A Tax on your Strangeness

So on New Year's Eve, 1695, a window tax was introduced in England. This was, literally, a tax on windows (but not, as I first misread, widows...). In honour of the fact that this was not nearly the weirdest thing to have been taxed, here is a list of 10 very odd taxes.

1) Window Tax:

Now, I am quite a fan of windows. They allow me to, y'know, see stuff that's outside without actually having to go into the outside, which is quite nice, especially when it is snowing or raining. They also are a very good means of keeping bugs and other unwanted objects away from my personage. Of course, being a modern, twenty-first century type, you know this already, and I am sure you are a fan of windows too. In 1695, many of the rich men and women of England also were fans of windows. 

 

However, when their King, William III decided that, under the Act of Making Good the Deficiency of the Clipped Money (yeah...that...uh...), windows should be taxed, the elite of England decided to brick up their windows so they wouldn't have to pay the tax, which is, I suppose, one way of getting around the problem. The tax itself had been introduced because the government was in need of money, but unable to pass a law which allowed them to collect a simple Income Tax, as  it was believed by many that disclosing your personal income to the government was an act of unacceptable intrusiveness into your personal liberties (an excuse I fear wouldn't go down too well today with HM Revenue and Customs).

The rate of tax was 2 shillings per house, with houses with more than ten windows incurring a variable rate of tax, and wasn't repealed until 1851, when 'House Duty' was introduced. 

2) Beard Tax:
In England, in 1535, King Henry VIII introduced a tax on beards. This was actually quite a clever idea to raise money - obviously the King and his government needed money, but it was often hard for them to raise it. However, anything that the King was seen to do or wear suddenly became highly fashionable, as people were keen to show the ruler what an excellent idea His Majesty had had in choosing to play bowls/wear clogs/learn the lute and so on. So naturally, when Henry grew a beard, those of his courtiers who were able to immediately followed suit (imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery). Henry then introduced the tax, knowing that no one would dare shave off their beards in case they were seen as being against something the King believed in - which was a pretty clever way of thinking, actually.

The tax was variable, and those with more income paid more, rather that those with larger beards paying more. However, when Elizabeth I reintroduced the tax a few years down the line, she taxed every beard of more than two week growth, which must have been very hard to measure, though I'd imagine that 18 year old weedy boys managed to get away with not paying it for several years...

3) Beard Tax, the sequel:
The beard tax was introduced again in 1705, but this time by Peter the Great of Russia. All men with beards were required to pay a tax, and carry around a token which stated that they had indeed paid their tax. The token was inscribed with two phrases - "the beard tax has been taken" (fairly self explanatory), and "the beard is a superfluous burden". The tax had been designed to encourage Russian men to get rid of their beards, as Peter believed that their hirsuteness meant that they weren't as forward-thinking as other Western European countries, and Russia could only become truly modern when the men were clean shaven like their clean-shaven fellow Europeans, which is a real shame.

4) Cooking Oil Tax:
Now, anyone who has seen the pyramids or Tutankhamen's death mask knows how much the Pharaohs liked their extravagances, but even though they were considered literal Gods on the Earth, they still had to find the money to pay for all the jewelery, fancy palaces and eyeliner. Possibly the strangest way they thought would allow them to collect this money from their subjects was to tax cooking oil - or rather, force their citizens to buy cooking oil only from the Pharaohs themselves. The scribes (Ancient Egyptian taxmen) would go round to all houses to ensure they were using enough oil and, in possibly the oddest twist, refuse to allow them to recycle the used oil, instead binning it and forcing the people to buy new, Pharaoh-approved oil.

5) Hat Tax:
By 1784, it had become apparent that the Window Tax in Britain was not enough to keep the country afloat, and so new methods of taxation were introduced. The government, led by William Pitt the Younger, once again tried to introduce an Income Tax, but were once again prevented from doing so by a public who believed that this was an outrageous infringement on their right to privacy, and so decided to introduce a tax on hats.

This isn't actually as absurd as is sounds. The theory was that, the richer you were the more hats you would own, and the better quality these hats would be. Whereas a poor person might have just the one hat, which wasn't of a very good quality (and so wouldn't have to pay very much tax at all), a member of the aristocracy would have a lot of very expensive hats, and so would have to pay a lot of tax. The problem with this, though, was that it was very unpopular, and apparently led to people insisting that what they were wearing on their head wasn't actually a hat at all, so they wouldn't have to pay the tax ("Oh, this? It's not a hat, no not at all...it's er...a kilt! Yes, a kilt. I'm embracing my Scottish heritage! Och aye, and all..."). 

6) The 'anything-but-Income-Tax' Tax:
As people were so very unwilling to admit their income to the taxman, the government of the eighteenth century introduced many taxes on various household items, in an attempt to raise revenue this way. Some of the items they taxed included taxes on building materials such as wallpaper and bricks; taxes on leisure items, including dice and almanacs and taxes on clothing and make-up, such as glove tax, perfume tax and hair-powder tax (though the Royal Family and their servants, and clergymen were exempt from paying this particular tax). The British people responded to this by not purchasing any more hair-powder, and walking around with very greasy hair for a good number of years, until someone worked out how to invent shampoo.

