Just for Laughs

Hope this makes your New Year's Eve a little brighter! :)

Confessions' Anniversary Give-Away!!!

Hello everyone!
The first anniversary of Confessions is coming up in exactly one month! To celebrate our first year of all things Anne I am hosting a give-away. All you need to do is comment with your email address on this post to enter. To recieve additional entries, refer a friend to follow the blog and list their name in a second comment. You will recieve 1 entry for every friend who becomes a follower.
The winner of our give-away will recieve a paperback copy of The Love Letters of Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn. Thanks for an amazing first year! Happy following and good luck!!

Anne Boleyn's Book of Hours Podcast

Hello All,
There was such a positive response to the first Anne Boleyn podcast I posted that I hunted up another. The subject of this podcast is Anne Boleyn's Book of Hours and it is an interview with the curator of the British National Libraries, Scott McKendrick. A Book of Hours is a personal prayer devotional that was popular amongst high-born, religious minded nobles. They were popular from the thirteenth century until the Reformation and were so named because they contained the short prayers said to the Virgin Mary that were read during eight fixed hours during the day. Not only is Anne's copy beautiful, but it reveals a very personal look at the relationship between Anne and Henry as it contains their personal notes to each other written in the margins and on the inside covers. The book is currently housed at Hever Castle, the childhood home of Anne. It is one of the few remaining posessions of Queen Anne as most were destroyed by her enemies following her execution. Click here for the audio.



Imagery of Anne's Book of Hours
Courtesy of the British Library Board



Read of the Week

This week I enjoyed Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. It was an interesting book, told from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, very uncommon amongst novels about Anne Boleyn. Mantel humanizes familiar characters and makes them seem refreshed and alive. Her descriptions of King Henry's rages, conniving court politics and Jane Seymour's frigid and dull personality are so incredibly vivid that you can easily get lost in the story. Even while lost in the narrative, I found myself disagreeing with the author that Cromwell implicates many of Anne's alleged lovers in his quest for revenge for their role in and mocking of the fall of his former master Cardinal Wolsey, though the angle is interesting to consider. My one complaint with the book is the portrayal of Anne. She is painted as uncaringly ambitious and overly haughty. She was undoubtedly ambitious and haughty, but her more endearing characteristics were completely ignored. Although this portrayal could be intentional, Mantel might've been trying to help readers understand not only the mind-set of Cromwell, but also the Tudor theological idea that women were offensive to God due to original sin. Be aware that the author holds a very favorable, almost hero-like view of Cromwell which makes her seriously consider some of the adultery rumors that directly led to Anne's fall,  in spite of the fact that most historians now agree she was innocent.  Despite this, the book is incredibly well researched and written. Absent from it are the overt creative liberties taken by some historical novelists. Pick it up today, you won't be disappointed.

Christmas at the Tudor Court

Christmas in Tudor England was very different from the celebration we know. For the four weeks leading up to Christmas Day, people would fast in observation of Advent. The twelve days of Christmas began on Christmas day and lasted through January 6th, the eve of the Epiphany for Catholics and Anglicans. On the day of Epiphany there was much celebration, music and feasting.

The Yule Log was an important part of Tudor Christmas celebrations. A family would bring in a log decorated with ribbons and place it in their hearth on Christmas Eve. The large log would burn through the twelve days and ashes of the log were kept to throw on next year's fire for good luck.

Gifts were exchanged on New Year's Day, not Christmas and they had very real political meaning and implication. Rich, gold gifts were often given to court favorites including the King's children, wives, nobility and council members. If a high-born man was left out of this gift giving it could be a sign of disfavor with the royal family. In 1532, in the height of King Henry's divorce drama, he famously rejected a diamond encrusted cup from Catherine of Aragon while accepting a beautifully adorned clock from Anne Boleyn.

 The royal cooks baked a silver coin into the Christmas cake and whoever found it was the appointed "Lord of Misrule". The Lord of Misrule was a commoner who supervised the celebrations of the Twelve Days encouraging entertainment and revelry as well as received lavish gifts and the favor of the royals.

Plow (Plough) Monday was the official end of the twelve days of Christmas named such because it was the time when those who lives on the land returned to plowing.  Wassailing and caroling were also important traditions though we know less about how they worked because they were outlawed in the midst of Edwardian religious reform.

Christmas in Tudor England was based around religion and less materialistic than the way we experience it. Debate about how it should be celebrated in post-reformation England would dominate political conversation for years to come.

Clock given to King Henry VIII by Anne Boleyn
New Year's 1532