A Christmas Compendium
The 2007 Christmas Compendium, written by Malinda Law.
The answers to the quizzes can be found here, but if you don't want to spoil your enjoyment of the other quizzes, have a go at them all before looking!
FACT: Christmas Day was not fixed as 25 December until 440 AD, and for the festival the early Christian churches were decorated with greenery as the pagan temples had been, justified by the reference in Isaiah chapter 9 verse 13, ‘the fir-tree and the pine-tree and the box-tree together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary’.
Index
Q - How many calves’ tails does it take to reach the moon?
A - One, if it’s long enough.
Q - When does a chicken have no bones?
A - When it is still in the egg.
Q - What animal goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?
A - A human. (This was the riddle the sphinx asked: it ate people who didn’t know.)
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ANNA, AUGUSTUS, CAESAR, DAVID, ELIZABETH, GABRIEL, HEROD, IMMANUEL, JESUS, JOHN, JOSEPH, MARY, QUIRINIUS, SIMEON, ZECHARIAH
The letters left over make up a well known verse from the Bible.
FACT: St Francis made the first Christmas crib scene, in a cave in the woods near Assisi in the year 1224, and held a midnight service there.
The last puzzle was about people connected with the story of Christmas. What are these people famous for? Match the pairs.
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Eglantine Jebb |
A |
The first powered flight |
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Joe Mitty |
B |
Mechanisation of weaving |
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Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole |
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Standardisation of screw threads |
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William Wilberforce |
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The Co-Operative Society |
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John Tradescant |
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Founder of Methodism |
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John Wycliffe |
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Founder of Save the Children |
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Orville and Wilbur Wright |
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The ‘Peace’ rose. |
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Joseph Whitworth |
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The first antiseptic surgery |
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Joseph Lister |
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Ran the first Oxfam shop |
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John Wesley |
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Prison reform |
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Elizabeth Fry |
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Ethical beauty products |
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John Kay |
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Nursing reform |
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Anita Roddick |
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Introduced plants from abroad |
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Charles Howarth and the Rochdale Pioneers |
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Translated the Bible into English |
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Antoine and Francis Meilland |
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The abolition of slavery |
FACT: There have always been midwinter festivals. The Romans kept a festival called Saturnalia, when courts and schools were closed and no criminals were punished. Families which kept slaves would wait on them for a day, and the usually strict rules of Roman life were relaxed.
Anyone who has ever tried to read a newspaper or write a letter with a cat in the house will know that the cat will immediately come and sit on the paper. There are various explanations for this behaviour, but it suggested the following game.
Prepare by cutting out as many cardboard circles/ovals as there are players. Each circle should be roughly the same size and shape as a cat’s bottom. (Include the tail or not as you wish!) Find a double-page spread of newspaper, preferably a broadsheet, which has many small articles on it: the letters page or a page of boxed adverts will do very well. Pages need not be in the order in which they were printed.
To play:place the newspaper on the floor, or a table. Each player secretly selects one article, letter or advert. They write down what these are (to avoid cheating) and secrete the paper somewhere for future reference. Then all players throw their cardboard circles onto the newspaper: these represent seated cats. The winner is whoever can read all of their chosen article at the end.
Mary was to name her son Jesus, a name not uncommon at that time, which was a variation of the name Joshua and meant ‘God’s salvation’. Other names and titles of Jesus include Immanuel which means ‘God with us’. Messiah and Christ both mean ‘anointed’.
Fill in nine more names used for Jesus from the (A.V.) references given, and find a tenth.
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1 Haggai chapter 2, verse 7 ---of nations
2 John 1 verse 29 --- of God.
3 Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6 ---God.
4 2 Peter chapter 2 verse 20
5 Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6 Prince of ---.
6 Revelation chapter 22 verse 16 ---star.
7 Revelation chapter 15 verse 3 ---of Judah.
8 Revelation chapter 1 verse 8
9 John 10 verse 14 --- shepherd.
‘MUM says if she hears “I wish it could be Christmas every day” once more, she’ll scream.’ Tom announced, holding out an envelope. ‘This one’s for you: Postie put it through our door while we were out shopping.’
Vera Cobham took the envelope and felt for her spectacles. ‘Thank you, Thomas. –What do you think? Would you like it to be always Christmas?’
Tom considered. ‘Bits of Christmas, yes. Presents and singing and no school- I’m being a rat in the play at school; Me and Josh get turned into footmen by Laura Cole and we have to wear wigs-‘
Vera smiled. ‘Your Mum told me. What bits of Christmas don’t you like, then?’
Tom pulled a face. ‘Afterwards. We always have people staying and there’s nothing to do: we can’t play with stuff properly because it gets in the way or Katie might put things in her mouth... Katie’s a pest.’