7) Urine Tax:
Not a tax on those who produced it, but on those who sold it on (er, of course...). In ancient Rome, it became very easy for the owners of public toilets to sell on the urine they collected to tanners and cleaners, who used the ammonia in it (yum...). Officials noticed how rich the toilet owners were becoming, and, on discovering why, introduced a tax on urine.  

8) Salt Tax:
As salt has so many uses in our lives, it has always been taxed, in India as much as anywhere. However, when the British took over India as part of their Empire they raised the tax extortionately. From 1858, the Indian people were forced to pay an incredibly high rate of tax on their salt - something which continued for another 80 years. During March 1930, Gandhi led the first Salt March to Dandi. This was his very first non-violent protest against British rule of India, and though it didn't actually do anything about the Salt Tax, it did help to increase the levels of awareness of the Indians' plight, and gave them international support for their campaign for independence.


9) Artistic Exemption:
This, in fact, is the opposite of tax - in 1969, Ireland brought in a rule which stated that income derived from the sale of art (books, music, paintings, sculpture, film and so on) was exempt from taxation, allowing us to perpetuate the image of a starving artist. The act was introduced to allow artists who had fallen on hard times to recover more easily, but ended up being a bit of a problem when it became apparent in the mid 2000s that Irish rock group U2 were paying no tax on their millions. The law was modified so that only those artists with an income of less than 250,000 euros were exempt, and Bono and co. moved their savings to the Netherlands, so they ensure that they still didn't have to pay tax. Huh. 

10) Poll Tax:
A Poll Tax is very popular with governments because it can be implemented at any time, very easily, and is very unpopular with the public because it can be implemented at any time, very easily. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher tried to introduce the tax, but was thwarted by the rioting and protesting of the public who were outraged at it's unfairness. (Anyone who doesn't think it's fair should imagine that I have 100 gold coins and am asked to pay just 1 in tax; whereas you, who have only 2 gold coins, are also asked to pay 1 in tax, and then consider its fairness...) Though they may have gotten their History a little bit confused ("Yeah! We're rioting in the spirit of the revolting peasants of thirteen-something who didn't want a Poll Tax either so they forced Queen Victoria to sign the Magna Carta and that's why Henry VIII broke with Rome!") but I can't fault them for their passion, and they did help strongly contribute to the ousting of Thatcher as PM, so it definitely wasn't a bad thing.                     

Monopoly

So I was just talking with a friend about everybody's favourite board game - Monopoly - when I happened to chance upon an article on the game in today's Guardian. The article mentioned that the game itself will be turning 75 this week, so this seemed as good a time as any to list 75 (or thereabouts) facts about the streets and stations featured on the UK edition. Let's go! (Award yourself £200...)

Old Kent Road:

Originally, Old Kent Road was part of a Roman road which ran from Dover to Holyhead, which is quite a way. Roads were vitally important to the Roman Empire, because they were the lines of communication and supply, the two most important things for a conquering army. Famously, they were built in dead straight lines, with no corners, as this was believed to reduce the number of attacks on lone travellers, as would-be attackers would have nowhere to hide behind, which is quite a sensible idea. I still wouldn't want to walk all the way from Kent to Wales, though... Old Kent Road is the only street in what is considered South London to be included on the Monopoly board, and in 1550, was regarded as the limit of the City of London's authority.

Whitechapel Road:

The oldest manufacturing company in Britain is located on Whitechapel Road - the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which you may not be surprised to learn, makes bells (mostly for churches) and 'bell accessories' (though I'm not quite sure what they are...fancy rope from which to ring the bell? Who knows...). The company officially dates back to 1570 (though there were people making bells there at least as early as 1420) and it has been located in its present premesis since 1670, in a building which is now Grade II listed. The bells in the children's rhyme Oranges and Lemons were all produced here, as were the bells of Westmister Abbey, Big Ben, many churches and cathedrals - some as far away as Australia - and the Liberty Bell.

The Angel Islington:

The only street in Monopoly to not actually be a street, Angel is a district of London which is part of the borough of Islington. The Angel Inn, which lies on the Great North Road, is believed to be where Thomas Paine wrote parts of the Rights of Man (he stayed there for a while after returning from France in 1790), which was a book defending the French Revolution, which states that "popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard its people, their natural rights, and their national interests", which is something I believe we should all get behind, with this current government...

Euston Road:

Officially opened as part of the New Road in 1756, Euston Road was built in the 1740s as London's first bypass, and its primary function was to allow sheep and cattle to be easily driven to Smithfield Market. It was only given its current name in 1852, by the Fitzroy family, who owned all the terraced houses along it, and who decided that it needed to be named after their luxurious country mansion, Euston Hall, which I'm sure those who were dwelling in the back-to-back housing really appreciated.

Pentonville Road:

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry on Pentonville Road There was little of Historical interest to ever happen here, so there's very little I can say about it, other than the fact that it was given its name in 1857. Moving on...

Pall Mall:

In the early nineteenth century, Pall Mall was the centre of the arts scene in London. The Royal Academy, the National Gallery and Christie's auction house were all once located along here, but by the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the street had lost its reputation for being a high class arts centre, and gained a reputation for being home to the most Gentleman's clubs in London... 

