CHRISTMAS

Boxing Day

Plum Pudding Hill

On Boxing Day people used to roll plum puddings down Plum Pudding Hill¹ in Greenwich Park.

Location: Greenwich Park, SE10 9NF.

¹. The one that is not Croom's Hill.

Christmas Cards

The 1840 introduction of the penny post gave a large boost to the Christmas-time custom of exchanging letters. The first Christmas cards were made in 1843. They were devised by Sir Henry Cole, then a young civil servant, who found that he did not have enough time to be able to write his Christmas dispatches. Therefore, he commissioned a printer to produce some cards for him to send instead. When the cards were retailed commercially they cost a shilling each (being individually hand-coloured), as a result only the well-off could afford them. Therefore, they were not an immediate popular success. With the advent of cheaper processes for colour printing, Christmas cards began to become an established feature of the Yuletide season.

Location: 3 Elm Row, Hampstead, NW3 1AA

33 Thurloe Square, SW7 2SD (orange, red)

Queen Elizabeth Gate

Hyde Park's Queen Elizabeth Gate (1993) commemorates Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (1900-2002). It appears as one might expect the illustration on a razor wire manufacturer's corporate Christmas card to look.

Location: Hyde Park Corner, c.W1J 7NT (orange, purple)

Robins

The use of the common-or-garden British bird the robin on Christmas cards stems from a form of pun. Victorian postmen having had a red uniform (to mark the fact that they were in royal service, red being the colour of royalty). Therefore, they were referred to as robins .

See Also: BIRDS; STREET FURNITURE Pillar Boxes

A Christmas Carol

Christmas was a major festival in British Life prior to Charles Dickens's interest. What he did was to enhance its place in the annual calendar still further. In parallel, it was increasingly being promoted by commercial interests.

Dickens travelled in the United States in 1842. There, he could see that the lot of ordinary working people was improving there in a way that it was not in Britain. His story A Christmas Carol (1843) challenged the idea that economics is a zero-sum game. It argued that class war was not the only way; Scrooge and Cratchett could prosper by co-operating. This outlook contrasted with those of Malthus and J.S. Mill.

Christmas Crackers

It took half a century for jokes to appear in Christmas crackers. The point about these is that they are weak. They are meant to prompt a groan rather than laughter.

Tom Smith

Tom Smith's father owned a sweet shop in Goswell Road. In about Smiths fils visited Paris. During his stay he noticed that the French sometimes wrapped individual sweets. Upon his return he started to do the same. Thus, the cracker was born in 1847. Two years later the sweet was removed. It was replaced by toys and trinkets. The following year, to make the experience more interesting, he added a snapping device that exploded if pulled from both ends at the same time. In the 1880s the paper hat was added.

The public took to crackers. The business moved into premises that could hold its expanding workforce, which grew to be 2000 people strong. The Smith family used their wealth to pay for a public drinking fountain that erected in Finsbury Square. In 1906 the firm was granted its first royal warrant by the Prince of Wales.

In 1953 Tom Smith left Finsbury.

Location: 65-69 Wilson Street, EC2A 2BU (orange, red)

Website: www.tomsmith-crackers.com www.tomsmithchristmascrackers.com

Christmas Lights

Lower Morden Lane is noted for its Christmas lights display on private houses.

Location: Lower Morden Lane, SM4 4SE

Christmas Presents

The Mayfair trichologist Philip Kinsley (1930-2016) had been born in Bethnal Green into an impoverished Jewish family. He did not believe in organised religion but he liked to celebrate Christmas. This was because as a child he had never been given a present.

Christmas Rituals (Modern)

The Duke of Cambridge

George Duke of Cambridge (1819-1904) was a male line grandson of King George III. From 1856 to 1895 he was the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. Under his leadership it failed to keep up with other European armies. His grace firmly resisted attempts at modernisation but ultimately he was outflanked by politicians.

An equestrian statue (1907) of Cambridge stands in Whitehall. Each Christmas members of the Household Cavalry give the horse some hay and spread wood chippings around its hooves. The statue is returned to its normal condition on Twelfth Night. This practice derives from an appreciation that in his attempts to resist modernisation he waged a successful rearguard action that preserved the distinctness of the Household Cavalry.

Location: Whitehall, SW1A (blue, grey)

Santa Run

Each year there is a Santa Run in Victoria Park. The event raises money for charity.

Website: www.londonsantarun.co.uk

The Serpentine Swimming Club

The Serpentine Swimming Club has existed since at least 1864. It is best-known for the Peter Pan Cup race. This is held on Christmas Day.

Location: Serpentine Lido, Hyde Park, W2 2UH (purple, red)

Website: http://serpentineswimmingclub.com

The Christmas Shop

The Christmas Shop stocks items that are used to celebrate the Christmas season. The business was founded in 1988. The shop closed in 2015. It continued to trade online.

Location: Hay's Galleria, 55a Tooley Street, SE1 2QN

Website: www.thechristmasshop.co.uk

Christmas Trees

The Christmas tree was adopted by Lutheran Germans as an alternative to Roman Catholic crib.

George III's wife, Charlotte of Mecklenburg, instituted the royal family's tradition of having a Christmas tree.

In 1848 the royal family posed in front of their Christmas tree for The Illustrated London News.

See Also: TREES

The Fairy

Britain is exceptional for having fairy dolls on the top of its trees.

