The Easter Bunny is thought to have been introduced to America by German immigrants with their tradition of an egg-laying hare whom they called the Osterhase. Children were encouraged to leave out carrots for the hare and make nests in which the hare could to lay brightly coloured eggs. Maybe this was something else new that Lydia encountered when her family moved to Boston?..

There was a great fire in Boston, which started from smaller fires on 17^th and 18^th March 1760, the year Lydia arrived there. It lasted for 3 days and destroyed 349 homes and left more than a thousand people homeless. Many businesses were also destroyed with a lady shopkeeper named Alice Quick losing over one thousand pounds of personal and business property and belongings. 10 ships were destroyed in the harbor.

It started in the central market area of the town in the early morning and the wind spread it quickly through the mainly wooden buildings towards the wharves. Remarkably though, no one was killed in the fire.

Sources:

http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=86

http://web.csulb.edu/projects/elizabethmurray/EM/psfire1760.html

I did not realize that Christmas used to be illegal here in Boston! How very strange it is to hear such things, but until 1681 you could be fined as much as five shillings for showing one’s holiday spirit. Even now it isn’t even a holiday here and people seem intent on continuing their work – although my parents will no longer be fined if they wish to mark the day in some way, thank goodness!

We do at least have a new Christmas hymn to sing at Church called Hymn on the Nativity, which has been written by a fellow Englishman, and will remind me of the carols we used to sing in Bristol..