UNDER THE HOLLY BOUGH
Ye who have scorn'd each other
Or injured friend or brother,
In this fast fading year;
Ye who, by word or deed,
Have made a kind heart bleed,
Come gather here.
Let sinn'd against and sinning,
Forget their strife's beginning;
Be links no longer broken,
Be sweet forgiveness spoken,
Under the holly bough.
Ye who have lov'd each other,
Sister and friend and brother,
In this fast fading year:
Mother, and sire, and child,
Young man and maiden mild,
Come gather here;
As memory shall ponder
Each past unbroken vow.
Old loves and younger wooing,
Are sweet in the renewing,
Under the holly bough.
Ye who have nourished sadness,
Estranged from hope and gladness,
In this fast fading year.
Ye with o'er-burdened mind
Made aliens from your kind,
Come gather here.
Let not the useless sorrow
Pursue you night and morrow,
If e'er you hoped—hope now—
Take heart: uncloud your faces,
And join in our embraces
Under the holly bough.
Charles Mackay, LL.D. [1814-1889]
CEREMONIES FOR CHRISTMAS
Come, bring with a noise,
My merry, merry boys,
The Christmas log to the firing;
While my good dame, she
Bids ye all be free;
And drink to your hearts' desiring.
With the last year's brand
Light the new block, and
For good success in his spending,
On your psaltries play,
That sweet luck may
Come while the log is a-tending.
Drink now the strong beer,
Cut the white loaf here,
The while the meat is a-shredding;
For the rare mince-pie
And the plums stand by
To fill the paste that's a-kneading.
Robert Herrick [1591-1674]
KRISS KRINGLE
Just as the moon was fading
Amid her misty rings,
And every stocking was stuffed
With childhood's precious things,
Old Kriss Kringle looked around,
And saw on the elm-tree bough,
High hung, an oriole's nest,
Lonely and empty now.
"Quite a stocking," he laughed,
"Hung up there on a tree!
I didn't suppose the birds
Expected a present from me!"
Then old Kriss Kringle, who loves
A joke as well as the best,
Dropped a handful of snowflakes
Into the oriole's empty nest.
Source: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
CEREMONIES FOR CHRISTMAS
Come, bring with a noise,
My merry, merry boys,
The Christmas log to the firing;
While my good dame, she
Bids ye all be free;
And drink to your hearts' desiring.
With the last year's brand
Light the new block, and
For good success in his spending,
On your psaltries play,
That sweet luck may
Come while the log is a-tending.
Drink now the strong beer,
Cut the white loaf here,
The while the meat is a-shredding;
For the rare mince-pie
And the plums stand by
To fill the paste that's a-kneading.
Source: Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
CHRISTMAS, 1918
Oh the joys of Christmas, as we hang our stockings
high,
The landmark of our ages, as the years go rushing by,
With hallow'd memories shrouding the laughter and the sigh,
The shouting of the conquerors, or the wounded prisoners' cry.
The Belgians now are cheering, who last Christmas
day were numb.
The Germans hide their conquered heads, who marched to sound
of drum:
But to us who dwell in plenty, peace and goodwill have come;
To the cry of hungry children shall we, who have, be dumb?
A happy, happy Christmas, we have got and we must
lend,
A merry, joyful Christmas, if to other folds we send:
For blessed are the givers, and more happy in the end
Is the boy or girl who joyfully shares with a poorer friend.
Source: Poems and Prose,
John Graham Boulton, December 25, 1930
••••••••
Christmas Cheer
Good husband and housewife, now chiefly be glad,
Things handsome to have, as they ought to be had.
They both do provide, against Christmas do come,
To welcome their neighbors, good cheer to have some.
Good bread and good drink, a good fire in the
hall,
Brawn, pudding, and souse, and good mustard withal.
Beef, mutton, and pork, and good pies of the best,
Pig, veal, goose, and capon, and turkey well drest,
Cheese, apples and nuts, and good carols to hear,
As then in the country is counted good cheer.
What cost to good husband, is any of this?
Good household provision only it is:
Of other the like, I do leave out a many,
That costeth the husband never a penny.
Source: "Christmas Cheer"
by Thomas Tusser
••••••••
Old English Song
I wish you a merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year;
A pocket full of money
And a cellar full of beer,
And a great fat pig
To last you all the year.
All you that to feasting and mirth are inclined,
Come, here is good news for to pleasure your mind,
Old Christmas is come for to keep open house,
He scorns to be guilty of starving a mouse:
Then come, boys, and welcome for diet the chief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies and roast beef.
…Traditional
••••••••
At Christmas I no more desire a rose
Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled mirth;
But like of each thing that in seasons grows.
