̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Christmas

Mistletoe and (a large) wine: seven-fold increase in wine glass size over 300 years

cjb250 — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 00:14:26 +0000

Both the types of alcoholic drink and the amount consumed in England has fluctuated over the last 300 years, largely in response to economic, legislative and social factors. Until the second part of the 20th century, beer and spirits were the most common forms of alcohol consumed, with wine most commonly consumed by the upper classes.

Wine consumption increased almost four-fold between 1960 and 1980, and almost doubled again between 1980 and 2004. Increased alcohol consumption since the mid-20th century reflects greater affordability, availability and marketing of alcoholic products, as well as licensing liberalisations leading to supermarkets competing in the drinks retail business.

In 2016, Professor Marteau and colleagues carried out an experiment at the Pint Shop in Cambridge, altering the size of wine glasses while keeping the serving sizes the same. They found that this led to an almost 10% increase in sales.

“Wine will no doubt be a feature of some merry Christmas nights, but when it comes to how much we drink, wine glass size probably does matter,” says Professor Theresa Marteau, Director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

In a study published today in ̽��ֱ��BMJ, Professor Marteau and colleagues looked at wine glass capacity over time to help understand whether any changes in their size might have contributed to the steep rise in its consumption over the past few decades.

“Wine glasses became a common receptacle from which wine was drunk around 1700,” says first author Dr Zorana Zupan. “This followed the development of lead crystal glassware by George Ravenscroft in the late 17th century, which led to the manufacture of less fragile and larger glasses than was previously possible.”

Through a combination of online searches and discussions with experts in antique glassware, including museum curators, the researchers obtained measurements of 411 glasses from 1700 to modern day. They found that wine glass capacity increased from 66 ml in the 1700s to 417ml in the 2000s, with the mean wine glass size in 2016-17 being 449ml.

“Our findings suggest that the capacity of wine glasses in England increased significantly over the past 300 years,” adds Dr Zupan. “For the most part, this was gradual, but since the 1990s, the size has increased rapidly. Whether this led to the rise in wine consumption in England, we can’t say for certain, but a wine glass 300 years ago would only have held about a half of today’s small measure. On top of this, we also have some evidence that suggests wine glass size itself influences consumption.”

Increases in the size of wine glasses over time likely reflect changes in a number of factors including price, technology, societal wealth and wine appreciation. ̽��ֱ��‘Glass Excise’ tax, levied in the mid-18th century, led to the manufacture of smaller glass products. This tax was abolished in 1845, and in the late Victorian era glass production began to shift from more traditional mouth-blowing techniques to more automated processes. These changes in production are reflected in the data, which show the smallest wine glasses during the 1700s with no increases in glass size during that time-period – the increase in size beginning in the 19th century.

Two changes in the 20th century likely contributed further to increased glass sizes. Wine glasses started to be tailored in both shape and size for different wine varieties, both reflecting and contributing to a burgeoning market for wine appreciation, with larger glasses considered important in such appreciation. From 1990 onwards, demand for larger wine glasses by the US market was met by an increase in the size of glasses manufactured in England, where a ready market was also found.

A further influence on wine glass size may have come both from those running bars and restaurants, as well as their consumers. If sales of wine increased when sold in larger glasses, this may have incentivised vendors to use larger glasses. Larger wine glasses can also increase the pleasure from drinking wine, which may also increase the desire to drink more.

In England, wine is increasingly served in 250ml servings with smaller sizes of 125ml often absent from wine lists or menus, despite a regulatory requirement introduced in 2010 that licensees make customers aware that these smaller measures are available. A serving size of 250ml – one third of a standard 75cl bottle of wine and one fifth of the weekly recommended intake for low risk drinking – is larger than the mean capacity of a wine glass available in the 1980s.

Alongside increased wine glass capacity, the strength of wine sold in the UK since the 1990s has also increased, thereby likely further increasing any impact of larger wine glasses on the amount of pure alcohol being consumed by wine drinkers.

