Christmasses

Christmasses

1. plural of Christmas
   • 1798, The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, volume CIII, London: W. Bent, page 42, column 2:

     The lord chancellor holds his fittings in this hall, and in former days, like the Temple, it had its revels and great Chriſtmaſſes. […] The account of the great feaſt in the hall of the Inner Temple, by the ſerjeants, in 1555, is extremely worth conſulting: and alſo of the hoſpitable Chriſtmaſſes of old times.

   • 1840, The New Sporting Magazine, volume 18, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, page 53:

     “Lawk!” says our old granddam, who has taken the liberty of looking over our manuscript while we were gone to mix a glass of water and something. “Lawk!” says she, “how can you write such stuff? Christmas, indeed! you’ve no Christmas now. Do you call this Christmas? It’s more like a vapour bath. Such weather! Lawk, how times are changed! the Christmasses I remember! the good, old-fashioned Christmasses, when there was snow on the ground six feet deep, and poor people were starved to death by dozens, and you couldn’t go out without having your fingers frost-bitten, and coals were at six shillings a hundred, and canals froze up so that you couldn’t get your goods, and the roads all impassable, and daren’t ask a few friends to merrymake for fear of losing three or four of ’em going home in snow-drifts, and—oh, those were Christmasses! we shall never see such times again!” / “Hope not, granny: but if I don’t put down every word you’ve said, and send it to the Editor of the New Sporting Magazine, my name’s not / Sylvanus Swanquill.

   • 1859, Marryatt, Florence, Temper: A Novel, New York: Dick & Fitzgerald, page 205:

     Reader have your Christmasses hitherto been marked with happiness? Thank God for it. […] Then mamma died—and later in your college days, dear Herbert, when you were both as tall as men, but as fond of play as ever—and we used to spend such happy Christmasses, till our dear father died, /“ […] Herbert darling, Lawrence has left the last impression of happiness on my memory—he, who has since broken up our domestic peace, and for a long time spoilt our Christmasses—Heaven bless him! […]”

   • 1994, Drummond, Cherry, The Remarkable Life of Victoria Drummond, Marine Engineer, page 354:

     Surely she was sitting there dreaming of Christmasses long past: Christmas in the South China Sea, the Christmas lights of Hong Kong, hot Christmasses so long ago in the Anchises under the Southern Cross stars, or even longer ago of Christmasses at Megginch, singing carols round the lighted Christmas tree in the hall, while Queen Victoria’s goddaughter in her starched white dress and bronze shoes had worn the sparkling pendant given her by the great Queen.