Aside from the Coventry Carol, literary treatments of Childermas, or the Feast of the Holy Innocents, is rare. Here is a poem by Cornish poet Charles Causley (1917-2003) dealing with the massacre of the boy babies of Bethlehem by King Herod described in Matthew 2: 16-18.
La Fée des Etoiles or the Star Fairy was a character added to Quebec Christmas lore by the Dupuis Frères department store in Montreal in the 1920s. Dressed in a gorgeous gown, wearing a tiara, and waving a star-tipped wand, she was conceived of as a sidekick to Père Noël, Father Christmas. She would accompany him on his float during the annual parade and hand out little treats to children at the store during shopping hours.
By the 1950s she was popular enough to be given her own float, appear on radio and television and portrayed by famous French-Canadian women such as athletes and actresses.
A cheeky parody of the classic Christmas carol:
Good husband and huswife now chiefly be glad,
things handsome to have, as they ought to be had.
They both do provide, against Christmas do coom,
to welcome their neighbor, good chere to have soom.
Good bread and good drinke, a good fier in the hall,
brawne, pudding and souse, and good mustard withall.
Biefe, mutton, and porke, shred pies of the best,
pig, veale, goose and capon, and Turkey well drest:
Chese, apples and nuttes, jolly Caroles to here,
as then, in the countrey is counted good chere.
– Thomas Tusser, “Five Hundredth Pointes of Good Husbandry”, 1572
A seventeenth-century English ballad links the holiday to charity and urges the upper class to be generous at Yuletide. Such ballads would been printed up (thus the term” broadside ballad”), put to a popular melody, and hawked in the streets by minstrels singing it out.
The title is “Old Christmas returned, or Hospitality revived; being a Looking-glass for Rich Misers, wherein they may see (if they be not blind) how much they are to blame for their penurious house-keeping, and likewise an encouragement to those noble-minded gentry, who lay out a- great part of their estates in hospitality, relieving such persons as have need thereof.”
Who feasts the poor, a true reward shall find,
Or helps the old, the feeble, lame, and blind
All you that to feasting and mirth are inclined
Come here is good news for to pleasure your mind,
Old Christmas is come for to keep open house,
He scorns to be guilty of starving a mouse:
Then come, boys, and welcome for diet the chief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.
The holly and ivy about the walls wind
And show that we ought to our neighbors be kind,
Inviting each other for pastime and sport,
And where we best fare, there we most do resort;
We fail not of victuals, and that of the chief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.
All travellers, as they do pass on their way,
At gentlemen’s halls are invited to stay,
Themselves to refresh, and their horses to rest,
Since that he must be Old Christmas’s guest;
Nay, the poor shall not want, but have for relief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minced pies, and roast beef.
Augustus Hare (1834-1903) was an English writer and painter of the Victorian era.
In his autobiography The Story of My Life (aka Peculiar People) Hare recounts a troubling incident on Christmas Eve 1866:
When the Mother and Lea were both ill last week, our Italian servants Clementina and (her daughter) Louisa groaned incessantly; and when Clementina was taken ill on the following night, Louisa gave up all hope at once, and sent for her other children to take leave of her. This depression of spirits has gone on ever since Christmas, and it turns out now that they think a terrible omen has come to the house. No omen is worse than an upset of oil, but, if this occurs on Christmas Eve, it is absolutely fatal, and on Christmas Eve my mother upset her little table with the great moderator lamp upon it. The oil was spilt all over her gown and the lamp broken to pieces on the floor, with great cries of ‘O santissimo diavolo’ from the servants. ‘Only one thing can save us now,’ says Louisa; ‘if Providence would mercifully permit that someone should break a bottle of wine here by accident, that would bring back luck to the house, but nothing else can.’
In 1993, a pact of friendship was signed between Saint Martin, Saint Nicholas and Father Christmas to help Belgian parents sort out the confusion between the Gift-Bringers that there children would encounter.
We, the undersigned,
Martinus of Tours, also known as Saint Martin, living in various places in Heaven and on Earth;
Nicolas of Myra, also known as Saint Nicholas, living in Spain and various other places in Heaven and on Earth;
Father Christmas, also known as Santa Claus, living in the Arctic region;
Acknowledge each other’s traditions and popular customs as patron saints of children in wintertime;
Express our concern over current abuses violating the essence of our traditions and posing a threat to their continued existence;
Call on parents, tradespeople, associations, public authorities and agencies and all persons who appeal to us henceforth to comply with the following three guidelines:
Signed in Brussels , November 17, 1993
In “A Summer Christmas,” from 1885 Douglas B. W. Sladen (who described himself as “an Australian colonist and late Scholar of Trinity College, Oxford”) writes of the Australian festivities as experienced by Victorian English immigrants trying, in vain, to recreate the Christmas that they knew at home.
The Christmas dinner was at two,
And all that wealth or pains could do
Was done to make it a success;
And marks of female tastefulness,
And traces of a lady’s care,
Were noticeable everywhere.
The port was old, the champagne dry,
And every kind of luxury
Which Melbourne could supply was there.
They had the staple Christmas fare,
Roast beef and turkey (this was wild),
Mince-pies, plum-pudding, rich and mild,
One for the ladies, one designed
For Mr. Forte’s severer mind,
Were on the board, yet in a way
It did not seem like Christmas day
With no gigantic beech yule-logs
Blazing between the brass fire-dogs,
And with 100 in the shade
On the thermometer displayed.
Nor were there Christmas offerings
Of tasteful inexpensive things,
Like those which one in England sends
At Christmas to his kin and friends,
Though the Professor with him took
A present of a recent book
For Lil and Madge and Mrs. Forte,
And though a card of some new sort
Had been arranged by Lil to face
At breakfast everybody’s place.
When dinner ended nearly all
Stole off to lounges in the hall.
All save the two old folks and Lil,
Who made their hearts expand and thrill
By playing snatches, slow and clear,
Of carols they’d been used to hear
Some half a century ago
At High Wick Manor, when the two
Were bashful maidens they talked on,
Of England and what they had done
On bygone Christmas nights at home,
Of friends beyond the Northern foam,
And friends beyond that other sea,
Yet further—whither ceaselessly
Travellers follow the old track,
But whence no messenger comes back.