̽��ֱ��researchers argue that if the impact of larger wine glasses upon consumption can be proven to be a reliable effect, then local licencing regulations limiting the size of glasses would expand the number of policy options for reducing alcohol consumption out of home. Reducing the size of wine glasses in licensed premises might also shift the social norm of what a wine glass should look like, with the potential to influence the size of wine glasses people use at home, where most alcohol, including wine, is consumed.

In the final line of their report, the researchers acknowledge the seasonal sensitivity to these suggestions: “We predict - with moderate confidence – that, while there will be some resistance to these suggestions, their palatability will be greater in the month of January than that of December.”

̽��ֱ��research was funded by a Senior Investigator Award to Theresa Marteau from the National Institute for Health Research.

Reference
Zupan, Z et al. Wine glass size in England from 1700 to 2017: A measure of our time. BMJ; 14 Dec 2017; DOI: 10.1136/bmj.j5623

Image

WA1957.24.2.380 Enamelled Jacobite portrait glass. © Ashmolean Museum, ̽��ֱ�� of Oxford

Our Georgian and Victorian ancestors probably celebrated Christmas with more modest wine consumption than we do today – if the size of their wine glasses are anything to go by. Researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have found that the capacity of wine glasses has increased seven-fold over the past 300 years, and most steeply in the last two decades as wine consumption rose.

Wine will no doubt be a feature of some merry Christmas nights, but when it comes to how much we drink, wine glass size probably does matter

Theresa Marteau

Charles Green

Christmas Comes But Once A Year

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Mulled wine: a recipe for sustainability?

cjb250 — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 08:37:23 +0000

Ingredients

1 bottle red wine
75g caster sugar
1 orange
1 vanilla pod, sliced lengthways
1 bay leaf
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise
4 cloves
½ teaspoon nutmeg
Thumb-sized piece of ginger, sliced

Peel the orange using a vegetable peeler and squeeze the juice
Pour the wine and orange juice into a pan and add the peel and sliced ginger, together with the spices and bay leaf
Heat the mixture, slowly adding the sugar until it has all dissolved.
Just before the mixture boils, turn down the heat and simmer on a low heat for 10 minutes.
Strain the mixture and serve.

To celebrate the festive period, researchers from the Global Food Security initiative did what many offices do in the run-up to Christmas: organised an evening of mulled wine and cheese to bring everyone together. However, there was one difference, as Kirsten Van Fossen, a PhD student at Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), who organised, the event explains:

“We asked researchers from across the university who are interested in issues of global food security to bring along mulled wine ingredients and to introduce their particular ingredient to the group – where they bought it, where it originates from and its journey to their store cupboard.”

̽��ֱ��majority of the ingredients brought along were purchased at local supermarkets, where produce from every corner of the globe is readily available. However, as the students explained, many of the ingredients could be grown at home or in the UK, yet have travelled thousands of miles to reach the supermarket shelves.

Claire Lambe, who is studying for an MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development, brought along star anise. “This spice is grown exclusively for mass production in China and Vietnam, yet I found out you could grow it in your own garden in the UK under the right conditions,” she says.

Root ginger, too, can be grown in the UK if it is protected from the frost, says Chris Barton, a fourth year Manufacturing Engineering student at the IfM. “I bought this at Sainsbury’s, though,” he admits. “There’s no identification of the source on it, but the likelihood is that it came from the Tibetan Plateau, about 5,000 miles away.”

Clara Aranda, an Engineering PhD student from the IfM explains that as with many foods, her ingredient, vanilla, is no longer mass produced in its original country of origin. “Vanilla originally comes from Mexico, but after the Spaniards came and distributed it around the world, it now mainly comes from Madagascar.”

