The Ghosts of Christmases Past

There is a long tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas time in England; around the hearth, in print, on the radio and on T.V.

Our T.V. channels uphold the tradition admirably with stories of murder and mystery throughout the Christmas period. In the 1970s and later in 2005 a series called A Ghost Story for Christmas was broadcast by the BBC. The producer’s remit was to create a television version of a classic ghost story at Christmas.

M.R James

The first five films were adaptations of stories from the four books by M. R. James published between 1904 and 1925. James, an English mediaeval scholar and Provost of Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, originally told his stories to friends and selected students at Christmas to entertain them. The sixth film, The Signalman, is an adaptation of a story by Charles Dickens published in his magazine All the Year Round in 1866.

 The origins of this Christmas interest in all things ghoulish started in the second half of the 17th century when there was a profound intellectual debate concerning the existence of ghosts and witches. The idea that cold snowy days were the best for stories designed to frighten goes back Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, written in 1611 when Mamillius says: "A sad tale's best for winter. I have one / of sprites and goblins."

Surprisingly those who did not believe in these supernatural manifestations were denounced as dangerous atheists. Our ancestors, it seems believed whole-heartedly in ghost and ghouls and things that go bump in the night.

William Kent

The 18th century saw the publication of what is to be the first proper ghost story; The Apparition of Mrs. Veal in 1706. The story has been attributed to the writer Daniel Defoe although it published anonymously. Interest in ghostly matters received a boost in 1762 in case of the strange The Knockings at  a house in Cock Lane, not far from St Paul’s Cathedral in London. This story of murder set the imaginations of the London literati alight. The ghost in question was said to be that of Fanny Lynes the mistress of William Kent. Fanny’s ghost confirmed rumours that she had been poisoned by the still living Kent. The case was a sensation, attracting the attention of figures such as Samuel Johnson, Horace Walpole, and Oliver Goldsmith. It ended in a court case where Kent, an eminent English architect, sued for defamation.

Elizabeth Gaskell

Despite the publication of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein in 1816, the ghost or horror story was on the wane in publishing terms when Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837. However, writers such as Willkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell breathed new life into it with their books and short stories through the 1840s and 50s and by the turn of the century the tradition of ghost stories at Christmas was firmly established with publishers promoting the new trend.

Disney's adaptation of A Christmas Carol

The best known Christmas ghost story today is probably Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, which he wrote in 1843 to highlight the harrowing poverty of so many people in Britain at that time. It's not just a ghost story that one could tell at Christmas, but – with Scrooge sitting in his armchair as his life's story is unfurled before him – it is a story about ghost stories at Christmas, a kind of meta-Christmas ghost story, if you will.

Michelle Dockery in Turn of the Screw, BBC, 2009

In The Turn of the Screw, the US Anglophile Henry James's own take on the Christmas tale, published in 1898, operates in much the same fashion, structured as it is to position its readers by the Yuletide hearth listening to tales of horror. The tale, which relates a series of strange events that befall a young governess, centres on the supposed possession of a boy by the spirit of a hostile figure named Peter Quint.

However, M. R. James is considered the master of the Christmas ghost story by most. James redefined the ghost story for the new century and gave it what is now considered a recognisable  Jamesian structure:

• a characterful setting such as an English village, seaside town or country estate; an ancient town in France, Denmark or Sweden; or a venerable abbey or university [think Mid Somer Murders];

• a nondescript and rather naive gentleman-scholar as protagonist often of a reserved nature (think of Mr. Garrett, an employee of a university library, who becomes involved in the bizarre search for a missing will in the The Tractate Middoth); and

• the discovery of an old book or other antiquarian object that somehow unlocks, calls down the wrath, or at least attracts the unwelcome attention of a supernatural menace, usually from beyond the grave (think Spiderwick Chronicles a series of children's books by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. On the first night on the Spiderwick Estate the Grace children discover a secret library. Following a clue in the form of a riddle-poem, Jared finds Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You in a secret compartment in a trunk in the attic. The Field Guide is an old hand-written describing types of faeries. The novel ends with a warning that the book is not meant for mortals..)

According to James, the story must "put the reader into the position of saying to himself, 'If I'm not very careful, something of this kind may happen to me!' His most famous story is perhaps ‘Casting of the Runes’ which has been adapted for film twice; once in 1957 as Night of the Demon (known as Curse of the Demon in the US), starring Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins and Niall MacGinnis. Another, looser adaptation of "Casting the Runes" borrowing elements from the earlier film is Sam Raimi's 2009 film, Drag Me to Hell.

In 2013 Mark Gatiss's adaptation of The Tractate Middoth, an M. R. James, was broadcast on BBC Two on Christmas Day followed by a documentary, M. R. James.

