps: Representing Regional Traditions in a Newly Created World of Christmas’, in David Picard and Mike Robinson, eds., Festivals, Tourism and Social Change: Remaking Worlds (Clevedon, Channel View

Publications, 2006), pp. 209–21; Switzerland: Schweizerisches

Idiotikon, ‘Chlaus’.
94 By 1796 its 250 booths: Perry, Christmas in Germany,

158–9.
94 ‘Christmas and New-Year’s Gifts’: Examples of such

phrases, and advertisements, can be found in: New York Mercury, 4 December 1752, 9 April [sic] 1759; 7 January 1760; New York Gazette, 22 December 1760; plus more in 1761, 1762, 1767 and into the 1770s, all placed by booksellers or stationers.

94  L’Ami des enfants: [Arnaud] Berquin, L’Ami des enfants (Paris, Didier et Cie., 1857), pp. 219 .; ‘M. Berquin’, The Children’s Friend (Newburyport, Boston, John Mycall, 1789), vol. 3, pp. 42 .

95  ‘Nine parts of Ten’: John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (London, A. & J. Churchill, 1693), p. 2.

95 Parson Woodforde’s presents: Woodforde, Diary, passim, e.g., 5 January 1775, vol. 6, p. 107; 3 January 1781, vol. 9, pp. 110–11; 1 January 1783 vol. 10, p. 93.

95  Some Boys are rich by Birth: John Gay, The Life of Mr. Gay (London, E. Curll, 1733), ‘Cloacina. A Tale’, p. 23.

96  ‘rcved a present’: Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition (Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1986), vol. 6, p. 137.

96 One of the first advertisements in Britain: Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, 23 November 1728.

96 the gimmicky, vulgar Christmas publication: The anthology entitled The Merry Medley was advertised, for example, on 5 November 1743, in Old England, or, The Constitutional JournalNurse Truelove’s Christmas-Box was a staple of the classified ads for years. The earliest one I have found was in the Penny London Post of 8 January 1750, but that was prefigured by

Little Polite Tales, Fables and Riddles ‘For a Christmas-Box or New Year’s-Gift’ for children in the General Advertiser of
23 December 1749. The Boghouse Miscellany was advertised in the Public Ledger and Gazette and London Daily Advertiser in December 1760, and in 1761 appeared in the classifieds in the London Evening Post and the Public Advertiser. I am grateful to Dr Nicole Garrett who sent me images of this rare volume, held in the Yale University Library.

96–7 entirely ‘for the young’: Cited in Parker, Christmas and Charles Dickens, p. 69.

97 ‘the Talisman; or, Christmas Conjuror’: The Times, 27 December 1793.

97  the earliest advertisements: These advertisements areall cited in Schmidt, Consumer Rites, pp. 111, 113 and 115, although I have reduced drastically the number of advertisements that I feel fit in this category; Schmidt includes news-carriers soliciting Christmas boxes, which were not gifts among equals, but are in a separate category.

98  ‘You want to bring us your German customs’: Liselotte
von der Pfalz (Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d’Orléans),
A Woman’s Life in the Court of the Sun King: Letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz, 1652–1722, trans. Elborg Forster (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), p. 184.

98  The standard story of Santa Claus: The information on the legend and, later, the non-existence of St Nicholas, and possible sources, all from Jones, Saint Nicholas, pp. 7–12.

99  ’Twas the night before Christmas: Clement C. Moore,

A Visit from St Nicholas (New York, Henry M. Onderdonk,

1848).
100 It is likely that the fourth-century Bishop of Myra never

existed: I am following Jones, Saint Nicholas, pp. 7–13, and

passim, for this reading.
100 From 1624 New Netherland: Oliver A. Rink, Holland on

the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York

(Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1986), passim.
102 half a century later, this was repeated: Mary L. Booth,

History of the City of New York . . . (New York, W. R. C. Clark

and Meeker, 1859), p. 99.
102 there was no New York church named for St Nicholas:

Charles W. Jones, ‘Knickerbocker Santa Claus’, New-York

Historical Society Quarterly, 38, 4, 1954, p. 331.

102  Irving described ‘Dutch’ New York cookies: William Irving, 
James Kirke Paulding and Washington Irving, Salmagundi; or, The Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langsta , Esq., and Others (New York, G. P. Putnam, 1860[1808]), p. 393.

103  Pintard claimed this verse: Pintard, Letters, 24 December 1828, vol. 3, p. 53.

103 no evidence of it appearing in the Low Countries: Nicoline van der Sijs, Cookies, Coleslaw and Stoops: The Influence of Dutch on the North American Languages, trans. Piet Verhoe and Language Unlimited (Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, [2009?]), p. 251.

103 ‘Old Santaclaw’: Cited in Jones, Saint Nicholas, p. 345.
103 a New York bookseller advertised: The advertisement, but

not the interpretation, cited in Schmidt, Consumer Rites,

135.
105 Samichlaus travelled through the Swiss mountains:

Schweizerisches Idiotikon, ‘Chlaus’.
105 we know John Pintard himself owned: His ownership is

recorded in 1813 in the society’s catalogue, and the original newspaper prospectus with the papers shows that they originally belonged to Pintard. I am indebted to Mariam Touba, of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library, New-York Historical Society, for this information.

106 the ‘pious’ stocking-hanging ceremony: ‘Diedrich Knickerbocker’ [Washington Irving], A History of New York (rev. ed., New York, Geo. Putnam, 1860), p. 140.

106 ‘Italian nobles had a practice’: Clavis Calendaria, vol. 2, p. 313; Venetian Children: Time’s Telescope for 1821 . . . (London, Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1821), p. 5.

106n the book’s author might have been James Paulding: Gerry Bowler, The World Encyclopedia of Christmas (Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 2000), p. 41.

107 bad children received horse manure and rotten vines: Schweizerisches Idiotikon, ‘Chlaus’.

107  ‘a great yew bough . . . [was] fastened’: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ‘Christmas Within Doors, in the North of Germany’, in The Friend; A Series of Essays (London, Gale and Curtis, 1812), pp. 300–301.

108  the very highest echelons of society: Bruce David Forbes, Christmas: A Candid History (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2007), p. 51.

108 ‘got up a little fête’: Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville, The Greville Memoirs, 1814–1860, ed. Lytton Strachey and Roger Fulford (London, Macmillan, 1938), 27 December 1829, vol. 1, p. 265.

108n horrified and indignant’: Cited in Christopher Hibbert, ‘Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed.), accessed 20 March 2017.

109 ‘large round tables’: Snyder, Christmas Tree Book, p. 19.

109 ‘The German form of celebrating’: [Anon.], The Christmas Tree: A Present from Germany (London, Darton & Clark, [1844]).

109  Illustrated London News published an engraving: Illustrated London News, 23 December 1848, pp. 25–6.

110  it was firmly believed that this German prince: ‘Peter Parley’ [William Martin], Peter Parley’s Annual: A Christmas and New Year’s Present for Young People, 1862 [printed thus, but published before December 1861], p. 15, cited in Neil Armstrong, ‘England and German Christmas Festlichkeit, 1800–1914’, German History: The Journal of the Germany History Society, 26, 4, 2008, p. 486.

