The great British Christmas - Maria Hubert

This anthology depicts how Christmas has been celebrated by the British across 2000 years. It includes the legend of how Arthur pulled the sword from the stone one Christmas Day in the 6th century, and Kipling's verse on the Christmas Spirit. Readers can sense Simon Minc'd Pye's disgruntlement as he sends out a plea for the restoration of games and special foods banned by the Puritan Parliament; share the Christmases of the famous diarist Samuel Pepys, who let his wife stay in bed after she "sat up till four this morning seeing her mayds make mince pies"; wonder at Charles Dickens's vivid recollections of his boyhood celebrations and his delight in the present of a jumping frog; revel in a small boy's attempt to sell left-over cake from his grandfather's shop to the masters of a grand London house; learn how Queen Victoria and Prince Albert spent their Christmases together; and see Thackeray's dismay at the proliferation of Christmas books. The book also offers recipes for a horn of mead and Mrs Beeton's original Christmas cake; traditional carols, the "Ballad of Christmas Ghosts", reminiscences of winter sports, village mummers and traditional farmhouse festivities, and the story of origins of the Christmas cracker and other Christmas customs.