Whitehall:

Whitehall today is synonymous with the civil service and government in Britain, and a lot of very important government buildings are situated along it (Downing Street itself is one of the roads which leads off it). As well as this, it is also famous for being the place of Charles I's execution (royalists still commemorate this regicide every year on the anniversary of his death - 30 January), and housing the UK's principle war memorial - the Cenotaph.

Northumberland Avenue:
Northumberland Avenue was long associated with the Percy family, who later became the Dukes of Northumberland. The first Duke of Northumberland was a Tudor courtier who was Lord Protector to Edward VI when he was too young to rule alone, and father in law to Lady Jane Grey, who often stayed in their London property (the original house was knocked down and replaced in the 1650s). Jane was England's famous 'Queen for nine days' - by all accounts a very reluctant monarch, who was beheaded by the Catholic Mary when she assumed the throne so that she wouldn't prove a Protestant 'rallying point'. 

Bow Street:
Bow Street is a thoroughfare in Covent Garden, which today is most famous for the Opera House situated there (which was opened in 1732). The street is also famous for being (surprisingly enough) the foundation point of the Bow Street Runners, London's first professional police force, founded in 1749 by Henry Fielding. They solved petty crimes and made arrests of criminals for a fee, and helped inspire the Metropolitan Police Force. The officers themselves never called themselves 'runners' as they believed the term to be derogatory.

Malborough Street:
Originally a very fashionable area of London, where much of the aristocracy lived, by the mid-Victorian period, Marlborough Street had become very commercial, and remains so today. It's main 'claim to fame' (other than being a Monopoly street) is that Malboro cigarettes' (today the biggest selling brand in the world) original factory was based on the street.

Vine Street:
Poor old Vine Street doesn't seem to have a lot going for it. It's very short and narrow, and mostly contains the back entrances of buildings which open onto more salubrious streets. It is also the only street on the Monopoly board not to have a single pub, which proves very annoying for those who are trying to participate in the Monopoly Pub Crawl (which sounds like a lot of fun...) 

Strand:
Another street with a very old History, the Strand was originally part of a Roman road, and is recorded in 1198 as being Stronde and in 1220 as la Stranda, both Old English names which mean bank or shore (referring to the fact that it was originally along the edge of the then much wider River Thames). By the late middle ages however, it had become the main route which linked the City of London (the Civil and Commercial areas of the city) and the Palace of Westminster (the political centre of the city, and the country as a whole). It is also home to a very large number of aristocratic houses and palaces.

Fleet Street:
Obviously Fleet Street's most famous resident is it's demon barber, Sweeney Todd, but it has also become synonymous with the British press. It was the home of British journalism until the 1980s (the last news agency to move out was Reuters, in 2005) with almost all major national papers at one point having an office there. Even today, with no remaining papers situated there, Fleet Street remains a metonym for the press.

Trafalgar Square:
Possibly the most famous Square in the UK, Trafalgar Square was named after the Battle of Trafalgar, Britain's great naval victory in the Napoleonic wars. Today, it doesn't really serve any purpose other than being a tourist attraction - it is often used in background shots of films and TV shows to suggest a generic London location, and for celebrations, such as New Year's Eve parties and welcoming returning sports victors. 

Leicester Square:
In the early 17th century, the 2nd Early of Leicester bought the area around what is today Leicester Square, built a house and closed off the grounds to the local residents of St. Martin's Parish. This meant that the commoners were not allowed to use the common land - a tradition which dated back to Norman times - so they appealed to King Charles I in large numbers - such large numbers, in fact, that Charles was supposedly fearful of what would happen to him should he refuse their demands. It was therefore ordered that the area of land surrounding the house be reopened to the public, and it became known as Leicester Square.

Coventry Street:
Apparently, someone has measured that, at the weekend up to 150,000 people walk along Coventry Street. This has to be one of the most random statistics ever... Coventry Street is most famous for being the home of Charles Hirsch's Librairie Parisienne, which between 1890 and 1900, ran a clandestine trade in expensive pornography, with the help of Oscar Wilde. It is claimed that Hirsch and Wilde wrote Teleny, or, The Reverse of the Medal together - the first work of homosexual pornography. The book is still in print, if you are curious...

Piccadilly:
Until the 17th Century, Piccadilly was known as Portugal Street. However, during the later part of this century, a tailor named Robert Baker was able to amass a large fortune by selling piccadills - "stiff collars with scalloped edges and a broad lace or perforated border" - which were very fashionable at the time. He made so much money that he was able to purchase much of the land on the street, and renamed it after his large property, Piccadilly House. Well, I guess they already had a Baker Street...

Regent Street:
After the Great Fire of London in 1666, when a large part of the city was destroyed, there was a desire by leading figures of the day to impose order on the city's medieval streets, which were a complete mess. Whilst some areas were rebuilt quickly, the Regent Street area wasn't touched until 1811, when the architect John Nash designed and built a new area of London, which completely ignored the old street layout and redesigned the streets so they lay parallel and perpendicular to each other. This idea didn't really catch on in Britain, but really took off in the new cities which were being built over in America. It was also one of the very first areas of London to be built primarily as a shopping district. 

