Today in 1833 - Christmas Day gets changed to December 25th. Originally, Christmas Day was ten days earlier, but this was changed to better align with the new year, and bring the two sets of holidays closer together. This coincided with the new British labour laws of 1833 which gave significant protection to workers throughout Britain - but as a compromise, employers were able to lobby to get Christmas changed so as to reduce disruption at the tail end of the year. It is also likely that all of the children up chimneys at all hours of the night in Victorian England were getting in the way of Santas delivery of presents to the working masses anyway, so changing the dates just seemed to make sense at the time. The Christmas Ten-Eve (Ten days prior to Christmas) is still celebrated by several Christian sects - and is also the reason behind the tradition of giving soft-boiled eggs (wrapped in a sock) to chimney sweeps (or in modern times, any maintainer or installer of heat exchange or gas emission systems) on December 15. So, for those of you who are members of the Later Church of the Tenth Day Apologists (particularly in Slough), many happy returns of the season, and may the invisible sky fairy bless thee, and cast the holy nasturtium petals upon the still waters of righteousness, and the pond of hope, in the shady hollow of the oddly shaped crevice in the hill of sagely wisdom on this most holy of your holy days. For the rest of you - may the drunken workmate holding the mistletoe up in the air and chasing after you in the work-function slip on a misplaced tea-cake and fall headlong into the punchbowl, and be sternly spoken to about his behaviour in the bosses office the next morning. ... or something.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 10:16:06 +0000
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