It was customary for visiting children to be given fairy dolls off the tree.

The Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree

For each Christmas since 1947 the Norwegian government has donated a spruce that is erected in Trafalgar Square. The tree is given as thanks for Britain's part in assisting Norway during the course of the Second World War.

John Polly Perkins, a Lerwick-based motor torpedo boat captain, claimed that the Trafalgar Christmas tree originated from the fact that in mid-December 1944, during an operation along a Norwegian fjord, he had harvested three saplings. He had given two of these to a senior Norwegian liaison officer. Subsequently, the trees had made their way to the homes of the Norwegian Prime Minister in exile and King H kon VII, where they had been used to celebrate Christmas. Another view of the practice's origin is that the Norwegian Navy's Shetland Bus service initiated the practice in 1940.¹ In 2008 it was reported that an official at the Norwegian Embassy believed that the custom originated with an idea that had been conceived of by a Mayor of Oslo.

Location: Trafalgar Square, WC2N 5DS (purple, yellow)

See Also: TRAFALGAR SQUARE

Website: www.london.gov.uk/about-us/our-building-and-squares/christmas-trafalgar-square

¹. A feature of Britain that is reputed to be of particular interest to Norwegian tourists is the canal system. (This may have something to do with the latent Viking within them.)

Crisis

Crisis provides homeless people with temporary accommodation over the Christmas period. While doing so, it furnishes them with a range of services with regard to their health, skills, employment, etc..

The organisation was founded in 1967 by William Shearman and Ian MacLeod as a response to the television docudrama Cathy Come Home. The name was coined by Eve MacLeod. The first Crisis Open Christmas was organised in 1971.

Location: 66 Commercial Street, E1 6LT (red, yellow)

See Also: HOMELESSNESS Shelter

Website: www.crisis.org.uk

Arthur Dickson Wright

The surgeon Arthur Dickson Wright (d.1976) hated Christmas. Each year he would read to his daughter Clarissa the awful early chapters of Charles Dickens's tale A Christmas Carol (1843) in order to try to engender in her a sense of gloom and misery. However, with time, she acquired a copy of the book and read it all the way through and so came to appreciate its celebratory nature. One year a pet budgerigar died. Dr Wright preserved it in formaldehyde in order that he should be able to conduct its burial upon Christmas morning. The physician and his wife Molly had a deeply dysfunctional marriage. One year he tried to humiliate her by closing all of the family s accounts with their domestic suppliers so that she would be unable to buy any Christmas gifts. However, Miss Wright appreciated that her father's professional commitments meant that he would not have closed the one that they had with the chemists John Bell & Croyden. Thus, mother and daughter were able to buy expensive soaps and scents and give them as seasonal presents.

Location: John Bell & Croyden, 50-54 Wigmore Street, W1U 2AU (red, orange)

12 Wimpole Street, W1G 9ST. Dr Dickson Wright's practice. (red, pink)

See Also: GHOSTS Marley's Ghost

Website: www.johnbellcroyden.co.uk

Father Christmas

The English and Welsh practice of referring to Father Christmas as Father Christmas dates back to at least the 16thC. The Scots tended to call him Santa Claus. The Americans do the same, having acquired the practice from the Dutch.

The Ministry of Fun

The Ministry of Fun trains Santas

Location: 22 Amelia Street, SE17 3BZ

Website: www.ministryoffun.net www.ministryoffun.net/portfolio/santa-school-2017

Food

Christmas Pudding

The first ever reference to a Christmas pudding dates from 1649. It occurs in Colonel Henry Norwood's A Voyage To Virginia.

During the course of the voyage they ran out of food and water. They made landfall in Virginia. They were reduced to eating rats. A week later they had turned cannibal. In the middle of the deprivation, they made a Christmas pudding.

See Also: THE CANNIBAL DEAN

New Testament

It was not until the late 19^thC that the Christmas portions of Matthew and Luke were used during Anglican Christmas services. For the previous 300 years services were focussed upon the philosophy of the Prologue of John.

Pantomime

Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837) had been given to making summer tours of his pantomimes. Following his retirement, the form became associated with Christmas.

Poet Laureates

In 1692 Nahum Tate (d.1715) was appointed to the office of Poet Laureate. He wrote the Christmas carol When Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night.

In 1813 the laureateship was conferred upon Robert Southey. He sought to revive the medieval celebration of Christmas.

Regent Street Decorations

The first Regent Street decorations were put up in 1951 as part of the Festival of Britain. They were devised by Jill Greenwood, a shop designer for Jaeger the clothes retailer. She was the wife of Tony Greenwood, a senior Labour politician. The Festival had been commissioned by a Labour government. In 1954 she designed Regent Street's first Christmas lights and five years later Oxford Street's initial seasonal ones.

Location: Regent Street, W1B 5NL (red, yellow)

Website: www.regentstreetonline.com/insider/the-spirit-of-christmas-by-regent-street

Santacon

Santacon is an annual, non-profit parade around London. Its sole purpose is to spread festive cheer.

Website: www.santacon.info

Twelfth Night

The Holly Man is rowed across the Thames to Bankside as part of Twelfth Night.

Location: Bankside, c.SE1 9JH (red, yellow)

Winter Markets

A winter market is held on the South Bank in the weeks prior to Christmas. It is food and drink-orientated.

Location: The South Bank, c.SE1 7ND

David Backhouse 2024