Scott, many thanks for that tip on Christmas. Your response prompted me to look in the "World Book Encyclopedia", Vol. C-Ch, page 416 to learn more about the history of the Christmas celebration. It was a very instructive education in basic genealogical procedure. Lesson #1 for me: It may pay to check my basic assumption. I'd always assumed Christmas had been celebrated since not too long after Jesus' death. And the World Book verified that. But then it went on to teach me something I'd never heard: "In England, during the middle ages, Christmas became the merriest day of the year. Celebrations eventually became so rowdy that the Puritans in England did away with the observance of Christmas by law in 1643. Colonists in New England copied the English laws." >From there, it goes on to explain the many things that happened, including references to Charles Dickens and Clement Moore, leading to how the celebration of Christmas gradually reappeared in the United States and England, including a reference to your 1843 date. The WB says the first Christmas card appeared in London that year. Well, all that's not really a Guernsey County topic, but it IS genealogically interesting. As for your comment "...my perpetual calendar says that this particular Christmas Day was a Thursday, which also sounds like an unusual day for a wedding." I have more than just one Guernsey/Licking county area ancestor married on a week day like that. And my reaction matches yours. My only guess is that perhaps weekend weddings weren't "the thing to do" back in those days. And since they were farmers, getting away from work for a weekday wedding wasn't as hard to do as today. Scott, thanks for the clue. -Bill Martin Denver, CO ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Subject: Re: [OHGUERNS] Marriage Esther Coles - Enoch Galloway 1828 > Date: 11 Apr 2001 14:11:44 -0400 > From: "Scott R. Anderson" <phssra@physics.emory.edu> > To: OHGUERNS-L@rootsweb.com > > On Wednesday, April 11, 2001 1:37 PM, Bill Martin <martinbill@earthlink.net> wrote: > >Enoch Galloway and Esther Cole[s] were married 25 Dec 1828 in Guernsey > >Co. > >[A rather interesting day for a marriage.] > > I read/heard somewhere (an NPR story, I think) that Christmas didn't become a holiday until later in the 18th century, after the publication of Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" in 1843. Until then, people commonly worked that day. > > Of course, my perpetual calendar says that this particular Christmas Day was a Thursday, which also sounds like an unusual day for a wedding. > > S R C A > cott obert ranston nderson From