Lastly, Mr. Brand makes this important note from personal regard. “Memorandum. I dined at the chaplain’s table at St. James’s on Christmas-day, 1801, and partook of the first thing served and eaten on that festival at that table, i. e. a tureen full of rich luscious plum-porridge. I do not know that the custom is any where else retained.”
Thus has been brought together so much as, for the present, seems sufficient to describe the ancient and present estimation and mode of keeping Christmas.
FLORAL DIRECTORY.
Holly. Ilex bacciflora.
Dedicated to the Nativity of Jesus Christ.
It ought not, however, to be forgotten, that a scene of awful grandeur, hitherto misrepresented on the stage by the meanest of “his majesty’s servants,” opens the tragedy of Hamlet, wherein our everlasting bard refers to ancient and still existing tradition, that at the time of cock-crowing, the midnight spirits forsake these lower regions, and go to their proper places; and that the cocks crow throughout the live-long nights of Christmas—a circumstance observable at no other time of the year. Horatio, the friend of Hamlet, discourses at midnight with Francisco, a sentry on the platform before the Danish palace, and Bernardo and Marcellus, two officers of the guard, respecting the ghost of the deceased monarch of Denmark, which had appeared to the military on watch.
Mar. Horatio says, ’tis but our fantasy,
And will not let belief take hold of him,
Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us;
Therefore I have entreated him, along
With us, to watch the minutes of this night;
That, if again this apparition come,
He may approve our eyes, and speak to it.
Hor. Tush! tush! ’twill not appear.