This excerpt is from Washington Irving, The Sketch Book, published in 1819. Washington Irving is famous for his tale “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” featuring Rip Van Winkle, and he spent some time in England beginning in 1815. You can see his musings on Christmas Eve in Friday’s Post. When I awoke the next morning, it seemed as if all the events of the preceding evening had been a dream . While I lay musing on my pillow, I heard the sound of little feet pattering outside the door, and a whispering consultation. Presently a choir of small voices chanted forth an old Christmas carol .   Washingt ..read more

This excerpt is from Washington Irving, The Sketch Book, published in 1819. Washington Irving is famous for his tale “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” featuring Rip Van Winkle, and he spent some time in England beginning in 1815. Today we are featuring his writings about Christmas Eve. Monday we will publish his Christmas Day musings.  It was a brilliant moonlight night, but extremely cold; our chaise whirled rapidly over the frozen ground; the post-boy smacked his whip incessantly, and a part of the time his horses were on a gallop. “He knows where he is going,” said my companion, laughing, “and ..read more

(Adapted from, Regency House Christmas: The Definitive Guide to a Remarkably Regency Yuletide by Linore Rose Burkard) Much has been made, said, written about and portrayed regarding an English Victorian Christmas, with hardly any good references to Regency Yuletides. Did England keep Christmas during the Regency? If so, how was it observed? Certainly not with ceiling-high Christmas trees (I cringe whenever I see a Regency set during the Christmas season with   big, modern tree on the cover. It just wasn’t the custom.) But if the Victorian Christmas we are al ..read more

When I think of Christmas Time, the lilt of bells and the memories I associate with them flood my mind. A warmth grips me, hugging me tighter than my best spencer. To me, bells always sound happy, giving an ethereal lightness and glow to the heart of the hearer. I prefer the sounds of cast bells. Their song is richer and more full-bodied than their thin sheet-metal cousins. England is steeped in both, and bell-ringing is a part of the culture and history. The tradition of casting English bells predates the Middle Ages. Today, two of her best bellfounders survive, Taylors of Loughborough (1400 ..read more

Regency Reflection is happy to welcome Louise M. Gouge to the blog today. Be sure to check out Louise’s new book, A Suitable Wife after reading the article below.  Thanks for stopping by, Louise! Nothing can cheer up a wintery night more than a fire in an old-fashioned fireplace, especially at Christmas time. Although today most of us have other methods of heating our homes, we enjoy the nostalgia generated by a cozy blaze so much that we put up with all the work that goes into maintaining our hearth. In Regency times, of course, people had no choice but to warm their homes with a w ..read more

During the Regency, an extremely fashionable item was the spencer, a very short jacket, resembling the bodice of the pelisse (see my earlier post on the pelisse) with long sleeves extending over the hands. Designed to cover the chest, spencers were made of a variety of materials, including wool, silk, satin, and velvet. Many chose spencers with high, frilled collars, but some were collarless. In our day, the bolero, shrug, or cardigan serve the purpose of filling in a low neck, offering warmth for the chest, or simply completing an ensemble. I find this item of apparel to be quite useful. Do ..read more

I smile as I type this post today, because it is with great fondness that I look back on some of my childhood memories. When I was six or seven and we gathered around the table on Christmas Eve to eat lamb and fruitcake and Yorkshire pudding, I hardly realized one day I’d be writing books set near the Regency Period of British history. So there I was, a young child scrunching up my nose at the funny shaped golden blobs that didn’t resemble pudding at all but were called pudding, grumbling that the lamb tasted funny, and complaining that thew fruitcake didn’t look much like cake. But my English ..read more

Confectioner's Shop We are so used to those luscious candies we justify eating at Christmas time—fudge, Godiva chocolates, cherry cordials, etc.—that we don’t consider how little chocolate was available during the Regency, and certainly not in cream-filled or even buttery forms. Mostly, chocolate was for drinking. Here, however, are two recipes for candies that might have been made at Christmas time—confectionary and chocolate drops.       To Make Confectionary Drops Dutch cocoa Take double refined sugar, pound and sift it through a hair sieve, not too fine; then sift it through ..read more

In researching my current WIP (Work-in-Progress) I needed to find a botanical garden for my hero and heroine to tour. I had the Chelsea PhysicGarden all lined up. paeonia moutan Chelsea at the time of the regency was an outlying suburb of London, very close to Mayfair. In fact all the land around Chelsea and Brompton as you were leaving London was dedicated to commercial nurseries since the soil was quite fertile. Many of these were walled gardens. Chelsea Physic (meaning healing) Garden was a renowned herbal garden right by the Thames. However, I found out that the garden was off limits to wo ..read more

Kristi here. Did you know the Christmas season has arrived? To be honest, it’s pretty hard to miss, at least where I live. Driving down the street you see the lights on the lamp posts and the town square, baked goods wrapped in red and green cellophane are already appearing on our counter, and the jingling of bells greets you as you enter nearly every store. I love Christmas. I especially love Christmas music. I’ve been known to break it out in June. While some tunes gracing the airwaves today are clearly modern inventions, others we tend to feel have been around for centuries. Most of them ha ..read more