110  one estimate in 1930: Johnes, Christmas and the British, p. 88.

111  the Moravian Brethren: Thomas, Moravian Christmas in the South, pp. 23, 19–20.

111 In 1821 in Lancaster: Cited in Nissenbaum, Battle, p. 195 .

111  a charity ‘Krischkintle Bauhm’: Brunner, Inventing the Christmas Tree, p. 53; I have only had access to the English translation of Brunner’s book, and therefore my suggestion of ‘possum’ can only be notional. The same tree, and the information in the footnote on the evolution of Christkind: Shoemaker, Christmas in Pennsylvania, pp. 55–9; Stokker, Keeping Christmas, p. xx, also has some useful comments. The banker is Calvin Fletcher, The Diary of Calvin Fletcher, vol. 4: 1848–1852, ed. Gayle Thornbrough, Dorothy L. Riker and Paula Corpuz (Indianapolis, Indiana Historical Society, 1972–78), p. 83.

112  Christmas trees were recorded: Restad, Christmas in America, p. 63.

113  ‘Christmass Gifts . . . hung on a tree’: Fletcher, Diary, 24 December 1846, vol. 3, p. 332; 25 December 1837, vol. 1, p. 470. In 1837 Fletcher mentioned buying ‘a fir cap for $10’, but I suspect that that was an astonishingly expensive

hat, rather than an even more expensive tree. (Fletcher’s spelling remained inconsistent.) He was travelling that day, noting, just before the purchase: ‘No stir in the celebration of Christmass.’

113 Trees were erected by German immigrants in Texas: Elizabeth Silverthorne, Christmas in Texas (College Station, Texas A&M University Press, 1990), pp. 10–11.

113  a ‘famous’ tree as the centrepiece: Karal Ann Marling, Merry Christmas! Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 161.

114  The Goodridge Brothers: Little is known about the brothers. The pioneering work on the subject is John Vincent Jezierski, Enterprising Images: The Goodridge Brothers, African American Photographers, 1847–1922 (Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2000), the advertisement appearing on p. 5.

115  the New York Evening Post ran a ‘proclamation’: New York Evening Post, 27, 28 and 30 December 1815; New York Courier, 27 December 1815.

115 a ‘coster’ who breathed fire: Cited in Schmidt, Consumer Rites, p. 132.

115  in The Lamplighter: Maria Susanna Cummins, The Lamplighter and Gerty the Foundling (London, John Farquhar Shaw, [1854]). I have used the serialization in Reynolds, the citation coming from the issue of 1 July 1854, p. 362.

116  a likelier source of inspiration: This is the view of Jones, Saint Nicholas, p. 355. Other views tend to come from those who have a less profound knowledge than he, and who frequently confuse the German gift-bringer, the saint, and his many sidekicks, assuming that they are all a single person, as, for example, Adam Gopnik does in ‘The Man

Who Invented Santa Claus’, New Yorker, 15 December 1997,

90.
116 giving things without payment: Nissenbaum, Battle,

62–3, 82–5.
116n the ideal Sandy Claus: Gentleman’s Magazine, 1827, p. 408.

118 the painter Robert Weir: Betsy Fahlman. ‘Robert Walter Weir’, American National Biography Online (February 2000), www.anb.org/articles/17/17–00915.html; accessed 24 August 2016.

118n The origins of Santa’s home: Reindeer: Jones, ‘Knickerbocker Santa Claus’, p. 380; Franklin Expedition: Restad, Christmas in America, pp. 147–8. The Franklin Expedition’s gory fate was leaked to the press in 1854, and it was another decade before Santa moved north too.

119 Santa had become the god of hedonistic enjoyment: These shifts are noted by Russell Belk, ‘Materialism and the Making of the Modern American Christmas’, in Daniel Miller, ed., Unwrapping Christmas (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 77–8, and in ‘A Child’s Christmas in America: Santa Claus as Deity, Consumption as Religion’, Journal of American Culture, 10, 1, 1987, p. 87.

119  it is ‘easier for a camel’: Matthew 19:24.

120  their ultimate destination was a local orphanage: This was 
originally in the New York Spectator; I have used a reprint in the Providence Patriot and Columbian Phenix, 11 January 1826, p. 1.

120  ‘a warm and comfortable hearth’: The Times, 29 December 1836, p. 3.

121  Dickens, and A Christmas Carol: William M. Curry Jr., ‘Appreciating the Unappreciated: Washington Irving’s Influence on Charles Dickens’, PhD thesis, University of Southwestern Louisiana, 1996.

122n the long-running Bracebridge Dinner: www.yosemitepark. com/bracebridge-dinner.aspx and http://bracebridge dinners.com/tickets/, accessed 19 February 2016; Marling, Merry Christmas!, p. 127.

123  the accompaniments to the holiday: Leigh Hunt, ‘The Inexhaustibility of the Subject of Christmas’, Monthly Repository, December 1837. These numbers and categories are not absolute: some entries fall into more than one category, others are di cult to determine, and a few I have omitted, being unable to identify them.

124  Two illustrations: Sandys, Christmastide, illustrations facing pp. 142 and 152.

126 Mrs Cratchit who takes centre-stage: It is Bella, Christmas Imperative, pp. 88–9, who has noted this gender shift.

126 Music: curtains at back are drawn: Cited in Paul Davis, The Lives and Times of Ebenezer Scrooge (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1990), pp. 77–8, 83.

126  And when Mr March returns: Bella, Christmas Imperative, p. 107.

127  ‘a large class of individuals’: The Times, 1 December 1846, cited in Neil Armstrong, Christmas in Nineteenth-century England (Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2010), p. 87.

127 ‘Oh my beef ’: George Cruikshank, ‘The Railway Dragon’, George Cruikshank’s Table-Book, ed. G. A. à Beckett (London, n.p., 1845).

129n a police-court report of 1834: The case is reported in The Times, 1 December 1834, p. 6. As digitization of newspapers continues, our previous views of Christmas as a partly

Victorian invention are sure to be overturned. For example, John W. Golby, ‘A History of Christmas’, in Popular Culture: Themes and Issues (Milton Keynes, Open University Press, 1981, Block 1, Units 1/2), pp. 14–15, has famously stated that between 1790 and 1836, The Times failed to mention Christmas in twenty out of forty-seven years. Today, a digital search of The Times returns 4,937 mentions, although the poor print quality of the earlier papers ensures that there are many other appearances that the optical character recognition software has missed. There is certainly, however, no single year within Professor Golby’s dates where Christmas is entirely overlooked.

129n A Christmas Carol’s production standards: Tara Moore, Victorian Christmas in Print (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 22.

130 the newspaper advertisements promised: The North American advertisements can be found, inter alia, in the New York Gazette, 27 November 1752 and 22 December 1760; and the New York Mercury, 4 December 1752 and 7 January 1760. The Times: 6 January 1796 and 25 December 1819.