This year will see the revival of the BBC’s Jonathan Creek in a 90 minute Christmas special, a Jamesian style psychic detective of all things mysterious. Alan Davies’ sleuth may have slipped off his duffel coat and acquired a wife in the form of Polly Creek (Sarah Alexander) but he remains the master of the locked-room mystery.

Alan Davis and Sheidan Smith in a BBC
Jonathan Creek Christmas Special 2013

Written by David Renwick it features a glittering cast including: Warwick Davis (Harry Potter, Star Wars, Life’s Too Short), Emun Elliott (The Paradise, Game Of Thrones), Ken Bones (Dr Who, Atlantis) and Rosalind March (Calendar Girls, The Evermoor Chronicles).


This year's story finds Creek solving the mystery of the modern day manifestation of a 19th century sorcerer named Jacob Surtees; a man with the ability to call up the powers of Hell to terrorise his victims at his home, a house called Daemons’ Roost.

If you can’t wait until Christmas there will be a free Christmas Ghost story entitled, The Nanny, written by me download on 22nd December at: https://www.facebook.com/juliaherdmanbooks/

 Wishing You A Happy, Spooky Christmas 

Christmas Hampers Past and Present

This week I have been looking at the history of Christmas hampers or what Americans call gift baskets.

The Christmas Hamper by Robert Braithwaite Martineau

Apparently, William the Conqueror brought the idea of gift hampers to England. The word is said to be derived from the French word ‘hanapier’ meaning a case for goblets. As Frenchmen William’s supporters would have appreciated a good glass of wine with their venison and goose at Christmas but they were unlikely to get one in England in 1066 so William no doubt had them shipped over.  Indeed getting food from home when abroad has been one of the key drivers of the development of the hamper as we know it today.

At the end of the 18th century, the improvement in roads and the introduction of Flying Coaches in England saw barrels of oysters, cheeses, and turkeys being sent out of London to the provinces but the trade really took off with the development of the railways in the 19th century when perishable food could be transported quickly.

The Roman Spa at Bath

The most famous hamper in the world is most probably the Fortnum and Mason’s Christmas hamper. This stalwart of the British establishment started life as a picnic basket. Fortnum’s first hampers were created in the late 1730s for their well-heeled customers journeying to their country estates or to taking the waters in Bath.





Many of these well-healed customers began their journeys at the coaching inns along Piccadilly and Fortnum’s was in the right place to meet their needs. Food en route was often poor; but that could be rectified with a basket of goodies from Fortnum’s containing generous game pies, fresh bread, West Country butter, ‘scotched eggs’, cheese, hothouse fruit and rich fruit cake, with mineral water, small beer and hock wine to drink. No wonder they took off.

A modern Fortnum and Mason Hamper

The 18th century Romantic Movement encouraged enjoyment of the English countryside, and picnics (first known by the less catchy name of fêtes champêtres) quickly became fashionable amongst those rich enough to own a carriage, creating a whole new demand for the hamper. In fact a good picnic became de rigueur at events such as the Harrow versus Eton cricket match, the Henley and Cowes Regattas, and the Epsom Derby. Derby Day was a particularly important day in the calendar, with carriage drivers queuing up from 4am to pick up their master’s Fortnum’s picnic basket.

Boarding School Boys

Requirements of Empire made many British men and women live or fight abroad until 1945 and the tradition of Boarding School also means the British elite live away from home from a young age.

I know from my own experience of living abroad that ex-patriots always long for the food comforts of home no matter how comfortable they be abroad and Fortnum’s was there to keep up the morale of Wellington’s soldiers as they fought Napoleon in 1815.

Ist Duke of Wellington

They also organised the delivery of beef tea to Florence Nightingale to nourish her patients which was sent by Queen Victoria and during the First World War troops, prisoners of war and Red Cross outposts received Christmas parcels, including one of 500 Christmas puddings organised by the company.

Although Fortnum’s is a by-word for luxury today a Christmas hamper does not have to be expensive. Christmas is above all about the past, it is a time to reminisce and reflect, a time for remembering family and friends.


Each year we try to recreate our memory of Christmas but as Marcel Proust said, “It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it [the past]: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object.”

The tastes and smells of our own Christmases past powerfully evoke fond memories and reminders of home. It was dipping his Madeleine in tea that did it Proust. He wrote:

"As I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? "

Homemade Christmas Cake

Food has a way of evoking memory like nothing else. For the British I would say that the taste and especially the smell of food like the full English breakfast with crispy bacon, flaccid pink sausages, black pudding and HP sauce or the taste of a piece of luscious rich fruit cake generously laced with brandy or rum and covered with a thick layer of marzipan and icing that does it for us especially at Christmas.

