The Christmas List - something of wonder in our current times. It began in ancient times as a tradition symbolic of the Three Wise Men and their gifts. It has moved on to include the year's "Best of {fill in anything}". The lists have started in the Globe and Mail.
The gift-giving of Christmas is historically tied to the 12 days of Christmas tradition, with a gift given on each day. Christmas is the Twelfth Night. That's the gift that Shakespeare gave in writing his play Twelfth Night - it closed the Christmas season with an entertaining comedy. Scholars think that it was written specifically to ge performed for Queen Elizabeth 1. There is other speculation that the play was written for a group of lawyers of the Inns of Court. It is thought that it was performed on January 6, 1602.
That seems an amazing Christmas gift, so I wondered about gifts throughout history - given we've got since 336 for such wonders to be given.
I found an article on Christmas gifts through history HERE. They include the Statue of Liberty, the City of Savannah, a White Elephant (to Pope Leo X in 1514), a bowling alley in the White House, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, The Trojan Horse, Faberge Eggs. Some gifts don't seem to be related to Christmas (and two are gruesome). But that's what you get with metalfloss.com.
Christmas presents along the lines of what we expect today all relate to what's most expensive Here's the descriptions for this list HERE.
The Orlov Diamond – Priceless
Evalyn’s Jewels, Star of the East and Hope Diamond – Upwards of USD 250 Million
Twenty-Two-Year-Old’s USD 88 Million Christmas Present - real estate
Diamond and Ruby for Liz – USD 4.2 Million - Liz Taylor
Spend It Like Beckham – USD 3 Million - a necklace
HK Superstar Aaron Kwok’s USD 2.6 Million Christmas Present -
Tyson’s Moment – USD 2.3 Million a gold bathtub
Aaron Spelling’s White Christmas Gift – USD 2 Million - snow machine making snow in his Beverly Hills backyard
The Waterfall Gift – USD 1.6 Million - to build a Frank Lloyd Wright Fallingwater house
Mastiff Gem – USD 1.5 Million - a rare dog
A snow orchard image today. The snow has almost melted. That means I can finish raking the leaves that are still coming down from the trees.
No comments:
Post a Comment