Social evening & speaker

Our November meeting started with the chairperson bringing us up to date with the Society’s activities when suddenly the King of Misrule entered the room very noisily & demanded to know why we had started the proceedings with out his permission. Dressed in the pagan costume the king turned out to be our speaker Brian Jones who explained that in pagan times any festivities would not take place without the King’s permission. Brian explained that the King would have a following of men of his choosing who saw that the rules were obeyed.
Brian went on to explain the many traditions & meanings of the activities around the event of Christmas. He spoke of Stir up day when Christmas puddings were made with the addition of silver coins, rings & thimbles, the history of the recipes for Christmas pudding & sweetmeats that in time became the mince pies of today.
Did you know that if you cut a mince pie in half it was said you would get bad luck for the following year? We were told the proper way to eat a pie was to take the lid off & count the number of currants stuck to the lid, as this told you how many wishes you could make, & that you should eat one mince pie on each of the twelve days of Christmas but that they must all be eaten in twelve different houses.
The Yule log, which should be as long as possible, must be dressed & have spirit poured over it & put into the fire end on to burn over the Christmas festivities & that a small piece of this log was saved to light the next years fire.
The history of hanging stockings up on the mantle piece & the decorations, the history of crackers and first footing had the audience laughing & joining in with Brian’s activities. These led onto the competitions for the evening which were trying to match baby /young child photos to the members who were at the meeting organised by Judy, followed by a Christmas quiz organised by Janet. Prizes were distributed to the winners.
There was a plentiful supply of food from the buffet & beverages supplied by the members & well organised by Barbara Bullen.
All the registers of the monumental inscriptions were available for members & guests to peruse & old photographs were on display.
The C.C.A.N. staff was available to scan any photos for addition to the Cambridgeshire Archives.
An evening full of activities & good cheer ended this year’s meetings. A Happy Christmas & a very good 2009 to you all.
[Barbara Holmes]