A real medieval xmas.....

Merry christmas everybody, friends, family and visitors alike. No doubt everyone apart from me is now gorged on pies, wine, turkey etc etc and sinking under the weight of presents.

I say apart from me as my two eldest are away for christmas day and so we're celebrating on New Years Day so we actually end up with four xmas dinners and 3 days of presents this year. All gets very confusing but our big day is then.

In the meantime it reminded me that were we all doing this properly, none of us would have presents yet. They weren't opened till much later, nor would we be celebrating new year and twelth night would have all sorts of religious goings on plus the start of the countdown to pentecost and lent and all the rest.

But at this time of year the master of the estate would give gifts to all his retainers - generally this would include food and wool, the wool would be in the form of cloth for everybody to make clothes in the family colours although for soldiers their trousers were traditionally red (to hide the blood allegedly). Each would also have a small badge to represent the household.

So as the master of Bryn Madn and Head of Hawthorn Trading along with Jennet, to all my friends and family I give to each

4 bolts of black wool and one bolt of white
1 roasted hog
2 stuffed Geese
and a hogshead of ale (look up how much that really is, scarlet - you may need to stop athor from drowning..)
A silver hawthorn sprig badge

And of course all my love and affection to you all for the year to come.



(Except marzena, who for some reason seems to think that medieval ladies had clutch bags and wore a dress that would fit inside one, fucking halfwit.)