While the evening was intended as a relaxed and informal event, the message that underlies it is a serious one about our global food systems, which are coming under increasing strain from as ever-growing global population: mass production of food can drain resources, such as water, and is energy intensive; plant monoculture puts crops at risk of devastating diseases that can wipe out an entire harvest; food is transported all around the globe as consumers expect to be able to buy fresh ingredients all year round – even locally-grown produce can be transported all around the UK to be processed, bagged and then shipped to a local supermarket; and, while some people still starve, other countries – including the UK – face an epidemic of obesity from food saturated with sugars and fats.

“ ̽��ֱ��food system – everything from how food is grown, processed and delivered, to how it is consumed – has become a truly global network,” adds Van Fossen. “But while it’s led to great advances in terms of food availability and strengthening international bonds of trade, it’s come with a cost to the environment and society. We wanted everyone to reflect on that.”

“We still have a lot of work to do to work out the right interplay between local and global food systems,” explains Jacqueline Garget, coordinator of Cambridge Global Food Security. “Tonight’s mulled wine reception is like a microcosm of our strategic research initiative, bringing together researchers from across the university who are interested in building sustainable food systems. We want to provoke everyone to think about the issues we face and to search for potential solutions.”

Nothing quite says ‘Christmas party’ like the smell of mulled wine drifting around an office. It’s an easy drink to make – all of the ingredients can be purchased at your local supermarket. But have you ever wondered where the ingredients come from? Like Santa Claus, many of them have travelled halfway round the world to get here, say students from the Cambridge Global Food Security strategic research initiative.

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Mulled wine

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Christmas Letters from a Second World War prison camp

tdk25 — Tue, 22 Dec 2015 08:32:17 +0000

Christmas letters written by the Cambridge academic John Crook while he was a 22-year-old POW during the Second World War have been placed online.

From his prison camp in central Europe, Crook, who would go on to become a Fellow and Professor of Ancient History at St John’s College, wrote unyieldingly positive Christmas letters to his family, demonstrating a remarkably steadfast character in spite of the harsh conditions in which he found himself.

̽��ֱ��letters are now held in the Special Collections of the College’s Library, where they are available for research, but selected items are now being made available to a global audience as well through the website.

Crook, the only child of parents of modest means, had begun an undergraduate degree in Classics after being awarded a scholarship to St John’s in 1939, but his studies were interrupted by the war. In 1942, he enlisted as a private with the 9th Royal Fusiliers. Captured at Salerno in September 1943, during the allied landings in Italy, he was sent to Stalag Luft VIII-B at Larnsdorf in Silesia, where he remained for the next two years.

̽��ֱ��letters present a vivid picture of life in the camp. They describe plays and concerts organised by the men (Crook himself was a keen clarinetist) and offer reassurance to Crook’s parents, urging them not to worry about him.

On 20 December he explained that he had been: “So intensely busy about rehearsals and writing parts, teaching Greek, cooking gelatine-and-chips, planning a chamber music concert and acting as usual as a general confidant and receiver of everyone’s troubles.” With a supply of Red Cross parcels, plenty of fuel and ample entertainment, Crook optimistically predicted that they “shall do all right” over the festive season.

Crook kept himself busy during the Christmas period, allowing himself “no time to pine away”. In his letter dated 12 December, 1943, he records performances of “carols, ‘Messiah’, a band concert, cabaret, pantomime [and] decorating our barrack with paper chains”.

In truth, life in the prison camp was extremely difficult - something which Crook hinted at in the letters in touchingly positive terms. His mention of “very Xmassy weather - snow and ice” refers to the perishing cold temperatures and challenging conditions experienced by the men. Life as a prisoner of war meant learning to live without certain basic comforts, and while Crook instructed his parents not to send any clothes, he did request cigarettes, explaining: “They are currency here, and one can obtain for them anything from a banjo to a tin of porridge.”

Crook’s letter to his parents on Christmas Day, 1944, is particularly moving and reveals the determination of the men in the camp to remain brave despite missing friends and family. He wrote that, notwithstanding the good cheer and cold, crisp weather, all that he and the other men could think of was their loved ones at home. Dances and concerts had taken place, with everyone “in their best khaki slacks”, but Crook longed to see the faces of his parents again.

