The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers has said following the conclusion of the final vote for the Beard of the Year 2022 on Christmas Eve, the BLF Electoral College will meet on 27th December.
The final list consisted of four names after two earlier voting rounds shaved the shortlist of eight names
The Electoral College will verify the over 11,000 votes cast and review the record of the four finalists in terms of positive beard impact across 2022. These two elements combined will determine the outcome.
Beard of the Year will be announced on 28th December.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we expect the outcome of the Electoral College to be a close shave
The Bank Holidays Act of 1871 introduced four Bank Holidays in England and Wales Boxing Day, Good Friday, Whitsun and August. Christmas Day and Easter Sunday were already recognised as religious holidays.
The reasons for the Act are not particularly easy to discern, except for the point that the UK in general had fewer such holidays than the rest of Europe- which is still true. Part of the reason may have been to try and counter the continuing practice of Saint Monday, where workers extended the weekend by a further day.
Parliament later determined that if Christmas and Boxing Day fell at the weekend then the following days would be Bank Holidays. In addition from 1974 New Years Day became a Bank Holiday in England and Wales (the 1871 Act had made New Years Day not Boxing Day a holiday in Scotland) and Boxing Day a Bank Holiday in Scotland….
Boxing Day was mentioned by Dickens in the Pickwick Papers but not in a Christmas Carol (1843) where Scrooge’s clerk was reluctantly given the whole of Christmas Day off but told to be at work early the following day.
However a check on the New Year edition of the Chartist paper the Northern Star for 1852 (its last year of publication) reveals Boxing Day crowds at London theatres. In addition there was Boxing Day entertainment at O’Connorville, part of the Chartist Land Plan on the outskirts of Ricksmanworth (now expensive housing..)
Perhaps in 1871 Parliament bowed to the inevitable
Northern Star 3rd January 1852
Christmas Amusements
Drury Lane
Mr Bunn once more lessee of this theatre commenced on his new course of management on Boxing night. The house was filled to overflowing with a holiday audience
Astleys (225 Westminster Bridge Rd)
Holiday nights are always bumpers at this theatre and Boxing night was no exception to the rule. The audience was as numerous, as patient, and although noisy, as good humoured as any manager could desire.
Christmas at O’Connorville (Ricksmanworth)
A tea party, soiree and ball was held in the School Room on Boxing Day, on which occasion a goodly number of allotees, their wives and families assembled to take part in the entertainments provided.. singing and dancing were kept up to an early hour in the morning
Michael Mosbacher writing in the Telegraph (where else aside from the Times or Mail) has claimed that the ‘woke mob’ has declared war on Christmas trees. Expect several hours of ‘debate’ on GB News later.
Mr Mosbacher has visited some of the great cultural institutions of London such as the Tate and found that they either have some other form of seasonal display not involving a tree or nothing at all. Reassuringly he found a tree and lots of Christmas baubles at the Ritz.
His assumption is that a lack of Christmas Trees is due to wokery though he doesn’t seem to have checked. It may of course be down to environmental concerns or simply that trees make a lot of mess with dropped pine needles and then have to be disposed of.
Like so much else at Christmas the tree is an invented tradition. It came to Britain in the early 1840s which may explain why Scrooge got a giant turkey for the Cratchits but not a tree. Dickens published the Christmas Carol on 19th December 1843.
It was Prince Albert who popularised the Christmas Tree with Royal celebrations in 1848.
Mr Mosbacher has clearly failed to notice that the traditional Christmas tree from Norway stands in Trafalgar Square. It a tradition invented after the Second World War and every year people like Mr Mosbacher complain that it looks too much like a tree and not what Prince Albert had in mind at all.
The early modern origins of Boxing Day. A matter of class
The origins of Boxing Day are in 2025 perhaps obscure. It was not, despite it now being, a major sporting day, traditionally a time for boxing matches for example.
Rather the early modern traditions of the day go back to the 1660s (just after the period when Christmas had been officially banned) where Christmas gifts (usually money) were left in a box by the better off for those who had done work for them during the year.
Hutton in Stations of the Sun notes that Samuel Pepys recorded putting money in five or six such boxes on Christmas Day 1667 to allow the recipients to have a more enjoyable festive season.
The following year Pepys was complaining (December 28th 1668) : “Called up by drums & trumpets; these things & boxes having cost me much money this Christmas.”
The wealthy being what they are complaints were not slow in coming. In 1710 Jonathan Swift complained that he would be ‘undone’ by the giving of Christmas boxes and in 1756 Sir John Fielding that the total cost of such boxes could amount to £30 (when the average wage was around £1 a week).
The Daily Telegraph, which knows about these things, has noted:
British servants to the wealthy in the 19th century were given time off to visit their families as their services had been required for the Christmas Day celebrations of their employers. They were therefore allowed the following day for their own observance of the holiday; each servant would be handed a box to take home, containing gifts, bonuses and sometimes leftover food.
As Hutton underlines the practice of the Boxing Day ‘box’ was not easily given up by the less well-off and in 1871 Boxing Day itself became an official day off, a Bank Holiday.
In modern neo-liberal times the pressure particularly in retail and services is making Boxing Day a working day again. The only effective brake here is trade union organisation.
