The Cumnor Christmas feast

25 December · Cumnor, Berkshire

No longer kept

After evening service on Christmas Day the tithe-paying parishioners of Cumnor went to the vicarage to be given bread, cheese and ale. It was not the vicar’s charity but the parishioners’ right, and even the quantities were fixed: four bushels of malt brewed into ale and small beer, two bushels of wheat baked into bread and half a hundredweight of cheese. Whatever was left was given to the poor after morning prayers the next day.

It is no benefaction on the part of the vicar, but claimed as a right on the part of the parishioners

From Chambers's Book of Days, vol. 2, pp. 759-760. Read the original

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Folklore from the old calendars

The apple Florentine No longer kept BedfordshireAt Potton in Bedfordshire and the places round about, some sixty years before Hone's Year Book, every Christmas entertainment had an apple Florentine on the table, of which all the guests ate.
The bells under the valley Lore and belief NottinghamshireNear Raleigh in Nottinghamshire, a Hone correspondent wrote, there was a valley said to have been made by an earthquake centuries before, which swallowed a whole village and its church.
Alexander and the King of Egypt No longer kept CumberlandA Whitehaven correspondent sent Hone the printed text of the mummers' play acted there every Christmas by companies of boys.
A Christmas feed for the beasts No longer kept StirlingshireIn former times the charity of Christmas and New Year was extended to the animals.
The Yorkshire gooding carol No longer kept YorkshireOn Christmas morning children in Yorkshire went gooding from house to house, carrying a small Christmas tree as the badge of their errand.
No spinning on Yule Day No longer kept ScotlandIn Scotland there was an old superstition against spinning on Christmas, or Yule Day.
The boar’s head at Queen’s College Still kept OxfordshireThe boar's head was once the first dish of every great Christmas dinner, carried in with minstrelsy and a carol, and Aubrey said that before the civil wars it came to the table in gentlemen's houses with a lemon in its mouth.
Christmas weather lore Lore and belief Devon, England, ScotlandAn old song in the Harleian manuscripts foretold the year by the weekday of Christmas: a Sunday Christmas meant a good winter, a fair summer and peace, while a Saturday one brought storms that killed man and beast, failing crops and dying children.
Christmas Day in the Highlands No longer kept HighlandsGrant's Popular Superstitions of the Highlands described a Highland Christmas.
Christmas pie and plum porridge Still kept EnglandEvery family once made a great Christmas pie, which Misson found stuffed with neats' tongues, chicken, eggs, sugar, raisins, peel and spice, and Brand said that in the north of England goose was always its chief ingredient.
The hackin No longer kept EnglandAn old tract called Round about our Coal Fire described how an English gentleman had all his tenants and neighbours into his hall at daybreak on Christmas morning.
Yule doughs No longer kept County Durham, EnglandBakers once baked a little image of paste at Christmas, called a yule dough or dow, and gave one to each of their customers, just as chandlers gave their customers Christmas candles.
West Country church carols Still kept Cornwall, DevonDavies Gilbert, who published the old carols of the West of England with their tunes, said that on Christmas Day they were sung in place of the psalms in all the churches, above all at the afternoon service, with the whole congregation joining in.
Wrestling for the boar’s head No longer kept EssexAt Hornchurch the lessee of the tithes, which belonged to New College, Oxford, provided a boar's head, dressed and garnished with bay leaves, every Christmas Day.
The Glastonbury Thorn Still kept SomersetGlastonbury tradition said Joseph of Arimathea stuck his hawthorn staff into Wearyall Hill, where it grew and blossomed every Christmas Day.

The Cumnor Christmas feast

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