Eleanor Swire, a Graduate Library Trainee at St John’s, researched the letters for an article on the College website, having come across them in a folder that Crook had poignantly marked with the words “Lost Time”.

“It must have been very difficult to be separated from his loved ones and to have to endure the harsh conditions of a prison camp,” she said. “When I sat down to read his letters in a quiet corner of the library, I was moved to tears by how brave he was to stay so upbeat and to put a positive spin on his circumstances in order to comfort his family.”

As the Soviet army advanced in the final stages of the war in 1945, Crook, along with 80,000 other PoWs, was forced by his German captors to march west in extreme winter weather conditions. He survived the “death march”, but many of his comrades died of hunger, exhaustion and the bitter cold before they could be liberated.

̽��ֱ��rest of his wartime service was spent as a sergeant in the Royal Army Educational Corps, before returning to St John’s to complete his degree in 1947. He later became a Fellow of the College, where he remained for more than 50 years, at the top of his chosen profession as Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge. Crook became a world expert on Roman Law and legal practices and taught Greek and Latin to Classics scholars.

̽��ֱ��letters form part of a collection of personal items including papers, letters and photographs that were left to St John’s after his death aged 85 in 2007. Since 2010, the College has offered a scholarship in Crook’s name and memory, open to gifted students from similar backgrounds, which reflects the spirit of his achievements.

Swire added: “It was an honour to read the private letters from the youth of this remarkable man and gain an insight into the kindness and humility he showed throughout his life, to which many members of the College can testify.”

To view the letters and other items from the collection, click here.

Inset images: ̽��ֱ��military band that was formed at the camp, Crook is pictured on the first row, fifth from right / John Crook. All images reproduced by permission of St John's College, Cambridge.

Moving letters sent by the academic John Crook while he was a prisoner at the notorious Stalag Luft VIII-B camp in World War II reveal his indomitable spirit and brave resolve to remain positive for the sake of loved ones back home.

So intensely busy about rehearsals and writing parts, teaching Greek, cooking gelatine-and-chips, planning a chamber-music concert and acting as usual as a general confidant and receiver of everyone’s troubles...

John Crook, letter dated 20th December 1943

Reproduced by permission of St John's College

One of several letters Crook sent from his prison camp, Stalag Luft VIII-B

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Opinion: Christmas is the hardest time of year for those estranged from close family

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Dec 2015 16:55:05 +0000

With Christmas just around the corner, many will be finalising plans to see their families over the festive period. Yet for others, family relationships are challenging, distant and a source of pain. In some cases, relationships break down entirely leaving people estranged from close relatives.

Results from a new online survey of people estranged from family members that I conducted with the charity Stand Alone, has shown how difficult Christmas can be. ̽��ֱ��survey was completed by 807 people who identified as being estranged from a parent, sibling or an adult child.

Almost all identified the holiday season as the most challenging time of year, describing feelings of loneliness, isolation and sadness. These feelings and experiences are in direct contrast to the idealised images of happy families around the dinner table that feature in Christmas advertising and the media at this time of year. One respondent said:

Everyone always says ‘what family plans do you have for holidays?’ and look at you funny when you say none. It’s hard to explain to people why you don’t want to be with your own parents.

Two-thirds of the respondents felt there was a stigma about family estrangement. They described feeling judged or blamed – and feeling that estrangement was a taboo subject about which there is little understanding or acknowledgement.

An advert for the German supermarket Edeka focuses on families living apart.

No two estranged relationships looked alike. Yet common factors often led to estrangement, such as having mismatched expectations about family roles and relationships, clashes in personality and values, and emotional abuse.