130 ‘their Christmas gift’: [Anon.], A Week at Christmas (Wellington, Salop, F. Houlston, 1829), p. 13.

130 fifteen di erent annuals: A list of the individual titles can be found at www.orgs.miamioh.edu/anthologies/FMN/ Chron_Ind.htm, accessed 26 August 2016.

130n For those who say that today’s Christmas begins: annual advertisements can be found in The Times: 29 October 1824, 21 October 1828, 16 and 23 October 1829; Die Reklame: Cited in Perry, Christmas in Germany, pp. 148; Los Angeles consortium: William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York, Pantheon,

1993), p. 337; 1661 almanac Stevenson, The twelve moneths,

51.
132 Clerks could obtain . . . wind, sleet and Christmas bills: The

Times, 19 December 1815, p. 1; 3 December 1821, p. 1; 16 December 1824, p. 3; 20 December 1828, p. 4. New Monthly Magazine: ‘Retrospections and Anticipations’, January 1837, p. 1.

132 a children’s Christmas party at Windsor: The Times, 7 January 1802, p. 2.

132 ‘our biggest captain of industry’: Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 54–5.

132  being used to sell jewellery: Nissenbaum, Battle, p. 169.

133  Parkinson’s confectionery shop: Shoemaker, Christmas in Pennsylvania, pp. 60–61. Shoemaker believes that pasteboard figures were used until 1849; George McKay, ‘Consumption, Coca-Colonisation, Cultural Resistance’, in Sheila Whiteley, ed., Christmas, Ideology and Popular Culture (Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2008), p. 57, suggests a real person, although he gives no source. Nissenbaum, Battle, p. 169, brings weight to the argument for the illustration, saying that Parkinson’s used the illustration from Brother Jonathan magazine for its model.

133 hair oil and dancing pumps: The Times, 2 December 1823, 24 December 1825, 10 January 1831.

133 dependants all: Nissenbaum, Battle, pp. 134–6, lists the advertisement, but does not note the dependent status of the recipients.

133  ‘very peculiar’: Cited in Restad, Christmas in America, p. 71.

134  ‘Hubert’s Roseate Powder: The Times, 12 January 1813; 
soothing syrup: inter alia, 25 December 1817, 17 December 1827.

134 wrote Lewis Carroll: Cited in Moore, Victorian Christmas in Print, pp. 109–11.

134  the main Berlin Christmas market: Perry, Christmas in Germany, pp. 161–2, 151–2, 147–8.

135  American shopkeepers started a little later: Belk, ‘Materialism and the Making of the Modern American Christmas’, p. 90.

135  a New York toyshop; Macy’s innovation: Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 83–91.

136  In Germany, the two Sundays before Christmas: Perry, Christmas in Germany, p. 165.

136 ‘with the children [to] Macy’s’: Cited in Schmidt, Consumer Rites, p. 152.

136 Emily Dickinson: The letter is dated 1884, remembering a time ‘when [I was] a child’, The Letters of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. Johnson and Theodora Ward (Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press, 1958), p. 835. The Life of Emily Dickinson, by Richard Benson Sewall, however, links this to an episode when Dickinson was at school in South Hadley, although that would have made her seventeen or so at the time, which seems unlikely.

136 assumes ‘it be a Christmas gift’: W. H. H. Murray, ‘How John Norton the Trapper Kept His Christmas’, in Holiday Tales: Christmas in the Adirondacks (Springfield, n.p., 1897), p. 22.

136  A schoolgirl in Rochester: Both teenagers cited in Schmidt, Consumer Rites, pp. 157–8.

137  Samichlaus-Züg: Schweizerisches Idiotikon, ‘Chlaus’.

137 Other German tree ornaments: These marzipan pieces

were described by Theodor Storm, in Brunner, Inventing the Christmas Tree, pp. 34–6.

137  The Pennsylvania Germans: Restad, Christmas in America, pp. 99–100; Civil War: ibid.

138  ‘gilded egg cups’: Restad, Christmas in America, pp. 59.

138 ‘dogs, cats, suns, moons’: Snyder, Christmas Tree Book, p. 58. 138 a whopping 12¢ each: Marling, Merry Christmas!, p. 75.

138n the Homestead Act: Act of 20 May 1862 (Homestead Act), Public Law 37–64, 05/20/1862; Record Group 11; General Records of the United States Government; National Archives.

139 ‘white papered presents’: Edward E. Hale, ‘Christmas Waits in Boston’, first published in the Boston Daily Advertiser ‘last year’ [?1867], reprinted in If, Yes, and Perhaps: Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations . . . (Boston, Ticknor and Fields, 1868), p. 288.

139  British children’s book: ‘Maggie Browne’ [Margaret Hamer Andrewes], Chats about Germany (London, Cassell & Co., [1884]), p. 18.

140  Other changes were also afoot: The psychology of gifts has long been studied, of gift-wrapping rather less. I have taken ideas from Marcel Mauss, The Gift, trans. Ian Cunnison (London, Cohen and West, 1970), and David Cheal, The Gift Economy (London, Routledge, 1988); more specifically regarding Christmas, and wrapping gifts: Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 10–20; James G. Carrier, ‘The Rituals of Christmas Giving’ in Miller, Unwrapping Christmas, 
pp. 55–74, and, in the same volume, Belk, ‘Materialism and 
the Making of the Modern American Christmas’.

142 It also . . . became big business: The history of wrapping,

and of retailers’ packaging, comes from Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 20–32, 369; William B. Waits, The Modern Christmas in America: A Cultural History of Gift Giving (New York, New York University Press, 1994), pp. 21–27.

144  decorative focus remained on the Putz: Explanations of Putzes, and descriptions, from George E. Nitzsche, ‘The Christmas Putz of the Pennsylvania Germans’, in The Pennsylvania German Folklore Society (Allentown, Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, 1941), vol. 6, pp. 3–28; and Shoemaker, Christmas in Pennsylvania, pp. 91–9, 159.

145  in America the proportion: Restad, Christmas in America, p. 63.

146  items were removed from display: This insight is Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 162–3.

146 Germany was the leader: Perry, Christmas in Germany, pp. 144–5.

146  Nuremberg tinsmiths: German specialities, Snyder, Christmas Tree Book, pp. 36–40, 63–78.

147  ‘a little doll like a fairy’: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s mother cited in Nada Gray, Holidays: Victorian Women Celebrate in Pennsylvania (‘An Oral Traditions Project’, University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983), p. 22.

147n ‘Christmas was a foreign day’; . . . a York newspaper reported: Stowe: Cited in Restad, Christmas in America, pp. 31–2. Shoemaker, Christmas in Pennsylvania, p. 79, cites the York newspaper article, but fails to note the impossibility of the dating.

148 In 1860, a Pennsylvania newspaper praised: Shoemaker, Christmas in Pennsylvania, p. 79.

148 A children’s book published shortly afterwards: Hale, ‘Christmas Waits in Boston’, passim.

148 ‘globes, fruits’: Cited in Restad, Christmas in America, p. 112. 148 In Germany books such as: Perry, Christmas in Germany,

33.

