’Tis the Fourth day in the Twelve Days of the great feast of Christmas and I’m back to talk about celebrating the winter holidays in the British Isles where the stories I’ve been writing are set.
A week of binge-watching the series Shetland gave me a good appreciation of the closeness of Scotland to Scandinavia. Given the Celtic and later Viking influence, It’s no wonder that many of this season’s customs date back to pagan festivities marking the winter solstice. The word Yule (as in Yuletide and Yule Log) comes from the Norse word “jul” or “houl” meaning wheel.
Ancient Rome also celebrated the winter solstice in the Saturnalia festivities of ancient Rome. I mentioned in my December post last year that the early Christian church built a religious holiday, Christmas, around this natural time of ancient celebration. Many of the Christmas traditions—Yule logs, mistletoe, feasting–date back long before the designation of December 25th as the birthday of Jesus.
Though we’re a week out from the shortest day of the year, nights are still long, so why not keep partying? The seventh day of Christmas, December 31st brings us to the celebration of the new year. In Scotland, reaching back to their Norse roots, the locals celebrate Hogmanay with torchlight parades, bonfires, and lots of good whisky.
My favorite Scottish New Year’s tradition is the First Foot.
Tradition says that if the first person to cross the threshold in the new year is a tall, dark, handsome man, the home and all who dwell therein will have good luck in the coming year. (No red-headed men, please—they’re considered unlucky!) I saw this set up in a blurb for a Christmas romance this year, and then promptly lost the link. If you recognize that story, please mention it in the comments below.
Whatever winter holiday you celebrate, I hope you’re surrounded by family and friends. I wish you many blessings in the New Year. Have a Happy Hogmanay!
2 0 Read moreA quarter of the year has passed since my last post, and I am back to talk again about Michaelmas!
In my post last year, Michaelmas Goose, I mentioned that September 29th, Michaelmas, was apparently a traditional feasting holiday.
This year, I cordially invite you to celebrate the holiday with me.
In my family tradition, holiday feasts are eating extravaganzas, and so I present our Bill of Fare: a family meal in two courses, the first one of eleven dishes, the second of fifteen, including a lovely green Michaelmas goose as the crowning dish. You will not go home hungry!
I owe this excellent menu to the 1787 edition of Mrs. Charlotte Mason’s The Lady’s Assistant:
There are many books of RECEIPTS, but I have never met with one that contained any instructions for Regulating a Table.–The great inconvenience I experienced, on commencing mistress of a family, from the want of such assistance, has since prompted me to attempt a set of bills of fare, which I flatter myself will be of great use to ladies in general…It is certain, that a woman never appears to greater advantage than at the head of a Well-Regulated Table…
Mrs. Mason was a “Professed Housekeeper, who had Upwards of Thirty Years Experience in Families of the First Fashion”.
The author provides not just menus and recipes, but also, in an age when food was much more likely to be locally sourced, advice choosing a goose to cook:
The bill and feet of a young goose will be yellow, and there will be but few hairs upon them; if old, they will be red: if it is fresh, the feet will be limber; if stale, they will be stiff and dry. Green geese are in season from May or June, till they are three months old: they should be scalded. A stubble goose is good till it is five or six months old, and should be picked dry. The same rules will do for wild geese, with regard to their being old or young.
A green goose will not take more than three quarters of an hour at the fire. Unless it is particularly liked, it is not usual to put any thing into it but a little pepper and salt, a little gravy in the dish, and some in a boat. There must be green sauce in another boat, made as follows:–About half a pint of veal broth, the juice of an orange or lemon boiled up for six or seven minutes, then put in some juice of sorrel, enough to make it green, and just boil it up; stir it all the time for fear it should curdle, which it is apt to do, and it ought to be very smooth.
Are you scratching your head over some of these dishes? The Lady’s Assistant provides explanations and receipts…er, recipes.
I confess, I had to look up many of them, and I’m not at all sure where I’ll find a leveret to serve, much less a potted one! Any suggestions?
Have a wonderful autumn, and if I don’t see you at my dinner party, I will meet you here again on December 28th!