Oxford Street:
Like it's neighbouring street, Oxford Street has been known as a shopping district since the nineteenth century and today is home to 548 stores, making it the busiest shopping area in Europe. Most of the UK's flagship stores are situated along it, and it is also home to Marble Arch, one of London's most famous landmarks.

Bond Street:
Bond Street technically does not exist - it is actually two separate sections, Old Bond Street  - the southern section - and New Bond Street - the northern section - (though you can see why no one really bothers to differentiate between the two). Originally just consisting of Old Bond Street, which was named after Sir Thomas Bond who developed the area in the late 1600s, New Bond Street was tacked onto the end in later years when it became clear just how fashionable the green squares area was becoming.  

Park Lane:
Considering it is the second most expensive property on the Monopoly board, Park Lane doesn't actually have that much going for it. Until the early nineteenth century, it was literally just a lane on the edge of Hyde Park, where it became a fashionable residential address and later home to Grosvenor House, the residence of the Duke of Westminster, which, when it was first built, was the largest privately owned home in London. And that is literally it - today it's famous for being a place where rich people lived, and being a free through route in the congestion charge zone, which feels slightly anticlimactic... 

Mayfair:
As on the Monopoly board, the Mayfair area has one of the highest rent prices in the UK. These days, it is home to many commercial and corporate headquarters; private banks and hedge funds and government embassies - most famously the United States' UK embassy. Though the area is so obsessed with wealth, it is actually named after the May Fair which originally happened annually in the area until the residents complained that it 'lowered the tone of the area' and demanded it move elsewhere. The fair organisers obliged, but the name had already stuck.

If you got to the end of that, I would like to take a moment to congratulate you, and offer you a further £200 - you deserve it!

     

                           

The Port Wine Treaty

You know how you sometimes come across utterly, utterly ridiculous events in History? I think I may have just found one. Another one... Basically, I've just been reading about a treaty to end a war, which seems to be mostly about wine. WINE.

Now don't get me wrong, I have no problem with wine at all. But to sign a treaty promising an alliance based on the sale of wine...did no one stop to think that this would go down in History as something future generations might find slightly strange and somewhat amusing? No one at all?
 

The treaty in question was the Methuen Treaty, and it was signed on 27 December, 1703 by the countries of Portugal and England, and it wasn't totally about wine. At the time, there was a big war going on (the War of Spanish Succession) and all the big European powers were fighting it out to see who would become 'top dog'. The country of Portugal, whilst obviously a source of great importance and national pride to those who lived there, wasn't a big European power, and so consequently wasn't considered that important to the other countries. However, they did have a few good exports (namely wine), so they weren't going to be completely ignored by the other countries.

When the War of Spanish Succession broke out, in 1702, the Portuguese allied with the French, which basically meant that the French promised to protect them from attacks by the British navy (the French navy, whilst better than the Portuguese - which from some reports, seems to have consisted of two rowing boats and a dinghy - was not as good as the British, which was truly a force to be reckoned with, so Portugal's request for protection seems fairly understandable). 

However, the British kept sailing really close to Lisbon on their way to and from Cadiz, and the Portuguese were understandably upset when the French did nothing to stop them. Believing that they were untrustworthy, Portugal soon entered into negotiations with Great Britain to switch sides. (Because obviously, the way to counter untrustworthiness is to be even more untrustworthy!) This was very appealing to the British, as they believed that the war could be won much more cheaply and easily if they were able to use Portugal's deep-water naval ports to attack the French ports at Toulon, so the MP John Methuen was sent as an ambassador extraordinary to Portugal where he negotiated the treaty.

The treaty had three main parts. Firstly, it established the Alliance's war aims. Despite the fact that, at the time of the treaty, the war had been going on for a year or so, no one had thought to write down - or even officially state - why they were fighting, so the treaty duly noted that the purpose of the war was to secure the Spanish Empire for the Austrian claimant, the Archduke Charles, with whom Britain had already made an alliance, which was A Good Thing because it reminded everyone in the Alliance whose side they were on this time. 

The second part of the treaty was to do with the actual military part of the war - it established that Spain would become the main theater of war, and established things like the number of troops each country would provide - which again, is a very important thing in a war, and something you'd've thought they would have thought about earlier on in the conflict.

Finally, it 'regulated the establishment of trade relations between Britain and Portugal', or, in layman's terms, ensured that the British could keep drinking. Before the war, France had been supplying Britain with wine, which a lot of people found very agreeable. However, when they went to war, the French stopped trading with the British, and so no one had anything to drink, which many people felt was a Very Bad Thing. Now, the Portuguese realised that, as they had a wine industry, they would be able to fill this gap in British lives, but they were also scared that, when the war was over, the British would just revert to trading with the French and they would be stuffed. An agreement was come to, which stated that all trading between Portugal and Britain would be tax free, so the wine which was being imported would be able to be bought much more cheaply than any the French tried to sell. (Though technically, they were selling Port, rather than straight wine, which lead to a massive market for the drink in Britain, a fact which my Grandmother remains eternally grateful.) 

This makes sound economic sense and everything...it's just a shame that the treaty became known as the Port Wine Treaty, and no one in the country remembered anything about the parts which actually related to the war...