148 Among the purchased ornaments: The paragraphs on
tree decoration are drawn from Armstrong, Christmas in Nineteenth-century England, p. 150; Brunner, Inventing the Christmas Tree, pp. 40–41; Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 75 .; Snyder: Christmas Tree Book, pp. 59–78.

150 Four months later a Christmas tree: the move from open flames to electric bulbs explored in: Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 55–6; Restad, Christmas in America, p. 114; and Snyder, Christmas Tree Book, pp. 102–4.

150  a low-end kitchen range: Stoves for 1904 (Chicago, Sears, Roebuck, 1904), https://archive.org/stream/StovesFor1904 #page/n0/mode/2up, accessed 30 August 2016.

151  After German unification: Perry, Christmas in Germany, p. 33.

151  ‘Christmas . . . to be the day’: New York Tribune, 25 
December 1844, cited in Nissenbaum, Battle, p. 216.

152  the headlines of those very articles: Nissenbaum, Battle, 
pp. 103 .

152  By the 1830s: The information on the Philadelphia parades, 
and the interpretation, are entirely from Susan G. Davis, ‘“Making night hideous”: Christmas Revelry and Public Order in Nineteenth-century Philadelphia’, American Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 2, 1982, pp. 185–99, passim, and Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-century Philadelphia (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988), pp. 17–18, 38–9, 44–6, 71–9, 103 ., 169–71.

153  ‘Christmas is now pre-eminently’: Harper’s Magazine, 1868, cited in Marling, Merry Christmas!, p. 302.

154  ‘domestic happiness, of social courtesy’: Thomas Babington Macaulay, The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay, ed. Thomas Pinney (6 vols., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1974–7), 2 January 1822, vol. 1, p. 168.

154 In parts of Norway: Stokker, Keeping Christmas, pp. 54–5,

although she does not comment on the pattern of

developing childishness.
155n a now lost play: John Webster, The Works of John Webster,

David Gunby, David Carnegie, P. Jackson MacDonald, eds., (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007); Dekker: Satiromastix, or, The untrussing of the Humorous Poet, STC (2nd edn) / 6521; proverb: James Howell, Paroimiographia Proverbs, or, Old sayed sawes & adages in English . . . (London, J. G., 1659).

155n there was no law obliging payment: This case was discussed passim, January and March 1831, in The Times, the correspondence brought to a close only when the estate baili wrote to say that all their workers were given holiday pay; this man’s had been withheld because he had ‘behaved ill’, and was to be dismissed.

156 ‘It would be hard to distinguish’: Fletcher, Diary, 22–24 December 1851, vol. 5, p. 356.

156 a rector in a Sussex village: John Croker Egerton, Victorian Village: The Diaries of the Reverend John Croker Egerton, Curate and Rector of Burwash, East Sussex, 1857–1888, ed. Roger Wells (Stroud, Alan Sutton, 1992).

156 the British postal service: e.g. Jane Carlyle, letter of
28 December 1844, ‘our London post-men have half
a holiday’, in The Carlyle Letters, vol. 18, pp. 301–2, http://carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu//content/vol18/#lt- 18441228-JWC-JW-01?term=post-men%20have%20half% 20a%20holiday, accessed 31 August 2016.

156 passenger numbers in England: Harold MacFarlane, ‘What the Railways Owe to Charles Dickens’, The Railway Magazine, 30, January–June 1912, p. 140. The author acknowledges that some of this increase is owing to an increase in the miles of track as the networks expanded, but he is not able to quantify it.

157  it was the very most agreeable party: Jane Carlyle, The Carlyle Letters, 28 December 1843, vol. 17, pp. 218–22, http://carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu//content/vol17/#lt- 18431228-JWC-JW-01?term=major%20burns, accessed 31 August 2016.

158  the Christmas of Hannah Cullwick: Hannah Cullwick, The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant, ed. Liz Stanley (London, Virago, 1984), 23–26 December 1863, pp. 143–6.

160 ‘used sometimes to practise’: Cited by Armstrong, Christmas in Nineteenth-century England, p. 79.

160  In the 1850s in Prussia: Perry, Christmas in Germany, pp. 85, 90.

161  ‘reunion of families’: Cited in James G. Carrier, ‘The Rituals of Christmas Giving’, in Miller, Unwrapping Christmas, p. 69.

162  ‘there is no country in the whole world’: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve (3rd rev. edn, New York, George Adlard, 1839), vol. 1, p. 303.

162 a census of religious attendance: www.open.ac.uk/Arts/ building-on-history-project/resource-guide/source-guides/ 1851censusreport.pdf, accessed 2 September 2016.

162  church attendance in the USA: Theodore Caplow, Louis Hicks and Ben J. Wattenberg, The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900–2000 (Washington, AEI Press, 2001), pp. 106–15.

163  away from the secular New Year’s Day: Elizabeth Pleck, Celebrating the Family: Ethnicity, Consumer Culture, and Family

Rituals (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2000),

48.
163 the Congregationalist Minister Alexander Fletcher: The

Times, 27 December 1827.
163 prisoners had received extra rations: Examples among

many: Flying Post or The Post Master, 24–26 December 1700; Times, inter alia, 27 December 1808, 25 December 1823, 26 December 1833 and more; in 1834, 1835, 1836 it is said to be the king’s ‘Christmas Bounty’. The workhouses that follow: Pimlott, Englishman’s Christmas, pp. 81 and 90, cites an 1840 letter from one group of Poor Law guardians, forbidding inmates extra food at Christmas, and says this was overturned in 1847, but it must be noted in contradiction the many advertisements for suppliers’ tenders that include a Christmas increase.

163n most religious countries in Europe: Figures from www.gallup.com/poll/13117/religion-europe-trust-filling- pews.aspx and www.brin.ac.uk/figures/church-attendance- in-britain-1980–2015/, accessed 24 October 2016.

164 a Christmas dinner for all 700 soldiers: The Times, 29 December 1804.

164 J. & J. Colman: Armstrong, Christmas in Nineteenth-century England, pp. 75–7.

164 dispatched religion in ten lines: Hervey, Book of Christmas, pp. 272 .

164  ‘a happy Christmas to one and all’: Cited in Silverthorne, Christmas in Texas, p. 11.

165  ‘as it orter be kept’: Murray, ‘John Norton’, p. 52.

165 ‘Answer to prayer’: Cited in Schmidt, Consumer Rites,

142–3.
165 constructed entirely from handkerchiefs: Schmidt, Consumer

Rites, p. 161.

165  Wanamaker’s department store: Schmidt, Consumer Rites, pp. 161–3, although Schmidt describes this shop as new in 1911; others suggest it was rebuilt.

166  the first Christmas card: The history of cards is drawn from George Buday, The History of the Christmas Card (London, Spring Books, 1964), pp. 19–27, 10–12; Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 288, 419; Restad, Christmas in America, p. 119.

