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Polite Society School of Étiquette offers Beginning, Advanced, Business, and Tea Étiquette Courses. Étiquette tutelage is presented at speaking engagements, webinars, school seminars, private dinners, and specialty tea events. The School's mission is to educate adults and children in customary codes of conduct with an emphasis on everyday social graces.

Saturday, November 26, 2016

ENGLISH TRADITIONS AT CHRISTMAS!

ENGLISH TRADITIONS AT CHRISTMAS

CORNISH CUSTOM



Visit a home in Cornwass and you may well find a Christmas Bunch hanging from the ceiling - two hoops of greenery, looped together and decorated with ribbon, fruit and possibly a candle, plus mistletoe to set lips aquiver.  'Nadelik' - Cornish for Christmas - is full of such quirks.

"The use of Cornish recipes at Christmas has increased hugely in the last ten years, especially Mahogany," says Simon Reed, director of the Cornish Culture Association.  Mahogany is made from warmed treacle and gin, and can be dangerously moreish.  Cornish Shenagrum will bring colour to the cheeks, too.  This drink consists of warmed dark beer sweetened by two spoons of demerara sugar, fortified with rum and topped with a twist of lemon and some cinnamon.

For the peckish, there is Stargazy Pie, which was created in the fishing village of Mousehole in honour of a brave fisherman called Tom Bawcock.  Legend has it that he sailed out into a violent stormy sea to fish when the village was facing starvation.  He returned with seven types of fish which were made into a pie and shared amongst the townsfolk, thus saving them from famine.  To this day his heroic deeds are celebrated every 23 December in the village.  Made with potato, egg and pilchards, their heads poking through the crust, the pie has the potential to alarm unwary diners.

Montol - Cornish for Midwinter Solstice - is a festival that takes place in the streets of Penzance, culminating on Montol Eve, 21 December, with night-time processions and 'guise dancing' that harks back to the medieval custom of people visiting homes on special occasions to perform in disguise.  Hundreds of people dress up in colstumes following prescibed rules, and a 'Mock' or Cornish yule log, with a stickman chalked on it, is burned to symbolise the death of the old year and the birth of the new.

ENJOY!

MERRY CHIRSTMAS!

THANK YOU ENGLISH HOME MAGAZINE

FROM BERNADETTE

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