Christmas Traditions

So where do all our modern Christmas traditions come from? Cards, trees, crackers - when did they become a staple of Christmas? For most of them, we can blame the Victorians. Victorian Britain was the superpower of the nineteenth century - France was still recovering from the Revolution and Napoleonic Conflicts; Russia were (mostly) content to keep themselves to themselves; the Prussian states did not start to become dominant until the latter half of the century and the Hapsburg Empire, consisting of Austria, Hungary and the other Eastern European countries, did not have the superior naval power of the British, which meant that they were unable to conquer other countries. 

It was this that gave the British their edge. The new Empire, consisting mostly of African and Asian countries, meant that a number of people became very, very rich, and a new middle class sprung up, of people who benefited indirectly from the wealth which inevitably comes to some when countries are taken over and money is redistributed (usually away from those who need it most and towards those who need it least).

Obviously, there were massive inequalities in Britain still - as well as the "underclass" made up of the natives of the various colonized countries, there were still some very poor people living in Britain itself - both in rural areas and in the back to back housing of inner cities. The middle and upper classes, therefore, wanted to distance themselves from these people, buy spending as much money as possible in the most obvious ways, and (rather sadly, I think) it is from this that we get most of our Christmas traditions today.

Christmas Trees:
Most people know the "story" of how Prince Albert introduced the Christmas tree to the British when he married Queen Victoria and came over from Germany, but this isn't entirely true. Trees had been a staple part of the Christmas celebrations in the Hapsburg Empire since as early as 1605, but actually arrived in Britain before 1840, as most people believe. Queen Victoria saw Christmas trees displayed at Kensington Palace in 1832, before she in fact became Queen, and in 1800, Queen Charlotte, the German born wife of George III had a tree put up for the Christmas Day party she hosted at Windsor.  

 

Christmas Decorations:

Electric lights for Christmas trees were invented in America, rather than Britain, in 1882, by Edward H. Johnson, who was a close friend of Thomas Edison (who had invented the light bulb three years earlier). Earlier in the century, candles had been hung on the trees, in protective metal casing to prevent things celebrations getting too heated, literally. Tinsel was imported from Germany, and trees were also decorated with glass baubles, ornaments made of silver wire, strings of beads and crocheted snowflakes, stars and angels. As ever, size was deemed the most important thing in the celebration, and anyone who was anyone made sure that their tree was large enough to have both ornamental decorations and gifts hanging from it. Gifts were also stacked under the tree, of course having been delivered by...

Father Christmas:

The tradition of hanging up a stocking came from Holland, and began in the seventeenth century, on 5 December, when children would fill their shoes with food for both St. Nicholas (whose night they were celebrating) and his horses. In return, Nick would fill their shoes with gifts (or coal, if you'd been really bad) and the tradition of Sinterklaas was born. It really took off in nineteenth century America, then back in Britain, where Santa Claus was established as a kindly, bearded old man bearing a sack of presents. Interestingly, Father Christmas was originally dressed in green, but became red in the 1930s, after a strong advertising campaign from a certain soft drinks company. 

Thomas Nast's famous 1863 portrait of Santa Claus

Christmas Cards:

Christmas cards were the brainchild of Sir Henry Cole in 1843, who was said to be inspired by the Christmas Pieces children would write at school and take home for their parents. He used a design by J.C. Horsley, which depicted a family at Christmastime, and had a banner underneath which read 'A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year to you'. Only about a thousand cards were sold in the first year, but by 1880, the volume of cards was so great that the post office had to ask people to post early for Christmas. 
 

Other Traditions:
 

Crackers (as in the ones you have at the beginning of a 3294023 course Christmas meal, rather than at the end) were invented by Tom Smith in the mid nineteenth century. He was a confectioner who had the bright idea that he could sell his sweets for two or three times the price if they were rapped in a twist of brightly coloured paper, which also contained a printed riddle. It is said that he was inspired to add the 'bang' after sitting in front of a crackling fire. In the words of his advertisement for them, they 'combine art with amusement and fun with refinement', which doesn't explain at all who's daft idea it was to put those annoying hats in, which only end up confusing me...
 

The Queen's speech originated in 1932, and was the King's sech then - broadcast by George V to the people of Great Britain and the Commonwealth.
 

Brussels sprouts are an abomination and should not be considered a Christmas tradition at all. 

The Christmas...Orgy?!

Sometimes, when I'm writing these little bloggy things, I have to check what day it is because I'm a bit disorganized, and enjoy asking Mr. Google questions. In December, however, this is not an issue at all, because I have an advent calender, which tells me the day and gives me chocolate. If this was the only thing that made Christmas a special holiday, I'd still love it... So, in honour of my feeling particularly festive as a result of having a little piece of chocolate to eat (God, I'm easy to please...), here is part one of a History of Christmas:

300 years Before Christ, or Before the Common Era if you'd prefer, if you happened to be in Persia towards the end of December you would find the people dancing around bonfires, paying homage to Mithras, God of light and guardian against evil. This festival was absorbed into the Roman Empire, becoming Dies Natali Invicti Solis, or the birthday of the unconquered Sun and later the festival of Saturnalia.

