I was reminded of these family gatherings when I re-read, a week or so ago, the Christmas stories in Washington Irving’s Sketch Book, which was published between 1819 and 1820. This series centers around a Christmas in England, where Irving lived for several years. The first essay, simply called “Christmas”, is mainly a lament for “those honest days of yore,” when “the world was more homebred, social, and joyous than at present.”

 “Of all the old festivals,” he writes, “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.”

 In another passage he adds, “It is a beautiful arrangement . . . that this festival . . . has been made the season for gathering together of family connections . . . 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 . . . there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementos of childhood.” This immediately made me think of yet another favorite Christmas song, Jethro Tull’s “Another Christmas Song” (yes, I know), which is all about this very sentiment.

 Next in the series is “The Stagecoach”, which recounts a trip through Yorkshire in a public coach the day before Christmas. There are lively descriptions of fellow passengers and their baggage – in particular three boys on their way home from school for the holidays, who are most excited to see their beloved pony – and a study of English coachmen in general. (I find Irving makes up for a dearth of dialogue in his stories with an overload of detailed description.)

 At an inn, the narrator (maybe the author; maybe not) meets a former traveling companion, who invites him to spend Christmas at his father’s “country seat”. This leads into the third essay, “Christmas Eve”, wherein the narrator travels to his friend’s family home. There a party is already in progress, featuring “the usual proportion of old uncles and aunts, comfortable married dames, superannuated spinsters, blooming country cousins, half-fledged striplings, and bright-eyed boarding-school hoydens.” The company goes on to supper, and then to their various rooms for the night – of course the house is big enough for everybody to stay over. The whole thing really makes me long for the 18th- and 19th-century custom of the house party, where friends and family would stay for days or even weeks at somebody’s country estate.

 “Christmas Day” opens with the narrator awakened by children caroling in the corridor outside his room, followed by a service in the family chapel. After breakfast, a tour of the extensive grounds, then a regular church service. Of course there’s a bit of speech from the squire about how the old days were better, along with a generous helping of patronizing noblesse oblige which nowadays seems somewhat cringeworthy: “Our old games and local customs . . . had a great effect in making the peasant fond of his home, and the promotiion of them by the gentry made him fond of his lord.” The squire “contented himself with inviting the decent part of the neighboring peasantry to call at the hall on Christmas Day, and with distributing beef and bread and ale among the poor, that they might make merry in their own dwellings” (because, it’s heavily implied, they aren’t really fit to spend the holiday with the likes of the squire and his family). So yeah, a bit icky and classist.

 The whole thing is rounded off with “Christmas Dinner”. Irving enjoys himself describing the dinner (complete with that obligatory boring guest who drones on about something only he is interested in), as well as the fun and games afterward, culminating in a “Christmas mummery or masking” performed by the young folks in fancy dress for the amusement of their elders.

 I remember loving this series when I first read it in college, especially since it made me reminisce about my own childhood Christmases. My family holiday celebrations had already changed quite a bit by then. It does hit a little differently now, or maybe I’m just noticing more of the snobbishness of it now. Still, it’s an entertaining read.