Histories of the Unexpected

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Christmas MicroHistories 8: Carrots Dec 23, 2020

Show notes

This is the EIGTH of our special Christmas-themed micro-histories in which we will embrace the task of demonstrating how an unexpected subject not only has a history but is massively important and interesting - in just 15 minutes! We will start with a shared example and then have just five minutes each to make a case for an interesting history on that very unexpected subject. Contributions will be rigorously timed and you - dear listeners - will get to vote on SM on what YOU think was the most interesting fact you heard today.

Today’s topic is CARROTS - nothing quite says Christmas like carrots (we like ours with olive oil/butter, cumin seeds and honey). Yum! We are so used to Christmas of over-indulgence, extravagance and all the trimmings (maybe not this year!), but it was not always thus! During the World Wars with rationing imposed and the supply lines of the British Empire greatly reduced, such luxury Christmas treats were a pipe dream, and more humble ingredients had to be used. The carrot in particular, was much lauded as a versatile and plentiful foodstuff, so much so that during the Second World War a recipe booklet was produced with instructions for thrifty carrot-based dishes, including carrot soups, carrot savoury, carried croquettes, and what was known as a ‘War-and-Peace pudding’. An alternative to Christmas pudding this was made with carrots instead of mincemeat. First made in Canada during the Great War, it consisted of flour, breadcrumbs, suet, grated raw potato and carrot to bulk out the mixed dried fruit and spice – and note the lack of fortified spirits. So popular was this that many never went back to eating the richer, more exotic, variety. Who knew! Carrots are also all about medicine in the ancient and medieval world - you will never think of the humble carrot quite the same again - and they're also all about colour, Afghanistan, Albrecht Dürer and Pliny.

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Christmas MicroHistories 7: Obscenity Dec 22, 2020

Show notes

This is the SEVENTH of our special Christmas-themed micro-histories in which we will embrace the task of demonstrating how an unexpected subject not only has a history but is massively important and interesting - in just 15 minutes! We will start with a shared example and then have just five minutes each to make a case for an interesting history on that very unexpected subject. Contributions will be rigorously timed and you - dear listeners - will get to vote on SM on what YOU think was the most interesting fact you heard today.

Today’s topic is OBSCENITY - nothing quite says Christmas like obscenity! Christmas was a time for subversion during the High Middle Ages and Renaissance when snowmen were regularly built as winter effigies. During the cold winter of 1510-11 the citizens of Brussels built around 110 individual snowmen around the city, depicting in snow folklore figures such unicorns and mermaids, religious and political themes, as well extreme sexual and even scatalogical imagery. One of the more sexualised sculptures could be found in Rozendal, the red light district of the city, which depicted a prostitute completely naked, with breasts and genitalia sculpted to attract attention, and a ‘dog...ensconced between her legs’. Of the more scatalogical, was a snow-cow that delivered ‘turds, farts and stinking’; a defecating centaur; a ‘manneken pis’ fountain depicting a small boy urinating into the mouth of a drinker; and finally a drunk drowning in his own excrement. These are a far cry from the ‘jolly happy soul’ that we know from the Frosty the Snowman song of 1950. Who knew! Obscenity is also all about name-calling on the streets in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Devon (especially in Bradninch!) and of course it's also all about puritanical attitudes in nineteenth-century America!

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Christmas MicroHistories 6: Riots Dec 21, 2020

Show notes

This is the SIXTH of our special Christmas-themed micro-histories in which we will embrace the task of demonstrating how an unexpected subject not only has a history but is massively important and interesting - in just 15 minutes! We will start with a shared example and then have just five minutes each to make a case for an interesting history on that very unexpected subject. Contributions will be rigorously timed and you - dear listeners - will get to vote on SM on what YOU think was the most interesting fact you heard today.