Saturnalia actually sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. As you may have guessed, it was both named after and a celebration of the Roman God Saturn, who was the God of Plenty. Festivities began around the solstice, and lasted seven days. To participate, you would have had to partake in the usual excess drinking and eating we have come to associate with Christmas, but the Romans had an interesting twist - the festival also involved inverting many social norms (such as men dressing up as women and vice versa, and masters waiting on servants) and allowing normally forbidden pastimes (including gambling and sex 'in groups' according to the Readers' Digest...so it was basically an orgy?!). Interestingly, they also decorated their homes with evergreens - the first (recorded) people to do so. 

At the same time, the Celtic tribes of northern Europe celebrated Yule, a festival similarly marked by indulgent eating and drinking, and the exchanging of gifts (for those who could afford it). They also decorated their homes with evergreens, and added holly, ivy and mistletoe, which symbolized extreme danger from Nargles renewal and everlasting life. Fires were lit, from which comes the tradition of burning a large Yule Log.

During the Dark Ages, the Christian Church started to have a much stronger grip on western Europe, especially in Britain. Whilst allowing the pagan faith to continue in any form was generally frowned upon, an exception was made for Christmas (though the tale of small children wandering around in dressing gowns and tea towels the birth of the Son of Christ was obviously pushed to the forefront of the celebrations, instead of old rituals involving fires and sacred plants). In 567, the Church declared the 12 days between the Nativity and Epiphany a sacred season, and by the time of the Norman Conquest, this period had become Britain's main holiday.

The Christmas celebrations remained largely unchanged for the next 500 odd years, with the exception of the banning of Christmas in 1647 (yes, this isn't just a myth). It was not, as is commonly claimed, Oliver Cromwell alone who banned the festival, but the New Model Army (of which he was one of the chief officers, admittedly), which was made up of extremely zealous Puritans who believed that Jesus would absolutely not be coming again until the country was sorted out and the people stopped behaving like such wanton harlots. The Major Generals (the top officers of the Army) decreed that only the Sabbath should be a day of rest, and the only national holiday should be 5 November, to celebrate its freedom from papist despotism.

What they didn't factor in was the public's reaction to this. People decorated the streets with holly and mistletoe, shopkeepers openly defied the demands to open their stores on Christmas Day. In Kent, an armed rebellion took place, most of which was quickly put down, but over 3,000 rebels held out behind the old Roman walls in Colchester for several months afterward. Though the Puritan reforms continued throughout the country, the banning of Christmas was quietly dropped for the following years.

What we today would recognise as 'Christmas' descended from the Victorian, C19th era where it was seen as an opportunity to embellish commercial interests. Most of our "traditions" either stem from this point or were revived by the middle and upper classes, eager to show off their great wealth and benefit themselves only, which is capitalism at it's absolute worst...but does give us beautifully festive scenes such as the one above, and The Nutcracker, so I think I might find it in my heart to forgive them a little bit...

[Part Two to follow.]   

Bibliophilia

Today is excellent, because I get to talk about books. I like books a lot. I don't go out, I stay in and read books. (This is honestly true. When other parents were berating their teenaged children for going out late and getting drunk underage, mine were berating me for staying up reading too late on a school night...) I read fiction - I have a soft spot for young adult fantasy (who honestly doesn't love Harry Potter?), but I also enjoy serious adult stuff from any genre, but particularly sci-fi and fantasy. When I'm feeling the need to become less bitter, I read romance novels (though I'm yet to find a good Mills & Boone). I'm also a big fan non-fiction - most of my bookshelf is taken up by history books (obviously...) though I enjoy well written science books too, and even once read a maths book. (Slash it was a book on fractals so I basically just looked at the pictures but they were really pretty and in a vaguely trippy kind of way. And when I say 'vaguely trippy', I basically mean 'what I imagine you might experience should you take some drugs because I am far too busy reading to partake in such activities'...)

Speaking of drugs, have you ever just inhaled a book? I honestly can't work out what smells best - a brand new book in all it's freshness, or an old book from a charity shop, with that very specific musty smell...

Anyway. BOOKS.

Today in 1768, the first Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was published, in Edinburgh. This was such a mammoth task that it wasn't completed until 1771, and when the second edition was published, in 1797 (and completed in 1801), it ran to more than 20 volumes. As you probably know, it's still going today, and even though it is now published in the United States, it maintains it's British English spelling. Which leads me on nicely onto something I'm proud of Britain for doing.

I'm British/English but I don't really identify with that label. I'm not patriotic - I don't support my country in sports or sing God Save the Queen at every opportunity or do anything typically British or English really, except drink lots of tea. I think that's partially because I find the whole "What-ho old chap, aren't we Brits really quite something, eh? Jolly good show we put on against those dastardly Aussies in the cricket this weekend, and what!" thing very Conservative, which as a socialist I am (of course) very much against, but also, historically, we did so much wrong to the world that I just feel embarrassed and ashamed to even think about celebrating it. Everyone knows about how 'the sun never sets on the British Empire!', but frankly it's embarrassing that this is still presented to young school children as a Good Thing. The fact that our subjugation of many, many other nations is presented as an achievement just disgusts me, so I therefore refuse to be patriotic.

With the exception of one thing. As a country, we should celebrate at every opportunity we have just how great our literature is. Now, this is quite a hard thing to prove, you might say. Every country in the world likes to claim that they have (or had) the "world's greatest author" - the English might claim Shakespeare, the French Hugo, the Americans Twain, and because obviously everyone has a different opinion on what the 'best' type of literature is, it is impossible to say which out of those three alone is the greatest author. However, one way of measuring just how good an author is, is to measure their total book sales.