167  One historian has catalogued: Hutton, Stations of the Sun, p. 116, who reports on the card collection.

167n Why robins became a Christmas regular: Hutton, Stations of the Sun, suggests that it is the colour that created the popularity of the robin; its link to hunting the wren is in Buday, Christmas Card, pp. 104 .; the tradition itself was reported in, for example, Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, pp. 292–3, although the verse I cite is from James Frazer. The link between robins on Valentine’s Day cards and Christmas cards is my own.

168 In their home market: Perry, Christmas in Germany, pp. 44–5. 168 one photography studio in Dundee: Dundee Courier and Argus, 16 December 1865, p. 1; another similar advertisement

appeared in the same newspaper in 1861. If any of these types of card have survived, they remain unrecorded by historians.

168 ‘very rare’ or even ‘insignificant’: L. D. Ettlinger and R. G. Holloway, Compliments of the Season (London, Penguin, 1947), pp. 25–6.

168  Tom Smith was a confectioner: Peter Kimpton, Tom Smith’s Christmas Crackers: An Illustrated History (Stroud, Tempus, 2004).

169  the Advent wreath: Bowler, World Encyclopedia, p. 3.

169 with ‘the help of a calendar’: Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks:

The Decline of a Family, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter

(Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1957), pp. 408 .

169  now beginning on 1 December: Bowler, World Encyclopedia, 
p. 3.

170  Other traditions took longer to move: Nordic customs are 
drawn from Willy Breinholst, Christmas in Scandinavia (Copenhagen, privately printed, [?1967]); Piø, ‘Christmas Traditions in Scandinavia’, pp. 57–69; Sinikka Salokorpi and Ritva Lehmusoksa, Yuletide Finland, trans. Tim Ste a (Helsinki, Otava, 1998); Dorothy Burton Skårdal, The Divided Heart: Scandinavian Immigrant Experience through Literary Sources (Oslo, Universitetsforlaget, 1974); Stokker, Keeping Christmas; Stokker, ‘Julebukk: Christmas Masquerading in Norwegian America’; Tryckare, Christmas in Sweden 100 Years Ago; Tre Tryckare, Swedish Christmas, trans. Yvonne Aboav- Elmquist, et al. (1955, n.p., 1955).

170  ‘other loose persons’: Cited in Siefker, Santa Claus, p. 159.

171  Lindeborg, Kansas: Pleck, Celebrating the Family, pp. 66–7.

172  ‘popular amusements, sports’: Hone, Every-Day Book, pp. 
821–2.

172 ‘Stir-up Sunday’: Robert Forby, The Vocabulary of East

Anglia . . . , ed. George Turner (London, J. B. Nichols and Son, 1830), vol. 2, pp. 326–7. The Revd Forby’s subtitle was, in part, ‘an attempt to record the vulgar tongue as it existed in the last twenty years of the eighteenth century, and still exists’, and Forby himself died in 1825, the book being published posthumously, so the phrase had to have been in use some time before that, although how long before is not stated. Brand, Observations, cites Forby, together with the verse, in 1843. An early use of the phrase to mean school holidays is in J. Hain Friswell, Houses with the Fronts O (London, 1854), the same year as it appeared in Anne

Elizabeth Baker, Glossary of Northamptonshire Words and Phrases (London, J. R. Smith, 1854). It recurs in a sprinkling of glossaries of local dialects, or of words considered obsolete, but before 1870 never meaning the day on which Christmas puddings are made; [Rhoda Broughton], Red as a Rose is She (London, Richard Bentley, 1872), p. 313.

172n hodening and ‘complete nonsense’: Stephen Roud, English Year, pp. 368–9 and p. 5.

173  dubbing it ‘Sir Loin’: This story appeared everywhere, from Thomas Fuller in the seventeenth century, to Swift’s parody A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation in the eighteenth, to Ashton’s Merrie Christmasse in 1894, p. 170.

174  ‘he had forgotten all about the cloth’: The Chinese version is in Ashton, Merrie Christmasse, p. 176, Louis IX and Henri IV in The Times, e.g. 25 December 1835.

174 Up-Helly Aa: Hutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 43–4. Hutton also notes that while a few fire festivals might be older, no records have survived for them; and since records of fire festivals at other times of year – Beltane, Midsummer and All Souls’ – have survived, this lack is a problem.

174  ‘the old custom of Burning the Bush’: Roud, The English Year, p. 5.

175  ‘hogmanay’ or ‘hangmen’, and first-footing customs: Hutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 32–3, 65, 51.

176  ‘we were very careful to fetch something in’: Robert Sharp, The Diary of Robert Sharp of South Cave: Life in a Yorkshire Village, 1812–37, ed. Janice E. Crowther and Peter A. Crowther (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997), 1 January 1827, p. 96, 1 January 1829, p. 179.

177  ‘not a gun been fired’: Fletcher, Diary, 1 January 1830, vol. 1, p. 169; 31 December 1833, vol. 1, p. 215.

178  I wind up this year: Greville, Memoirs, 30 December 1837, vol. 3, p. 408.

178 ‘I was wakened by a Christmas discharge’: Moulton, Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, vol. 2, pp. 140–41. The strikethrough might not be Clark’s own, but a later hand. The words are his, though, and he did revise his journal before publication.

178 legislation banned shooting and other ‘loud amusements’: Perry, Christmas in Germany, p. 91.

178  In Sweden ‘shooting in Christmas’ was traditional: Tryckare, Christmas in Sweden, p. 56.

179  A German in Houston in 1849: John E. Baur, Christmas on the American Frontier, 1800–1900 (Detroit, Omnigraphics, 1993 [1961]), pp. 135–7.

180  turkey and sauerkraut: Shoemaker, Christmas in Pennsylvania, p. 136, says that the earliest he has seen this was 1819.

180 luminarias and farolitos: Jack Santino, All Around the Year:

Holidays and Celebrations in American Life (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1994), pp. 185 . Silverthorne, Christmas in Texas, pp. 24–5, says the Texan tradition goes back to sixteenth century Spain, but gives no sources.

180 gifts of toys in the modern American style: Cited in Stokker, Keeping Christmas, pp. 119 .

180  Montana mining communities in the 1870s: Baur, Christmas on the American Frontier, p. 193.

181  ‘disturbing the good easy people’: Sharp, Diary, 23 December 1826, p. 93, and 19 February 1827, p. 177.

181 ‘retained the primaeval simplicity of manners’: Oliver

Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield. A Tale (London, C. Cooke,

[1793]), vol. 1, p. 40.
182 ‘written by superstitious and illiterate persons’: Brady, Clavis

Calendaria, vol. 2, pp. 334–5, citing ‘A Compendious Analysis

of the Calendar’.
182n history attached to this carol: Keyte and Parrott, New Oxford

Book of Carols, pp. 304–5.
183 ‘specimens of times now passed’: The Times, 28 December

1822, p. 3; 21 December 1822, p. 4.
183 ‘Anciently, bishops carolled at Christmas’: Hone, Every-Day

Book, vol. 1, pp. 1595 .
183 ‘deficient of interest’: These are cited in Mark Connelly,

Christmas: A History (London, I.B. Tauris, 2012), p. 64.

