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.