Source: William Shakespeare
••••••••
'But my song I troll out, for CHRISTMAS Stout,
The hearty, the true, and the bold;
A bumper I drain, and with might and main
Give three cheers for this Christmas old!
We'll usher him in with a merry din
That shall gladden his joyous heart,
And we'll keep him up, while there's bite or sup,
And in fellowship good, we'll part.
'In his fine honest pride, he scorns to hide
One jot of his hard-weather scars;
They're no disgrace, for there's much the same trace
On the cheeks of our bravest tars.
Then again I sing till the roof doth ring
And it echoes from wall to wall --
To the stout old wight, fair welcome to-night,
As the King of the Seasons all!'
Source: Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
••••••••
I have apples, I have
cakes,
Icicles, and snowy flakes,
Hanging on each naked bough;
Sugar strawberries and cherries,
Misletoe and holly-berries
Nail'd above the glorious show.
I have presents rich and rare,
Beauties which I do not spare,
For my little children dear;
At my steps the casements lighten,
Sourest human faces brighten,
And the carols, music strange,
Float in their melodious change
On the night wind cold and drear.
Source: Bessie Rayner Belloc, A Carol for
Willie (from Poems, 1852)
Credit to: Victorian Women Writers Project: an Electronic Collection
digitally published by Library Electronic Text Resource Service
(LETRS) of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana (edited
by Perry Willett).
••••••••
Where now sun, now shadow dapples--
As it wavers in the breeze--
Clumps of fresh-complexioned apples
On the heavy-laden trees:
Red and yellow, streaked and hoary,
Russet-coated, pale or brown--
Some are dipped in sunset glory,
And some painted by the dawn.
What profusion, what abundance!
Not a twig but has its fruits;
High in air some in the sun dance,
Some lie scattered near the roots.
These the hasty winds have taken
Are a green, untimely crop;
Those by burly rustics shaken
Fall with loud resounding plop.
In this mellow autumn weather,
Ruddy 'mid the long green grass,
Heaped-up baskets stand together,
Filled by many a blowsy lass.
Red and yellow, streaked and hoary,
Pile them on the granary floors,
Till the yule-log's flame in glory
Loudly up the chimney roars;
Till gay troops of children, lightly
Tripping in with shouts of glee,
See ripe apples dangling brightly
On the red-lit Christmas-tree.
Source: Mathilde Blind, Excerpt from Apple-Gathering
(from The Ascent of Man, 1889) Credit to: Victorian Women Writers
Project: an Electronic Collection digitally published by Library
Electronic Text Resource Service (LETRS) of Indiana University
in Bloomington, Indiana (edited by Perry Willett).
Holiday
Quotes
The summers we spent in the country, now at one
place, now at another. We children, of course, loved the country
beyond anything. We disliked the city. We were always wildly
eager to get to the country when spring came, and very sad when
in the late fall the family moved back to town. In the country
we of course had all kinds of pets—cats, dogs, rabbits, a coon,
and a sorrel Shetland pony named General Grant. When my younger
sister first heard of the real General Grant, by the way, she
was much struck by the coincidence that some one should have
given him the same name as the pony. (Thirty years later my
own children had their pony Grant.) In the country we children
ran barefoot much of the time, and the seasons went by in a
round of uninterrupted and enthralling pleasures—supervising
the haying and harvesting, picking apples, hunting frogs successfully
and woodchucks unsuccessfully, gathering hickory-nuts and chestnuts
for sale to patient parents, building wigwams in the woods,
and sometimes playing Indians in too realistic manner by staining
ourselves (and incidentally our clothes) in liberal fashion
with poke-cherry juice. Thanksgiving was an appreciated festival,
but it in no way came up to Christmas. Christmas was an occasion
of literally delirious joy. In the evening we hung up our stockings—or
rather the biggest stockings we could borrow from the grown-ups—and
before dawn we trooped in to open them while sitting on father's
and mother's bed; and the bigger presents were arranged, those
for each child on its own table, in the drawing-room, the doors
to which were thrown open after breakfast. I never knew any
one else have what seemed to me such attractive Christmases,
and in the next generation I tried to reproduce them exactly
for my own children.
Source: Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919).
An Autobiography. 1913.
••••••••
Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy
face, had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion, and
had set off his rich gifts of warmth and color with all the
heightening contrast of frost and snow...The plum-pudding was
of the same handsome roundness as ever, and came in with the
symbolic blue flames around it, as if it had been heroically
snatched from the nether fires, into which it had been thrown
by dyspeptic Puritans; the dessert was as splendid as ever,
with its golden oranges, brown nuts, and the crystalline light
and dark of apple-jelly and damson cheese; in all these things
Christmas was as it had always been since Tom could remember;
it was only distinguished, it by anything, by superior sliding
and snowballs.
