With no restrictions in place this year it looks like the South Borsetshire Boxing Day hunt will go ahead. With the departure of Shula to Sunderland, Oliver Sterling is expected to lead the horses on the day. He did a PR job for the Hunt at the recent Hunt Ball but the Ambridge Socialist is not fooled.
We don’t expect the BBC to report it but the Ambridge Socialist will have reporters out covering what takes place
The Ambridge Socialist has backed Mia Grundy’s protests in the past and numbers of supporters have pledged to help. Please meet on the Village Green at 9am on Boxing Day. Glasses of mulled Tumble Tussocks will be available.
Engels may have been guilty of Christmas dinner mistletoe & beard error
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has urged those with beards to take extra care when kissing under the mistletoe this Christmas.
There may be particular issues when two beards are involved but the guidelines also apply more generally.
The campaigners say that mistletoe can easily become intertwined with the beard leading to potential damage to follicles. Additionally the mistletoe berries may squash into the beard and cause further damage.
Mistletoe was a regular feature of Christmas dinners at the residence of Friedrich Engels in the 1870s and 1880s in Regents Park Rd but there is no evidence that he followed BLF guidelines and may on occasion have suffered follicle damage as a result
BLF Guidelines to kissing under the Mistletoe
1] Keep the mistletoe at least six inches from the beard, preferably by ducking or squatting under it.
2] Avoid any contact between the beard and the mistletoe
3] If contact does accidentally occur immediately cleanse the beard in a glass of imperial stout to avoid any damage to follicles
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said Kissing under the mistletoe is a traditional part of Christmas, or at least it has been since the Victorian era. However the hirsute need to take particular care to avoid follicle damage. Engels example is not one we would advise the hirsute to follow on this occasion.
Christmas dinner at Friedrich Engels (122 Regents Park Rd NW1)
The following is an extract from Eduard Bernstein’s My Years of Exile (1915). Bernstein was a co-thinker of Marx and Engels who went on to be a revisionist leader of the German SPD.
Engels was indeed a considerable fan of plum puddings. He was an enthusiastic beer drinker, particularly Pilsner but had a wine cellar. He certainly didn’t cook the Christmas dinner himself but he was also to be found in the kitchen on occasion. He was well known for his lobster salad, the recipe for which is sadly not extant
Christmas was kept by Engels after the English fashion as Charles Dickens has so delightfully described it in The Pickwick Papers. The room is decorated with green boughs of every kind, between which, in suitable places, the perfidious mistletoe peeps forth, which gives every man the right to kiss any person of the opposite sex who is standing beneath it or whom he can catch in passing. At table the principal dish is a mighty turkey, and if the exchequer will run to it this is supplemented by a great cooked ham. A few additional attractions – one of which, a sweet known as tipsy-cake, is, as the name denotes, prepared with brandy or sherry – make way for the dish of honour, the plum-pudding, which is served up, the room having been darkened, with burning rum. Each guest must receive his helping of pudding, liberally christened with good spirits, before the flame dies out. This lays a foundation which may well prove hazardous to those who do not measure their consumption of the accompanying wines.
Peace & Goodwill for the Ambridge Xmas: the Tories haven’t noticed
Elsewhere in the country a Tory promoted class war is in progress. In Ambridge though peace and goodwill reigns at Christmas. The two choirs of Fallon and Jolene united for a final seasonal warble. Meanwhile via Ben, Jill and Daveed have been reconciled and she will return to Brookfield to oversee the cooking of the Christmas dinner and in particular Daveed’s ‘timings’
Choirs v Panto
The Ambridge Socialist view is that the choirs of 2022 were a relatively benign Xmas storyline compared to the perennial pofflings associated with Lynda’s Pantos..
David & Nigel. Confession nears
As another anniversary of Nigel Pargetter’s murder looms Daveed has come close to a confession this week. Perhaps he didn’t exactly push Nigel off the roof of Lower Loxley but he knew what he was doing. Putting Nigel in harm’s way as a current Tory Minister would say.
Writing on the Wall for the Tories in Ambridge
A new poll shows that rural voters are now as likely to vote Labour as Tory. Perhaps Sir Keir will stop by The Bull in the New Year and have a chat with Eddie Grundy about his voting intentions
Happy Christmas(but note Marx’s 25th Dec 1857 advice to Engels on tippling)
Marx in London and Engels in Manchester were frequent correspondents.