‘So was my little sister.’ Vera flicked the envelope. ‘Hilda, who sent this. She’s turned out better than I ever thought she would when she was crawling, and I dare say Katie will, given time... You know, the only bit of Christmas I really did not like when I was your age was writing thank-you letters. Not so much the saying thank you for things, but thinking of something else to say, to make it into a proper letter. Do you write letters, or do you telephone people?’
‘Mum rings people and calls me in to say thank you, so I do an’ then I go away again.’ Tom came closer. ‘What did you have for presents when you were little?- I mean, boys: I bet you just had dolls an’ stuff.’
Vera smiled. ‘One year I had a book; a big fat story-book with pictures and poems, and a bright yellow cover. I still have it. The boys had Meccano, or clockwork trains. Some people had roller skates or bicycles... We used to have new shoes, all four of us. My mother had to save up for months because it was a big expense, shoes for four children. And my cousin usually had a new winter coat, and the next week Auntie’d bring the old one round for Doris- that was my eldest sister. So Doris had a new coat, and Emily had hers, and I had Emily’s, and Hilda had mine, and my Mum passed Hilda’s old coat on to someone else, and we all felt very special, going down the road in new shoes and a different coat...’
‘Go on.’ Tom urged, perching on the wall and settling down for a good listen. ‘An’ what did your Mum have for Christmas, when she was that old?’
This time it was Vera’s turn to think hard. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Dolls, I expect. A rag doll, probably, with a wax face if she’d been really very good... My father had a cricket ball one year, and another time he got a board game where you raced horses round a track. And before that the children had oranges and pennies, and the pennies were big, like a modern twopence, and you could get a bag of sweets for a farthing and spend the rest on a ball, or a skipping-rope, or a whip and top... And way, way back, even before that, there was a time when there wasn’t any Christmas at all! Oh, not as far back as the Romans; when Oliver Cromwell was in charge, after King Charles had his head cut off. The Puritans thought the people were too light-hearted and enjoyed themselves too much, so they banned dancing and theatres and football and all sorts of things people did for pleasure, and they banned Christmas.’
She paused. ‘It sounds dreadful, but I think your Mum would understand. The only essential part of Christmas is Jesus being born, and nobody knows the exact date when that happened, so really you could have the Church part of Christmas in the middle of August, and it’d still be Christmas, and you’d be able to concentrate on it without all the adverts and loudspeakers and flashing lights, and people not being able to travel because of the bad weather. Sometimes I think that would be a very good idea.’
They considered this in silence for a while. Eventually, Tom said wistfully, ‘Would we still get presents?’
‘Of course. –Possibly not as many as you get in December, but there’d still be the presents people had even during the time of the Puritans. Jesus, to start with, because He’s God’s present to everyone, for always. You know how Jesus died on the cross for our sins and rose again at Easter? If he’d never been born as a baby, there would never have been an Easter.
‘And then there are the other presents I enjoy getting- some from God, like seeing sunsets, or the first primroses, or the goldfinches that come to my bird-table, and some from people, like this letter from Hilda, or the letters your school sent me after I went in to talk about Traidcraft.
‘But one of the nicest presents I ever had was from a child only a little older than your Katie, when I fell over in the street once and cut my knee very badly. His mum was very practical, and rang for an ambulance, and somebody put their coat round me and picked up my shopping, but this little boy stood watching all the fuss very solemnly, and then he put his hand in his pocket and took something out, and he pushed it into my hand and grinned at me. And when I looked it was a sticky, fluffy jelly baby!’
Tom grinned. ‘Yuck!’
Vera smiled back. ‘So I said thank you very much, and I thought I’d better pretend to eat it, so I pretended, and I slipped it into my pocket. Where, no doubt, it got even fluffier and stickier... but then I had to wait so long in Casualty, and I got so hungry, that in the end I’m ashamed to say I ate it! So you see, Thomas, you don’t have to spend vast sums of money on presents. It’s better to look round and see what needs doing, and do it, and quite often that doesn’t cost anything except time and a bit of thought...’
Tom was not convinced. ‘I’d rather have something proper in paper to open. Mum says I might get a bike...’
Vera wondered whether her words of wisdom had been wasted, but Tom had been listening, as she found out on Christmas morning. When she returned from church she found two parcels in her porch, one decidedly neater than the other. The larger parcel was wrapped in shiny paper and tied with ribbon, and contained a bowl planted with hyacinths, wishing her a Happy Christmas from Ali, Dan, Tom, and Katie. The other was a paper bag fastened with far too much sticky-tape. Attached to it was a page torn from an exercise book which read ‘Dear Miss Cobam I put oil on you’re gate Happy Chrismas Tom.’ Touched, but mentally correcting the spelling and punctuation,Vera cautiously opened the paper bag. ‘Well!’ she said aloud, smiling. ‘The first thank-you letter I write will have to be a very special one.’
She had been given two ounces of jelly babies.
