Christmas

Henry VIII always kept the feast of Christmas with ‘much nobleness and open court’. It was incumbent upon kings to dispense hospitality throughout the twelve days of the festival, and in Henry’s reign more than a thousand […]

Theatre of the World reignites our curiosity with the world both ancient and modern. It is beautifully illustrated and rich in detail. Before you could just scroll Google Maps, maps were being constructed from the ideas and […]

Feast of Fools In the Middle Ages, on the eve of the Feast of Circumcision (31 December) when the Magnificat was read out in cathedrals and abbeys – He has put down the mighty – […]

Christmas in Tudor England is always described as a season of great feasting and revelry, but, then as now, it was a time when sadness was more poignant. That was sometimes the reality of the […]

Two great empire builders were crowned on Christmas Day. The first, in the year 800, was Charlemagne. He liked to claim that it had happened by accident. He’d popped into St Peter’s Basilica in Rome […]

Jack Lark’s Christmas Paul Fraser Collard explores Christmas for a Victorian redcoat soldier Jack Lark awoke with a groan. Reveille was sounding, the bugler giving it a louder and longer flourish than usual. But it […]

Hate Christmas? Blame the Victorians. At the beginning of the 19th century, Christmas was barely celebrated. It wasn’t just Ebenezer Scrooge who begrudged his clerk the day off – many didn’t consider the 25th December […]