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Christmas is complicated.

I keep seeing things about simplifying Christmas while the next thing on my feed is about something new I can do to add to my Christmas traditions. I think we are a bit like hamsters in a wheel. So I was considering Christmas Regency style. At first thought, I had some romantic notion that  Christmas in the Regency era would have been much more simple but as I pondered that premise a bit longer it soon became obvious that Christmas could not have been very simple because they had to make pretty much everything from scratch! Sure, they had servants to do most of the manual labor - but that made Christmas anything but simple for them! Actually cutting down your tree without anything electrical to either cut it or transport it, gathering garlands and holly from the woods, arranging a lot more candles and having to hand light every stinking one! Phew, makes me tired just thinking about it. And then there was all the extra cooking, extra in quantity and extra in difficulty. No Sara Lee for them! And the extra people meant extra linens to prepare and wash and fires to light. Conclusion: Christmas is complicated now and then and perhaps that is part of what makes it special.

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