Estrangement was found to be more complex than simply a lack of contact or communication between family members. Although most of the respondents who were estranged from a parent, sibling or an adult child had no contact whatsoever with this individual, approximately 25% had contact that was minimal in nature. These results are similar to those of Australian social worker Kylie Aglias, who has distinguished between family members who have no contact at all (physical estrangement) and those whose contact is infrequent, perfunctory, and often uncomfortable (emotional estrangement).

We also found that estranged relationships change over time and that cycles in and out of estrangement are common. Of those who said they wished that their estranged relationship was different, most wanted a relationship that was more loving, warm and emotionally close.

What can be done to help?

When it came to getting support, respondents said those friends and support services which offered them emotional and practical support and took the time to listen to them and show them understanding were the most helpful. They found it unhelpful when they felt friends or counsellors dismissed them or when they felt they had been judged and blamed for the estrangement.

It would be wrong to assume that all those experiencing estrangement wish for there to be reconciliation in the future. Feelings about the future of estranged relationships were varied. Of those who were estranged from a mother or father, most felt that there would never be a functional relationship between them in the future. Yet for those who were estranged from an adult son or daughter, most felt that there could be a functional relationship in the future or were unsure of the future direction of the relationship.

Four out of five respondents also reported that there had been a positive outcome from their experience of estrangement. These included feeling more free and independent, feeling happier and less stressed, and having gained a greater insight or understanding of themselves and relationships more broadly.

By listening to the hidden voices of people who are estranged from close relatives, we can begin to move beyond assumptions about what families could or should look like and begin conversations about families and family relationships as they really are.

Lucy Blake, Research Associate at the Centre for Family Research, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Lucy Blake (Centre for Family Research) discusses family estrangement and the particular difficulties associated with Christmas.

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Alone on Christmas

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Opinion: Frankenstein or Krampus? What our monsters say about us

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 00:15:36 +0000

Two new monster movies are being released in the lead-up to Christmas, and each sports a very different kind of beast. There’s the man-made creation of Victor Frankenstein in the latest rendition of Mary Shelley’s gothic tale, a grotesque creature cobbled together from “the dissecting room and the slaughter-house”. And then there’s Krampus, an American re-working of the evil Austrian counterpart to Father Christmas.

̽��ֱ��word “monster”, as this shows, covers all manner of things. Man-made, such as Frankenstein, folkloric demons such as Krampus, and then there are also the classical images of exotic peoples with no heads or grotesquely exaggerated features, or the kinds of impossible chimerical beasts inhabiting the pages of medieval bestiaries.

̽��ֱ��etymology of monstrosity suggests the complex roles that monsters play within society. “Monster” probably derives from the Latin, monstrare, meaning “to demonstrate”, and monere, “to warn”.

So monsters, in essence, are demonstrative. They reveal, portend, show and make evident, often uncomfortably so. How they have been created over the centuries is much more indicative of the moral and existential challenges faced by societies than the realities that they have encountered. Though the modern Gothic monster and the medieval chimera may seem unrelated, both have acted as important social tools.

Victor Frankenstein. Fox UK

Early modern monsters

Until relatively recently in history, monsters close to home, such as deformed babies or two-headed calves, were construed as warnings of divine wrath. Monstrous depictions in newspapers and pamphlets expressed strong political attitudes. Traditional monstrous beasts such as basilisks or unicorns, that were banished to distant regions in maps, represented a frightening unknown: “here be dragons” effectively filled cartographic voids.

̽��ֱ��‘sea-elephant’.

Simultaneously, however, monsters represented the wonderful diversity of divine creation, a playful “Nature” that produced a multitude of strange forms. Exotic beasts brought to Europe for the first time in the 16th century, such as armadillos or walruses, were often interpreted as “monstrous”. More accurately, they were made into monsters when they were defined as such: as things that did not fit into the accepted natural categories. An armadillo became a pig-turtle, while a walrus was a sea-elephant.

