A BATCH OF DINNERS

HOLIDAY DINNERS,

A Special dinner for a holiday celebration has so long been a time-honored custom in most families, that the majority of housewives consider it indispensable. While we admire the beautiful custom of gathering one's friends and neighbors around the hospitable board, and by no means object to a special dinner on holiday occasions, yet we are no wise in sympathy with the indiscriminate feastings so universally indulged in at such dinners, whereby stomachs are overloaded with a decidedly unhealthful quality of food, to be followed by dull brains and aching heads for days to come.

And this is not the extent of the evil. Holiday feasting undoubtedly has much to do with the excessive use of intoxicants noticeable at such times. Tempted to overeat by the rich and highly seasoned viands which make up the bill of fare, the heaviness resulting from a stomach thus overburdened creates a thirst not readily satisfied. A person who has noted how frequently one is called upon to assuage thirst after having eaten too heartily of food on any occasion, will hardly doubt that indigestible holiday dinners are detrimental to the cause of total abstinence.

Then, for the sake of health and the cause of temperance, while an ample repast is provided, let not the bill of fare be so lavish as to tempt to gormandizing; and let the viands be of the most simple and wholesome character practicable, although, of course, inviting. As an aid in this direction, we offer the following bills of fare;—