Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only €10,99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Old Christmas
    Old Christmas
    Old Christmas
    Ebook75 pages1 hour

    Old Christmas

    By Washington Irving

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    In this classic nineteenth-century Christmas story, the author of Rip Van Winkle returns to England and experiences a traditional holiday with friends.

    First published in Washington Irving’s The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., these personal essays offer reflections on the meaning of Christmas and recount the author’s time spending the holiday at the home of an old schoolmate. Irving vividly describes the charm of his friend’s English country estate, Bracebridge Hall, and the warm welcome he experiences from the entire family.

    Through these heartwarming experiences, many old Christmas traditions come to life, from a sumptuous English holiday dinner to the virtues of charity, togetherness, and merriment.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateMay 12, 2020
    ISBN9781504063296
    Author

    Washington Irving

    Washington Irving fue un autor, ensayista, biógrafo, historiador y diplomático estadounidense. Realizó estudios de Derecho, pero su vocación se interesaba más por el periodismo y la escritura que por la abogacía. En 1802 comenzó a escribir artículos en periódicos de Nueva York. En 1815 se fue a vivir a Liverpool y allí trabó amistad con importantes hombres de letras: sir Walter Scott y Thomas Moore, entre otros. Escribió algunos ensayos y relatos bajo el seudónimo de Geoffrey Crayon. Considerado el mentor de autores como Nathaniel Hawthorne, el hispanista Henry Wadsworth Longfellow y Edgar Allan Poe, entre su obra destacan los siguientes títulos:  Cuentos de la Alhambra, Los buscadores de tesoros, La conquista de Granada, La leyenda de Sleepy Hollow o la biografía George Washington. En 1846, regresó a Sunnyside (EE. UU.), su casa de campo, y allí falleció en 1859.

    Read more from Washington Irving

    Related to Old Christmas

    Related ebooks

    Essays, Study, and Teaching For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Jenny Agutter

      Jun 24, 2022

      Jenny Agutter
      14 min read

    • Article

      How Long Does GRIEF LAST?

      Sep 23, 2021

      How Long Does GRIEF LAST?
      3 min read

    • Article

      'Tombland' Unearths Plots And Tudor-era Political Intrigue

      Jan 14, 2019

      C. J. Sansom's historical mystery series features lawyer Matthew Shardlake – one of the best-drawn leading characters in the entire genre.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Farmers Can’t Win

      Apr 21, 2021

      THE aggravating thing about farmers is, to misquote Thomas Hardy, that ‘although they are never more than half right, they are never more than half wrong’. Living in the country, you learn at a pretty young age not to ask a farmer how business is goi

      2 min read

    • Article

      New Chapters Unfolding

      Nov 22, 2022

      When first I saw the vast English house that would become my home, I was overawed. An elegant redbrick Victorian vicarage in Oxford, tucked away next to a lake, with a rambling garden and an ancient willow. We toured the property as part of my husban

      6 min read

    • Article

      Hopeful Expressions for a New Year

      Nov 23, 2021

      It wasn’t until a few months ago that I decided to tackle the fast-approaching New Year from a different angle: being kinder to myself. Recently, I compiled a vision board with multiple words and phrases that serve as my goals. It was worthwhile flip

      5 min read

    • Article

      Steeped in Tradition

      Mar 21, 2023

      Steeped in Tradition
      5 min read

    • Article

      Curses And Blessings

      Jun 25, 2023

      Curses And Blessings
      3 min read

    • Article

      A Village Affair

      Jul 14, 2021

      AS an attentive aunt, Jane Austen was keen to encourage her niece, Anna, with the novel she was writing. ‘Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on,’ she wrote to her in 1814, adding, ‘such a spot… is the delight of my

      4 min read

    • Article

      Valentine’s way AN WILSON Valentine Ackland: A Transgressive Life

      Jun 2, 2021

      Handheld Press £15.99 One old reviewer found a tear rolling round his cheek towards the end of this book. When the poet Valentine Ackland went into hospital with breast cancer, she wrote to her lover of 38 years, novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, ‘You

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Ties That Bind

      May 8, 2022

      The Ties That Bind
      2 min read

    • Article

      ‘Peace On Earth And Mercy Mild’

      Dec 15, 2021

      DECEMBER months in Salcombe seldom hold snow, but nevertheless, silver hues and low suns hang over the harbour, the sparsely populated beaches marking out Nature’s quieting of the seasons. Most yawls and yachts are back in boatyards, leaving the wate

      5 min read

    • Article

      Ode To Autumn

      Oct 4, 2023

      OUR perception of the seasons is often one of metaphor: there is the joyous youth of spring, summer’s fecund vigour and autumn’s melancholy decline (of winter we will not speak yet). Autumn represents the year in its late middle age and many people d

      2 min read

    • Article

      Celebrating Christmas

      Oct 19, 2022

      Celebrating Christmas
      3 min read

    • Article

      While Shepherds Watched

      Dec 5, 2023

      While Shepherds Watched
      2 min read

    • Article

      Eat, Drink And Be Merry

      Nov 9, 2023

      Eat, Drink And Be Merry
      3 min read

    • Article

      Perfect Presents

      Nov 25, 2020

      AN orange rustling in the bottom of a stocking, a sixpence dropped into the plum-pudding mixture, nuts, dates, gingerbread and festive drinks—these were the simple treats of Christmases past, as evoked in our food-themed Advent calendar this year. Im

