NOTHING says Christmas like a picture-postcard snow scene, on the cover of COUNTRY LIFE, on a glitter-frosted greetings card or on a festive biscuit tin. The Christmas of our imagination—and, indeed, our dreams—is resolutely white. Yet why is this, when so rarely does the big day bring a blanket of snow?
At first glance, it seems logical to credit Charles Dickens with our yearning for a white Christmas. The theory goes that it was his own bitterly cold (although heartwarmingly happy) childhood Christmases that inspired him to give both The Pickwick Papers and A Christmas Carol a snowcovered backdrop and that, in doing so, he created a lasting feeling that the very best Christmases were white.
Certainly, born in 1812, Dickens experienced six white Christmases in the first nine years of his life. However, dig a little deeper into the snowdrifts of centuries past and it’s clear that the association pre-dates the author. He was by no means the first to pen a snowy festive scene and certainly not the first, nor the last, to experience one.
Between roughly 1550 and 1880, Britain was in the grip of what has become popularly known as the Little Ice Age—a period of intensely cold winters. Forget treetops glistening, frosts were persistently harsh and forbidding. The Thames froze solid with regularity until 1814; that it didn’t freeze so completely in later years is generally acknowledged to be the result
Denne historien er fra December 11-18, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra December 11-18, 2019-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
