Christmas Archives - History Spinner

Short Poems for Christmas and The New Year

A selection of old-fashioned Christmas and New Year’s verses and short poems. Welll suited for crafting your own holiday cards to celebrate the season.

Little Jim: An Incident of the Strike at the Bonny Belle Mine

Christmas, Poetry

A personal tragedy inspires great Christmas time charity in “An Incident of the Strike at the Bonny Belle Mine.”

Traditional English Christmas Puddings and Cakes

Christmas, Old Fashioned Recipes

Traditional English Christmas pudding and cake recipes from 1859, including Twelfth Cake and Gingerbread.

The Mistletoe Bough: Sad Songs That Our Grandmothers Used to Sing

Christmas, The Library

This article about the song and legend of The Mistletoe Bough appeared in an early 20th century children’s encyclopedia (1911), The Book of Knowledge. I’ve included a clip from a silent film of the same title that I found on Archive.org. Then there was Thomas Haynes Bayly. We do not know his songs so well as our grandfathers and grandmothers used to know them; but we know at least “The Mistletoe Bough,” and we have heard of “She wore a Wreath of Roses,” and of “Oh, no! We Never Mention Her,” of “I’ll hang my Harp on a Willow Tree,” and...