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Happy Midsummer’s Day! We’re only a few days past the celebration of the summer solstice,
but I think the magical time of summer is a good time to talk about…
I’m always on the hunt for tidbits of research I can use in one of my stories, particularly Celtic myths and superstitions. Fairies, Fauns, Selkies, Goblins, Elves, these delightful creatures populate stories for children (fairy tales), but they weren’t all sweet Tinkerbells!
In Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, The fairy king, Oberon, and his henchman, Puck, spread a great deal of mischief among the human characters. Fairies could sicken the livestock, ruin the crops.
Worse, fairies were known to steal human children and substitute fairy offspring (changelings). Fairies, elves, and all their kin were the original paranormal villains. For a really good article on this subject, check out Fairy Scapegoats: A History of the Persecution of Changeling Children.
Then, as in present times, a notion, no matter how unsupported by logic or facts, could take hold, spread, and in some cases lead to persecutions.
Besides stealing human children, magical creatures sometimes influenced humans who engaged in witchcraft. Most people have heard of the Salem Witch Trials, but witch hunts weren’t limited to the Colonies. In sixteenth century Scotland thousands of people were tried for witchcraft and executed. King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) became obsessed with witchcraft and wrote a treatise on the subject, Daemonologie, in 1597:
The fearefull aboundinge at this time in this countrie, of these detestable slaves of the Devill, the Witches or enchaunters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post, this following treatise of mine…
These beliefs persisted well past the sixteenth century. The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, written in 1691 by Robert Kirk, and reissued in 1893 is
An Essay on The Nature and Actions of the Subterranean (and, for the most Part,) Invisible People, heretofioir going under the name of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, or the lyke, among the Low-Country Scots, as they are described by those who have the Second Sight…
In an earlier post, I mentioned that Quarter Days were important for paying rent (and sometimes absconding without paying!). These rent-payment days were apparently important for supernatural creatures also. Mr. Kirk describes the Invisible People’s activities at Quarter Days:
They remove to other Lodgings at the Beginning of each Quarter of the Year, so traversing till Doomsday…Their chamaelion-lyke Bodies swim in the Air near the Earth with Bag and Bagadge; and at such revolution of Time, Seers, or Men of the Second Sight, (Faemales being seldome so qualified) have very terrifying Encounters with them, even on High Ways.
These men with the second sight understandably shunned quarterly travel and sought spiritual safeguards. They
thereby have made it a Custome to this Day among the Scottish-Irish to keep Church duely evry first Sunday of the Quarter to sene or hallow themselves, their Corns and Cattell, from the Shots and Stealth of these wandring Tribes; and many of these superstitious People will not be seen in Church againe till the nixt Quarter begin, as if no Duty were to be learned or done by them, but all the Use of Worship and Sermons were to save them from these Arrows that fly in the Dark.
Mr. Kirk was the seventh son of his father, and was thus “specially gifted.” I’m just delving into this book, but if you’re interested, click the link above and download a free copy from Googlebooks.
May your summer be happy, may you be safe from all the Fair Folk and Good People, and I’ll be back for another post at Michaelmas.
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons
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Greetings to my fellow history nerds. It’s time for another installment of my quarterly blog on historical topics.
In past posts, I talked about the English Quarter Days of Christmas, Midsummer’s Day and Michaelmas.
To refresh your memory, Quarter Days were the four days during the year when rents were paid, servants hired, and contracts commenced. My Christmas blog inspired some comments about when New Year’s was celebrated. Marianne said:
“New Years used to be celebrated on the First Day of Spring. But when we changed from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian’s calendar, New Years change to January 1st. That’s why September, October, November and December are named the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th months—even though they no longer are. While the Gregorian calendar was introduced in October 1582, we didn’t start using it until September 1752. April Fools were people who still celebrated the New Year in the Spring.”
In fact, that first day of spring on which the new year was celebrated was March 25th!
I mentioned before that most of the Quarter Days coincide with astronomical events (like the Vernal Equinox) and Pagan or Christian holidays. In the Catholic tradition which dominated most of Europe until the Reformation, March 25th is the Feast of the Annunciation, the date on which the Angel Gabriel visited the Virgin Mary. Thus it’s called Lady Day.