Marx wrote to Engels on 25th December 1857 (in part)
I trust you won’t go out tippling too much during the holiday and these exciting times in Manchester and that you’ll pay due attention to your health. Warmest regards to Lupus.
Lupus refers to a co-thinker of Marx and Engels Wilhlem Wolf
Campaign for Real Santas says forget Suella Braverman, Santa is welcome here
The Campaign for Real Santas, which campaigns for Santas to have genuine organic or knitted beards, has said that Christmas Eve is the peak time for Santas
Despite what Home Secretary Suella Braverman may think Santa is not an illegal entrant to the coming. Santa is welcome here.
The Campaign has issued special Xmas Eve guidelines so that if Santa is spotted it is easy to tell if they are genuine or a Tory imposter.
HOW TO SPOT A GENUINE SANTA
1 Tug the beard of the Santa. If it comes away easily, then the Santa is FAKE
2 Tug the beard of the Santa again. If the Santa swears then they are genuine. If they simply repeat a ‘ho ho ho’ mantra they may be a Tory
3 The Campaign for Real Santas says that genuine Santas must have just the right mix of bonhomie and gruffness and a real organic beard, particularly when delivering presents on Xmas Eve
CFRS organiser Keith Flett said, Santa is a key part of the Christmas story. Someone who travels the globe without papers and hands out presents for free. It’s everything that Suella Braverman and the Tories hate, as well as the beard of course.
‘A Harder Christmas than we have known since the war’ (Tory PM Heath,1973)
Christmas 2020 is one of crisis for many, albeit a crisis engineered mainly by the Tory Government and in particular 44 day Truss
There is a cost of living crisis, an energy crisis and a climate crisis and a Tory Government intent on waging class war against ordinary working people striking to try and maintain some kind of standard of living in the face of 10% inflation
Is it then the worst Christmas ever? Here it must be remembered that the media has very little or no historical memory and it is getting worse. Nearly all journalists including those who are meant to be ‘serious’ are now more interested in clickbait stories of the moment rather than context.
Let’s think back to Christmas 1973, still very much in living memory.
Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody was No.1 in the charts (No.2 was by someone we don’t mention anymore).
Yet there was a huge crisis.
The miners (the UK still relied heavily on coal for power) had begun an overtime ban and Tory Prime Minister Heath had announced a 3 Day working week starting in the New Year. This actually happened. The power went off with little specific warning for lengthy periods and that was that until it came back.
Meanwhile the price of oil had doubled in a matter of weeks.
Tory industry minister and ex-industrialist John Davies told his family, ‘We must enjoy this Christmas for it may be our last one.’
In his diary, Tony Benn noted:
‘Dinner with Wilfred Brown, head of Glacier Metals, who believes we are headed for a slump and food riots and that there must be a National Government… At the Commons I saw John Biffen who told me Enoch Powell is waiting for the call.’
Heath addressed the nation and said ‘we shall have a harder Christmas than we have known since the war,
Let’s hope it is the last Christmas for this particular Tory Government
From 1644 until 1660 the celebration of Christmas was officially banned in England.
The reasoning of Puritans and Cromwell’s Parliamentarians for this, as well as Catholic opposition to it, is important but for further posts. Below is an edited summary of what the ban meant in practice.
The words are written by Keith Down of the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds
Christmas was banned in Britain by a 1644 Act of Parliament, with the Long Parliament of 1647 passing a law which officially abolished the feast of Christmas making its celebration punishable. The ban remained in place until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.
Puritans wanted Christmas Day to be a day of fasting and humility, but otherwise a normal working day – not a Feast or Holy day as it had been in the past. Indeed, MPs sat in Parliament on Christmas Day 1643 as though it was any other day of the year. Such measures were not uniformly popular, even in Parliamentarian-dominated London. That same Christmas, for example, some angry Londoners keen to follow the old traditions of Christmas, attacked shops that opened.
In January 1645 Parliament set up a New Directory of Public Worship which stated that there were to be no Holy Days apart from Sunday. In June 1647 Parliament passed an ordinance which confirmed the abolition of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun and during the 1650s (during the Commonwealth) legislation put in place penalties on those found attending special Christmas church services, or for closing their businesses for the day. In 1657 the Council of State urged the mayor of London to clamp down on celebrations.
