“Leave a loaf of bread on the table after Christmas Eve supper and you will have a full supply until the next Christmas.” A superstition from the Reader’s Digest collection, The Best Literature Of Christmas.
As we helped Santa wrap the gifts late last night, my wife and I watched Scrooge the colorized version of the 1951 classic, A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim. I think I much prefer the original black-and-white version. We watch one version or the other every Christmas Eve. It’s become a Christmas Eve ritual.
“How the season telescopes itself upon us. Christmas drops a plumb line down through the years! My father, a young man, sits at the end of the dining room table as we finish our Christmas morning breakfast, eating in desperation because we know we must–it is the family rule–before we go in together to our laden Christmas tree. My father leans forward: ‘I think I’d better go down to the office,’ he says. ‘You don’t mind waiting an hour or two, do you?’ It is part of the ritual, and we shriek our ritual protests.
“Moving back and forth from kitchen to dining room now, getting ready for supper, I looked into the living room at my own family circle–my husband, our four handsome teenaged children–and, for these few days, Hoyt’s mother and father adding their special presence to our family scene. … Warmed, made content by all of this … I realized I was singing softly to myself. ‘We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing,’ I sang. I smiled–a Thanksgiving song and it’s Christmas. I know why. But–Joy to the world, I thought. Joy to the world!” An excerpt from the writing of Martha Whitmore Hickman and featured as a complement to the beautiful holiday paintings of Thomas Kinkade in the collection I’ll Be Home For Christmas, compiled by Anne Christian Buchanan and published in 1997 by Harvest House Publishers. Its ISBN is 1-56507-594-3.
I hope you had a wonderful Christmas Eve last night. I also hope you heard my wife and family on our special Christmas Eve program at Erin’s home. Again, I’d like to thank her and her family for welcoming us warmly into their home at this very special time of year.
By now I would imagine all the gifts have been opened unless you’re still waiting for late visitors to your home and hearth. “Christmas has come; / Let every man / Eat, drink and be merry all he can. / No matter what lies / In the bowls, / We’ll make it rich with our own souls.” William Henry Davies quoted in an article called A Caroler’s Supper with Feasting and Mirth in the December 1990 issue of Victoria magazine.
“Now all our neighbors’ chimneys smoke and Christmas logs are burning; their ovens with baked meats do choke, and all their spits are turning. /Without the door let sorrow lie, / And if for cold it hap to die, / We’ll bury it in Christmas pie.” George Wither from the Reader’s Digest collection, The Best Literature Of Christmas.
“Indoors, the fire is glowing on the wide hearth, a great bed of coals that will last all night and be enough … and the older people sit round it not saying much, and thinking with their hearts rather than with their heads, but small boys and girls know that interesting things have been happening in the kitchen all afternoon, and the grown-ups and the children have made up any little differences of opinion they may have had, before supper time, because good-will must reign, and reign alone.” F. Marion Crawford from The Little City Of Hope, published by HarperCollins.
My wife is busily making final preparations for our Christmas dinner while I write this blog. There will be candles on our table as well as in the sconces on the walls. This was another excerpt from that Reader’s Digest collection. “The Yule candles used long ago in France and England were so huge that holes had to be chiseled in the stone floors to serve as holders. Christmas dinner lasted as long as the candles burned.” And this traditional prayer said when the Yule log is lighted, from that same collection: “May the fire of this log warm the cold; may the hungry be fed; may the weary find rest, and may all enjoy Heaven’s peace.”
We’ll also have Christmas crackers at each place setting. This is the history of the “cracker.” They are a British tradition dating back to Victorian times when a confectioner sold sugared almonds, each with a motto and wrapped in a twisted paper package, as love tokens. “On Christmas Day a jet of resin from the confectioners log fire burst into flame with a loud ‘crack’. Using this idea he decided to make a log-shaped package that would produce a surprise bang and inside would be an almond and a motto. It soon became a firm favorite at parties with toys and hats added to each ‘cracker’. By the end of the century it was well established as a traditional Christmas custom and now each year virtually every household in the U. K. has at least one box of party crackers to pull at meal times, parties and family gatherings over the holiday season.” That was the written legend accompanying a box of crackers.
“The ceremonial Christmas drink in England was once lamb’s wool: a mixture of hot ale, sugar, spices, eggs and roasted apples. Thick cream was sometimes added. It was served in a wassail bowl with pieces of toast floated on top. Hence, the origin of the drinking toast.” Again from the Reader’s Digest collection. And be sure to designate a driver this holiday season…
“Let every pudding burst with plums, / And every tree bear dolls and drums, / In the week when Christmas comes. / Let every hall have boughs of green, / With berries glowing in between, / In the week when Christmas comes.” Eleanor Farjeon from that Reader’s Digest collection.
“The dessert was splendid as ever, with its golden oranges; brown nuts, … and apple jelly… Christmas was as it had always been…” George Eliot from The Mill On The Floss.
“At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put on the table, and a shovelful of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew around the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half of one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass, two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle. These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed: ‘A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us all!’ Which all the family re-echoed. ‘God bless us everyone!’ said Tiny Tim, last of all.”
I hope you have a wonderful Christmas dinner today…
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Don Jackson
