Traditions of the
Holiday Season
In Great Britain there are two interesting traditions of Boxing Day and
Christmas Crackers…….
Boxing Day takes its name from the ancient practice of opening boxes
that contained money given to those who had given their service during the
year. It was also the day when alms boxes, placed in churches on Christmas
Day, were opened. The money was then given to the priest or used to help the
poor and needy. Another name for Boxing Day used to be Offering Day.
The earliest boxes of all were not box shaped, as you might imagine, nor
were they made of wood. They were, in fact, earthenware containers with a
slit in the top (rather like piggy banks.) These earthenware ‘boxes’ were
used by the Romans for collecting money to help pay for the festivities at
the winter Saturnalia celebrations.
During the seventeenth century it became the custom for apprentices to ask
their master’s customers for money at Christmas time. They collected this
money in earthenware containers, which could be opened only by being
smashed, and on Boxing Day the apprentices would eagerly have a ‘smashing
time’, hence the expression, seeing how much they had collected.
A later tradition, and the one which has survived to this day, was the
distribution of Christmas ‘boxes’, gifts of money to people who had provided
services throughout the year – the postman, the lamp-lighter, parish
beadles, parish watchmen, dustmen and turn-cocks – which happened on the day
after Christmas Day.
(Reprinted from the Christmas-time.com website)
Christmas Crackers: Everyone loves to pull a cracker. It’s all part
of the fun of Christmas. The originator of the cracker was a man called Tom
Smith who owned a sweet shop in London.
Tom had a good eye for business. He also had a sense of humour. ‘What people
like,’ he used to say, ‘is something new. And if it’s not new, the art is to
find a way of selling it!’
During the 1840’s Tom found that people liked sugar almonds, but while he
was on holiday in France he came across a variety of sweets wrapped up in a
twist of paper. These bonbons seemed very popular, so Tom decided to copy
the idea to wrap his sugar almonds. The new wrapping made the sweets look
rather special. They sold well. Then Tom noticed that young men were buying
them to give to their sweethearts. He began placing ‘love mottoes’ on small
slips of paper inside the sweet wrapping. This novelty sold even better than
Tom had expected. People went out of their way to visit his shop and buy
this new kind of sweet.
In 1846 Tom turned his thoughts towards Christmas. Instead of sweets, why
not wrap little toys and novelties in the twisted wrapping? Tom experimented
and hit on the idea of producing a wrapping that could be pulled apart –
just like the cracker as we know it today.
As he had hoped, the Christmas novelty was a success, but Tom was still not
satisfied. One evening he was standing idly in front of the fire. As he
kicked a log into place there was a shower of sparks and the log cracked and
popped making Tom jump. ‘That’s it!’ he laughed to himself. ‘What I need is
something in my wrapping that will make a ‘snap’ when it is pulled open’.
For some months he worked with several chemicals until at last he found one
that was safe, easy to make, and would make a noise just loud enough to
amuse his customers and not frighten them.
The new ‘crackers’ were a sensation and soon making them became a full-time
business. Tom had to open a factory to produce them. Today the Tom Smith
factory sell crackers all over the world, and the man who liked to amuse his
customers would be amazed to know that his sense of fun had started a
Christmas tradition.
(reprinted from the Christmas-time.com website) |
In the United
States the festivals of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa have their own
traditions too……
Hanukkah takes place in the home and involves lighting candles, enjoying
special foods (like potato pancakes) and playing dreidel and card games. It
is significant to us all because it’s the first record of a minority people
fighting to attain the right to practice their own religion.
Reprinted from The Wicked Twins website
Kwanzaa means "first fruits of the harvest," and appropriately, this
week-long festival culminates in a glorious feast on December 31 that draws
on a variety of cuisines. At the center of the celebration is the table, set
with a bowl of fruits and vegetables, a straw place mat, a communal cup and
a seven-branched candelabra with black, red and green candles. And, while
the table includes a wide variety of creatively inspired appetizers, man
dishes and desserts, the feast is not complete without recipes made with
sweet coconut. |
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