King Charles Xmas broadcast which highlighted the cost of living crisis and praised health workers and teachers seemed designed to annoy Tories. They are of course too arrogant to care. While historically the Tories are the Party of Church and King, as they were at Peterloo in 1819 44 day Truss made clear this is only a front for their obsession with money (mainly making it for themselves)
However the Royal Christmas deserves attention since there was clearly no cost of living crisis. The King has 20 Royal Palaces to choose from but tradition dictates a seasonal appearance at Sandringham. The Queen stayed on until the 6th February each year but the Times reports that Charlie and Co are off to Scotland ASAP.
This year was marked by the biggest Royal Christmas gathering for a while. Camilla brought some of her relatives along and Fergie was allowed back after being banned by the Duke of Edinburgh. Andrew was also present and managed a brief walk to Church without being arrested.
No detail of what was eaten has yet emerged although the King is apparently not keen on lunch. Given the reluctance of the Cabinet Office to release Royal Papers for researchers it may be that details of the repast remain secret.
It looks like the South Borsetshire Boxing Day hunt will go ahead again. With the departure of Shula to Sunderland, Oliver Sterling is expected to lead the horses on the day. He did a PR job for the Hunt at the Hunt Ball back in 2022 but the Ambridge Socialist was not fooled.
We don’t expect the BBC to report it but the Ambridge Socialist will have reporters out covering what takes place
The Ambridge Socialist has backed Mia Grundy’s protests in the past and numbers of supporters have pledged to help. Protesters gathered on the Village Green at 9am on Boxing Day. Glasses of mulled Tumble Tussocks will be available throughout the day.
Engels may have been guilty of Christmas dinner mistletoe & beard error
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has urged those with beards to take extra care when kissing under the mistletoe this Christmas.
There may be particular issues when two beards are involved but the guidelines also apply more generally.
The campaigners say that mistletoe can easily become intertwined with the beard leading to potential damage to follicles. Additionally the mistletoe berries may squash into the beard and cause further damage.
Mistletoe was a regular feature of Christmas dinners at the residence of Friedrich Engels in the 1870s and 1880s in Regents Park Rd but there is no evidence that he followed BLF guidelines and may on occasion have suffered follicle damage as a result
BLF Guidelines to kissing under the Mistletoe
1] Keep the mistletoe at least six inches from the beard, preferably by ducking or squatting under it.
2] Avoid any contact between the beard and the mistletoe
3] If contact does accidentally occur immediately cleanse the beard in a glass of imperial stout to avoid any damage to follicles
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said Kissing under the mistletoe is a traditional part of Christmas, or at least it has been since the Victorian era. However the hirsute need to take particular care to avoid follicle damage. Engels example is not one we would advise the hirsute to follow on this occasion.
Christmas dinner at Friedrich Engels (122 Regents Park Rd NW1)
The following is an extract from Eduard Bernstein’s My Years of Exile (1915). Bernstein was a co-thinker of Marx and Engels who went on to be a revisionist leader of the German SPD.
Engels was indeed a considerable fan of plum puddings. He was an enthusiastic beer drinker, particularly Pilsner but had a wine cellar. He certainly didn’t cook the Christmas dinner himself but he was also to be found in the kitchen on occasion. He was well known for his lobster salad, the recipe for which is sadly not extant
Christmas was kept by Engels after the English fashion as Charles Dickens has so delightfully described it in The Pickwick Papers. The room is decorated with green boughs of every kind, between which, in suitable places, the perfidious mistletoe peeps forth, which gives every man the right to kiss any person of the opposite sex who is standing beneath it or whom he can catch in passing. At table the principal dish is a mighty turkey, and if the exchequer will run to it this is supplemented by a great cooked ham. A few additional attractions – one of which, a sweet known as tipsy-cake, is, as the name denotes, prepared with brandy or sherry – make way for the dish of honour, the plum-pudding, which is served up, the room having been darkened, with burning rum. Each guest must receive his helping of pudding, liberally christened with good spirits, before the flame dies out. This lays a foundation which may well prove hazardous to those who do not measure their consumption of the accompanying wines.
Peace & Goodwill for the Ambridge Xmas: the Tories haven’t noticed
Elsewhere in the country a Tory promoted class war is in progress. In Ambridge though peace and goodwill reigns at Christmas. The two choirs of Fallon and Jolene united for a final seasonal warble. Meanwhile via Ben, Jill and Daveed have been reconciled and she will return to Brookfield to oversee the cooking of the Christmas dinner and in particular Daveed’s ‘timings’
Choirs v Panto
The Ambridge Socialist view is that the choirs of 2022 were a relatively benign Xmas storyline compared to the perennial pofflings associated with Lynda’s Pantos..
David & Nigel. Confession nears
As another anniversary of Nigel Pargetter’s murder looms Daveed has come close to a confession this week. Perhaps he didn’t exactly push Nigel off the roof of Lower Loxley but he knew what he was doing. Putting Nigel in harm’s way as a current Tory Minister would say.
Writing on the Wall for the Tories in Ambridge
A new poll shows that rural voters are now as likely to vote Labour as Tory. Perhaps Sir Keir will stop by The Bull in the New Year and have a chat with Eddie Grundy about his voting intentions
Happy Christmas(but note Marx’s 25th Dec 1857 advice to Engels on tippling)
Marx in London and Engels in Manchester were frequent correspondents.
Marx wrote to Engels on 25th December 1857 (in part)
I trust you won’t go out tippling too much during the holiday and these exciting times in Manchester and that you’ll pay due attention to your health. Warmest regards to Lupus.
Lupus refers to a co-thinker of Marx and Engels Wilhlem Wolf
