Our January meeting was 'The history of Sheffield newspapers', a talk by Suzanne Bingham, a local historian from Sheffield and a previous visiting speaker for the group.

A good turnout braved the cold snap that seemed to have descended on us to enjoy a fascinating insight into the development of local newspapers, taking sheffield as a good example.  Suzanne divided the development of local papers into three periods - the earliest papers from the late 17th century up to around 1840,  the Victorian period up to around the great war, and the modern period.

It was remarkable to learn how the earliest newspapers from around the mid-late 1600's crammed as much information as possible into three or four pages of dense type in order to avoid the expense of what was then relatively highly-taxed paper. These early papers were produced only weekly, as information took a long time to circulate, and it wasn't until around the late 18th century, with a reduction in tax that newspapers began to expand both in number of pages and in size.

It was equally interesting to learn how these early newspapers served a very different audience to that of today, a paper in a city such as Sheffield serving an area that covered Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, because the potential readership was only that small proportion of the population who could read and could afford to buy the paper.  This also meant that the paper covered the topics of interest of that well-to-do section of the population that made up the 'gentry', the propertied and professional classes, so while 'standards' such as marriage announcements and obituaries appeared early on, they might cover 'society' people from as far away as London and rarely mention local people or events, although crime news always seems to have been a popular feature.

It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that this really changed, when the effects of the 1870  Education Act meant that by the 1890's most of the population could read. By this time local papers were truly 'local', covering events of interest to their target area andreflecting the appeal of major sporting events and the performance of local teams.

All of this was well-illustrated with examples gleaned from the archives, from which it could be seen how the way in which the public were informed changed over time, for example about things like the progress of the two major wars of the 20th century.

Today of course we have 'instant' information by radio, television and increasingly the internet, and there are real concerns that local papers are disappearing. It will be sad if this turns out to be the case, because these archives offer a tantalising glimpse into our past that could so easily be lost in an age of 'electronic records'.

Our meeting for Thursday 26th November 2009 was "Christmas And Its Customs" with Patrick Harding, a real chance to get into the festive spirit!

Patrick was a real treat, his talk was very interesting and his delivery was sparkling with wit and humour.  He started with the story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem 2000 years -  or was it then? He proceeded to separated fact from a lot of fiction. Much of the story that is performed in schools and churches at this time of year is not strictly Biblical:  the 'Inn' where there was no room for the holy family may well be a mis-translation; there is no mention in the Bible of a stable or animals, etc; and we don't really know how many Magi there were, and certainly not their names!  These are all assumptions and later 'embroidering' that have become part of the Christmas story.

He also questioned the date when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, which was actually was just chosen by church leaders to tie in with other festivals that occurred at that time. No-one really knows the date, and in fact different dates are used by different churches within the Christian faith. We can’t even rely on it being 2009 years ago, because errors where made when calculating the first calendar.

He also looked at the many traditions that have arisen over the years, the origins of Father Christmas, or Santa Claus, which seems to be a mixture of St Nicholas, who was Turkish, and a Norwegian native Holy Man who was high on magic mushrooms - or was he invented by the writer of the poem ‘The night before Christmas’? And he concluded that the reindeers pulling the sleigh had to be females, which sounds about right, as we all know that women do all the work at Christmastime.

He talked about the first Christmas cards that cost as much as a  working man's weekly wage, but soon became cheaper and more popular thanks to the penny post.

He also talked about Christmas fayre, central to which originally would have been the goose, but in the late 19th century thanks in some part to Charles Dickens' inadvertent advertising in ‘A Christmas Carol’ this role was taken over by the Turkey, except, perhaps for the royal family who were still allowed to eat swan! The accompaniment to the Turkey was usually bread sauce, until the Americans, who had a lot of cranberries left over from ‘Thanksgiving’ in the early 1990's decided with the help of Sainsbury's to encourage us to change to cranberry sauce.

All in all Patrick investigated the myths and magic of Christmas and I think we all learned something new in a fascinating night's entertainment.