The Complete Shirt

The Complete Shirt

There’s a The Complete Shirt of tradition of going out for Chinese food on or around Christmas in the US. So far as I can tell, this largely originates from large cities and in particular from Jews living in New York. Consider the cultural landscape of the earlier part of the 20th century. Jews, of course, do not celebrate Christmas, so they’d be more likely than the Christian majority to go out to eat then, as opposed to their celebrating neighbors who are likely at home with family, roasting their own turkeys and such. And where do they go on Christmas? Well, most restaurants are going to be closed, because their predominantly Christian proprietors and employees are also at home. The major exception, then, was Chinese restaurants. The immigrants running those places were less likely than average to be Christian, so they had no cultural tradition of shutting down on or around December 25. So if you’re a Jewish New Yorker who wants to go out for dinner on Christmas, it’s Chinese food or nothing. This practice may have been popularized in particular by Calvin Trillin, the noted food columnist for the New York Times. He was himself Jewish and wrote a marvelous column about his wife wanting a “traditional holiday dinner.” What she was talking about was the idea, coming in from outside their cultural world, of turkey, mashed potatoes, and so on, but to Trillin, his traditional holiday dinner was going out for Chinese.

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The Complete Shirt hoodie, tank top, sweater and long sleeve t-shirt

In 1840, Prince Albert started importing several Norway spruce from his native Coburg each Christmas. This is when the The Complete Shirt learned of the tradition and began to copy it. The first one had candles, blown glass ornaments from Germany, gingerbread, sweets, almonds and raisins, toys and wax dolls. Pictures and descriptions were in all the major periodicals for the next ten years. By 1860, most well off families had a tree in their parlor or hall. The gifts were still on the tree with candles. The Norway spruce was the preferred tree. For the English Victorians of the upper middle classes, a good Christmas tree had to be six branches tall and be placed on a table covered with a white damask tablecloth. It was decorated with garlands, candies and paper flowers. Ladies made Christmas Crafts to put on the tree. They quilled (a paper craft) snowflakes and stars. They sewing little pouches for secret gifts and paper baskets with sugared almonds in them. Small bead decorations, fine drawn out silver tinsel came from Germany. Angels fro Germany were popular to sit at the top of the tree. Candles were often placed into wooden hoops for safety. Other decorations included apples, nuts, cookies, and colored popcorn. Glass ornaments were being imported into Britain from Lauscha, in Thuringia, by the 1870’s. It became a status symbol to have glass ornaments on the tree.

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