Now, this is obviously fairly imprecise, but we are looking for a general number of sales, rather than exact figures. Part of what makes an author 'great' is word of mouth - when all of your friends start saying "Hey, have you read ABC? It's really good!" you are more inclined to check out a book than if they'd gone "Urgh, don't read ABC, it's really rubbish and I couldn't even be bothered to finish it!". Anyway, in 1979, UNESCO decided to publish a list of the top 50 authors in the world at the time, based on total book sales alone.

The decisions they made regarding who to include on the list are somewhat perplexing. The original list included authors who weren't really authors (Walt Disney Inc. and the Bible, for example); the same authors twice (sort of - they included each of the Grimm brothers separately, for some bizarre reason) and people whose books were printed more for supply than demanded (Lenin, Marx, the Pope and so on). Once you take out these non-entries though, you're left with a list of 41 authors - of which 14 are British. 
 

They are, with their world ranking based on how may books they've sold in brackets: Agatha Christie (1), Enid Blyton (3), William Shakespeare (4), Barbara Cartland (5), Arthur Conan Doyal (14), Robert Louis Stevenson (19), Charles Dickens (20), Victoria Holt (23), Oscar Wilde (25), Alistair MacLean (27), James Hadley Chase (32), JRR Tolkien (34), Ruth Rendell (35) and Rudyard Kipling (40). 

In comparison, the United States has a mere 11 authors on the list (their best-selling author being Danielle Steele, coming in at number six), leaving the rest of the world to make up the remaining 16 authors. Now, as this list is clearly based on popularity, I am sure that if it were to be repeated today, the order would have changed slightly - and I would bet all £3.82 of my life-savings that both JK Rowling and Stephenie Mayer would appear on the list as well.

Also, I would hope that, if it were to be repeated today, African and Asian authors would be better represented on the list, as it is admittedly very Western-centric. However, for all we should (rightly) decry the exclusion of these countries from the list, it seems odd that, say, France isn't as well represented on the list as Britain is. (The list counts all copies of a book, no matter what language it's in, so the argument that a book isn't on there because it only counts books published in English, which obviously Britain would have a monopoly on, is rendered null and void). None of the other major European countries - which have a very, very similar history generically to Britain, are nearly as well represented on the list.

From this, we can only conclude that our great strength as a nation is novel writing, something I am more than happy to be proud of and patriotic about. That is what a real achievement is, not however many foreign countries we once ruled over.

Happy Deathday Mr. Mozart!

In honour of today being 211 years since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died, here are 16 facts which you may or may not have known about him.

1) Although he was wildly famous from a very young age, Mozart was actually bankrupt when he died, and had to have a pauper's funeral. He was buried in an unmarked grave, the location of which remains a mystery. However, he has ended up with a rather snazzy statue in the Burrgarten in Vienna, so if you want to go and pay your respects, it's not wholly impossible to do so.

2) Mozart wrote his first minuet at the age of six, his first symphony at eight (No. 1 in E flat) and his first opera at 11. In contrast, by the age of 11, I had just about figured out which way round to hold my flute...

3) Legend has it, that at the age of 2, he identified a pig's squeal as being in the key of G sharp. As a historian, I normally have an intense disliking for legends, but that is such an adorable story that I couldn't resist. And by 'adorable' I mean 'insanely-jealous making' of course, because I'm pretty sure having perfect pitch is unnatural. Also, why on earth was he around a squealing pig anyway? Was mini-Mozart into animal abuse? Questions, questions...

4) Whilst on tour with his mother 1777, Mozart met and fell in love with Aloysia Weber. He composed music for her, but as he was still fairly poor at that time, he asked her to wait for him whilst he toured around France and became financially better off. When he returned a couple of years later, his one true love had married an actor, so Mozart wooed and married her sister, Constance, despite his father's disapproval. (Which I promise is not the EastEnders' Christmas plot...)

5) Originally, Mozart's older sister, Nannerl was seen as the more talented of the siblings, so Mozart's father took them both on a tour of Austria in 1762, when Mozart was a mere six years old. The two played and sang for aristocratic classes, including the Empress Maria Theresa, with whom Mozart shocked the court by climbing into her lap to give her a kiss, instead of bowing respectfully towards her. The Empress was merely amused by his childlish impulsiveness, and showered him with gifts after he had played for her.

6) In Munich in 1981, Mozart's Symphony in F was discovered amongst some private family papers. It is thought to be his third symphony, written when he was nine years old.

7) The film Amadeus, whilst making for entertaining viewing, is almost entirely fictionalized - well, the conflict between Mozart and Salieri is, at any rate. Though there may have been some rivalry between them, Mozart was not poisoned by his supposed enemy; he died of what is most likely to have been a kidney infection, aged 35. 

8) The famous composer Haydn once said to Mozart's father, "Before God and as an honest man I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me." Mozart jr remained good friends with Haydn, and dedicated six of his quartets to him.

