FullReads

So many things have been said of late years about Christmas, that it is
supposed by some there is no saying more. O they of little faith! What!
do they suppose that every thing has been said that can be said about
any one Christmas thing?

About beef, for instance?
About plum-pudding?
About mince-pie?
About holly?
About ivy?
About rosemary?
About mistletoe? (Good Heavens! what an immense number of things
remain to be said about mistletoe!)
About Christmas Eve?
About hunt-the-slipper?
About hot cockles?
About blind-man’s-buff?
About shoeing the wild-mare?
About thread-the-needle?
About he-can-do-little-that-can’t-do-this?
About puss-in-the-corner?
About snap-dragon?
About forfeits?
About Miss Smith?
About the bell-man?
About the waits?
About chilblains?
About carols?
About the fire?
About the block on it?
About school-boys?
About their mothers?
About Christmas-boxes?
About turkeys?
About Hogmany?
About goose-pie?
About mumming?
About saluting the apple-trees?
About brawn?
About plum-porridge?
About hobby-horse?
About hoppings?
About wakes?
About “feed-the-dove”?
About hackins?
About yule-doughs?
About going-a-gooding?
About loaf-stealing?
About Julklaps? (Who has exhausted that subject,
we should like to know?)
About wad-shooting?
About elder-wine?
About pantomimes?
About cards?
About New-Year’s Day?
About gifts?
About wassail?
About Twelfth-cake?
About king and queen?
About characters?
About eating too much?
About aldermen?
About the doctor?
About all being in the wrong?
About charity?
About all being in the right?
About faith, hope, and endeavor?
About the greatest plum-pudding for the greatest number?

Esto perpetua,–that is, faith, hope and charity, and endeavor; and
plum-pudding enough by and by, all the year round, for everybody that
likes it. Why that should not be the case, we cannot see,–seeing that
the earth is big, and human kind teachable, and God very good, and
inciting us to do it. Meantime, gravity apart, we ask anybody whether
any of the above subjects are exhausted; and we inform everybody, that
all the above customs still exist in some parts of our beloved country,
however unintelligible they may have become in others. But to give a
specimen of the non-exhaustion of any one of their topics.

Beef, for example. Now, we should like to know who has exhausted the
subject of the fine old roast Christmas piece of beef, from its original
appearance in the meadows as part of the noble sultan of the herd,
glorious old Taurus,–the lord of the sturdy brow and ponderous agility,
a sort of thunderbolt of a beast, well chosen by Jove to disguise in,
one of Nature’s most striking compounds of apparent heaviness and
unencumbered activity,–up to its contribution to the noble
Christmas-dinner, smoking from the spit, and flanked by the outposts of
Bacchus. John Bull (cannibalism apart) hails it like a sort of relation.
He makes it part of his flesh and blood; glories in it; was named after
it; has it served up, on solemn occasions, with music and a hymn, as it
was the other day at the royal city dinner:–

“Oh the roast beef of old England!
And oh the old English roast beef!”

“And oh!” observe, not merely “oh!” again; but “and” with it; as if,
though the same piece of beef, it were also another,–another and the
same,–cut, and come again; making two of one, in order to express
intensity and reduplication of satisfaction:–

“Oh the roast beef of old England!
And oh the old English roast beef!”

We beg to assure the reader, that a whole Seer might be written on
this single point of the Christmas-dinner; and “shall we be told” (as
orators exclaim), “and this, too, in a British land,” that the subject
is “exhausted“!