Christmas is our most important holiday, and its literature is correspondingly rich. Yet until now no adequate bundle of Christmas treasures in poetry and prose has found its way onto the Internet for Winter, Christmas, the birth of Christ, Santa Claus, and so much more..Christmas in 1839
I spent the winter in St. John’s, intending to be ready in May to set out again on my coasting survey, and examine the rest of the shores of Newfoundland in search of mineral wealth and productions. During the latter part of November and the first two-thirds of December there was dull disagreeable weather, with occasional snow-storms and frost, interrupted by thaws.
During the latter part of December, and the whole of January, the weather was beautiful, the air clear, with sharp frost and snow on the ground, but no very intense cold. The harbor was never once frozen over, although the brooks and ponds gradually became fast. This was the season of general holiday. The lower orders ceased work; and, during Christmas, they amused themselves by what seemed the relics of an old English custom, which, I believe, was imported from the West of England, where it still lingers.
Men, dressed in all kinds of fantastic disguises, and some in women’s clothes, with gaudy colors and painted faces, and generally armed with a bladder full of pebbles tied to a kind of whip, paraded the streets, playing practical jokes on each other and on the passers by, performing rude dances, and soliciting money or grog. They called themselves Fools and Mummers.
The merchants and higher classes shut up their books and neglected their various employments, and amused themselves with sleighing parties to various points where the roads were open; while a general series of dinner parties commenced, varied now and then by an evening party and a dance. There was an amateur theatre, the profits of which were devoted to charitable purposes… in which their several parts were well sustained both by the actors and the audience. There were, moreover, two public balls, for charitable institutions, that were well got up and numerously attended. In short, there was no lack of amusement, till the preparations for the sealing voyage began, towards the middle of February, to draw off the attention both of masters and men to the more serious business of life.