Enforcement of the legislation was another matter, whilst some church ministers were arrested in 1647 for preaching Christmas sermons, many people continued to celebrate the season despite Parliament’s official position. The fact that Parliament had to keep issuing proclamations against Christmas throughout the 1650s shows that, until later on in the decade, many people ignored the prohibition.
Royalists saw the victorious Parliamentarians as ‘killing off’ Christmas. One Royalist ballad of 1645 complained that “Christmas was killed at Naseby fight” – a reference to a major Royalist defeat by Parliamentary forces at the battle of Naseby on 14 June 1645. Royalist clergymen also engaged in writing pamphlets defending the celebration of Christmas and the importance of passing on these traditions to the young.
At Christmas in 1647 in Canterbury the town crier had proclaimed the committee’s commitment to the suppression of Christmas. In response a large crowd gathered to demand the usual traditions be observed. Eventually a riot broke out, forcing the mayor and several magistrates and clergymen out of the town. A few months later Kent rose in revolt in the name of King Charles I. Christmas also remained particularly popular among England’s community of Catholics or ‘Recusants’, who regarded the celebration of Christmas and devotion to the Virgin Mary as essential tenets of the faith.
Christmas traditions really stayed the same from the Middle Ages and throughout the Civil Wars. In many ways, we still observe them today. Despite the official ban many still decorated their homes and doorways with holly, bay, ivy and rosemary. People gave gifts especially to the young and the poor, attended church services, feasted and drank copious amounts of alcohol – including ‘wassailing’ which involved going from door to door singing and drinking from a communal wassail bowl whilst wishing people good health.
Carol singing was an important part of Christmas and some MPs complained that their neighbour’s preparations for Christmas had disturbed their sleep. Mince pies (made with real minced beef) were eaten, as was plum pudding. Morris dancing was another feature of Christmas, as was gambling. As I mentioned previously, Catholics were particularly attached to Christmas and were known for their great Christmas festivities. Some Catholics may have attended illegal Catholic masses in the homes of wealthy Catholic gentry and nobility – one aspect of the Christmas tradition they would have had to have kept secret from the authorities.
‘Sir Christemas’ had appeared in song in the 15th century, but certainly in the 17th century the personification of Old Father Christmas served as a means of defending the season from Puritans, after all people can generally relate much better to and empathise more towards a person than an idea. In the 1652 ‘Vindication of Christmas’ published by the Royalist John Taylor, a bearded ‘Father Christmas’ defends himself as only bringing “good cheere”
In 1658 Josiah King published ‘The Examination and Tryall of Old Father Christmas’ in which ‘Christmas’ is depicted as a white-haired old man on trial for his life – certainly a deliberately sympathetic image, and naturally ‘the jury’ acquits him. I’m not sure when Christmas is first depicted as an old man, but certainly by the late 16th century.
Their Christmas & Ours. Over Indulgence is bad for you(if you have money enough to make the choice)
There is a cost of living crisis and the bourgeois media is full of the importance and indeed good sense of having a frugal Christmas where over indulgence is frowned upon. For many frugality is a reality not a choice but those who have enough money to choose are determined to make sure everyone joins in.
The Times (23rd December) reports that Nigella Lawson now frowns upon on having a starter at Christmas dinner. She claims that it leads to over indulgence and feeling bloated although she has previously published Christmas starter recipes
Meanwhile the right-wing Spectator magazine has a piece that argues that the over indulgence of the Roman ruling class (not their slaves obviously) led to health issues and that a balanced meal was promoted by more forward looking Romans.
Britain remains a nominally Christian country with an Established Church so it might be thought that mention would be made of the point that Christmas Day was one of feasting because it marked the end of the dietary restrictions of Advent. The rich certainly feasted on 25th December and the poor no doubt did what they could
For many this Christmas it would be nice to have enough money to make the choice between frugality and feasting
Dear Mrs Marx, I take the liberty today of sending you a dozen bottles of wine for the festive season in the hope that they will be to your liking and contribute to the FAMILY’S cheer. The champagne and Bordeaux (Château d’Arcins) can be drunk at once, while the port wine should be allowed to rest a little and won’t be in proper condition until about New Year.
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