The Christmas Box, 1825

Author

(not in Praise! index). The first complete book published by the Religious Tract Society, decades before the Victorian (and post-Victorian) flood of carol-books, was this seasonal assortment including ‘Three New Carols’. It has bequeathed to us 4 enduring lines, usually comprising as here a concluding stz for no.350*. (Whether or not in conscious rivalry, another anonymous volume called The Good Christmas Box, used and found ‘valuable’ in 1928 by P Dearmer and others, was published in 1846–47, a words-only collection of some genuine folk-carols. By way of contrast, A Christmas Box—probably late 19th-c—is an attack on Christmas for its paganism by S Cozens of Rehoboth Chapel, the Particular Calvinistic Baptist Ch in Shadwell, E London.)