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Tag Archives: Christmas

What to Give an Earl?

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Yesterday Amanda stole Gerard Butler from me, to use as the model for Conlan, her hero in Duchess of Sin. Today I’m taking him back!!

Take a look at this soon-to-be commercial.

http://www.theexfoliator.com/2010/11/nuff-said.html

Only a manly man can hawk moisturizer!!!

Will you put L’Oreal’s Men Expert, new Hydra-Energetic, Anti-Fatigue Moisturiser on your shopping list for the man in your life?

If this were Regency England, what might you purchase for that special Earl in your life?

Would you go to Floris at 89 Jermyn Street in Mayfair and ask them to create a special scent for your man?

The Floris Shop was founded in 1730 by Juan Famenias Floris. England from his native island of Menorca to seek fortune. Shortly after his arrival in England from his native Menorca he secured premises in Jermyn Street, where the shop still uses the mahogany counter that was purchased directly from the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park in 1851. Beau Brummel used to discuss scents with Floris. Mary Shelley sent an order to Floris to send her two brushes and a toothbrush during her time abroad when she wrote Frankenstein.

Perhaps your dear Earl is a studious sort of man. He might prefer a book from Hatchards, the oldest surviving bookshop in London. Hatchards, on Piccadilly since 1797, has served such famous historical figures as Wellington, Byron, Queen Charlotte.

What book would you buy him? Endymion: A Poetic Romance By John Keats, perhaps? Or something educational, like The History of England: From The Earliest Times To The Death of George II by Oliver Goldsmith.

Maybe you cannot give your dear Earl such a personal gift such as scent or a book of poetry. You can always fall back on the holiday standby. Food. He might delight in some tea or spices or preserves from Fortnum and Mason, right next door to Hatchards.

Fortnum and Mason have been selling quality foods since the 1700s, started by a footman to Queen Anne, who enterprisingly remelted and sold the candle stubs, supplementing his income.

I can hardly believe we have to start thinking of holiday gifts! I don’t know about you, but I wish I could be doing my Christmas shopping in Mayfair.

Where in the world would you like to shop?

Come to Diane’s Blog on Wednesday, not Thursday, this week to learn about the exciting Harlequin Historical Holiday Giveaway, with 22 days of prizes and a Grand Prize of a Kindle, complete with several Harlequin Historicals to start your ereading!

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Peace on earth, goodwill to all

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Whatever you celebrate at this time of year, we Riskies wish you a peaceful and joyous holiday season.

I’m not religious yet I find the images of the birth in the stable powerful and moving, as is so much of the music associated with Christmas (The Messiah rather than Bing Crosby et al). I can feel the anticipation, the buildup to the big day. Here’s a poem I’m particularly fond of, written by Thomas Hardy in 1915; it’s based on English folklore that animals in the stable fall to their knees on Christmas Eve, as they did long ago in Bethlehem.

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen.
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few believe
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve
“Come; see the oxen kneel

“In the lonely barton by yonder comb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.


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Happy Boxing Day!

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Happy Boxing Day!

Of course, I’d heard about Boxing Day before but since I never needed it for a story, I had only a vague idea that it had to do with giving presents. In boxes, of course. So exactly what is Boxing Day and what are the associated traditions? I googled and found a delightful explanation on the website of the Woodlands Junior School in Tonbridge, Kent. Boxing Day is a time of charity. During the Regency, people would give gifts to their servants and to the poor. According to the website, an “‘Alms Box’ was placed in every church on Christmas Day, into which worshippers placed a gift for the poor of the parish. These boxes were always opened the day after Christmas, which is why that day became know as Boxing Day.”

Other traditional Boxing Day activities include fox hunting, indoor games or appropriate wintry outdoor pursuits. There is also a custom of hunting the wren, a bird one was not allowed to hunt any other day (though why one would wish to hunt wrens is beyond me).

