Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Week of November 28 (Mini-Update)

As December opens, a note from Hone about past tendencies to mark the winter months:


[Christmas] is the holiday, which, for obvious reasons, may be said to have survived all the others; but still it is not kept with any thing like the vigour, perseverance, and elegance of our ancestors. They not only ran Christmas-day, new-year's-day, and twelfth-night, all into one, but kept the wassail-bowl floating the whole time, and earned their right to enjoy it by all sorts of active pastimes.

Hone then summarizes a range of colorful and boisterous activities--which we will return to in the coming days. You, too, will learn "the way to turn winter to summer." [EDBv1]

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