A Sort of Christmas Card: Mr Pepys’s Christmas Day

Diary, 25 December 1662

Up pretty early, leaving my wife not well in bed. And with my boy walked, it being a most brave cold and dry frosty morning, and had a pleasant walk to Whitehall… By and by down to the Chapell again, where Bishop Morley* preached upon the Song of the Angels – “Glory to God on high, on earth peace, and good will towards men.” Methought he made but a poor sermon, but long and reprehending the mistaken jollity of the Court for the true joy that shall and ought to be on these days… He did much press us to joy in these publick days of joy, and to hospitality. But one that stood by whispered in my ear that the Bishop do not spend one groat to the poor himself. The sermon done a good anthem followed by vialls, and the King** came down to receive the sacrament… I walked home again with great pleasure, and there dined by my wife’s bed-side with great content, having a mess of brave plum-porridge and a roasted pullet for dinner, and I sent for a mince-pie abroad, my wife not being well to make any herself yet. After dinner sat talking a good while with her, her [pain] being become less, and then to see Sir W Penn*** a little, and so to my office, practising arithmetique alone with great content, till 11 at night; and so to supper and to bed.

Wishing you a very happy Christmas.

*Bishop of Winchester, then in 1663 also Dean of the Chapel Royal

**Charles II
***Admiral William Penn, a close friend of Pepys. Father of the founder of Pennsylvania

A Sort of Christmas Card (2)

Last year it was TS Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi”.

This year, something much closer to home by Thomas Hardy.

And it feels right for us, living as we do, surrounded by livestock on the edge of our village on the borders of Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire.

Written during the First World War, Hardy recalls a Wessex folk tradition that, at midnight on Christmas Eve, the cattle kneel.

The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come; see the oxen kneel,

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

Faith, mingled with doubt, and the wish to cling to childhood certainties.

Happy Christmas, one and all.

(Portrait photograph of Thomas Hardy by H Walter Barnett, c1909.)