Читать книгу The Mistletoe Wager - Christine Merrill - Страница 4

When I set out to write about Christmas in the Regency, I had to unlearn a lot of our current Christmas traditions. Much of what we do now to celebrate the season did not become popular until Victorian times. No Christmas cards or Santa, of course. And Christmas trees were still quite a novelty in the early nineteenth century.

With no television or radio to entertain them, people passed the time eating and drinking holiday foods, and playing parlor games. As I was doing the research for this story, I came across a game that didn’t make it into this book. A player must answer every question asked of him with the word “sausage.” When he laughs, he loses his turn.

A week later, my sons returned from summer camp. They had been surviving without electricity for a week, and had learned to play “Sausage” to pass the time.

So although the showier aspects of the Christmas season were years away, people had already found ways to amuse themselves that are still able to tame bored teenagers in the twenty-first century. Very impressive!

Merry Christmas and Happy Reading.