Source: George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
••••••••
And numerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings
a brief season of happiness and enjoyment. How many families,
whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide,
in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet
once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill,
which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one
so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that
the religious belief of the most civilised nations, and the
rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among
the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided
for the blessed and happy! How many old recollections, and how
many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken! ... Happy,
happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our
childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures
of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller,
thousands of miles away, back to his own fireside and his quiet
home!
Source: Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers
••••••••
The coach was crowded, both inside and out,
with passengers, who, by their talk, seemed
principally bound to the mansions of relations or
friends, to eat Christmas dinner. It was loaded with
hampers of game, and baskets and boxes of
delicacies, and hares hung dangling from their long
ears about the coachman's box-presents from
distant friends for the impending feast
Source: Washington Irving, The Sketch
Book
••••••••
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't
believe
there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour,
size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration.
Eked out by apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a
sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit
said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone
upon the dish) they hadn't ate it all at last!
Source: Charles Dickens, Christmas
Carol
••••••••
There were pears and apples clustered high in
blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the
shopkeepers’ benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks that
people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were
piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance,
ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle
deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab
and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons,
and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently
entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and
eaten after dinner.
Source: Charles Dickens, Christmas
Carol
••••••••
When the cloth was removed, the butler
brought in a huge silver vessel of rare and curious
workmanship, which he placed before the squire.
Its appearance was hailed with acclamation, being
the Wassail bowl, so reknowned in Christmas festivity.
The contents had been prepared by the squire himself,
being a beverage on the skillful mixture of which he
particularly prided himself; alleging it was too abstruse
and complex for the comprehension of an ordinary servant.
It was a potation, indeed, that might well make the heart
of a toper leap within him; consisting of the richest and
raciest wines, highly spiced and sweetened,
with roasted apples bobbing about the surface.
Source: Washington Irving
••••••••
"I never indeed saw more general good humour and
merriment on a Christmas day since I went to sea. A pretty compliment
was paid to all the officers by a well meaning, but certainly
not very sober crew, by absolutely forcing each in turn, beginning
with myself, to go out on the lower deck, and have his health
drank with three hearty cheers. On the 26th, we sent all the
people for a run on the ice, in order to put them to rights,
but thick weather coming on, it became necessary to recall them,
and, postponing the dinner hour, they were all danced sober
by 1 p.m. the fiddler being, fortunately, quite as he should
be."
Source: Captain
Lyon's Private Journal
“The private journal of Captain G.F. Lyon, H.M.S.
Hecla, during the recent voyage of discovery under Captain Parry”
New Edition published by John Murray in London, 1825 (First
CD-ROM Edition 1999 - isbn 1-894127-12-9)
Holiday
Recipes
Santa Claus & Christmas Tree Cookies
(A family favorite handed to us from Grandma Violet. These
are a sweet, light-colored cookie, with a hint of orange flavor.
It is also the basic recipe for Valentine Cookies using a heart
shaped cookie cutter in February, Halloween Cookies with cats,
pumpkins and witchie cookie cutters, and turkey shaped cookie
cutters for Thanksgiving time treats!)
1 c. shortening
2 c. sugar
2 egg
2 t. grated orange rind
3 1/2 c. flour
1 t. salt
2 t. baking powder
Thoroughly cream shortening and sugar. Add beaten
egg, orange rind and beat well. Add sifted dry ingredients.
Chill. Roll thin and cut with Santa Claus and Tree cookie cutters.
Place cookies on greased baking sheet and bake in a slow oven,
325° F. 8-10 minutes.
Decorate with confectioners' sugar frosting as
follows: 2 c. powdered sugar, 1 t. vanilla, milk or cream.
Carrot Pudding
This makes a nice holiday dessert. It can be cooked on top
of the stove just in case the oven is being used to cook the
turkey!
1 c. grated raw carrots
1 c. grated potatoes
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. butter
2 eggs
1 c. flour
1 t. soda
1 t. cloves
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. nutmeg
salt
1/2 c. raisins
1/2 c. currants
Mix carrots, potatoes, sugar, and butter well.
Add eggs, flour, and soda, blend well. Add spices; blend. Add
raisins and currants; blend. Place in steamer. (Or use juice
cans, greased and covered tightly with foil. Tie two layers
of foil on the top with string.) Fill pan 2/3 full of water.
Put steamer (or can) of batter in pan, cover and steam for 2
hours or until done. Can be served with Plum Pudding sauce.
