NO PLACE LIKE HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

Three of the favorite Christmas palaces - Windsor, Westminster and Eltham - can still be visited today. However, they were by no means the exclusive sites of medieval and Tudor Christmas courts.

If trouble was brewing in a far-flung outpost of the kingdom, the royal family and their entire entourage would embark upon an arduous winter journey in order to celebrate the season in a more strategic (or defensive) venue. So heightened were the tensions of the Wars of the Roses during December 1467, that Edward IV ensured his security by surrounding himself with a body guard of 200 personally-selected valets and archers as he traveled to Coventry to celebrate Christmas. As an added caution, he commanded his duplicitous brother George, Duke of Clarence, to make merry at Coventry with him.

Nor were those away-from-home Christmases necessarily merry. Eleanor of Aquitaine spent any number in reduced circumstances during her years of enforced confinement. Sometimes her children would visit; often not. Edward III spent more than his share of winter "hols" in cold, wet misery on the battlefields of France. And, in a tragically foreboding scenario, Richard II spent 1387 as a virtual prisoner in the Tower of London ; there is some thought that this may actually have been his "first" deposition, foiled due to lack of support from John of Gaunt.

Decrying the Christmas season for its decline into crass commercialism has become as much a part of today's Christmas vernacular as "Season's Greetings". We wonder: were the days of ancient Christmases past, with their royal excesses and intrigues really any more admirable? We think not. (But we can't help thinking that, in their own odd way, they were tons more fun!)

This splendid series from

 'The Amateur Historians'
Sarah Valente Kettler & Carole Trimble

at Britain Express