Hark

Paul Kerensa

Description

In this delightful sleigh ride through Christmas history, Paul Kerensa answers the festive questions you never thought to ask...Did Cromwell help shape the mince pie? Was St Nicholas the first to use an automatic door? Which classic Christmas crooners were inspired by a Hollywood heatwave? And did King Herod really have a wife called Doris?Whether you mull on wine or enjoy the biggest turkey, the biggest tree or the biggest credit card bill, unwrap your story through our twelve dates of Christmas past. From Roman revelry to singing Bing, via Santa, Scrooge and a snoozing saviour, this timeless tale is perfect trivia fodder for the Christmas dinner table.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian worship
• Cultural studies

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 22 septembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780745980492
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

"If you don’t know what to get someone for Christmas, and want to know how you’re in this position in the first place – this funny and interesting book could solve both problems at once."
MILTON JONES
"Christmas sits among us like a familiar member of the family – but its history, as told here, is a story-and-a-half. A brilliant book."
JEREMY VINE
"If you love Christmas, you’ll love this fun romp into all its history. A joy to the world o’books!"
MIRANDA HART
"I adore Christmas... now I have years of festive pub ammo with which to regale my fellow merrymakers over however many Yuletides I have left."
CHRIS EVANS
Previous praise…
"Top comic, top writer, top bloke."
LEE MACK
"Paul Kerensa is a jolly nice chap and he knows what’s funny – if he’s written a book, I want to read it."
TIM VINE

