Christmas is a time where there are so many connotations, through so many associated words that it becomes impossible to read some words in any other context. These keywords, such as “snow”, “Santa”, or “Slade” are all things one can use to search the catalogue of Dorset History Centre.
As we looked through our holdings for some suitably festive material, it became increasingly obvious however that there are alternative stories to tell. Stories where all those familiar festive buzzwords actually relate to something entirely different. We therefore would like to take this opportunity to look at some of the records which seemingly relate to Christmas, but actually have no relation at all!
Christmas
Simply searching for Christmas will find you a large amount of material in our catalogue. This is because Christmas, long before it had the connotations of the 20th and 21st Centuries, was simply another date in the calendar by which people had to pay bills. Our catalogue has numerous vouchers to and from people which needed paying by Christmas; and often we find the terms of leases or land-ownership documents would be until Christmas.
However for this entry we have instead chosen to look at the Christmas family of Sydling. In D-CPR collection (the Copper collection) there is an Assignment of leaseholds from 3 December 1604. In this assignment Thomas Christmas, his daughter-in-law Katheryn Christmas and her son Richard Christmas Jnr were assigned a house with arable and meadow lands. Merry Christmas indeed!
Santa
No Christmas story is the same without a visit from good old Santa. Unfortunately, in our catalogues, Santa is conspicuous by his absence. Instead, when we search for ‘Santa’ in our catalogue you will find documents detailing tombs and unknown inscriptions. Far from being some bizarre mystery involving the big red guy, these are instead records of William John Bankes’ investigations and sketches at Santa Maura in Greece in 1817!
St. Nicholas
Not that his alias, that of jolly old St. Nick is any easier to find. Naturally in a county that has Sydling St. Nicholas as one of its parishes, as well as a few churches of St. Nicholas, there is a large amount of material, although none of it relates to the bearer of gifts! Instead (and we could have picked any one of a large number of documents for this entry) we have chosen this wonderfully idyllic scene of Sydling St. Nicholas from c.1955.
Rudolph
The leader of the reindeer pack is as inconspicuous as his driver in our collections. A search only yields seven results. Of these, we have chosen to celebrate the work of the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra from 1949 when they played at the Winter Gardens in Bournemouth, and were conducted by Rudolf Schwarz (and yes, we know it’s spelt differently!)
Snow
Naturally, when searching for the white stuff, we find various photographs of the towns and countryside of the county filled up with snow, but we decided this was too obvious. So we instead found the only slightly-less-obvious performance of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in the collection of West Stafford’s Golden Jubilee Celebrations from 2002. Given the Jubilee celebrations took place between May and July, we are going to hope that this was not a Christmas Panto!
Turkey
Of course, no Christmas is complete without the turkey (unless, of course, you are vegetarian), and whilst we could again look at some of the locations William John Bankes visited on his various adventures, as he spent some time in Turkey; instead, we have found the sales particulars of Turkey Cottage, Dorchester Road, Maiden Newton from 1950.
And finally…
…because of course you can’t get through Christmas without them. We couldn’t go all the way through this blog without looking out for Noddy and his boys. That Slade’s Charity was giving out Christmas aid in the mid-20th Century is something of a bonus!
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We hope you enjoyed our ‘festive’ trawl through some of our collections! We hope that this blog emphasises the need to be thorough with catalogue searching, and to ensure that what you are after is relevant to your search. Keywords are useful to begin with, but searches need to be narrowed down to ensure that they are relevant! Staff are always available to help with any searches or problems you might be having: archives@dorsetcouncil.gov.uk
Your reference to ‘Santa’ recognises the impact of American English on our times. I am an Australian, but grew up decades ago when this country was still practicing ‘Old English’, and my abiding memories are of receiving presents from a ‘Father Christmas’.