      1 min read

    • Article

      Joyful Celebration

      Dec 17, 2021

      Joyful Celebration
      2 min read

    • Article

      Andrew Jefford

      Dec 4, 2024

      I’ve let you down: more than 250 columns for Decanter, and not one on Christmas wine. There is an urgent topic to address; it’s not, though, so urgent that it can’t wait until January. I’ve also got an undiscovered jewel among Big Reds to describe: p

      3 min read

    • Article

      Comfort And Joy

      Nov 27, 2024

      Future Publishing Ltd, 121–141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London W2 6JR 0330 390 6591; www.countrylife.co.uk CHRISTINA ROSSETTI wrote of snow, frost and a stable’s warmth, T. S. Eliot of the chilly pilgrimage of the Magi and Thomas Hardy of ‘mee

      2 min read

    • Article

      From the Editor

      Jul 18, 2023

      From the Editor
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Joyful Home

      Dec 8, 2022

      The Joyful Home
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Old Christmas

    3.5/5

    32 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Quick and interesting read about how Christmas was celebrated in the past.Liked the way it was divided up into the different aspects of Christmas; travelling for the celebration, Christmas Eve, the morning, Christmas dinner.Interesting to see which traditions have continued, perhaps without people knowing exactly why.Very well written, Irving painted a picture so you could easily imagine the scenes he was describing.Would like to know when this was written, I would guess around Victorian era.
    • 4/5
      A look back to when Christmas was fading as a holiday in pre-Dickins England and American Washington Irving was nostalgic for the old ways of celebrating.
    • 4/5
      "Old Christmas" is an 1875 collection of Christmas stories first appearing Washington Irving's "Sketch Book" published in 1819-1820. . It is a wondrous thing to read laments about how the modern world had lost some of the Christmas magic. At the same time, Irving captures Christmas essences, like families and food and a general spirit of generosity. BTW bought this book at a library book sale.

    Book preview

    Old Christmas - Washington Irving

    Irving_OldChristmas.jpg

    Old Christmas

    Washington Irving

    Contents

    Christmas

    The Stage Coach

    Christmas Eve

    Christmas Day

    The Christmas Dinner

    Christmas

    A man might then behold

    At Christmas, in each hall

    Good fires to curb the cold,

    And meat for great and small.

    The neighbours were friendly bidden,

    And all had welcome true,

    The poor from the gates were not chidden,

    When this old cap was new.

    Old Song.

    There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present. I regret to say that they are daily growing more and more faint, being gradually worn away by time, but still more obliterated by modern fashion. They resemble those picturesque morsels of Gothic architecture which we see crumbling in various parts of the country, partly dilapidated by the waste of ages, and partly lost in the additions and alterations of latter days. Poetry, however, clings with cherishing fondness about the rural game and holiday revel, from which it has derived so many of its themes—as the ivy winds its rich foliage about the Gothic arch and mouldering tower, gratefully repaying their support by clasping together their tottering remains, and, as it were, embalming them in verdure.

    Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christmas awakens the strongest and most heartfelt associations. There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, and lifts the spirit to a state of hallowed and elevated enjoyment. The services of the church about this season are extremely tender and inspiring. They dwell on the beautiful story of the origin of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that accompanied its announcement. They gradually increase in fervour and pathos during the season of Advent, until they break forth in full jubilee on the morning that brought peace and good-will to men. I do not know a grander effect of music on the moral feelings than to hear the full choir and the pealing organ performing a Christmas anthem in a cathedral, and filling every part of the vast pile with triumphant harmony.

    It is a beautiful arrangement, also, derived from days of yore, that this festival, which commemorates the announcement of the religion of peace and love, has been made the season for gathering together of family connections, and drawing closer again those bands of kindred hearts which the cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world are continually operating to cast loose; of calling back the children of a family who have launched forth in life, and wandered widely asunder, once more to assemble about the paternal hearth, that rallying-place of the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementoes of childhood.

    There is something in the very season of the year that gives a charm to the festivity of Christmas. At other times we derive a great portion of our pleasures from the mere beauties of nature. Our feelings sally forth and dissipate themselves over the sunny landscape, and we live abroad and everywhere. The song of the bird, the murmur of the stream, the breathing fragrance of spring, the soft voluptuousness of summer, the golden pomp of autumn; earth with its mantle of refreshing green, and heaven with its deep delicious blue and its cloudy magnificence, all fill us with mute but exquisite delight, and we revel in the luxury of mere sensation. But in the depth of winter, when nature lies despoiled of every charm, and wrapped in her shroud of sheeted snow, we turn for our gratifications to moral sources. The dreariness and desolation of the landscape, the short gloomy days and darksome nights, while they circumscribe our wanderings, shut in our feelings also from rambling abroad, and make us more keenly disposed for the pleasures of the social circle. Our thoughts are more concentrated; our friendly sympathies more aroused. We feel more sensibly the charm of each other’s society, and are brought more closely together by dependence on each other for enjoyment. Heart calleth unto heart; and we draw our pleasures from the deep wells of living kindness, which lie in the quiet recesses of our bosoms; and which, when resorted to, furnish forth the pure element of domestic felicity.

    The pitchy gloom without makes the heart dilate on entering the room filled with the glow and warmth of the evening fire. The ruddy blaze diffuses an artificial summer and sunshine through the room, and lights up each countenance into a kindlier welcome. Where does the honest face of hospitality expand into a broader and more cordial smile—where is the shy glance of love more sweetly eloquent—than by the winter fireside? and as the hollow blast of wintry wind rushes through the hall, claps the distant door, whistles about

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1