Gifts - now there's a topic that generates visions of misery, catastrophe and ire. I recall a distant year when such things were used, and a husband had gifted his wife a far better camera than his wife had bought him. Then there's getting cheap tat from someone on whom you had splurged out on a luxury item..... and then there's buying a toy for a child who already has had that one - and never liked it much anyway. Then there's the hunt for receipts for all the clothes that will not fit and in styles and  colours that appal despite the weak smiles of thanks.
And so also, OK, my regal friends, Yeh, leave the gold and the  frankincense too, that can probably be gifted on to an elderly aunt, but could we er, possibly exchange the er, myrrh, mmm?

Ah, the joy of giving in our secular age. Obvious "re-gifted" gifts (items assessed and immediately rejected by the new donor the Christmas Day of the previous year) give one pause for thought. This didn't happen to me, but I once heard of a someone opening a basket of toiletries - one of those delightful "gift sets" from Boots or a similar emporium - only to notice a huge gap where the talcum powder or  soap-on-a-rope or something had once been.  Something in the unloved set had at least caught the original recipient's eye and had been considered worth keeping. Perhaps another lucky friend got it.

if its disasters you want, I have a bagful..... and that's without mention of the loss of dear ones.... not only down the M1 but from this earthly coil... though I can see the attraction in timing.... it does seem to throw plans awry. I was thinking more of things like Christmas trees - assorted.
There's the 15ft tree I had in our hall abroad when finally fully decorated with lights on that was brought down with a huge crash by three cats in clearly planned assault. The there was father burning one down with Victorian candle holders intended for a much larger trree. There are trees that become needle bare by 24th night and some tha are just too big.
My grandson bought last year's tree for the family, he seemed to think they lived in a stately home and 4 ft of trunk and branches had to be taken off... to get it into the house......then more later. And of course it  also turned out to cost a fortune when his father's credit card account arrived... and the back patio was a mess of chunks and branches of tree.

My fav tree story is of the expat family in the subcontinent who were awakened very early on Christmas morning by 20 local non Christian staff who were very excited to   present a huge bound up fir tree that they had been hiding for 2 weeks - it having being brought  at great trouble and expense from the foot hills to present to their well liked boss and his family, as their Christmas gift. A load of us - none too sober - later had to help dispose of it secretly  late in the night less the very dead tree appeared to be unappreciated.

The Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square is a sorry sight this year - has it got some awful tree disease? It is all droopy and miserable - obviously pining for the fjords. The threadbare offering has united Londoners in dismay (well, more dismay than usual - dismay being our default setting at the moment). "Even Norway hates us!" commented the Metro. One wit(?) on social media wondered if we are now at war with our former friends up north, and another suggested:

“Norway has not taken the sacking of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer well."

Gosh, so was the tree a punishment for the former Manchester United manager’s departure from the club?

I had no idea Manchester United had a Norwegian manager.

Norway apparently thinks the tree is OK and won't send a replacement - it probably wouldn't get through Customs now in time for Christmas anyway. I blame the French (so does Nelson up there). I bet Macron told the Norwegians to send us the mangiest tree they could find and they obliged.

Edinburgh's is OK. Donated by Hordaland County in Norway it sits alongside a geometric snowflake light display designed by Hannah Ayre and Amanda Yates on the Mound.

Decorations.... a by word for disaster. We all made those ring chains when young, I expect and the awful things were strung about in otherwise tasteful decor - and of course the phrase 'the weakest link,' probably started there from sections that broke loose. In the tropics in my early days, one strung up whatever was sold in the bazaar. Tissue expanding bands of tissue paper chains in lurid shades for the most part were the mainstaay - along with similar cheap paper balls and bells that now cost a fortune at smart shops.

Now these often caused a problem for the unwary. It being cool enough in the shaded homes in December, the centre fans are not used and are ideal for fixing swathes of gaudy paper chains. And of course some idiot would then carelessly flick the fan switch in error when putting on lights. And even on slow, fans go at quite a lick so in the fraction of a second a room could look like the tray of a paper shredder and the fan shaft a tightly bound mess.

Christmas Day Menu for the Beverley Hills Hotel, 1945:

Boxing Day Lunch on the Queen Mary in 1940 (for Officers), QM being a Troopship at the time:

Christmas Dinner for 215 Squadron, RAF, at the time based in Jessore in (now) Bangladesh:

The Lord of Misrule:

Often people blackened their faces or disguised themselves as animals or cross-dressed, thus operating under a protective cloak of anonymity. The late-nineteenth-century historian John Ashton reports one episode from Lincolnshire in 1637, in which a man selected by a crowd of revelers as “Lord of Misrule” was publicly given a “wife,” in a ceremony led by a man dressed as a minister (he read the entire marriage service from the Book of Common Prayer). Thereupon, as Ashton noted in Victorian language, “the affair was carried to its utmost extent.”

London Palladium Pantomime, from the 1950s

BBC2 are showing this film at the moment.

Funtime at a Moscow Christmas Party...1913??

Triceratops wrote:

It's often thought that the modern day image of Santa Claus was created by the Coca Cola Company.

However, this picture by Thomas Nast appeared in the 1st January 1881 edition of Harper's Weekly several decades before Coca- Cola began using the image:

Also from North America and the late 19th Century - one of the earliest, if not the earliest, known recordings of a non-religious Christmas song:

Sleigh Ride Party with Len Spencer and Friends (1897)

Recorded on a wax cylinder and played on a phonograph (both in excellent condition) the sound quality is astonishing for being 125 years old.