YULETIDE BRIEFS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18278, 20 December 1922, Page 1 (Supplement)

YULETIDE BRIEFS.

Thirteen different sorts of holly are grown in Europe.

England exports two hundred tons of plum-pudding every year. Christmas Day among Armenians la celebrated on January 18. Mince-pie was known originally as " shred ' pie, and was a savoury rather than a sweet. At one time Gloucester used to make a Christmas present of a lamprey-pie to the Prince of Wales. Wearing new shoes on Christmas Day is considered unlucky in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The Christmas of 1860 was the coldest ever experienced in Britain. In Hyde Park the thermometer was seventeen degrees below freezing point. At Nottingham there were forty-five degrees of frost. Raisins are dried grapes. The best are sun-dried, but some are dried in ovens. Spain, Turkey, and Italy produce most raisins. Muscatels are tho very finest raisins—actually being tho muscatel grape dried. Whether Queen Alexandra is at Sandringham or in London, she sets up a tree at Christmas, in her gardens, and hangs it with pieces of sugar, raisins, canot, and suet for the birds to peck at. -41so, she doesn't forget the good old Danish custom of nutting a wreath of wheat above her garden door—again lor the birds' delight. Her thoughfulness for animals and birds is wonderful—always. Cloves come from the French " clou " (a carpenter's nail) which they resemble in shape. They are, however, the flowerbuds of a small ever-green called the " Caryophilus Aromaticus." twelve years," one of these trees will yield anything from five to sixty pounds of cloves yearly, and as a single stem may live for 150 years, the output in time becomes almost incredible. jug