Odd this day
270 years ago today, this date became ‘Old Christmas Day’. The previous year, Britain had introduced the Gregorian calendar — only 170 years after Pope Gregory first came up with it — and 2 September had been followed by 14th.
The ‘give us back our 11 days’ riots which have passed into legend didn’t actually happen, but some people were jolly cross because it was a beastly, papist idea — so they refused to observe this new-fangled, so-called Christmas Day and continued to celebrate it on 6 January instead — and this continued right up to the 20th century.
You may remember that there were those who believed that farmyard creatures were also stubborn in their observance of the date:
Either way — SOUND THE RANDOM DIGRESSION KLAXON — what I can tell you is that today is Baddeley Cake day at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, thanks to long-forgotten actor (outside Drury Lane, at least) Robert Baddeley, 1733–94.
He was never a leading man, but was, apparently, “a great success in low comedy and servants’ parts, and often played comic foreigners”. (He was also not a successful husband and once fought a duel over his faithless wife.)
But the important thing is that he set aside £100 in his will to be invested to provide £3 each year for cake and wine for the actors in whatever show was on at Drury Lane at the time. Here’s the cast of Babes in the Wood enjoying theirs in 1908.
I’m a particular fan of these people who can’t agree on which direction to look in:
You can find out more about Baddeley and the cake from the excellent Spitalfields Life blog:
…which includes an entertaining shot of Alex Jennings cutting a Wonka-themed cake, which seems to signify that the cakes have got gradually more elaborate and relevant to the show of the moment. The current one is Frozen, so this very evening a cast may be asking themselves: do you want to eat a snowman?