FACT: In Anglo-Saxon times December 25 was New Year’s Day, but from the late 1100s to 1752 the year began on 25 March, Lady Day. Only after 1752 was New Year’s Day the first of January.
COVERED BOXES You may have made up a ‘shoebox’ for one of the charities which sends Christmas presents to children in need. While the wrapping paper is handy, why not cover a shoebox in readiness for next year?
Wrapping paper can’t be recycled, owing to the dyes used in printing it, but you could use the best pieces to cover smallish boxes ready for sending out presents next year. Save any ribbons and bows to decorate them, and tissue paper and bubble-wrap to pad them inside. Choose your boxes carefully, nest one inside another when they’re done, and keep them safe- on top of a wardrobe?- for next year.
GINGERBREAD MEN These are always popular, and can be made to any size or shape you fancy: gingerbread ladies, cats, dogs, initials...
Ingredients: 8 oz plain flour, a flat teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda, the same amount of ginger, 4 oz sugar, 2 oz margarine, 4 oz syrup (weigh this with the sugar so it doesn’t stick to the scales), one egg, currants or something for eyes if necessary.
Method: Wash the hands of any small helpers! Preheat the oven to gas mark 3 or 4 (170-180 C/325-350 F) and grease a baking tray. Mix the flour, bicarb and ginger in a bowl. Melt the margarine, syrup and sugar together over a low heat, then pour into the bowl. Mix, adding enough of the egg to make a stiff dough. Sprinkle some flour on a clean worksurface and pull pieces off the dough, modelling it into flat shapes about ½”/1 cm thick. Put them on the baking tray, not too close together as they will spread, and decorate with currants. Bake for about 15-25 minutes, depending on size, until nicely ginger. Let them cool on the tray for a few minutes then move to a cooling-rack with a fish-slice.
A limerick: can you make sense of it?
Christmas Carols- Match the words to the reference
| 1 |
All out of darkness we have light Which made the angels sing this night
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A |
Luke 2, verse 7 |
| 2 |
Herod the King in his raging Charged he hath this day His men of might in his own sight All young children to slay
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B | Luke 2, verses 25-38 |
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Likewise a bright star in the sky did appear Which led the Wise Men from the east to draw near
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C | Luke 2, verses 8-9 |
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While shepherds watched their flocks by night All seated on the ground The angel of the Lord came down And glory shone around
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D | Luke 2, verses 17-18 |
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Saints before the altar bending Watching long in hope and fear Suddenly the Lord, descending, In His temple shall appear.
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E | Luke 2, verse 14 |
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Then entered in those wise men three Fell reverently upon their knee And offered there in His presence Both gold and myrrh and frankincense
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F | Luke 1, verses 26-28 |
| 7 |
And praises sing to God the King And peace to men on earth
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G | Matthew 2, verse 16 |
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Say, ye holy shepherds, say What your joyful news today: Wherefore have ye left your sheep On the lonely mountain steep?
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H | Matthew 2, verse 11 |
| 9 |
Once in royal David’s city Stood a lowly cattle shed Where a mother laid her baby In a manger for His bed.
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I | Matthew 2, verses 1-2 |
| 10 |
The Angel Gabriel from heaven came His wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame. ‘All hail’ said he ‘thou lowly maiden Mary, Most highly favoured lady, gloria.’
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J | John 1 verses 5,9 |
For Foss, and for his owner, Edward Lear.
THERE were three leaves left on the tree in the front garden, on a small branch which had been snapped earlier in the year. The light from the street lamp behind them cast their shadow on the blind. The cat sat on the back of the sofa, tail curled neatly over her paws, watching the shadows moving. Far away the church clock struck the half hour and the central heating hummed into life again. It was a cold night. The cat watched.
Then another shadow appeared on the blind, settling with a flap of wings onto the branch. It was a bird, and the cat was interested in birds. She watched closely.
A few minutes later a bluebottle lurched from its hiding-place in the corner of the ceiling and blundered towards the table-lamp. The cat lost interest in the bird-shadow and leapt as the fly buzzed above her. The buzz stopped abruptly and the cat batted the small dry corpse around on the carpet for a few seconds.
She padded out to the kitchen. Tantalising smells lingered: the People had been cooking more than usual in the last few days, with visitors coming and going, bringing things, taking things. Cards had gone up, pegged onto ribbons or standing on shelves, and the People had brought twigs indoors, frageant pine, glossy dark ivy, spiny holly. The cat nosed around her dish, finding nothing left from her evening meal. Traffic passed on the road outside and she heard talking and laughter, squeals and shouts and the occasional snatch of singing. Why were so many of the People still around so late at night? Even her own People, who were usually predictable, had hurried off for the second time that day...