Text copyright © 2017 Paul Kerensa
This edition copyright © 2017 Lion Hudson
The right of Paul Kerensa to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Lion Books
an imprint of
Lion Hudson IP Ltd
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road,
Oxford OX2 8DR, England
www.lionhudson.com/lion
ISBN 978 0 7459 8017 1
e-ISBN 978 0 7459 8049 2
First edition 2017
Text acknowledgments
Scripture quotations from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.
p. 223 Extract © Henry Williamson, reprinted by permission of Henry Williamson Literary Estate.
Picture acknowledgments
Alamy: pp. 48, 148, 174, 128 Chronicle; p. 64 robertharding; p. 114 Michele Castellani; p. 230 Heritage Image Partnership Ltd; p. 246 Moviestore
Superstock: p. 24 ACME Imagery; p. 88 Classic Vision / age fotostock; p. 160 ClassicStock.com; p. 210 World History Archive
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover image: © Adyna/iStock
Background image: © tonioyumi/iStock
CONTENTS
Foreword by Chris Evans
On my first page of Christmas…
Prologos: In the Bleak Midwinter
Chapter 1 The First Nowell (4 BC – AD 300)
Chapter 2 Roman Holiday (753 BC – AD 325)
Chapter 3 Ho Ho Who? (270 –1100)
Chapter 4 Merrie Olde England (935–1588)
Chapter 5 Caves and Carols (1181–1610)
Chapter 6 Cancel Christmas (1517–1800)
Chapter 7 All is Quiet (1700–1861)
Chapter 8 The Night Before (1809–1931)
Chapter 9 God Bless Us, Every One (1827–1901)
Chapter 10 A Lesson in War (1862–1928)
Chapter 11 Through the Marvels of Modern Science (1906–2012)
Chapter 12 Bing to Bublé (1934– present )
Wrapping Up: Last Christmas… and Next
Bibliography
The Big Christmas Timeline (Abridged)
A Christmas Quiz!
For Mum & Dad
Thanks for all the stocking-fillers and turkey
Here’s one for you
(A stocking-filler hopefully, not a turkey)
"Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused."
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Dinner
"It’s Chriiiiiistmas!"
Me, aged 8, singing along to Top of the Pops
Foreword
I love Paul Kerensa. Honestly, I do. I have actual love for the guy. The guy whose name, "Kerensa", actually translates as "love". Ancient Cornish and all that. Ah, yes, now that’s another thing: Paul is actually from Cornwall. Which I also love. And he currently lives in Guildford, not too far away from my mum who I really, really, really love. Even more than Paul.
I work with Paul and have done for a good few years. Four, five, six, maybe more. I’ve never been a counter when it comes to jobs. It leads to desperate self-justification, quantity over quality, relevance, and most of all talent. Mmm… talent. Kerensa is overflowing with it. PK’s scripts for our daily feature "Pause For Thought" on Radio 2 are nothing short of perfect. Their rhythm, their lightness of touch, his love of language, his wordplay, his understanding of people and the ever-crazier world which becomes ever more mind-meltingly difficult to make sense of each and every day, are evident for all to hear. And most annoyingly of all, he’s very funny – but the real kicker is, he’s such an incredibly nice guy. If I could steal anyone’s warmth, and contentment, combined with the uncanny ability to care and comprehend enough to be able to convey much of what might otherwise go unnoticed to the rest of us, it would be a dead heat between Paul and Father Brian D’Arcy. (I’ve no time to tell you about Father Brian here, save to say, he’s a living and breathing saint of a man, no miracles required. He is a walking miracle. No more genuine a human being has God’s earth ever seen.)
And so what’s Mr K up to here? He’s only gone and written one of the most blindingly obvious behind-the-scenes stories thus far yet to be told. The truth about Christmas! Goodness me, why didn’t I think of that? Like all the greatest comedy routines, it’s been staring us in the face for decades. I adore Christmas, and having now read the following tinseltastic tome, I have years of festive pub ammo with which to regale my fellow merrymakers over however many Yuletides I have left.
Wait till you read about how paranoid Herod was that no one would be "sad enough" after he died, and what he ordered to be done about such posthumous injustice. Or how come "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks" was the only Christmas carol that could be legally sung for over a century? Were The Three Kings really kings at all, and were there really three of them in the first place? Oh my giddy antlers, so many questions, but finally all the answers.
My favourite present under Paul’s Christmas tree of literary wonder is the tale behind Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – my favourite book of all time. Always has been and always will be. How it came about. What it began as, compared to what it became. The personal risk Dickens took to get the book published at all. And my favourite part, the effect it had on countless real-life Scrooges back then and still today. Be prepared: there’s so much to munch on.
This is a simply fabulous idea, and like all the best ideas it also happens to be fabulously simple.
Enjoy.
Oh, and a very merry Christmas.
Especially to you, PK – you truly deserve it.
Chris Evans
On my first page of Christmas…
’Twas the part before Prologue, and all through the pages,
Christmas was waiting, as it has through the ages…
L et nothing in the pages after this one sway you from this fact: I love Christmas. I love it quiet and candlelit, I love it loud and floodlit, I love its lessons, its carols, its ridiculous jumpers, and its turkey leftovers.
I also love history, though I’ve never studied it. But I have studied story. I adore anecdotes, quirks, and trivia, so expect plenty to litter what’s to come. But I’ll leave discovering the exact historical truth to the historians. I’m here to tell some stories. I’m a storian.
Whether your typical festivities are big and boisterous or sacred and solemn, I hope that you’ll find your Christmas tucked away somewhere in this attic of a book. You just might have to move a few boxes of decorations to find it.
We’ll visit Christmas’ great turning-points and the origin of great innovations. Beyond the familiar tales of Scrooge and Santa, we’ll hear about the lesser-known bizarre Christmas connections. Which broadcasting achievement was written by Englebert Humperdinck (not that one)? Which near-miss Gospel had the first use of the sci-fi concept of time standing still? Was St Nicholas the first to use an automatic door? How did Christmas change when the Reformation split churches from Rome (let’s call it "Rexit"…)?
A confession: I am English, sorry (apology comes as standard with the nationality). I often glance this way to the Americas though, and that way to the Continent. So my particular focus on what has created the classic Christmas I know is based in Britain, but with plenty of visits from Uncle Sam, a glut of gifts from Mother Europe, and a few makeweights from Great Auntie Elsewhere. So that still means a more international story than any Bond film. We’ll fly from Bethlehem to Cornwall, stopping at Scandinavia, Rome, Greece, Germany, Mexico, Japan, Russia, France, and maybe even Lapland. London will bring us feasting, Dickens, pantomime, and broadcasting grandeur. Our North American cousins will say goodbye to King George then "Happy Holidays" to George Washington, Washington Irving, and Irving Berlin (there was clearly a name shortage for a while).
As I see it, there are – how convenient – twelve key dates that helped shape the modern Christmas, so one by one we’ll go through them (because you can’t open all your presents at once). While we’re there, we’ll look at the era surrounding each date and the various stocking-fillers that history has offered us along the way, from Mary to Mariah Carey, candles to Handel, banned festivities to Band Aid.
Finally we’ll reach our own Christmas, so that maybe next time you dust the snow off your Advent calendar, find a Cliff Richard CD in your Christmas pudding, or discover last year’s turkey leg in your Christmas stocking * , you’ll have a new appreciation of where it came from. A huge thank you to my wife for tolerating my obsession while making this book, and to my young children for throwing frequent festive facts at me. Thanks to Mum, Dad, and Mark for shaping my festive season over the years, and to grandparents gone for doing likewise – because of course Christmas is all about what’s handed down to you. Thanks to my agents Nick Ranceford-Hadley and Greg Sammons; Simon Cox, Jessica Tinker, Drew Stanley, and all a