Beasts that subverted what was expected in some way actually reinforced categories by clarifying the defining criteria for these groups. By transgressing, they helped to determine boundaries. Because to define a deviant form, such as a “deformed” baby or calf, or a “monstrous” exotic creature, you have to define “normal”.

For example, the simple definition of a “bird” was something that had two legs, two wings, could fly and walk. Then two new creatures arrived in the 16th century that seemed to violate this definition. First, birds of paradise were brought to Europe in 1622 as trade skins with stunning, colourful plumes but no legs or wings. Their limbs were removed by the hunters who supplied the birds in New Guinea. ̽��ֱ��birds were interpreted by European naturalists as heavenly creatures that never landed, inhabiting the boundary between the avian and the angelic.

Some legless birds of paradise. Johnston

At the other end of the avian spectrum, Dutch sailors landing on Mauritius at the end of the 16th century encountered dodos. Though rarely brought to Europe physically, the descriptions and detached parts of dodos were used by naturalists to depict ungainly, fat birds. Not only did dodos not fly, they could hardly walk.

̽��ֱ��dodo was therefore depicted as vast and gluttonous in late 17th-century accounts. It greedily consumed everything it came across, even hot coals. It was described as nauseatingly greasy to eat: one bird could apparently feed 25 men. This image was created by writers who had never seen the bird, and is not supported by current paleobiological evidence. ̽��ֱ��idea of the avian glutton embodied European anxieties about the rapacious colonial trading activities in the Indian Ocean, which brought a surfeit of riches to Europe. ̽��ֱ��engorged dodo became a scapegoat for the European sin of gluttony.

̽��ֱ��monstrous dodo.

Monsters, therefore, are not self-evident; they are created to serve certain roles. Making things monstrous also added value. They became commercially lucrative things: oddities, curiosities and rare things were very marketable.

̽��ֱ��market for monstrosity further motivated the literal creation of monsters: “mermaids” were assembled from pieces of fish, monkeys and other objects while “ray-dragons” were created from carefully mutilated and dried rays. These objects could be sold to collectors or displayed in menageries and freak-shows. Writing about and portraying virtual monsters helped to sell books and pamphlets.

Modern-day monsters

So how do we use our monsters today? One of the two monsters set to hit cinemas displays the dangers of hubristic human enterprise (Victor Frankenstein); the other provides a dark embodiment of Christmas-spirit gone awry (Krampus). Such monsters are images that embody the cultural or psychological characteristics that we as a society find difficult to acknowledge. By excising them, through fantastical narratives, we rid ourselves of the undesirable attributes they are perceived to carry. ̽��ֱ��cathartic consumption of monster-culture provides us with a safe, removed space to explore and excise social anxieties.

It also offers the illusion of absolution from them by externalising anxieties into ridiculous figures, such as Krampus. Monsters such as this proffer us pastiches of moral messages in easily-swallowed forms that both highlight their potential threat, and soothe us by defusing it.

Though it may not seem so, this has always been the most important role that monsters have played: they horrify us, yes, but ultimately their function is to remove what we find horrifying about ourselves. So we can recoil at the gory construction of Frankenstein’s monster, or shriek at the toothy maw of Krampus for a few hours, then leave them happily behind when the credits roll.

Natalie Lawrence, PhD Candidate, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Natalie Lawrence (Department of History and Philosophy of Science) discusses the history of monsters, and what they say about the people who invent them.

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Nikolaus and Krampus in Austria

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Queuing for the magic of King's on Christmas Eve

ns480 — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 06:25:26 +0000

It’s as chilly and as uncomfortable as Occupy London. But the agenda is somewhat different and it will all be over on Christmas Eve when the first few notes of Once in Royal David’s City soar into the semi-darkness of one of the world’s most famous chapels. Each year up to 600 people queue for several days outside King’s College in Cambridge to hear the sublime music of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from seats inside its 440-year old chapel. ̽��ֱ��candle-lit service, first introduced in 1918, is relayed live by the BBC to millions all over the world.