Fruit Cake
The last few years I've been making fruit cake
by making a basic pound cake recipe then adding whatever dried
and candied fruits suit me. I've used dried black currants,
pears, apples, apricots and sometimes add some citron and candied
lemon peel. After baking, I wrap it in plain muslin (cheesecloth
works, of course), douse it with rum, and put it in a tin until
the holidays. The trick is to remember to check it every few
days and dribble more rum on the cloth if it looks dry. I've
used the Pound Cake recipe in the Joy of Cooking but it looks
like there are lots of pound cake recipes around. The trick,
apparently, is to use butter and nothing but butter! (Really
put on those pounds!) (KE)
Christmas Eve
Salad
For Nativity Feast - Adapted from: Fruits in
Cooking, by Robert Ackart (Macmillan Publishing Co., NY,
1973).
2 oranges, thinly sliced and seeded
2 limes, thinly sliced and seeded
4 apples, thinly sliced and cored
4 beets, cooked, peeled, thinly sliced (reserve beet juice)
1 T. cumin seed
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 t. salt
Juice of 1 lemon
Reserved beet juice
Salad greens
radishes, sliced
Roasted unsalted peanuts
In mixing bowl combine oranges, limes, apples
and beets. In a saucepan, combined beet juice and lemon juice
with cumin seed, sugar, and salt then bring to boil. Cool liquid
to lukewarm, pour over fruit. Chill.
Serve fruit mixture on bed of shredded greens,
garnished with sliced radishes and peanuts.
Panettone
A FruitFromWashington.com adaptation of
the classic loaves of Italian Christmas fruit bread.
Bread starter--
1 c. bread flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
2 t. yeast
1 c. warm water
Prepare starter and let rest for one to two hours.
Meanwhile, soak fruit--
1 c. raisins
1 c. dried pear, diced
3/4 c. dried apples, diced
1/3 c. poire, pear brandy or calvados
1 t. vanilla
Dough--
Add to bread starter:
2 t. yeast
1 c. warm skim milk
1 t. vanilla
1 egg plus 2 egg yolks (reserve whites to brush on finished
loaves prior to baking)
1/2 c. butter, unsalted (softened)
2/3 c. sugar
1 t. salt
5-6 c. unbleached all-purpose flour
Optional addition:
1/2 - 1 c. bittersweet chocolate chunks
Mix bread starter and remaining dough ingredients
adding just enough flour to form soft dough. Let rest 15 minutes
then knead dough adding more flour as the dough demands. Work
in fruit and up to 1 c. bittersweet chocolate chunks, if desired.
Add more flour as needed to keep dough manageable. Let rest
for another 15 minutes then shape into ball and place in greased
bowl, turning once. Cover, leave in warm place to rise for an
hour. Punch down, let rest for 15 minutes. Shape into loaves,
place on greased baking sheet or in loaf pans. Cut an "X"
in the top of each loaf using a serrated knife. Let rise again
until almost double.
Preheat oven to 375° F. Brush loaves with
egg white. Sprinkle with sugar. Place in oven and reduce heat
to 350° F. Bake for 35-45 minutes (longer for large loaves)
until well-browned. Remove from baking sheet or pan, and allow
to cool on rack. Traditionally served on Christmas Eve with
vanilla ice cream, hot bittersweet chocolate sauce accompanied
by steaming cups of chamomile tea.
Christmas Currant Loaf (Overnight Method)
From the Recipes section of the Encyclopedia of Practical
Horticulture, edited by Granville Lowther and William Worthington
(The Encyclopedia of Horticulture Corporation, North Yakima
Washington, 1914). We’ve substituted shortening for lard
and suggest that using a quick action yeast would speed up the
rising time.
Two cakes of Fleischmann's yeast, one pint lukewarm
milk, one pint lukewarm water, one tablespoonful salt, one cup
butter and shortening mixed, one cup granulated sugar, one cup
chopped raisins, two cups cleaned currants, six pints sifted
flour, one teaspoonful ground mace, one teaspoonful cinnamon.
Make sponge from milk, water, yeast and two pints
of the flour. Cover and set aside to rise for about one hour.
Then add sugar, shortening, salt, fruit, thoroughly floured,
spices; add remainder of flour gradually. Knead thoroughly,
cover and set aside to rise in a warm place, free from draft,
for about eight and a half or nine hours, or until very light.
In the morning divide into loaves, put into well-greased
pans, cover and let rise for one and one-half hours, or until
real light. Bake one and three-fourths hours in a slow oven.
This amount makes four ordinary loaves or three
large ones. The whole process takes about fourteen hours.
If a richer cake is desired, add more fruit and
some chopped citron.
This bread is lighter and in every way much superior
to that made from a bread dough.
••••••••
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