CHRISTMAS ODDITIES.

Thames Star, 24 December 1921, Page 6

CHRISTMAS ODDITIES.

CURIOUS AND QUAINT. : *= Many are the ail 'a quaint incidents wh J ave happened in connection with the Christmas festival (says a London writer). While we enjoy our Yuletide in a prosaic, but comfortable, fashion, some of these proceedings, curious, romantic, and occasionally even gruesome, may be bought to mind: — A GRUESOME IDEA. A clergyman in the north of London, feeling his decease at hand, invited his relations and friends to a Christmas dinner. When the pudding made its appearance, he remarked that, as he knew his death was at hand, he had caused to be inserted in the dish before him a number of "In Memoriam" rings, which he trusted such as were fortunate in •securing would wear for his sake. He then solemnly divided the pudding. A week later he was dead. A MILLIONAIRE'S CHRISTMAS, A contrast to the above is the Christmas spent by a certain English millionaire. He never saw a regular old-fashioned Christmas of ice and snow during the last 40 years of his life. Each December 25 was spent by himself, his family, and his guests in an atmosphere of tropical heat, with beautiful flowers all round them, and with a cloudless sky of delicate blue overhead. And his ■Christmas dinner, instead of relying on the orthodox turkey, goose, and plum- pudding, consisted of such viands as spring lamb and midsummer fruits. Yet the millionaire did not fly to Italy or the tropics for his Christmases, but spent, them all in England. He was, or professed to be, tired of the old fashioned Christmas Day, and wanted to have some■thing different. So a subterranean chamber built, under a lake in his private grounds, was transformed into a summer-like paradise with a ceiling painted to resemble the sky, and deftly-arranged lights to conjure up a vision of sunshine. Unlimited money did the rest. A CHRISTMAS HATER.

Surely the ugliest sort of human nature is that which ostentatiously refuses to be happy at Christina*. Lord Macaulay was fond of telling a story about an elderly lady who, while he lived with his parents at Clapham, resided there as a kind of outlander. She neither visited nor reeeiVed visits from her neighbours, nor held communication with them. To Christmas Day she had such an aversion that throughout it she sat at her window knitting, as regularly as the day came round. Moreover, her Christmas dinner invariably consisted of boiled mutton and apple

pie, by way of protest against the" general indulgence in roast beef and plum pudding, which she utterly abhorred. [ A PLUM PUDDING FIGHT. j Imagine a plum pudding causing a riot! Paignton, the popular Devon- | shire watering place, has always been still more popular as a plum pudding place, so to speak, for, under a very ancient charter, the inhabitants for a long time provided the poor of the town with a gigantic plum pudding every 50 years. There was really nothing to equal the pranks which were played when the famous pudding, which was prepared to celebrate the opening of the railway to Paignton, about 50 years ago, made its appearance on the green, drawn by a team of eight horses. Its ingredients have been so often described that it is only necessary to state here that it cost £45 to make, weighed a ton and a half, and attracted a crowd of no fewer than 18,000 persons. Before the eutting-ug could be properly started, these people made a rush forward, the scenes which ensued almost beggaring description. It was impossible to stop them, and, breaking down the fences, they swooped down upon the pudding, and fought like so many demons possessed for portions of it. THEY WERE NOT GREEDY, BUT— Another plum pudding incident which nearly'caused a riot occurred in the town of Burnley, Lancashire. With a laudable desire for the happiness of their out-relief paupers at the festive season, the local guardians decided to distribute plum puddings amongst them, and an announcement of their intention was published beforehand in a local paper. But, owing to some extraordinary printer's error, it was stated that each applicant would receive 1951 b, or very little less than lfcwt, of pudding! Incredible as it may seem, the statement as to quantity was taken quite seriously, and the distribution was attended by a great many persons, who came provided with huge receptacles in which to carry home •their liberal portions. One individual was said to "have arrived on the . scene with a wheelbarrow; while another actually went the length of borrowing a horse and cart in which to convey his Christmas pudding home. Needless to. say, there was trouble when they found that the distribution was not to be on quite such a liberal •scale. ■