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will you have in the ensuing year; you have only therefore to go to a different house each day in the Christmas to ensure a happy twelvemonth, a simple receipt, if effectual. Something like this is mentioned in ' Dives and Pauper,' by W. de Worde, 1496, where the custom is reprobated of judging of the weather of the coming year by that of the days of Christmas. This was also prognosticated by the day of the week on which Christmas Day fell, and there are some old Christmas songs referring to it. In the ' Golden Legend,' of the same printer, is a more laudable prejudice, " That what persone, beynge in clene lyfe, desyre on thys daye a boone of God; as ferre as it is ryghtfull and good for hym; our lorde at reuerece of thys blessid and hye feste of his Natiuite wol graut it to hym."
The north of England is celebrated for its Christmas pies of a different description, composed of turkeys, geese, game, and various small birds, weighing sometimes half a hundred weight and upwards, and calculated to'meet the attacks of a large Christmas party throughout the festival. Plum-pudding, of which the old name is said to have been hackin, until the time of Charles the Second, is another valuable dish; though, fortunately for its admirers, not confined to Christmas time. Plum-porridge seems to be something like the French edition of plum-pudding brought up to our ambassador many years since, which had been boiled without the cloth; it is, however, mentioned by Misson, and not very many years since the custom existed of serving up a tureen of it at the table of the royal chaplains at St. James's Palace.
An amusing little book, called (Round about our coal-fire, or Christmas Entertainments,' gives an account of the manner of observing this festival, by the middling classes, |
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