Today, I will not be foxhunting, nor ice skating, nor hunting wrens. Instead, I’ll be on a family outing organized by my parents to see a dinner theatre performance of “White Christmas”. The group will include all 5 grandchildren ranging in ages from 5 to 11. I don’t know if my parents know what they are letting themselves in for! My own children are among the older ones and they will behave (or risk, as Dumbledore put it, “a very painful death”). But as for the others–all bets are off. Plan A: pretend we don’t know them. Plan B: drink heavily.

So what are you doing to celebrate Boxing Day?

If you are looking for something to do, why not send a postcard to the Woodlands Junior School? (Here’s the address.)

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

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Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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It’s here. It’s begun.

My extended family officially voted this year to exchange gifts, much to my dismay. We’d escaped unscathed for a few years–gifts for kids only–although the number of rule-breakers over the years has increased. Last year I was on deadline and didn’t even do any baking; we came more-or-less empty-handed and left staggering under the weight of guilt and loot.

The subject came up in today’s Cary Tennis article in Salon, when someone wrote in bemoaning the fact that kids today (oh does that ever make me feel like the old fart I am)–and some adults too–only want cash and gift certificates. While I find his response inexplicably silly (it’s all our fault as representatives of today’s materialist society) I loathe the idea of both because then the recipients know exactly how much I spent. I’d far rather buy something spectacular, unusual, and dirt cheap (ebay, here I come). But what do you get for the nieces and nephews you see only a few times a year and who you really don’t know? Or the adults who have everything? (My solution may well be Heifer International, a nonprofit I’m very fond of.)

Now I can’t delegate this to my husband, who, once when his workplace had a gift exchange of socks–a foolproof idea, you would have thought–gave a pair of socks that were not only used but stained (oh okay, they had some sort of heating element in them so they were special and oh-so-useful), and the recipient was a bit surprised and my husband is still surprised that she was surprised, and so on. As he points out, at least it wasn’t underwear.

And it’s times like this that I envy people in the past. In very early pagan times you might have given someone special a tree branch as a gift for the New Year (“Oooh, leaves! My favorite!”) which is why there’s so much emphasis on trees and greenery and Yule logs around Christmas. In the Regency, possibly you might have given the odd shilling to the servants and a condescending visit to the poor with gifts of gruel and the promise to see about repairing the nasty leak in the roof, then back home to the mansion to eat and drink yourself silly (much like the rest of the year in fact). And church, of course–my, what party animals they were.

So how do you and your extended family handle the gift problem and are you satisfied with it?

Give yourself the gift that keeps giving all year–a subscription to the Riskies newsletter. Sign up now at riskies@yahoo.com with NEWSLETTER in the subject line.

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Martinmas

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November 11 is Veterans Day–Armistice Day in England–the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month being when the First World War officially ended.

But November 11 is actually an older holiday, and rather an appropriate one, the feast day of St. Martin, patron saint of soldiers. The legend goes that he cut his soldier’s cloak to share with a dying beggar.

Martinmas was also traditionally the day on which hiring fairs were held, when servants sought new jobs, holding the symbol of their specialty–cooks held a wooden spoon, shepherds their crook, and female servants wore different colored aprons (e.g. for housemaid, nurserymaid). Hiring fairs were a great social occasion for servants, who, even if they were not looking for a new job, went to meet their friends and socialize, dance, and drink.

This was also the time of year when livestock was killed off for the winter and Advent, the run up for Christmas, officially began with a fresh meat feast. In Ireland, the feast began the previous night when the front door and four corners of the house were sprinkled with fresh blood from a slaughtered animal, and it’s still traditional on that night to have a roast pork dinner.

The date was seen as a turning point in the year–rents and contracts were often due at Martinmas–and the official start of winter, and the time to traditionally eat goose. And here’s a useful hint for your Martinmas goose feast–take a close look at the breastbone. If it’s a fair, clear bone, then winter will be cold and frosty. A dark bone indicates warmer temperatures with snow and sleet.

Of course we’ve had Christmas thrust down our throats for months already, but what are your plans for Christmas? It’s getting close… how ready are you?

Jane Lockwood is guest blogging over at Romance Sirens. Come and say hello!

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