Cake with a clear conscience

Everybody needs cake, but some in York are short of everyday food. Joanne Casey explains how Information Services have managed to balance these two facts.

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On the last Friday of every month, staff from the Library, IT Services, and the Archives hold a Cake Day to raise money for charity. Any member of staff can nominate a cause to support, volunteers bake cakes, and equally selfless volunteers donate money to eat them. In the past, we've supported local, national, and international charities including Plan's Because I Am A Girl campaign, the Poppy Road Poppy Project, Macmillan, St Leonard's Hospice, and the Nepal Earthquake Appeal.

A fine selection of cake

This time, we're supporting the York Foodbank, run by the Trussell Trust, and in a bit of a twist, we've encouraged people to bring along donations of food rather than (or as well as!) cash. The Foodbank provide lists of the items that they currently need to stock up on to fill food parcels for families and individuals in crisis; at this time of year, they also ask people to donate items with Christmas in mind, so our collection boxes contain not just tinned food, tea, coffee, UHT milk, and cereals, but also biscuits, snacks, selection boxes, chocolate advent calendars - things that will make the festive season a little bit brighter for people who are struggling.

Sarah Peace, who suggested this month's charity explained why she chose this cause:

"I chose to nominate York Foodbank for our October cake day as it's a charity that we may all need to turn to at some point in our lives.

The food bank helps people struggling with insecure work, low pay and high living costs. Families and individuals are going hungry and skipping meals in our country to make ends meet. 

I hope that raising money and donating food in the run up to Christmas may make the difference to families in York."

One of our four collection boxes

The Trussell Trust report that in 2014/15, the food banks they operate gave out 1,084,064 emergency three-day parcels of food. They also work with food bank users, to listen to their concerns and point them to other sources of help: their developing More Than Food initiative partners with other advisory agencies to provide support with managing money, learning to cook and eat well, developing job skills, and making benefit claims.

There are many stories of people who have benefited from the intervention of a food bank when they're struggling:

"We resorted to borrowing a tin of soup from next door to feed our 18 month old daughter. The problems came when my partner got ill and received no sick pay. It was snowing and we were struggling to afford food and heating. In the end the cupboards were bare. I don't know what we would have done without the foodbank." 

We're collecting donations of non-perishable food until Tuesday 3 November, so if you'd like to join us, we'd be happy to have your donation - just drop it off at the Library or IT Services. The Foodbank have asked us to say that, while they're grateful for any and all gifts, they do have a lot of beans at the moment!

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Update

By the time our collection ended earlier this week, we'd collected vast quantities of food - so much that we had to use the department van to deliver it to York FoodBank. A plan to list how much food we'd collected fell by the wayside as we just didn't have enough space to get it all out of the boxes, but the collection included pasta and sauce, tinned meat, coffee, tea, sugar, soup, cereals, herbs and spices, tinned fruit and puddings, chocolate advent calendars and selection boxes, biscuits, UHT milk, and Christmas puddings and cake. In addition to that, we collected £121 in cash.

The full haul, loaded up and ready to be delivered.

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More information:

• York Foodbank
• York Foodbank shopping list
• The Trussell Trust - statistics
• The Trussell Trust - More than Food

Bah humbug! Using ECCO and EEBO to uncover a time when Christmas wasn’t so merry...

Kirsty Whitehead, Academic Liaison Librarian for History, Archaeology and the Centre for Medieval Studies, explores seventeenth century attitudes to Christmas with two of our electronic resources.

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Imagine how different this time of year would be without Christmas. In the seventeenth century Christmas was, as it is now, a big event: an important religious festival but also a chance to unwind by indulging in eating, drinking, dancing, singing, and all round general excess, of which unfortunately the Protestant Puritans disapproved. This contributed to a deep religious divide which subsequently led to civil war, and in 1649 the Puritans took control of government and, whilst in charge, abolished Christmas. Fortunately, when Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 all legislation banning Christmas was dropped, allowing Christmas to be celebrated once again with renewed enthusiasm.

Anon., The Vindication of Christmas.
London: G. Horton, 1652.

Our electronic resources such as Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and Early English Books Online (EEBO) contain a wealth of primary sources, amongst which you can find contemporary perspectives on this period, such as the examples shown here.

In this 1652 pamphlet the Puritans' attempts to do away with Christmas are described in a tale about Father Christmas visiting Scrooge-like characters in London, and, of course, merry farmers in Devon. On the title page shown here, the man on the left - a fairly unthreatening-looking soldier - warns Father Christmas "Keep out, you come not here", with Father Christmas responding "O Sir, I bring good cheere". On the right, a friendly countryman says "Old Christmas welcome; Do not fear".

King, Josiah. The examination and tryal of old Father Christmas.
London: Charles Brome, 1686.

This pamphlet by Josiah King, published in 1686 after the legislation banning Christmas had been dropped, celebrates the reinstatement of the festivities through a humorous portrayal of the campaign against Christmas as a trial of Father Christmas.

He is ultimately acquitted of having "...abused the people of this Common-wealth, drawing and inciting them to drunkenness, gluttony, and unlawful gaming, wantonness, uncleanness, lasciviousness, cursing, swearing, abuse of the creatures, some to one vice, and some to another; all to idleness...". Phew!

Where can I find these resources and how can I get more help?

ECCO and EEBO are available to University of York users via the E-resources Guide, or you can explore other useful resources for your subject on your department’s Subject Guide. Both ECCO and EEBO can be used with EndNote Online to help you collect and manage your references - more information is available on our Reference Management site. For more advice about using electronic resources and for general advice about Library resources for your department contact your Academic Liaison Librarian (contact details are on the Subject Guides).