[Editor: This article, regarding Christmas, was published in the “Stray notes” section in The Week (Brisbane, Qld.), 17 December 1887.]
Stray Notes.
By a Non-Bohemian.
Inseparables.
Father Christmas and Jack Frost are familiars in old England. Jack comes along with what the boys call “a keyhole frost,” and gets things ready for exciting sports on Jack’s back. Rinking is an illegitimate imitation of the glorious whirligig on a well laid field of ice.
How boys glory in the prospect of a good sharp, sneezing frost at Christmas! The thing they do not like is the dark lowering look of the clouds which sometimes gather in the north and threaten a heavy fall of snow, or at best a black frost. It is bitterly cold, with nothing bracing in its touch. The wind gets through one’s garments, of whatever material and thickness. It makes one look blue, feel blue, and curse Jack that he did not give a more tender regard to his votaries.
A good run and tumble on the ice give one an amazing appetite for the roast beef of old England. Mountains of it melt before the warm appetites of a “growing family.” Young Australia hardly knows what is meant by a model Christmas. He knows what a good dinner is, but where is the appetite which Jack Frost gives as an indispensable condition of enjoyment? It comes of having brawny muscles, great thews like cords of wire, strong bones full of marrow, and blood full of good ozone.
But “out here” Jack Frost is unknown, and Father Christmas comes laden with a number of good things to be sure — puppet dogs, sheep, horses, and elephants, with blast of trumpets, bugles, and other instruments of music, of wind instruments, the windiest. If no ice, no snow, no skating, sliding, snowballing, and such like accomplishments, yet, after all, probably not many of our boys would change the new world for the old. We give them a word, “A merry Christmas to ye, my hearties.”
Source:
The Week (Brisbane, Qld.), 17 December 1887, p. 15
Also published in:
The Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld.), 24 December 1887, p. 2
Editor’s notes:
blue = depressed, sad; to have “the blues” is to feel very down or low in spirit
Jack Frost = a personification of cold weather, freezing temperatures, frost, ice, sleet, snow, and winter
See: 1) “Jack Frost”, Mythical Creatures
2) “A brief history of Jack Frost”, Writing in Margins, 27 June 2016
3) Jaime McLeod, “Who is Jack Frost?”, Farmers’ Almanac, 22 December 2022
4) “Jack Frost – Jokul Frosti legend in Norse mythology”, Mythical Creatures
5) “Origins of Jack Frost”, A.B.E. Doors & Windows, 16 December 2019
6) “Jack Frost”, Wikipedia
rinking = the act of skating on an ice rink
thews = muscles or sinews; physical strength or vitality
votaries = plural of votary [see: votary]
votary = (plural: votaries) someone who is bound by solemn vows to a religious life, such as a monk or a nun; a devoted adherent, admirer, advocate, believer, fan, or follower of a particular cause, leader, religion, hobby, or pursuit
ye = (archaic; dialectal) you (still in use in some places, e.g. in Cornwall, Ireland, Newfoundland, and Northern England; it can used as either the singular or plural form of “you”, although the plural form is the more common usage)
[Editor: Changed “appenite” to “appetite”.]
[Editor: The original text has been separated into paragraphs.]
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