183  Sandys had acknowledged in passing: William Sandys, 
Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern . . . (London, William 
Beckley, 1833), p. 182.

184  a ‘prolonged and costly’ job: R. R. Chope, Carols for Use in Church During Christmas and Epiphany (London, Metzler and Co., [1880]) p. xxv. The citation is from an introduction by the Revd Sabine Baring-Gould.

184 what the curate himself referred to as a ‘hymn’: This is cited in Geo rey Rowell, ‘Dickens and the Construction of Christmas’, History Today, 43, December 1993, pp. 20–21, although it is undated. It implies that it occurred when Pusey was installed there.

184n ‘tedious catalogues of eating and swilling’: Keyte and Parrott, New Oxford Book of Carols, p. 351, and that is not their sole reference to the superiority of carols with religious lyrics.

185 The entirely secular ‘Jingle Bells’: Marling, Merry Christmas!, p. 327.

185 ‘the ancient carols of England’: ‘George Bourne’ [George

Sturt], William Smith, Potter and Farmer, 1790–1858 (London,

Chatto & Windus, 1920), pp. 28–9.

185  one magazine commended Oxford University: The English Illustrated Magazine, 1903, cited in British Calendar Customs, 
vol. 3, p. 226.

186  ‘friends and patrons’: Cited in Silverthorne, Christmas in 
Texas, p. 15.

186 ‘remind them of the old days’: Joel Chandler Harris, ‘A

Conscript’s Christmas’, in Balaam and His Master an Other

Sketches and Stories (Boston, Houghton, Mi in, 1891), p. 104.

186  ‘only by continued sobriety’: Cited in Silverthorne, Christmas in Texas, p. 7.

187  alleviated ‘the miseries of the year’: Cited in Genovese, Roll Jordan, p. 578. Genovese does not, however, say if this was written by Pierpont while he was in South Carolina, or later, once he had become an outspoken advocate of abolition.

187 ‘the spirit of insurrection’: Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself (Hartford, CT, Park Publishing, 1882), pp. 182, 180.

187n One recipe recommended: The nineteenth-century eggnog recipe is in Mrs J. C. Croly, Jennie June’s American cookery
book . . . (New York, Excelsior, [c.1878]), p. 273; the contemporary recipe cited can be found at www.jamieoliver. com/news-and-features/features/best-eggnog-recipe/# 3vwGdre4TM8i9weL.97, accessed 7 September 2016.

188 men, women and children all: Nissenbaum, Battle, pp. 261–2.

188 ‘everybody was [just] expected’: Cited in Nissenbaum, Battle, pp. 263–4, although the resemblance to the English custom of graded hospitality is my own.

188 catalogued in the letters of John Pintard: Pintard, Letters,

1 January 1821, vol. 1, p. 357; 26 December 1821, vol. 2,

114; 26 December 1831, vol. 3, p. 305.

188  In the maritime regions: Georges Arsenault, Acadian Christmas Traditions, trans. Sally Ross (Charlottetown, Prince 
Edward Island, Acorn Press, 2007), pp. 29–30, 69, 74, 83.

189  ‘The Hebrew brethren did not keep aloof ’: Cited in 
Shoemaker, Christmas in Pennsylvania, pp. 77–8.

189n poutine appeared only in the later twentieth century: Claude

Poirier, ed., Dictionnaire historique du français québécois (Sainte- Foy, Québec, Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1998), ‘Poutine’, pp. 426–9.

190 It was not coincidental that Chanukah: For Chanukah in the USA especially: Ran Abramitzky, Liran Einav, and Oren Rigbi, ‘Is Hanukkah Responsive to Christmas?’, Economic Journal, vol. 120, no. 545, June 2010, p. 612; Pleck, Celebrating the Family, pp. 68–70; Jenna Weissman Joselit, ‘“Merry Chanuka”: The Changing Holiday Practices of American Jews, 1880–1950’, Jack Wertheimer, ed., The Uses of Tradition: Jewish Continuity in the Modern Era (New York, Jewish Theological Seminary/Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 303–14. ‘Family gatherings’: Rabbi Gustav Gottheil, in ibid., p. 309.

192 A child living on a small farm: Respectively ‘George Bourne’, William Smith, pp. 27–30; E. H. Shepard, Drawn from Memory and Drawn from Life: The Autobiography of Ernest H. Shepard (London, Methuen, 1986), pp. 146–61; and Augusta Gregory, Lady Gregory’s Diaries: 1892–1902, ed. James Pethica (Gerrards Cross, Colin Smythe, 1996), pp. 105, 120, 198, 294, 309.

192 an ambitious resident prepared a Christmas dinner:
Sadly, the glorious meal was not to be. Another lodger accidentally poured cold water, presumably for her laundry,

on top, spoiling the meat and precipitating the ‘a ray’ which resulted in both lodgers winding up in court, and thus in The Times, 27 December 1816, p. 3.

192 ‘walls of fat beef ’: Thomas Carlyle, The Carlyle Letters, 23 December 1852, vol. 27, pp. 372–5; and 25 December 1847, vol. 22, pp. 178–81.

194 the Christmas truce, in the first winter of World War I: For information about the Christmas truce, I have drawn on Stanley Weintraub, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce (New York, Free Press, 2001), passim, unless otherwise noted.

196  British choices were far more secular than the Germans’: Weintraub, Silent Night, pp. 38, 43, 45–6, and Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton, Christmas Truce (London, Leo Cooper, 1984), pp. 66, 68, give the titles, but neither comments on the carol/secular split.

197  ‘This is Lord & Taylor’s’: Cited in Marling, Merry Christmas, p. 113.

198  ‘Christmas isn’t Christmas’: Cited in Schmidt, Consumer Rites, p. 167.

199  In 1956 Dayton’s: Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 97, 101.

200  ‘ten thousand sparkling lights’: David Sedaris, Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays (London, Indigo, 1997), pp. 170 .

200 the parade developed north of the border: Christmas

parades based on information in Bella, Christmas Imperative, pp. 157–9, 163, 170; Leach, Land of Desire, pp. 332–6; Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 114–19; Pleck, Celebrating the Family, pp. 33–4.

202  In Montreal such was the community’s engagement: Bella, Christmas Imperative, gives a viewing figure of nearly 250,000; the population of the city of Montreal at the time was 818,577, of the island 1,003,868. From how far afield the parade drew its audience I cannot say.

203  allowing at least four weeks of shopping: Restad, Christmas in America, p. 162.

203 keeping their Christmas money separately: Waits, Modern Christmas in America, pp. 29–31.

203n The change was mocked in Holiday Inn: Marling, Merry Christmas!, p. 323.

204 it is customary for senior o cers to serve: See, for example, www.heraldscotland.com/news/13085963.Squaddies_to_ be_pampered_by_o cers_as_Afghan_bases_mark_ Christmas__Army_style/, accessed 12 September 2009.