Today there are companies supplying home comforts to British exiles all over the world. The items most requested are packets of tea, McVitee's digestive biscuits, the much loved, soft waxy Cadbury's Dairy Milk, Heinz baked beans and Marmite. None of these items is expensive or luxurious but they do provide the much craved Proustian moment.







Sources:
https://www.fortnumandmason.com/fortnums/history-of-the-hamper

https://www.fisheaters.com/proust.html

Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images

A modern American Gift Basket

Also recommended:
http://francinehowarth.blogspot.co.uk/

http://romancereviewsmagazine.blogspot.co.uk/
https://reginajeffers.blog/
http://novelsbykatherinepym.blogspot.co.uk/
http://eecarter.com/
http://www.alisonstuart.com/alison-stuart-blog-ms-stuart-requests
https://asweetdisorder.com/
http://www.beverleyoakley.com/

Christmas and stockings an age old tradition

Christmas and stockings are two words forever bound together. They illustrate the magic and generosity of Christmas time. The tradition is an old one whose origins are lost in the mists of time but William Lee of Calverton, Nottinghamshire is the man who made it possible for us to hang up our modern stockings.

In 1589 he made the first breakthrough in stocking manufacture. It is said that he invented the stocking frame, a machine that knits stockings and socks for love.

One story has it that he invented it out of spite: having discovered his sweetheart preferred her knitting to his attentions, another suggests he invented it for his hard working wife who knitted stocking by hand to supplement their family income.

Stocking Frame at Ruddington
Framework Knitters' Museum

During the 18th century stocking frames quickly became the domain of men like weaving machines while the hand knitters remained primarily women. The English East Midlands, particularly in the towns of Nottingham and Leicester became the centre of stocking manufacture from the 18th century.

Tough, hand knitted
woollen blue stockings

Until the invention of nylon there were two types of stocking; the luxury ones and the utilitarian ones. Luxury stockings were made from imported silk, or the fine fibres of long-wooled sheep, on a machine by a male frame knitter in London or one of the East Midland towns. Utilitarian socks were hand-knitted, usually by poor women in the country and was made from the much coarser wool of the sheep of Westmorland, Wales, or Scotland.

Elegant, machine knitted French silk stockings

The frame-knitted silk stockings were costly
accessories worn by men and women of middling and upper rank. Without elastic they where held up by garters and ribbons. Thousands of pairs were exported and sold in the British colonies, which were bound by the mother country’s restrictions on manufacturing.
In 1767, Benjamin Franklin’s enterprising maidservant, Ann Hardy, made a reasonable second income selling socks and worsted stockings to Philadelphians from the supplies her British friends sent to her.

A racy pair of candy cane
Christmas stockings

There are no records to say when Europeans started to hang an empty stocking or sock by the fire in the hope of receiving a Christmas gift. Legend tells us that it began with a poor man who had three very beautiful daughters but no money for their dowries.

Saint Nicholas it is said heard of the man’s plight and wanted to help but knew the old man would not accept charity so he decided to help in secret. After dark, he threw three bags of gold through an open window into the house and one landed in a stocking. So the tradition of receiving gifts in stockings from a strange man under the cover of darkness was born – blimey it sounds positively saucy when put like that!

However, there is another possible origin for the practice. According to writer Phyllis Siefker, Scandinavian and German children would place their boots, filled with carrots, straw, or sugar, near the chimney for Odin's flying horse. Odin would then reward them with gifts or sweets (candy). This practice, she claims, survived in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands after the adoption of Christianity and became associated with Saint Nicholas through Christianisation. Another possible source is the Grandmother cult in Bari, Italy where grandmothers would put gifts in stockings at Christmas. This too merged with the St. Nicholas tradition.

The modern Santa

Today the Christmas stocking tradition is going strong. In our family, we always hang our stockings up on Christmas Eve and wake on Christmas morning to find them filled with chocolate money, an orange, a walnut and a little toy. (I wonder which magical person does that?). Every family has its own Christmas traditions and special magical people who make them happen - is it you?




Sources: https://katedaviesdesigns.com/2014/05/05/a-brief-history-of-british-socks/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_stocking

Picture credits:
French Medium: silk, metallic Dimensions: Length: 23 in. (58.4 cm) Accession Number: C.I.55.52.1a, b The Metropolitan Mueseum of Art
http://anextraordinaryday.net/from-sweater-to-christmas-stocking-in-12-easy-steps/
https://www.smiffys.com/candy-stripe-thigh-high-stockings-red-and-white
http://www.southernsavers.com/stocking-stuffer-round-up-1219/
The Carol Burnett Show: The Family (Merry Christmas Mama) - 1974