Christmas party

“ He talks of nothing but big families. I suppose the sight of the five little Blair children across the way is tantalizing, and it certainly is lonely for the two little duds with nobody but grown-ups in the house. Their efforts to be a large party in themselves, to play games, on Thanksgiving day, were really laughable, but they were pathetic, too. If Julia had thought of it, we might have had a little Christmas party for them. It's a good deal of trouble for Santa Claus to climb down a chimney for just two children. ”

“ The Christmas family-party that we mean, is not a mere assemblage of relations, got up at a week or two’s notice, originating this year, having no family precedent in the last, and not likely to be repeated in the next. ”

“ We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!”
“Good afternoon!” said Scrooge. ”

“ In The Christmas Party we have the deferred revenge of a woman, a theatrical costumer, upon her strait-minded family; Patience is an elderly man’s recollection, in perfectly domesticated surroundings, of his youthful affair ”

“ On Christmas eve a large and important dinner party was given by some old inhabitants of the station. All the Europeans were invited, and it was intended that the evening should be spent in jovial and merry games like a typical Christmas eve at home. But alas! never was an entertainment beset with greater difficulties.
In the first place, nearly all the guests upon whom we most depended for amusement sent word that they had fever. ”

“ We never leave home on Christmas Day, because there is a kitchen party which needs to be entertained. We suppose they like to come, as they always arrive so early and stay so late; but we wonder at them, though we do our best. ”

“ Dear Mrs. Ruggles,—I am going to have a dinner-party on Christmas Day, and would like to have all your children come. I want them every one, please, from Sarah [Pg 33] Maud to Baby Larry. Mamma says dinner will be at half past five, and the Christmas tree at seven; so you may expect them home at nine o'clock. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, I am
Yours truly,
Carol Bird. ”

“ There is always somebody ready for a tramp whenever you want to go out, and in the evenings it is like being at a party all the time.
On Christmas eve we hung up our stockings, even the grown-ups. That was for the little children, who still think there is a Santa Claus. There was hardly room enough along the mantelpiece for them all, and the next morning, when they were all full and knobby, they actually overlapped. Christmas morning we were all up ever so early. Before it was really light, my big cousin was around knocking at the doors, calling us to breakfast and shouting, "Merry Christmas!" ”

“ No one who has been up Smith’s Sound can fail to notice this.”
On the 24th of December, after eating a birthday dinner, the Christmas presents from an unknown friend to every one of the party, were distributed. The rooms were appropriately decorated, and everything was done to render the occasion cheerful and pleasant. ”

“ Please don’t say we can’t play any jokes.”
Christmas fell on Thursday, and the guests were to arrive the next day. Christmas itself was the gala day it always is in a house full of happy young people. It began, of course, with the usual excitement over the stockings, big and little, that hung on the back-parlour mantel. Then there were the presents that were too big to go into stockings to be oh-ed and ah-ed over. Then came the church service and the Christmas dinner, and in the evening, a little party at a neighbouring house.
The girls from Kayuna arrived Friday afternoon. ”

“ And so the service remitted us all to our own homes, to what roast-beef and plum-pudding slender means permitted, to gatherings around cheerful fires, to half-pleasant, half-sad remembrances of the dead and the absent.
From sermon I have returned like the others, and it is my purpose to hold Christmas alone. I have no one with me at table, and my own thoughts must be my Christmas guests. Sitting here, it is pleasant to think how much kindly feeling exists this present night in England. By imagination I can taste of every table, pledge every toast, silently join in every roar of merriment. ”

“ It is a good thing to call together the family once a year,—our brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces,—we all of us love the children so much, and have a good time. I would not give that up. The dinner is very well; but the evening goes off a little heavy; that whist playing, we both dislike it; so much talk about such trifles. What if we should have a Child's Festival on Christmas night, and ask all the little folks in the town to your nice New Hall,—it will be done before that time, won't it? ”

“ It is inspiring to read even the dry details which some antiquarians have given of the quaint humours, the burlesque pageants, the complete abandonment to mirth and good-fellowship with which this festival was celebrated. It seemed to throw open every door, and unlock every heart. It brought the peasant and the peer together, and blended all ranks in one warm generous flow of joy and kindness. The old halls of castles and manor-houses resounded with the harp and the Christmas carol, and their ample boards groaned under the weight of hospitality. ”

“ One is that you think old Mother Goose is a good friend of yours, and loves you all very much. And you're quite right about that, for I declare, I love every one of you as much as I love—plum pudding. And the second reason why you are all smiling, I guess, is because you think I am going to show you a Christmas Play. And you're right about that, too. I have a play all ready for you, there behind the curtain, and the name of it is "The Christmas Dinner." ”

“ Our readers had better take a biscuit and a glass of sherry before they venture upon the glimpses into those regions of banqueting which we are tempted to lay before them. The ballad opens like the ringing of a dinner-bell, and, we conceive, should be sung to some such accompaniment:—
"All you that to feasting and mirth are inclin'd,
Come here is good news for to pleasure your mind,—
Old Christmas is come for to keep open house,
He scorns to be guilty of starving a mouse:
Then come, boys, and welcome for diet the chief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beef." ”

“ Still, a Christmas crowd is always a crowd in which good-nature prevails, although this one was made up of flashily dressed girls, stout, heavy-browed women, or bony, haggard ones, all equally eager for bargains, pushing and grabbing at counters. Mothers abounded with babes in arms and children tagging on behind, adjured every few minutes to remember what Santa Claus was going to bring them.
One voice made itself insistently and irritatingly heard, raised in a monotonously recurrent wail. ”

