“But although each season of the year had its own
merrie little rite it was at Christmas time that Lady Bobbin and her disciples
in the neighbourhood really came into their own, the activities which she
promoted during the rest of the year merely paving the way for an orgy of
merrieness at Yule....
[E]very year at Compton Bobbin the German and Sussex
customs were made to play their appointed parts. Thus the Christmas Tree,
Christmas stockings and other activities of Santa Claus, and the exchange
through the post of endless cards and calendars (German); the mistletoe and
holly decorations, the turkeys, the boar's head, and the succession of carol
singers and mummers (Sussex Roman Catholic); and the unlimited opportunity to
over-eat on every sort of unwholesome food washed down with honest beer, which
forms the groundwork for both schools of thought, combined to provide the
ingredients of Lady Bobbin's Christmas Pudding.”— Christmas Pudding, by Nancy
Mitford (1932)
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