I am grateful to Michael Hargreave Mawson for this

reference.
204n the German National Tourist O ce promoted: The

promotion is cited by Armstrong, Festlichkeit, p. 489, but not

the contradiction.
205 ‘it is customary for my father to mention’: James H. S.

Bossard and Eleanor S. Boll, Ritual in Family Living: A Contemporary Study (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950), p. 77. I am puzzled by some of the categorizations of the authors: Irish Catholics, for example, are described eating ‘buckwheat pudding, potato pancakes or “bleenies”’, which suggests to me an East European heritage, but the comments of those interviewed seem nonetheless useful.

205 In Germany in the 1920s and 1930s: Perry, Christmas in Germany, pp. 173, 178.

205 nativity plays performed by small children: Sutton, Stations of the Sun, p. 121.

205  the development of Kwanzaa: Anna Day Wilde, ‘Mainstreaming Kwanzaa’, in Amitai Etzioni and Jared Bloom, eds., We Are What We Celebrate: Understanding Holidays and Rituals (New York, New York University Press, 2004), pp. 120–30; Kathlyn Gay, African-American Holidays, Festivals, and Celebrations: The History, Customs, and Symbols Associated with . . . Religious and Secular Events . . . (Detroit, Omnigraphics, 2007), pp. 268–74.

206  respondents to a British survey: Survey reported in Adam Kuper, ‘The English Christmas and the Family: Time Out and Alternative Realities’, in Miller, Unwrapping Christmas, pp. 157–8.

206–7 she was ‘almost obliged’ to go: Orvar Löfgren: ‘The Great Christmas Quarrel and Other Swedish Traditions’, in Miller, Unwrapping Christmas, p. 225.

208  Santa sold pipe tobacco: These ads among many others cited in Marling, Merry Christmas!, p. 210.

209  Santa reverted to the old Christmas: George McKay, ‘Consumption, Coca-Colonisation, Cultural Resistance’, in Whiteley, Christmas, Ideology, pp. 57–9.

211 Coca-Cola hired Haddon Sundblom: There is not, unfortunately, any good single source on the Coca-Cola/ Sundblom campaigns. McKay, ‘Consumption, Coca- Colonisation’, is helpful on the commodity element; Cecil Munsey, The Illustrated Guide to the Collectibles of Coca-Cola (New York, Hawthorn Books, 1972), pp. 234–5, has some

good images, but the background material is unreliable; while J. C. Louis and Harvey Z. Yazijian, The Cola Wars (New York, Everest House, 1980), pp. 97–8, veer from the vague to the incorrect in the two pages allocated to the subject.

212  ’Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the hills: Robert L. May, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (London, Simon and Schuster, 2014 [1939]).

213  the twentieth century’s most successful holiday songs: The list can be found at www.ascap.com/press/2014/1203-top- holiday-songs-100-years; information on the faith of many of the composers and lyricists is explored by Nate Bloom at www.interfaithfamily.com/arts_and_entertainment/ popular_culture/The_Jews_Who_Wrote_Christmas_ Songs.shtml, accessed 14 September 2016.

213  Christmas adapted in other ways to wartime: The CBS broadcast, and St Nicholas: Jones, Saint Nicholas, pp. 359, 307–8; information on the propaganda purposes and funding of the Knickerbocker Weekly: Charlotte Kok, ‘The Knickerbocker Weekly and the Netherlands Information Bureau: A Public Diplomacy Cooperation During the 1941–1947 Era’, MA Thesis, American Studies Program, Utrecht University, 2011.

214  German propaganda use of Christmas: The paragraphs on Nazi Christmas traditions are drawn from Perry, Christmas in Germany, pp. 172–3, 181, 185–6, unless otherwise stated.

215  thesoldierPetermannerectshistree:Weintraub,SilentNight, pp. 18–19.

216  a decorated fourteen-metre hemlock: Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 178, 180.

216 by 1914 Austin: Silverthorne, Christmas in Texas, p. 17.

216 the White House moved its tree outside: Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 178–87.

216  In the same decade, in the Weimar Republic: Corey Ross, ‘Celebrating Christmas in the Third Reich and GDR: Political Instrumentalization and Cultural Continuity under the German Dictatorships’, in Karin Friedrich, ed., Festive Culture in Germany and Europe from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Century (Lewiston, NY, Edwin Mellen, 2000), pp. 323–4, 330; Esther Gajek, ‘Christmas Under the Third Reich’, Anthropology Today, vol. 6, no. 4, August 1990, p. 6.

217  In Washington in 1941: Marling, Merry Christmas!, pp. 185–6.

218n the population of England and Wales sent: The figures for

Christmas cards in the 1880s, 1938, 1977 and 1992 are from Mary Searle-Chatterjee, ‘Christmas Cards and the Construction of Social Relations in Britain Today’, in Miller, Unwrapping Christmas, p. 176; the figure for 2014, when the Greeting Card Association estimates that 8.78m cards were sold, taken from www.greetingcardassociation. org.uk/resources/for-publishers/the-market/facts-and- figures, accessed 26 February 2016; the population figures are UK census figures for the appropriate decades.

219  The Third Reich Christmas: Nancy R. Reagin, Sweeping the German Nation: Domesticity and National Identity in Germany, 1870–1945 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 206–10, although she fails to note the non-Germanic Santa costume.

220  For Germans, like the Americans and British: Perry, Christmas in Germany, pp. 176–9.

221  ‘a link with the past’: Connelly, Christmas: A History, pp. 137–80.

222  ‘in 1928 the BBC broadcast’: Connelly, Christmas: A History, pp. 142–3.

222  a retired life has left her Majesty: Published pseudonymously as by William Watkins Smyth, of Canonbury, in The Star newspaper, 1888; George Bernard Shaw, ‘The Abolition of Christmas’, The Shavian, vol. 3, no. 8, 1967, pp. 7–9.

223  the King’s (later Queen’s) Christmas speech: Transcripts of all the Christmas-Day speeches to 1980 appear in Tom Fleming, Voices Out of the Air: The Royal Christmas Broadcasts, 1932–1981 (London, Heinemann, 1981).

223n ‘I wish he would not speak’: Kathleen Tipper, A Woman in Wartime London: The Diary of Kathleen Tipper, 1941–1945, ed. Patricia and Robert Malcolmson ([London], London Record Society, 2006), p. 27.

224 an annual peak in divorce rates: It is regularly suggested that divorce rates peak in January, after the Christmas holidays. It is di cult, however, to find any reliable evidence that this is indeed the case. See www.divorce-online.co.uk/ blog/research-finds-a-quarter-of-brits-think-christmas- causes-relationships-to-su er/, accessed 15 September 2016. Johnes, Christmas and the British, p. 47, cites the domestic violence spike, from an NHS pamphlet, ‘Keep Safe This Christmas’ (2012), p. 6. I am uncertain what its figures were based on, and it may be, as with the divorce figures, this is something that is generally felt, rather than statistically quantified.

