Christmas Day Passed Very Quietly
Christmas Day passed very quietly. The men had a holiday from work and the children from school and the churchgoers attended special Christmas services. Mothers who had young children would buy them an orange each and a handful of nuts; but, except at the end house and the inn, there was no hanging up of stockings, and those who had no kind elder sister or aunt in service to send them parcels got no Christmas presents.Still, they did manage to make a little festival of it. Every year the farmer killed an ox for the purpose and gave each of his men a joint of beef, which duly appeared on the Christmas dinner-table together with plum pudding - not Christmas pudding, but suet duff with a good sprinkling of raisins. Ivy and other evergreens (it was not holly country) were hung from the ceiling and over the pictures; a bottle of homemade wine was uncorked, a good fire was made up, and, with doors and windows closed against the keen, wintry weather, they all settled down by their own firesides for a kind of super-Sunday. There was little visiting of neighbours and there were no family reunions, for the girls in service could not be spared at that season, and the few boys who had gone out in the world were mostly serving abroad in the Army.
There were still bands of mummers in some of the larger villages, and village choirs went carol-singing about the countryside; but none of these came to the hamlet, for they knew the collection to be expected there would not make it worth their while. A few families, sitting by their own firesides, would sing carols and songs; that, and more and better food and a better fire that usual, made up their Christmas cheer.
- From, Lark Rise To Candleford by Flora Thompson Flora Thompson.née Timms
The eldest daughter of Albert and Emma Timms,Flora Jane Thompson was born in the tiny Oxfordshire hamlet of Juniper Hill, near Brackley, on 5th December 1876. She attended school in the neighbouring village of Cottisford. After leaving school at fourteen, and moving away from home, for the first time, she worked as a post-office clerk at the Fringford post-office. After four years she left Fringford, and took a number of short holiday-relief engagements in various rural post-offices, then applied for and got the job of assistant at the Grayshott post-office, in Hampshire. There, in due course, she met her future husband John Thompson,himself a post-office-clerk who later became a postmaster. In 1903 John Thompson was transferred to the main post-office in Bournemouth, he and Flora were married and began life together in this large sea-side town. Flora was then twenty-six.
The Thompsons remained in Bournemouth for thirteen years, during which time their two elder children, Winifred and Basil, were born. In 1916 they moved to Liphook in Hampshire, and a younger son, Peter was born a year later. They lived in Liphook for twelve years, until another, and final posting for John Thompson took them, in 1928, to Dartmouth, where they remained until his retirement in 1940. In the early years she supplemented their meagre income with journalism, writing nature essays for The Catholic Fireside, the Daily News, The Lady, and other papers, and in 1921 she published a volume of verse, Bog-myrtle and peat. She is remembered for her autobiographical trilogy Lark Rise to Candleford (1945), published originally as Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941), and Candleford Green (1943), works which evoke through the childhood memories and youth of third-person 'Laura' a vanished world of agricultural customs and rural culture. There is a selection of works by Margaret Lane, A Country Calendar and other writings (1979), with a biographical introduction.
Flora Thompson died on 21 May 1947, and was buried in Dartmouth. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. © Margaret Drabble and Oxford University Press. 1995. |
Fire and Sleet and Candlelight A Lark Rise Christmas Albion Christmas Band Tour 2008 On Christmas Night All Christians Sing
external internet links This mummers play was recorded in 1892. It was performed in Winchcombe in Gloucestershire and is a typical mummers play.
In December the berries start to appear. They are green at first and gradually turn black when ripe. By February these will be the last natural fruits left in the hedgerow for birds to eat.
The books, the plays, the music,
Flora Thompson, Ashley Hutchings,
John Tams, and all the usual suspects.
(suet pudding)
A real Christmas pudding that requires a pudding cloth |
