My final festive clipping of the year coems from a 1798 edition of the European Magazine and London Review. This runs a poem by Richard Polwhele, which describes a Christmas celebtation held at Andarton Hall…
In the gay circle of convivial cheer,
Blithe Christmas came which chaplets never fear,
How beam’d delight, in every eye, unblam’d,
When at the hallow’d eve for carols fam’d,
The greenwood towering o’er the heapy turves,
Frist fum’d and stacked in elastic curves,
When brightly blaz’d the sap-besprinkled ash,
And listening holly danc’d with many a flash,
And, every bularfire design’d to mock,
Repos’d in sombroud state the Christmas-stock.
Alas! uprooted in the tempest’s roar,
And hewn in sunder to its hallow core;
Andearton’s oldest oak the flame attacks–
For ages yet it ‘scap’d the firest-axe!
Rais’d high amid the turf, the kindled sprays,
It bids awhile defiance to the blaze;
And, though it redden deep, preserves is claim
Twelve days and twelve long nights to feed the flame
Continue reading “Christmas Past: Richard Polwhele and a Necromantic Trump”
Santa Claus, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle – call him what you will, the development of this composite folkloric figure has been pretty thoroughly mapped. Much has been written about how authors like Washington Irving, Clement Clarke Moore and Robert Lewis May, along with artists like Thomas Nast and Haddon Sundblom, helped to develop the popular image of Santa: name an aspect of Santa’s persona, and the origin typically won’t be hard to trace.
Doris V. Sutherland 