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made in the ordinary manner, coloured with saffron, as is the custom in these parts. On this occasion the peculiarity of the cakes is, that a small portion of the dough in the centre of each top is pulled up and made into a form which resembles a very small cake on the top of a large one, and this centre-piece is usually called " the Christmas." Each person in a house has his or her especial cake, and every person ought to taste a small piece of every other person's cake. Similar cakes are also bestowed on the hangers-on of the establishment, such as laundresses, sempstresses, charwomen, &c., and even some people who are in the receipt of weekly charity call, as a matter of course, for their Christmas cakes. The cakes must not be cut until Christmas-day, it being probably unlucky to eat them sooner." — (Geo. C. Boase, Notes and Queries, 5th series, Dec. 21st, 1878.)
The materials to make these and nearly all the cakes at this season were at one time given by the grocers to their principal customers.
In Cornwall, as in the other English counties, the houses are at Christmas " dressed up " with evergreens, sold in small bunches, called " Penn'orths of Christmas " ; and two hoops fastened one in the other by nails at the centres are gaily decorated with evergreens, apples, oranges, &c., and suspended from the middle beam in the ceiling of the best kitchen. This is the " bush," or '* kissing bush." At night a lighted candle is put in it, stuck on the bottom nail ; but once or twice lately I have seen a Chinese lantern hanging from the top one. This is an innovation.
In a few remote districts on Christmas-eve children may be, after nightfall, occasionally (but rarely) found dancing around painted lighted candles placed in a box of sand. This custom was very general fifty years ago. The church towers, too, are sometimes illu- minated. This, of course, on the coast can only be done in very calm weather. The tower of Zennor church (Zennor is a village on the north coast of Cornwall, between St. Ives and St. Just) was lit up in 1883, for the first time since 1866.
When open chimneys were universal in farmhouses the Christmas stock, mock, or block (the log), on which a rude figure of a man had been chalked, was kindled with great ceremony; in some parts with a piece of a charred wood that had been saved from the last year's
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