# onthisday otd rarebooks reindeer speccoll twitterstorians botanicalillustration birds ornithology durham winter

Day 17
The familiar tradition of decking the halls with boughs of holly for winter festivals pre-dates Christmas. Today is the Roman festival of Saturnalia, when Romans would decorate their houses with holly & exchange gifts.

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2018-12-17

Day 11
A & Sami family, from a 1674 English translation of 'The history of Lapland', by Swedish humanist Johannes Schefferus. Did you know the Sami are the northernmost indigenous people of Europe?

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2018-12-11

Day 10
Will you be eating figgy pudding this Christmas? A tradition dating back to C16th, when fig trees became commonplace in English gardens. This hand-coloured by Johann Muller (or John Miller) dates from 1777.

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2018-12-10

Day 6
A little robin from Eleazer Albin's 'A Natural History of (1738-40). With over 300 hand-coloured engravings by Albin & his daughter Elizabeth, this was the first British work of to feature hand-coloured plates.

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2018-12-06

Day 4
It was a frosty morning in this morning, so here's a lovely arctic fox from John Ross's 'Narrative of the 2nd Voyage in Search of the Northwest Passage', 1835.

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2018-12-04