I blogged a bit about the calendar changes in a 2016 Leap Day post. In short, the year began in January when the world ran on the Julian calendar (inaugurated by Julius Caesar) until 1582, when Pope Gregory introduced the Gregorian (what else would you call it?) calendar. With the implementation of the Gregorian calendar, countries adopting the calendar lost ten days.
Given that the calendar was devised by Catholics, England resisted and ran on the Julian calendar until 1752. Imagine subtracting ten days (or adding them) to line up your calendars. And vital statistic records, like births, deaths, and marriages? What a mess! As I mention in my 2016 post, George Washington’s birthday in 1732 was not February 22nd but February 11th.
As the first day of spring, Lady Day was the most important Quarter Day for landholders and tenant farmers, and these contracts would run at least a full year to allow for the cycle of planting, cultivation and harvesting. Kathryn Kane has a thorough and well-researched post on this subject at her blog, The Regency Redingote.
Kathryn mentions that Lady Day apparently initiated goose-plucking season. Throughout the warmer months, quills (needed as writing implements) and down were harvested. And when the summer ended with Michaelmas, I seem to remember a feast of roast goose! Poor birds!
I know these are all little pieces of trivia, but as a historical romance author, I never know when I’ll be able to snag a detail or two to add to my story. Or maybe even craft a holiday-themed story, like I did with my latest release, A Leap Into Love, a Regency romance built around Leap Day traditions. I hope you too can find something useful here!
Happy spring! I’ll be back again in June for Midsummer’s Day.
Image credits: Wikimedia Commons
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Greetings to my fellow history nerds. It’s time for another installment of my quarterly blog on historical topics.
In past posts, I talked about the English Quarter Days of Midsummer’s Day and Michaelmas.
To refresh your memory, Quarter Days were the four days during the year when rents were paid, servants hired, and contracts commenced. The last Quarter Day of the calendar year was the grand holiday of Christmas. Though the Quarter Day was December 25th, Christmas celebrations went on for twelve days.
We romance authors flood the lists every year with Christmas novellas, and not just the contemporary lists. Christmas Regency romances abound and sell well. But how to get the details right for our hero and heroine? How did the Christmas celebrations aid or interfere with a Regency hero’s wooing? How did they celebrate Christmas?
As I pointed out in an earlier post, Christmas falls around the time of the winter solstice. The pagan festivities of the season were Bacchanalian revels of feasting and drinking and other wicked practices. To encourage some order, the early Christian church designated December 25th as a religious holiday.
So, people went to church…and then they feasted, drank, and engaged in other wicked practices.
Under the Puritan rule that resulted from the 17th century English Civil War, the observance of Christmas was banned. The Lord High Protector of England, Oliver Cromwell, and his Puritan cohorts decided that English people needed to be protected from carnal delights of holiday celebrations. Christmas became a regular workday. Anyone celebrating could be subject to penalty.
The Puritans carried this attitude across the Pond. Christmas was illegal in their American colonies also.
With the restoration to the throne of Charles II (a man greatly given to Bacchanalian revels), Christmas was also restored in the English calendar of holidays.
Christmas as we know it was documented by Charles Dickens, author of A Christmas Carol. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’ve dipped into the book by Les Standiford. In the story of Scrooge and Tiny Tim, Dickens brought to life the quintessential picture of a Victorian Christmas.
But if you’re writing a Regency-set Christmas romance, don’t pull out your copy of Dickens and copy his story world. To quote a post I wrote a couple of years ago:
Decorating with evergreen boughs and mistletoe (and kissing under the mistletoe!), wassailing, acting out pantomimes, and singing carols, were very likely part of the Regency holiday celebration…Christmas trees and Santa Claus did not become popular until Victorian times.
Click on the link to read the rest of that post.
Or, as we know it, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, was written by an American, Clement Clarke Moore, in 1823. Dutch and German holiday traditions influenced the celebration of Christmas earlier in America than in England. Prince Albert, Victoria’s German prince, is credited with popularizing the Christmas tree in England.
Dickens brought us A Christmas Carol in 1843, but check out this series of illustrations by cartoonist George Cruikshanks. Even before Scrooge made his appearance, the early Victorians were holding over-the-top celebrations of the Twelve Days of Christmas.
No matter what holiday you celebrate, I wish you all the best in this season of holidays! I’ll be back in March to talk about Lady Day.
All Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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