A further dip into the Haworth registers shows that Patrick Brontë took seventeen christenings and four weddings on his first Christmas Day (1820). The logistics alone are mind boggling. I think I was aware that it was an unusually popular day for weddings – simply because Bob Crachit wasn’t the only one for whom it was a rare day off – but I hadn’t anticipated it being so for christenings as well, let alone anticipate such a number.
There had
been none on that day the previous year when there wasn’t an incumbent and
presumably there wasn’t an alternative clergyman easily available, which
reminds me of the arguments going on in those years about enforcing clerical residence
– it was said that the non-availability of a resident parson would severely
restrict timely access to ministry and in this case (through vacancy rather than habitual non-residence) this was true.
The thought
about Bob Crachit made me dip one step further.
Twenty-three years later, in the year that Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published (1843), things had eased off a bit. There were two Christenings on Christmas Eve and two on Christmas Day, one Wedding on
Christmas Day and one on Boxing Day. But I note in particular that – forget
Tiny Tim – he buried one year old Frances Sugden on Christmas Eve and five
month old James Roberts on Boxing Day.
The picture is one of Giuseppe Penone's tree installations at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
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