9) Mozart composed the opera Don Giovanni about a fictional womanizer named Don Juan, who gets his 'just desserts' in the end. He is not the only one who was inspired by the Spanish tale - in 1665, the playwright Moliere based one of his dramas on him; Lord Byron wrote an epic poem about his adventures in 1821 and he was also an inspiration in the twentieth century, for the author George Bernard Shaw.

10) In 1769, the Mozart family went on another tour, this time to Italy. There, the Pope bestowed upon him the title of 'The Golden Spur' for his services to music, which gave him the title of Cavalier. 

11) Mozart's first official job was as Concertmaster and Conductor of the Salzburg Chapel Orchestra. He quit after only a couple of years, however, saying that he didn't get on with the new Archbishop - though a more likely reason is that he knew he could make more money through touring.

12) Though everyone today knows him as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, only one official document from his lifetime survives which calls him by this name. He was in fact baptized as "Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart", which makes me want a Latin name. Except I'm a bit worried that 'Anna' might translate as 'Annus'...

13) The Marriage of Figaro, today one of his most famous operas, was initially not received very well at all by the crowds in Vienna. Undaunted by this, Mozart took it to Prague, where it performed much better and was the storming success it remains today. 

14) Mozart's life was blighted by tragedy. His mother died when on tour with him when he was a teenager, and only two of his six children survived infancy (though this was not uncommon at the time). He wrote his very famous ringtone Symphony in G Minor for his first daughter, who died in June 1788 six months after she was born.

15) After Mozart died, there were several attempts to catalog all the pieces he wrote. However, as their number exceeds 600, this was not an easy task. In 1862, Ludwig von Kochel finally succeeded in doing so, creating the Kochel catalog. This lists every piece of music he wrote in chronological order, with a 'K' in front - for example, his final piece, the Requiem in D Minor, is K. 626.  Between 1937 and 1964, this catalog was edited by Alfred Einstein, who's claim to fame is that he wasn't related to Albert Einstein. 

16) I am going to see my opera-loving friend Charlotte perform in her university's production of The Marriage of Figaro in January, and I will be sure to be more excited about this than the Viennese were.  

Rosa Parks, hero

Today marks 55 years since Rosa Parks, a black seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man and was arrested for refusing to abide by the city's racial segregation laws. The law stated that black people must sit at the back of the bus and fill up the rows from the back to the front. If a white person got on the bus and wanted to sit in the seats at the front, the black person must go and stand at the back and give them their seat. I remember learning that, when I was six years old in primary school, and being amazed that such a law should  have existed at a time when my parents were children.

Explaining why she took the action she did, Parks wrote (in her autobiography): "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.
 
When Parks was arrested, she was ordered to appear in court on 5th December. To show their solidarity with her cause, the black citizens of Alabama boycotted the buses for the day, encouraged to do so by Jo Ann Robinson, who was head of the Women's Political Council. Despite their actions, Parks was found guilty of disregarding the "law" and was fined $10 with an additional $4 court costs - a lot of money at the time, especially for a poor seamstress. Undeterred however, she decided to challenge the ruling.

The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) decided to use her case to test the segregation laws in the state. Interestingly, they had tried to do something similar the previous year, when a black girl named Collette Colvin had been arrested for exactly the same crime. However, as she was fifteen years old and pregnant, she was deemed an unsuitable candidate for advancing their cause, whereas the older, employed, married Rosa Parks, who had excellent standing within her community was seen as someone who would make their case winnable. 

 

the bus on which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat 

They therefore decided to extended the boycott of the buses until Parks had won her case. A young preacher named Martin Luther King addressed a crowd at Parks' local Baptist Church where this idea was put forward, and the boycott soon spread throughout the city of Montgomery, eventually lasting 381 days, ending in late December 1956. The NAACP demanded that all bus passengers be treated courteously by bus drivers; that seats be allocated on a first come, first served basis (ie black people should no longer be forced to give up their seats for white people) and that black men should be allowed to be employed as bus drivers, and until these rules were instated, the black community (all 40,000 of them) would not use the city's buses.

The white community did not make this easy for them. When black car owners organized car-sharing schemes so that those who did not own a car were able to get to work, they pressured the local insurance companies not to ensure cars which were being used in the scheme. When black taxi drivers allowed black men and women to ride with them for only 10 cents (the price of a bus ticket), the council passed a law saying that all taxi drivers must charge passengers a minimum of 45 cents, or face a fine. Four Baptist churches, and the homes of Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy were firebombed.

There were some positive stories, though. Black communities all over the US raised money to pay for bicycles and new shoes for the people of Montgomery, and when King was sent to jail for two weeks for "hindering" a bus in June of 1956, the protest started to gain national attention. Pressure was put on the state of Alabama to remove the 'Jim Crow' segregation laws, which, eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that it must. On 20 December, 1956 it became law in the state of Alabama that black people should no longer have to give up their seats for whites - Rosa Parks had won, and helped to initiate the Civil Rights Movement, and draw national attention to Preacher Martin Luther King.

 

Sadly, she did not initially have the happy ending she deserved. She lost her job and faced so much harassment in Montgomery that in 1957 she moved to Detroit, where she worked for John Conyers, a Democratic Congressman until she retired in 1988. She died in October 2005, a hero.

(If you are interested in reading the original BBC newspaper report of Parks' arrest, it can be found here.)