Tim Wotherspoon was the first person to arrive this year, taking possession of a corner of damp cobbled space close to the great wooden doors of the college on King’s Parade. Tim lives in Cottenham, a village just north of Cambridge, and studied maths at Robinson College in the early 1980s. Having opted out of life in London, he is restoring a 17^th century pub and is a councillor for South Cambridgeshire District Council.

When Tim cycled to Cambridge on Monday to unroll his sleeping bag, he was advised by the college porters that he was far too early. But he was determined to spend five nights at the head of the queue to ensure a place in his favourite spot inside the chapel. It will be his third time of attending the service, which is open to the public but cannot be booked. “I really hate Christmas – the tinsel, the glitter, Father Christmas, the reindeer and all that. For me Christmas is the service at King’s whether I’m here or listening on my radio. I’m a lapsed church-goer but I love the sense of tradition.”

Apart from his black hat, everything Tim has with him is colour-coded in shades of blue – right down to his tooth brush. “It’s a clue to my political beliefs but also a bit of fun,” he says. He is reading the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with the Apocrypha (Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press) to while away the hours and celebrate the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible.

“I’ve got as far as the Book of Joshua and it’s wonderful to be absorbing it in the medieval setting of Cambridge, feeling the daily rhythm of the city from the birds singing just before dawn though to the night sounds of the Corpus Christi clock ticking and the sign of the National Trust shop gently creaking. ̽��ֱ��Book of Numbers, which everyone says is so boring with all the x begat y business, has some passages I can only describe as mind-blowing. Take Chapter 6, verses 24-26: ‘ ̽��ֱ��Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make his face shine upon thee: the Lord lift his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace’.”

At 7.30 pm on Wednesday Ian de Massini arrived to set up his green camp bed next to Tim’s blue one. Ian has attended the service at King’s every year bar one since 1977. He studied music at King’s and is a composer, choir director and pianist. A few years after graduating he returned to Cambridge and became a member of the Classic Buskers (formerly the Cambridge Buskers) who play all over the world. He is also director of the Cambridge Voices.

“Tim and I have worked out that the first time he came to the Nine Lessons and Carols in 1981 we were both Cambridge students and I was singing in the King’s College Choir. Like Tim, I dislike all the razzamatazz of Christmas – King’s is Christmas for me,” says Ian. “ ̽��ֱ��queue has a life of its own – each year we catch up with each other’s lives and as people gather we start to sing carols to keep our spirits up. When the service begins, the stained glass windows are ablaze with light. As the sun goes down, the colour gradually drains from them and the candlelight takes over. It’s pure magic.”

On Thursday afternoon Tim and Ian were chatting to the trickle of people joining them with rugs and chairs. “There’s Charles from Texas, Thomas from Zurich, and Natalia from Carolina,” says Ian. “It’s great to see them all.” By Saturday mid-morning the queue will be lengthy and there will be mounting anxiety among latecomers about who will get into the chapel.

But it’s a highly civilised line, discreetly overseen by the King’s porters, and everyone gets a chance to slip away from their places to eat, wash and visit the nearest toilets. Groups from the queue take it in turns to go out for nourishing meals together during the long wait. “It’s a very special time of year for me,” says Ian. “I listen to Radio 3 on my headphones, talk to lots of friends, and just let my mind empty itself of all the usual clutter. Stepping out of the chapel after the service you feel a bit flat and empty. As all our friends and family know, there’s nothing else about Christmas that means as much.”

For more information on the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Saturday, including details of how to catch it on television and radio go to: https://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/chapel/a-festival-of-nine-lessons-and-carols

Each year hundreds of people queue day and night in the cold to experience the magic of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in King's College Chapel. At the head of the queue this year is Tim Wotherspoon who lives in Cottenham and studied maths at Cambridge. He is spending five nights on a camp bed on the cobbles to ensure his seat on Christmas Eve.

