From Christmas Day to Plough Monday

 

An Essex Christmas, Sutton Publishing

I found my first Sutton "Christmas anthologies" (A Worcestershire Christmas, if you care) at a library book sale many years back. When A Surrey Christmas turned up at a subsequent sale I realized this was a series. I think the coronavirus emergency made me a little crazy this year; every time I found a book from this series for less than five dollars with postage, I bought one and managed to accumulate ten (or is it eleven?). These contain short excerpts of Christmas/Christmastide passages from various British novels, memoirs, and poetry books, with the action taking place in the shire or historical era denoted in the title.

These books vary in quality in what is included in each volume, based on what regional information can be collected. Sometimes there is much generic commentary about the weather and events in December and January without having much connection to the holiday season. This volume did frustrate me a bit with entries like the generic "Essex" and a fragment of Anthony Trollope talking about riding to hounds, plus a couple of bits about highwaymen (one of whom was a woman). On the other hand, I fell in love with three entries by Ethelind Farmon (only to find all her books are all out of print) that had definite Gladys Taber vibes. Elsewhere a man reminisces about the fierce snowball fights of his youth, another takes on the almost-forgotten customs of Plough Monday (the first work day after Epiphany). A January snowstorm traps a small village, a doctor runs through his rounds on Christmas Day 1930, a man recalls Christmas during WWII bombings. Tennyson goes skating and memorializes it in verse, editor Humphrey Phelps presents vintage seasonal fare, a dog comes home for the holidays...and more.

Really worth it for the Farmon pieces.