Decades of Christmas

A Hertfordshire Christmas, compiled by Margaret Ashby

I found my first volume of the 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. Every time I found a book from this series, I bought one and have now managed to accumulate all of the regional ones. 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.

Some of the books repeat certain things heavily, like the "St. George and the Dragon" skit done door-to-door by the Waits, or excerpts from Dickens, so it was refreshing to find this one, which is pretty much wall-to-wall memoirs from former Hertfordshire writers and residents, and they run the gamut from poulterers' shops in the late 1880s to memories of the cold, cold winter of 1962: from a story about an orphan put out for fostering by an old couple to a Christmas selection by Anthony Trollope, from wartime Christmases during both World Wars to celebrations in school, memories of composer Elizabeth Poston to one from Charles Dickens' great-granddaughter Monica, reports from department stores and ghost stories and bookmobiles, and more.

I really enjoyed this one because of the different decades of memories throughout, and, as always, the reminders of how little it took one hundred years ago to make a small child's Christmas.