Happy December, Risky readers!  It’s been a busy month around here, with family visits and some lovely concerts (like Elena, there are aspects of Christmas that always make me feel a bit melancholy, but music is one of my favorite things about the season).  I have also had a flurry of new releases.  The latest is the 4th in my Elizabethan Mystery series, Murder at Whitehall (which takes place, of course, at Christmastime 1560).

So, how did the Elizabethans celebrate Christmas?

One thing I learned as I researched Murder at Whitehall is that the Elizabethans really, really knew how to party at the holidays! The Christmas season (Christmastide) ran 12 days, from December 24 (Christmas Eve) to January 6 (Twelfth Day), and each day was filled with feasting, gift-giving (it was a huge status thing at Court to see what gift the Queen gave you, and to seek favor by what you gave her), pageants, masquerades, dancing, a St. Stephen’s Day fox-hunt, and lots of general silliness. (One of the games was called Snapdragon, and involved a bowl of raisins covered in brandy and set alight. The players had to snatch the raisins from the flames and eat them without being burned. I think the brandy was heavily imbibed before this games as well, and I can guarantee this won’t be something we’re trying at my house this year!)

Later in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, she mostly kept Christmas at Greenwich, or sometimes at Hampton Court or Nonsuch Palace, but in the year my story is set, 1559, she spent the holiday at Whitehall in London. Elizabeth had only been queen for a year, so hers was a young Court full of high spirits. This was also one of the coldest winters in memory, so there would have been a lot of sledding and ice skating . It was fun to imagine this scene, and put my characters, Kate and her friends (including the real-life Lady Catherine Grey and her suitor Lord Hertford) into the action!

Even though there were no Christmas trees or stockings hung by the fire, I was surprised to find we would recognize many of the traditional decorations of the time. Anything that was still green in December would be used–holly, ivy, yew, bay. The Yule log was lit on Christmas Eve using a bit of last year’s log saved for the purpose. It was brought in by the men of the household, decorated with wreaths and ribbons, and set ablaze so everyone could gather around and tell tales of Christmases past.  Music, as it is now, was one of the big mood-setters of the season, and since Kate is the queen’s favorite musician I listened to many CDs of period music and imagined what she might play every day.

Food was also just as big a part of the holiday as it is now! Roast meats were favorites (pork, beef, chicken, fricaseed, cooked in broths, roasted, baked into pies), along with stewed vegetables and fine whit manchet bread with fresh butter and cheese. Elizabeth was a light eater, especially compared with her father, but she was a great lover of sweets. These could include candied flowers, hard candies in syrup (called suckets, eaten with special sucket spoons), Portugese figs, Spanish oranges, tarts, gingerbread, and figgy pudding. The feast often ended with a spectacular piece of sugar art called (incongrously) subtleties. In 1564, this was a recreation of Whitehall itself in candy, complete with a sugar Thames. (At least they could work off the feasting in skating and sledding…)

A couple fun reads on Christmas in this period are Maria Hubert’s “Christmas in Shakespeare’s England” and Hugh Douglas’s “A Right Royal Christmas,” as well as Alison Sim’s Food and Feast in Tudor England and Liza Picard’s “Elizabeth’s London.”  Be sure and visit my website,http://amandacarmack.com, for more Behind the Scenes history on Kate and her world, and a few Christmas traditions and recipes.  (Anyone going to try and cook the roasted peacock??)  If you’d like to give Murder at Whitehall a read, or see an excerpt, you can find it right here….

And And–if you are more of a Regency fan (I told you I had a flurry of new things out!), I have a little Christmas novella, The Bluestocking’s Christmas Wish!  If you’re like me, you don’t have a lot of time for deep reading this time of year, and I’ve always found a Regency Christmas novella fills the slot nicely.

What are some of your favorite holiday reads???

Hello, Riskies!  It’s been much too long since I visited our drawing room, and once again I am on a deadline and have fallen behind (oh my!)  Let’s take a look at a re-post of a blog I did in 2009, which is just as much fun now.  Gothic writer Ann Radcliffe died on February 7, 1823, and I always like to take another look at some of her tales….they would be perfect for a Halloween theme party!

Author Ann Radcliffe died on this date in 1823. She could be called “Queen of the Gothic novel,” as many of the standard elements of her plots can still be found in novels today, such as innocent heroines, dark, mysterious heroes, dramatic settings, and wicked villains. (And she was the most popular writer of her own day, influencing Keats and Scott among others, and forming the centerpiece of Catherine Morland’s literary obsessions in Northanger Abbey).

She was born in London in 1764, the only child of William and Anna Ward, and married William Radcliffe at age 22. (Radcliffe was a lawyer, and later editor and owner of The English Chronicle). Ann was said to be shy and reclusive, so not much was known about her private life, which gave rise to many rumors. (She had gone mad as a result of her terrible imagination and been sent to an asylum! She had been captured as a spy in Paris! She ate rare pork chops before bed to stimulate nightmares for her novels!)

J.M.S. Tompkins writes that in all Radcliffe’s novels “a beautiful and solitary girl is persecuted in picturesque surroundings, and, after many fluctuations of fortune, during which she seems again and again on the point of reaching safety, only to be thrust back again into the midst of perils, is restored to her friends and marries the man of her choice.” Sounds like the Victoria Holt stories I was addicted to as a teenager

Her best known works include A Sicilian Romance (1790), The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Italian (1796), and of course The Mysteries of Udolpho. She also wrote a travelogue, A Journey Through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany (1795) and various poems, which were published by her husband after her death along with the historical romance Gaston de Blondville.

More information can be found (mostly on the books, since the details of her life are still obscure–though I doubt the pork thing) in Deborah Rogers’ Ann Radcliffe: A Biography-Bibliography(1996).Have you ever read any of Radcliffe’s works? Have any favorite modern Gothic authors?? I’m thinking aMysteries of Udolpho-theme Halloween party would be lots of fun…

Have you ever read any of Radcliffe’s books? Have any favorite modern Gothic authors? And what might you wear to my Halloween party???