Romance Unlaced: Traditions of Christmas Past

If you think the holiday season extends until at least the New Year, what better way to spend some of the down time after tomorrow than reading an historical romance with a Christmas setting? A long list of such books and novellas can be found here.

I asked some of these writers for some historical tidbits that they came across in their research.

Sabrina Jeffries, who has a Christmas novella reissued this month (When Sparks Fly), has been collecting "weird" Christmas traditions in history for some time: "The Welsh had a Christmas tradition involving a dead horse's head. I kid you not (the Mafia would have loved this one). It's called the Mari Lwyd, and it involved carrying around a horse's skull on a stick dressed in a sheet. Sort of like caroling. Only with a horse's skull. Then there's the fun game of snapdragon, where you snatch raisins from a bowl of burning brandy. The winner gets, well, nothing except burned fingers, but it's fun! Really! I used it in my Christmas novella When Sparks Fly, along with the more familiar custom of burning a Yule log." As for that Yule log, she says, "No one is entirely sure when or where it started. It was popular in North England, where it was called the Yule Clog. It was generally started from a piece of the previous year's log kept all year to bring good luck and protection from evil to the household."

She shared a few other peculiar customs from the Regency period: "Morris dancing was popular throughout Great Britain during the Regency. Gentlemen danced intricate patterns to weird music while waving handkerchiefs and possibly swords. I would sure love to have seen that. One popular holiday food in the Regency was ginger nuts, round gingerbread cookies often sold in the streets of London. (Imagine the jokes that came about from calls of 'Ginger Nuts! Ginger Nuts for sale!') What made them a bit different from regular gingerbread is they included caraway seeds."

Louisa Cornell, whose first Christmas story has just been released in the anthology Christmas Revels, explained Christmas pudding that had its origins in the middle ages and is still a tradition today. "Without a doubt, the most popular and important dessert of the season was the Christmas pudding. It usually consisted of 13 ingredients — to represent Christ and the 12 apostles — and it was boiled in a pudding cloth for hours. Traditionally the Christmas puddings had to be prepared by the Sunday before Advent in order to be ready by Christmas. It was believed the taste improved the longer it was kept. They were usually kept in a pantry or larder under a cloth. This Sunday was called Stir-up Sunday for two reasons. First, every member of the family took a turn stirring the pudding with a special wooden spoon. The wooden spoon represented the Christ Child's crib and the stable. Whilst stirring in a clockwise direction, each person closed their eyes and made a wish. In some households even the servants took a turn at stirring. Second, it was so-called because the collect for the church service that day was 'Stir up we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people.' The Christmas pudding is known by other names — plum pudding or "figgy" pudding — but by the Regency era, there were no plums or figs included in the ingredients. These items were replaced with raisins, sultanas and/or currants. If you were from a family of meager means, you might have joined a Pudding Club. In the weeks and sometimes months before Christmas, you would leave money at the grocers' in order to have enough money to buy the ingredients for your Christmas pudding when it came time to do so."

Jo Beverley, whose Christmas Angel was a Readers' Choice Award winner, shared her favorite old-time tradition: "There are many interesting aspects to Christmas in the past, but one I like is that when a gentleman steals a kiss beneath the mistletoe bough, he pinches off a berry. When the berries are gone, the kissing must stop. That's why they had the 'bough' — a big bunch of mistletoe rather than a single sprig. They needed lots of berries!"

Louisa adds that the plant did not grow all over England, which meant a potential deficiency of excuses for those kisses: "It grows mostly in the western and southwestern parts of England. However, the tradition was so popular, friends and family in those parts of the country often sent it by way of mail coach to those in other parts of England."

Margaret Moore, whose novella Comfort and Joy is in the anthology The Christmas Visit, points out, "Originally a carol was a dance, not a song. 'Follow me in merry measure' in Deck the Halls means 'come dance with me.'

And speaking of Christmas carols, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, says Monica Burns, author of A Bluestocking Christmas, "has been adapted and reinvented and updated more than any other work of English literature. The book is credited for creating the Christmas celebrations of today, although the story is regarded by many scholars as a social commentary on the treatment of the poor in Victorian England. It is also the first book in a series of stories called The Christmas Books."

According to Louisa, "There were no Christmas carolers in Regency England. However, there were wassail groups who would go from house to house singing begging songs in the hope of receiving food, drink and money. Wassail was a mixture of beer, wine and brandy and was usually served to the singers at each house. I think I've seen groups like this around my neighborhood at Christmastime."

As for Christmas trees, they were known in Germany long before England. "There were no Christmas trees during the Regency. Christmas trees were introduced to England by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in the middle of the 19th century," Louisa explains. "However, on Epiphany Eve, gentlemen would gather round a tree, usually in an orchard, with cider and guns. In an ancient ceremony, they would drink to the tree and fire the guns to drive away evil spirits and promote the vigor of the trees. Horn-blowing was an alternative to firing guns. (Sounds like a Regency tail-gating party to me!)"

Speaking of the Epiphany, today many people still leave their trees up until Jan. 6, which is the Feast of the Epiphany, associated with the visit of the three wise men.

The only problem with this explanation for that tradition is that Jan. 6 was not always the date when the Epiphany was celebrated. That did not become standard until 1970, and even then only in countries that have Roman Catholic holy days. Prior to that, the Epiphany was the Sunday after New Year's Day. The tradition of ending the holiday season on Jan. 6 is much older than that and is practiced in many cultures.

I did some research and concluded that the Jan. 6 date is actually a nod to Twelfth Night, the final celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas. The Twelve Days were celebrated in England beginning in the 16th century. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, it was common to celebrate from Christmas Day until the 12th night after. People partied and drank wassail on Twelfth Night, as Louisa described. When Jan. 6 became standardized as the Epiphany, the two traditions merged.

Special foods were cooked for Twelfth Night. In Georgian times, one traditional food was the Twelfth Cake. It was a huge disk of cake, iced. (You can see a picture of one on a 2011 post at the Austenonly blog.) At times it was so big it had to be brought in on a cart, according to some images from the period. Back then yeast was used to leaven, not baking powder (that came later), so it was more like a sweet bread studded with dried fruits and nuts. A recipe for the cake can be found in John Mollard's The Art of Cookery (London 1803).

Such a cake might be elaborately decorated. The decorations were made by pressing gum paste into molds. The gum paste was made with gum tragacanth (a natural red or white gum extracted from a plant that grew in Asia) and powdered sugar, mixed with a little water to form a stiff paste. Today, bakers use fondant, which is made from boiled sugar syrup.

I wonder if these cakes tasted better than the fruitcakes of today? I assume they were denser and not really very cakey, since the dough was more a bread dough. By the way, the same recipe, with a few alterations, would be used back then for a bride's cake. It was said these cakes remained edible a long time, so leftovers would not go to waste.

So the season historically lasted a long time. Almost two weeks past Christmas Day. It may seem as if today is a culmination, but it is only the beginning. There is plenty of time to indulge in some reading, and to enjoy characters finding romance in holiday seasons of times past.

May your season, however you celebrate it, be joyous and full of good things!

Paste BN and New York Times bestseller Madeline Hunter is the two-time RITA-winning author of 25 historical romances. Her most recent book, The Accidental Duchess, was published June 3. You can find her at www.MadelineHunter.com. To contact Madeline about content for or in this column, please e-mail her at RomanceUnlaced @ gmail.com (close up the spaces). Due to the volume of mail, e-mails from authors may not be answered personally, but all will be read.