Today’s topic is RIOTS - nothing quite says Christmas like riots! Riots are also of course all about!Christmas has often been about violence and rioting as much as it has sharing and caring. It is well known that Oliver Cromwell and puritans sought to abolish Christmas, which they viewed as a ‘Popish superstition’. One ordinance was passed by Parliament in June 1647 which threatened with punishment anyone who celebrated this festival. This ban did not go down well in all quarters, and in December 1647 many of the citizens of Canterbury defied it, taking to the streets to riot. The pamphlet Canterbury’s Christmas: Or A True Relation of the Insurrection in Canterbury on Christmas Last describes how shops that stayed open on this holy day were ransacked, the mayor, aldermen and constables attacked, and the sheriff knocked down, his head ‘fearfully broke, it was gods mercy his brains were not beat out’. In another example, this one in America in 1776 at the start of the American Revolutionary War, the rebel militia guarding the maritime route to Canada Fort Ticonderoga was a simmering pot of class and cultural rivalry exacerbated by cold and boredom. The extra alcohol of Christmas day saw it erupt into shocking violence as the soldiers turned on each other like hungry dogs. A recently-discovered personal account noted how Pennsylvania soldiers ‘armed with guns, bayonets and swords, [who] by force entered the tents and huts of [Massachusetts] officers and soldiers, dragging many out of doors naked and wounding them, robbing and plundering.’ Riots are also all about Mrs Thatcher (milk snatcher) and the infamous Poll Tax Riots of 1990, and of course they're also all about British rule in India, resentment, methods of protest and resistance, loyalty and servitude.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Christmas MicroHistories 5: Spite! Dec 20, 2020

Show notes

This is the FIFTH of our special Christmas-themed micro-histories in which we will embrace the task of demonstrating how an unexpected subject not only has a history but is massively important and interesting - in just 15 minutes! We will start with a shared example and then have just five minutes each to make a case for an interesting history on that very unexpected subject. Contributions will be rigorously timed and you - dear listeners - will get to vote on SM on what YOU think was the most interesting fact you heard today.

Today’s topic is SPITE - nothing quite says Christmas like spite! Now you’re probably all thinking about sending Christmas cards or are in the middle of doing so. If you are you may just want to take note of the following. The custom of exchanging greetings cards during the festive season was a Victorian invention, with the first commercial card produced in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole. From the 1870s onwards, the introduction of the halfpenny stamp made postage much more affordable, which boosted the popularity of sending cards for ordinary people. Many examples of nineteenth-century Christmas cards survive in collections of Victorian scrapbooks held in libraries around the country. Among the cheerful Yuletide messages many of which were distinctly secular, a number took on a more sinister spiteful note. Examples include an image of a dead robin, a child boiled in a teapot, a clown sneaking up on a policeman to assault him, grizzly looking snowmen and nothing quite says Merry Christmas as does a depiction of frog murder! Who knew! Spite is of course also all about poisoned pens letters throughout the ages, as well as Jack the Ripper, Victorian London and his female victims, Mary Ann ‘Polly’ Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes.

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Christmas MicroHistories 4: Lucky Finds Dec 19, 2020

Show notes

This is the FOURTH of our special Christmas-themed micro-histories in which we will embrace the task of demonstrating how an unexpected subject not only has a history but is massively important and interesting - in just 15 minutes! We will start with a shared example and then have just five minutes each to make a case for an interesting history on that very unexpected subject. Contributions will be rigorously timed and you - dear listeners - will get to vote on SM on what YOU think was the most interesting fact you heard today.

Today’s topic is LUCKY FINDS - nothing quite says Christmas like serendipity! You may all be becoming slightly chimney obsessed as we are nearing the festive season - decorating fireplaces, hanging stockings - and we have talked in our microhistory episodes on Evil and shoes - about how chimneys are a way into the houses for evil beings but they are also remarkable historical archives: they often contain artefacts and documents that have been bricked in or lodged up the flu. Serendipity in this way has left us with one of the most interesting types of letters to be discovered in chimneys: children’s letters to Father Christmas. For historians, they are a joy. ‘I want a baby doll and a waterproof with a hood and a pair of gloves and a toffee apple and a gold penny and a silver sixpence and a long toffee’ wrote the breathless Alfred or Hannah Howard in October 1911 before placing their letter in the fire. It started to burn before being picked up by a draft and whisked to safety on a tiny shelf inside the chimney of their house in Dublin. 81 years later it as discovered by a couple renovating their house. Such letters are magical because, not only do they record a list of material objects, but a child’s hopes and, sometimes, their fears. The lesson of all of this is never to take your chimney for granted: take a look inside – you just never know what you might find Who knew! Lucky finds are also of course all about the discovered of a long-lost John Donne poetry manuscript, and coins found while weeding in the garden dating from the age of HenryVIII carrying the initials of three of his wives, as well as rare finds of the Bible!

