Jane Austen's Christmas Quotes

“The set country dances of the eighteenth century went through complex patterns and changes, and could last upwards of an hour.”
― Maria Hubert, Jane Austen's Christmas: The Festive Season in Georgian England

“Christmas is treated as an oft-longed-for event, which, however, is often disappointingly low key when it arrives, almost as if the anticipation of the event was better than the actual event itself.”
― Maria Hubert, Jane Austen's Christmas: The Festive Season in Georgian England

“Emma Austen Leigh, a niece of Jane, kept a record of all her gifts from 1813 to 1821.”
― Maria Hubert, Jane Austen's Christmas: The Festive Season in Georgian England

“My dear Cassandra, In the first place I hope you will live twenty-three years longer. Mr Tom Lefroy’s birthday was yesterday so you are very near of an age.”
― Maria Hubert, Jane Austen's Christmas: The Festive Season in Georgian England

“While mutton held pride of place on many an eighteenth-century Christmas table, and was the Christmas Eve dish served roasted to John Knightley in the novel Emma, venison was the socially acceptable meat for the very wealthy. To have venison showed that one had sufficient parklands to graze the deer, thus it was a high status symbol.”
― Maria Hubert, Jane Austen's Christmas: The Festive Season in Georgian England

“In Jane’s England, the Christmas holidays lasted for several weeks, due in part to the tedious journeys undertaken to visit family for the holidays, and the quite obvious fact, from several of her novels as well as from her own letters, that guests were reluctant to leave again!”
― Maria Hubert, Jane Austen's Christmas: The Festive Season in Georgian England

“I spent my time [at Manydown] very quietly and very pleasantly with Catherine. Miss Blanchford is agreeable enough. I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
― Maria Hubert, Jane Austen's Christmas: The Festive Season in Georgian England