224 a company called Department 56: Department 56 information from the company website: www.department 56.com; the other villages: Marling, Merry Christmas!, p. 66.

226 as many as 500 adaptations: James Chapman, ‘God Bless Us, Every One: Movie Adaptations of “A Christmas Carol”’; Mark Connelly, Christmas at the Movies: Images of Christmas in American, British and European Cinema (London,

I.B. Tauris, 2000), p. 9, has counted 357 by 1987; and Davis,

Scrooge, lists others, so 500 seems a safe bet to me.
226n George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly: All in Davis,

Scrooge, pp. 156–7.

228  A typical example of the genre: For Christmas television 
I have relied on Russell Belk, ‘Materialism and the Modern US Christmas’, in Elizabeth C. Hirschman, ed., Interpretive Consumer Research (Provo, Association for Consumer Research, 1989); Fred Guida, A Christmas Carol and its Adaptations: A Critical Examination of Dickens’s Story and its Productions on Screen and Television (Je erson, NC, McFarland & Co., 2000); Vincent Terrace, Television Specials: 3,201 Entertainment Spectaculars, 1939–1993 (Je erson, NC, McFarland & Co., 1995); Robert J. Thompson, ‘Consecrating Consumer Culture: Christmas Television Specials’, in Forbes and Mahan, Religion and Popular Culture, pp. 44–55.

229  the lens of rural nostalgia: Peter J. Thompson, ‘Consecrating Consumer Culture: Christmas Television Specials’, in Bruce David Forbes and Je rey Mahan, eds., Religion and Popular Culture in America (rev. edn, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2005), pp. 44–55.

230  the aftermath of World War II: Jonathan Mundy, ‘A Hollywood Carol’s Wonderful Life’, in Connelly, Christmas at the Movies, pp. 39–57.

231  an idiosyncratic Japanese Christmas: For Japanese Christmas I have relied on: Kimura and Belk, ‘Christmas in Japan’, and the same authors’ ‘Santa Claus is Coming to

Town: Assimilation of Christmas in Japan’, in Advances in Consumer Research (Portland, OR, Association for Consumer Research, 2005); Brian Moeran and Lise Skov, ‘Cinderella Christmas: Kitsch, Consumerism, and Youth in Japan’, in Miller, Unwrapping Christmas, pp. 105–33; and David Plath, ‘The Japanese Popular Christmas: Coping with Modernity’, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 76, no. 302, 1963, pp. 309–17.

232  a study undertaken in Indiana in the 1970s: Theodore Caplow, ‘Rule Enforcement without Visible Means: Christmas Gift Giving in Middletown’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 89, no. 6, May 1984, pp. 1308–10.

233  In the Indiana study: Caplow, ‘Rule Enforcement’, pp. 1232, 1316; James G. Carrier, ‘The Rituals of Christmas Giving’, in Miller, Unwrapping Christmas, p. 57.

234  In Sweden, for example: Löfgren, ‘Great Christmas Quarrel’, pp. 219, 222–3.

234n In one Swedish survey: The survey, from 1988, is in Löfgren, ‘Great Christmas Quarrel’, p. 226; number of residents per household: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/ statistics-explained/index.php/Household_composition_ statistics, accessed 29 September 2016.

236  the Starbucks Nutcracker ‘Bearista’: All the Nutcracker merchandise mentioned was found on amazon.com, accessed 18 September 2016.

237  the Joulustaalo of Lapland: Hawkins, Bad Santa, pp. 99 .

237 ‘spirits and ghosts . . . that glide by night’: Christopher

Marlow[e], The Rich Jew of Malta; A Tragedy (London,

Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1818[1589/90]), p. 20. 237 ‘no spirit can walk abroad’: Hamlet, I:i.
237 ‘history of apparitions, oracles, prophecies, and

predictions’: Thomas Bromhall, An history of apparitions,

oracles, prophecies, and predictions . . . Written in French, And now

rendred into English (London, John Streater, 1658).
237n a descendant of Siberian shamans: This debunking of the

theory of Rogan Taylor was e ciently carried out by

Hutton, Stations of the Sun, pp. 118–19.
238 a seasonal pastime of ‘Countryfolks’: Round About Our Coal

Fire, cited in Parker, Christmas and Charles Dickens, p. 105. 238 ‘conjuror and ghost, / Goblin and witch’: Walter Scott,

Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field (3rd edn, Edinburgh,

Constable and Co., 1808), p. 306.

238  ‘Whenever five or six English-speaking people’: Jerome K. 
Jerome, Told After Supper (New York, Henry Holt, 1891), 
pp. 15–16.

239  I hate a family gathering at Christmas: George and Weedon 
Grossmith, Diary of a Nobody (London, Folio Society, 1979 
[1892]), p. 89.

239 is an indecent subject: George Bernard Shaw, Our Theatres in

the Nineties (London, Constable and Co., 1932), vol. 3, p. 279. 239 ‘A day set apart and consecrated’: Ambrose Bierce, The

Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary, ed. David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi (Athens, GA, University of Georgia Press, 2002),
p. 36.

239  ‘this Christmas idiocy bursts upon one’: Philip Larkin, Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, 1940–1985 (London, Faber and Faber, 1992), 17 December 1958, p. 297.

240  The markets were too commercial: Oliver Haid, ‘Christmas Markets’, in Picard and Robinson, Festivals, Tourism and Social Change, pp. 209–21.

240  One British Christmas anthology: D. B. Wyndham Lewis and G. C. Heseltine, eds., A Christmas Book: An Anthology for Moderns (London, J. M. Dent, 1928), p. vii.

241  To such Christmas originalists: For the discussion on nostalgia and history that follows, I am most heavily indebted to the incomparable Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York, Basic Books, 2001). I have also drawn on: Linda M. Austin, Nostalgia in Transition, 1780–1917 (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 2007), passim; Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 63–5; Christina Goulding, ‘Romancing the Past: Heritage Visiting and the Nostalgic Consumer’, Psychology and Marketing, vol. 18, no. 6, 2001, pp. 565–92; Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Inventing Traditions’, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1–14; Dell Hymes, ‘Folklore’s Nature and the Sun’s Myth’, The Journal of American Folklore, vol. 88, no. 350,pp. 345–69; David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985), passim; Katharina Niemeyer, ed., Media and Nostalgia: Yearning for the Past, Present and Future (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 3–11; Pleck, Celebrating the Family; and Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1991), passim.

241  ‘The Shop of Ghosts’: G. K. Chesterton, ‘The Shop of Ghosts’, published in the Daily News, 22 December 1906, reprinted in Chesterton, The Spirit of Christmas (London, Xanadu, 1984), pp. 27–31.

242  Psychologists studying the function of memory: Harald Welzer, ‘Re-narrations: How Pasts Change in Controversial Rememberings’, Memory Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2010, pp. 5, 15.

244 wrote a seventeenth-century historian: John Selden, Table-Talk: Being the Discourses of John Selden, Esq . . . (London, E. Smith, 1689), p. 21.

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