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WINGS REVAMPED! Dec 16, 2020

Show notes

In this BONUS episode, the Histories of the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, take another flight into the historical stratosphere to talk about the expected history of WINGS! Which is all about Aerial combat in WWI, John Aidan Liddell, VC, William Blake and Paradise Lost, tree toppers, Hans Christian Anderson’s Christmas Tree!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

WINGS! Dec 14, 2020

Show notes

In this episode, the Histories of the Unexpected duo, James and Sam, scale the heights of historical inquiry to uncover the expected history of WINGS! Which is all about biblical angels, the Christmas story, early modern angels and the Reformation, conservation and falcons, the Cottingley Fairies and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Christmas MicroHistories 3: Shoes Dec 13, 2020

Show notes

This is the THIRD of our special Christmas-themed micro-histories in which we will embrace the task of demonstrating how an unexpected subject not only has a history but is massively important and interesting - in just 15 minutes! We will start with a shared example and then have just five minutes each to make a case for an interesting history on that very unexpected subject. Contributions will be rigorously timed and you - dear listeners - will get to vote on SM on what YOU think was the most interesting fact you heard today.

Today’s topic is SHOES - nothing quite says Christmas like shoes! - Shoes were not simply a noxious deterrent for evil sprites at Christmas time, but a precursor to the now customary stockings as receptacles for yuletide gifts. Earlier depictions of St Nicholas associate him with dropping gold coins down the chimney, which in sixteenth-century Holland similarly led to the tradition of children placing their shoes on the hearth on the eve of the Feast of St Nicholas, awaking in the morning to find them filled with present and sweets. In Italian folklore an old woman named Befana (sometimes referred to as the ‘Christmas Witch’) delivered gifts to children on the eve of Epiphany (6 January) slipping them into shoes left by the fireplace. These earlier chimney-related European traditions no doubt passed into usage in the US through patterns of migration: the spread of Christmas traditions is of course intimately linked with the spread of people around the globe.! Who knew! Shoes are of course all about the politics of sneakers, via the brilliant Public Enemy's 'politics of the sneaker pimps' track on their album He Got Game, and of course it's all about the French Revolution and the banishment of high heels! Who knew!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Christmas MicroHistories 2: Evil Dec 11, 2020

Show notes

This is the SECOND of our special Christmas-themed micro-histories in which we will embrace the task of demonstrating how an unexpected subject not only has a history but is massively important and interesting - in just 15 minutes! We will start with a shared example and then have just five minutes each to make a case for an interesting history on that very unexpected subject. Contributions will be rigorously timed and you - dear listeners - will get to vote on SM on what YOU think was the most interesting fact you heard today.

Today’s topic is EVIL - nothing quite says Christmas, as evil! - which is all about chimneys, European Folklore, Kallikantzaroi or Christmas Goblins, as well as witch bottles and the reign of Alexander III of Russia! Who knew!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Christmas MicroHistories 1: Bad Luck Dec 09, 2020

Show notes

This is the FIRST of our special Christmas-themed micro-histories in which we will embrace the task of demonstrating how an unexpected subject not only has a history but is massively important and interesting - in just 15 minutes! We will start with a shared example and then have just five minutes each to make a case for an interesting history on that very unexpected subject. Contributions will be rigorously timed and you - dear listeners - will get to vote on SM on what YOU think was the most interesting fact you heard today.

Today’s topic is BAD LUCK - nothing quite says Christmas, as bad luck! - which is all about robins on Christmas cards, unlucky holly, passing a light between houses, childhood superstitions and the gold rush in America during the nineteenth century! Who knew!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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