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Ian and Tim

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Who colour-coded Christmas?

lw355 — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:13:44 +0000

Jolly Father Christmas with his rosy cheeks and scarlet coat, shiny green holly with its bright red berries, glittering red decorations on a lush green Christmas tree – the clichéd colour coding of the Christmas season seems as entrenched as the conventions in the West of wearing black to funerals and white to weddings. But where do the familiar Christmas colours come from and what do they really mean?

On Saturday 22 October, Dr Spike Bucklow from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Hamilton Kerr Institute will be examining artists’ materials to ask who came up with the colours of Christmas at the Festival of Ideas, the UK’s only festival devoted to the arts, humanities and social sciences (www.cam.ac.uk/festivalofideas).

“We associate Christmas with red and green because that’s the way we’ve always done it.” said Dr Bucklow. “But one can trace the roots of this colour coding back through the centuries, to a time when the colours themselves had symbolic meaning, possibly as a way of accentuating a significant division or a boundary.”

Although the Victorians wholeheartedly embraced Christmas and introduced many of the traditions we see today – from cards to crackers and trees to turkeys – Dr Bucklow believes that the Christmas colours were not inspired by the Victorians but rather revived by them, and that their significance draws on a history many centuries older.

His research over the past three years, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, has focused on the art history of medieval rood screens, which date from the 14th to the 16th centuries and were used to separate the nave from the chancel of churches. “Although many were defaced or even destroyed during the Reformation, on some of those that survive are beautiful painted panels depicting saints, as well as local donors, merchants and serfs. They were commissioned by parishioners and represent the biggest investment of corporate art that this country has ever seen,” he said.

Strikingly, the vast majority are painted in red and green. “ ̽��ֱ��panels were painted by newly settled members of the Flemish immigrant population or by itinerant English and continental European artists who worked together,” he explained. “Choosing red and green would have been a question of pigment availability but it would also have represented a tradition based on a consciously chosen symbolic meaning. If you like, these colours would have been part of a common language of panel painting that everyone knew about but didn’t necessarily express.”

Dr Bucklow speculates that this meaning is linked to an emphasising of the different spaces in the Church: at one side of the screen, the nave where the parishioners sat; at the other side, the priest’s holy sanctuary and the altar. He further suggests that the Victorians, who carried out some of the early restoration of the medieval churches, would have noticed the colour coding and might have adopted it to accentuate another boundary – the end of one year and the beginning of another at Christmas.

However, he believes that although the medieval rood screen painters effectively left the biggest body of physical evidence for the existence of colour coding, the use of red and green as symbolic colours goes back even further. “As one example, the red–green colour coding appears in the Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh stories from the 13th century, but almost certainly based on an oral tradition that dates back to the pre-Christian Celts many centuries before. Here, the hero comes to a half-red, half-green tree that marks a boundary.”

Today though, in a world flooded with every hue imaginable, Dr Bucklow believes we no longer consider colour to be particularly meaningful. “ ̽��ֱ��sensation of seeing colour has become devalued and downgraded,” he observed. “Our life experience is impoverished by not acknowledging the possibility of symbolic meaning. By contrast, in the Middle Ages and earlier, colour was integrated into a cultural awareness and even an understanding of life. It touched all members of society and conveyed a deeper message.

“For red and green, our comparatively recent obsession with associating these colours with Christmas masks a profound and long-forgotten other history.”

‘Who colour-coded Christmas?’ will take place on Saturday 22 October at the Faculty of Law 11am – 12noon as part of Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Festival of Ideas. Pre-booking is required. Suitable for age 14+.

̽��ֱ��conventional colours of Christmas – red and green – are not, as many might suppose, a legacy of the Victorians. Instead, they hark back to the Middle Ages and perhaps even earlier, according to Cambridge research scientist Dr Spike Bucklow.

For red and green, our comparatively recent obsession with associating these colours with Christmas masks a profound and long-forgotten other history

Dr Spike Bucklow

Gaeten Lee

Santas

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