“ They each held aloft a sprig of holly, and they all kept time as they sang, "God rest you, merry gentlemen," in their march from the dining-room to the office. And there they must form in circle about the tree, and dance three-times round, singing "The Christmas-tree is an evergreen," before they could touch a single present.
The presents are done up according to custom, packages of every shape and size, but all in white paper and tied with red ribbon, and all marked for somebody with somebody else's best love. They all fall to opening, and the babies' shouts are not the only ones to be heard. ”

“ But with all this glorious sunshine, sultry and Oppressive atmosphere, Christmas is not Christmas as we know it in Old England, where friends meet friends in all the warmth of overflowing love and hospitality round the well-filled board, and the social gatherings round the hearth, with song and dance, and Christmas-tree. ”

“ They will all want to get down on their hands and knees, Grandfather and Grandmother and all, and crawl under the table. Won't that be funny? They all clap their hands and dance up and down. That's what the magic hazel nuts will make them do, says SANTA CLAUS. And when they have crawled under the table—you see, it's a table that has a Christmas dinner on it, and that makes a difference, of course—well, when they have crawled under the table, then—. ”

“ The light that falls from the windows of the Neighborhood Guild, in Delancey Street, makes a white path across the asphalt pavement. Within, there is mirth and laughter. The Tenth Ward Social Reform Club is having its Christmas festival. Its members, poor mothers, scrub-women,—the president is the janitress of a tenement near by,—have brought their little ones, a few their husbands, to share in the fun. One little girl has to be dragged up to the grab-bag. She cries at the sight of Santa Claus. The baby has drawn a woolly horse. ”

“ With an entire month at one’s disposal in which to do one’s Christmas shopping and to tie up one’s Christmas packages and to plan for one’s Christmas dinner, the burden of preparation would not fall so suddenly or with such crushing force upon those who minister to us, and many who are now unable to rejoice in the Christmas celebration would be found joyfully singing the Christmas song. Much of the congestion and the crowding of the present would be rendered impossible, and Christmas would become what it ought to be,—a time of universal exultation, a season of world-wide gratitude and love. ”

“ On the benches in the rear is the lower service,—butlers, maids, the farmers and their families. And last of all, far back against the doors, which they discreetly open and close, come the cooks, between two sauces, to catch a little whiff of the Mass, bringing with them into the bedecked church, warm with the light of so many tapers, odoriferous suggestions of the Christmas supper. ”

“ Leaving the patriarchs to finish those professions of friendship for each other, in which they are so devoutly engaged, the younger part of the company will shape their course to the ball-room, or the card-table, as their individual inclinations suggest; and the remainder of the evening is spent with the greatest pleasure of which human nature is susceptible. Nor will this happy evening terminate the festivities of this occasion. Christmas mid-day awakes all but old age, to a renewal of former hilarity. To age, however, there is no permanent enjoyment ordained in this sublunary state. ”

“ Should the titled stranger or the ragged beggar knock, throw wide open the doors of thy hospitality; and while prattling infants recount the joys of the season, and school-boy striplings pursue their holiday sports, and gray-haired men who have traversed the wide world over, tell how in all their wanderings they have never passed a Christmas from home; he will turn his thoughts with a melancholy pleasure to the distant fireside beyond the sea, and to the friends who are gathered there, and wonder where the wanderer is spending his Christmas. ”

“ But the hospitality of the Queen is not limited to the children. On alternate years the old men and women resident on the estate are given, under the same pleasant auspices, presents of blankets or clothing. To-day it was the turn of the men, and they received tweed for suits. The aged people have their pudding as well. For the farm labourers and boys, who are not bidden to this entertainment, there is a distribution of tickets, each representing a goodly joint of beef for the Christmas dinner. ”

“ There is to be a boar's head, with, no lack of mustard and minstrelsy, and nothing eatable or drinkable that pertains to Christmas will be wanting. Carols, and waits, and contended tenants; merry chimes and clinking glasses; twanging fiddles and the rush down the middle—nothing is spared and nobody is forgotten. So the hour draws on, the guests pull through the dreary day (for as I have said before, everything on Christmas day gives place to the dinner) , and at last the dinner becomes an absolute fact, something to be apprehended, sat down to, and finally eaten. ”

“ Come along; while I am immortalizing myself, twenty hungry families are waiting for a Christmas dinner they don't expect to get, and their mouths watering for plum-puddings and mince pies that they have not the most distant expectation of"—and the good old soul led the way into the hall, and thence into the court yard, at the entrance of which stood a large covered furniture-cart, filled to over-flowing with the wonderful twenty baskets destined to distribute happiness among as many poor and suffering families, and make their hearts merry on Christmas day. ”

“ Who sits within the centre of the room, To cry the pawns; much is the laughter, now, Of such as can't the Christmas Catch repeat, And who, perchance, are sentenc'd to salute The jetty beauties of the chimney black, Or Lady's shoe: others, more lucky far, By hap or favour, meet a sweeter doom, And on each fair-one's lovely lips imprint The ardent kiss."
Poor Robin's Almanack (1695) thus rejoices at the return of the festival:—
"Now thrice welcome, Christmas, Which brings us good cheer, Minc'd-pies and plumb-porridge, Good ale and strong beer ”

“ Dreary Christmases I have spent, as have many others, in country hotels or on the road, but the utter loneliness and longing for home were invariably lightened by the cheerfulness and comradeship of fellow travellers, who, while utter strangers, were filled with the spirit of Christmas, and if it was not a merry one, it was not altogether a miserable day. ”

“ Through the open door a bright light shone, and the warm air, filled with the fragrance of the Christmas pine, rushed out from the inner room and greeted the little wanderer with a kiss. As the child turned back into the cold and darkness, he wondered why the footman had spoken thus, for surely, thought he, those little children would love to have another companion join them in their joyous Christmas festival. ”