Tea at Trianon: Food, Noise, Fire!

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Food, Noise, Fire!

Touchstone features a delightful story by my friend Rebecca Sicree.

G. K. Chesterton called tradition “the democracy of the dead” because it gave “votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.” If he had been blessed with children, he would have learned that the democracy of the dead is often overthrown by the dictatorship of one’s descendants. Live children have a way of overruling dead ancestors. They even overrule their ancestors who are not dead. By the time our tenth child arrived, our Christmas traditions had devolved to resemble the more successful children’s party games, all of which, as my husband is fond of pointing out, involve food, noise, or fire. Preferably all three.

Saying family prayers around an Advent wreath, for example, scores a surprisingly high two out of three for noise and fire. (If you cannot imagine how evening prayers could involve noise, you obviously have never heard our family sing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” accompanied by maracas.) Up to the last amen, my children behave reasonably well.

Then we have the Great Candle Competition. (Read entire article.)