She trotted back to the warm lounge, sprang gracefully onto the arm of the sofa and took up her usual position on the back, where the People had thoughtfully placed a woolly jumper. Outside the three leaves waved in the breeze. The bird took off a few times, swooping out of sight for several minutes before returning. Once it was carrying something with a long tail which it ate in two gulps.
The cat watched, ears pricking and the tip of her tail twitching as another group of humans passed outside the house. Surely her People would come home soon? When they returned she would ignore them pointedly for having stayed out so late, then nip upstairs and curl up on the foot of the bed...
There was a thump in the distance. The cat-flap rattled. The cat jumped off the sofa and ran to investigate, tail fluffing out. If it was that black and white tom from up the road she would give him a piece of her mind...
The cat-flap rattled again. She arched her back, preparing to hiss, and recoiled at the sight of round yellow eyes and a sharp beak. The owl rattled the cat-flap again, shuffled a few steps backwards, pulled gently at something dark which lay at its feet and stood glaring at the cat.
She peered into the back garden, wondering what the owl had caught.
‘For goodness’ sake, hurry up!’ the owl snapped. ‘Do something with it, will you?’
‘What do you mean?’ The cat bristled, affronted, but she had pushed open the cat-flap and was halfway out, poised to evade a possible attack.
The distrust was clearly mutual: the owl spread wide, muffled wings and flew silently up to a fence-post. ‘Found it down by the garages.’ it explained. ‘Poor little thing... Your lot’ll know what to do. Especially tonight...’
The cat nosed the scrap of wet fur, then picked it up and looked up at the owl, and pushed back through the cat-flap.
Your lot’ll know what to do, the owl had said. As if you could trust any human to wash a kitten properly! She settled down in her basket under the table and began to lick purposefully. The kitten was very small, very thin, and very cold. What if the People thought it was hers, and turned her out? People had done that to her before, and she had spent a miserable few months as a stray...
They’ll know what to do, the owl had said, and owls were supposed to be wise. Surely the People who’d chosen her from the row of cages would be kind to this little one too? She licked and licked, dribbling because there was oil as well as mud on the thin fur, feeling warmth come back to the small body.
The front door opened.
They were back. One of them was singing softly.
‘Yea, Lord, we greet Thee,
‘Born this happy morning...’
‘Where’s Puss? Puss-puss-puss-‘
The cat sat tight under the table, still washing the kitten, tense with apprehension.
‘There she is, under the table. –She’s got something-‘
‘Oh, not a mouse, surely, not tonight- Come on, pussy, let’s see- Here, it’s a kitten!’
She relinquished the newcomer and watched as they found a towel and milk and boiled a kettle, then tried to spoon drops of milk into the pink gape.
‘I wonder where she found that?’ one of them asked at last, making a pot of tea. ‘There’s oil on its fur, so I should think it’s a stray...’
‘We’ll have to report it, and find out how to get the oil off. I’ll look on the internet.’ The other looked down at the waiting cat. ‘Do you want Baby back for the moment? I think he’s had all the milk he wants for now...’
The kitten was placed in the basket, and the cat curled round it, licking.
‘I’m glad she’s so maternal.’ The second human accepted a mug of tea. ‘She’s usually such a grand duchess: she’s never shown her nicer nature before.’
‘Ah well, that’s Christmas for you. Peace on earth, goodwill to all men- and cats.’
In the basket under the table, two cats purred.
Aimed at everyone who never quite finds the hymns in time to sing the first line… These are the last lines of the first verses of hymns for Advent and Christmas and Epiphany. What are the FIRST lines?
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To hear the angels sing.
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O ye children of the day.
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Long ago.
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Shall come to thee, O Israel.
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Evermore be led to thee.
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Glad tidings of the King of Kings.
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Let us find our rest in thee.
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And glory shone around.
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And every voice a song.
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Born the King of Angels:
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Kneel and adore him, the Lord is his name.
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Repeat the hymn again:
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Glory to the new-born King
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Of God incarnate and the Virgin’s son.
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Jesus Christ, her little child.
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Are met in thee tonight.
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Now proclaim Messiah’s birth:
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He judgment brings and victory.
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On a cold winter’s night that was so deep:
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Following yonder star:
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Came to rule his Israel.
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Sleep in heavenly peace.
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Deep and crisp and even.
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When we had gone astray:
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The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay.
FACT: A Devon man named Wynfrith was the originator of the Christmas tree. When he became a monk he was known as Boniface. In the year 719 he went out as a missionary to the Germans, who at that time worshipped the Norse gods. At Christmas one year he found the Germans sacrificing to an oak tree in honour of Odin: he cut down the oak tree and pointed out a small fir tree which stood near it. ‘As the oak to Odin, so is this tree to the true God .You use the wood of this tree to build your homes: let Christ be at the heart of your lives. The leaves of this tree are green even in Winter: Christ will be with you always. The branches of this tree reach out and the top points to heaven: let Christ comfort and guide you.’
We wish you a happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year.
