Christmas Every Day

• 1800 The first English Christmas tree is erected at Queen’s Lodge by Queen Charlotte.
  
  
• 1815 In Guizhou province, China, Wang Dacai, a barber, commits suicide out of regret for his part in the sentencing to death of his son, Wang Hebao. Dacai had been caught in an act of adulterous sex and was tied to a tree awaiting the arrival of the authorities. He ordered his son to slightly cut his neck, hoping to countersue his accusers for assault. Unfortunately, his son was detected in this act of striking a father, a gross violation of Confucian filial piety, and was sentenced to death by beheading.
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• 1818 “Silent Night” is sung for first time in Oberndorf, Austria. A local teacher and priest have collaborated to come up with a guitar arrangement in the absence of the church organ.
  
  
• 1826 West Point cleans up after the “Grog Mutiny” or “Eggnog Riot” — 20 cadets will be court-martialled for their part in a protest against restrictions on alcohol. The disorders were led by cadets from the southern states (including future Confederate President Jefferson Davis) who were used to a more spirited celebration of the holiday.
  
  
• 1837 A Seminole Indian force is defeated by American troops led by Zachary Taylor at the Battle of Okeechobee.
  
  
• 1846 Missouri Mounted Volunteers defeat Mexicans at the battle of El Brazito, in New Mexico. “On Christmas day, at a spot called Bracito, when the regiment after its usual march, had picketed their horses, and were gathering fuel, the advance guard reported the rapid approach of the enemy in large force. Line was formed on foot, when a black flag was received with an insolent demand. Colonel Doniphan restrained his men from shooting the bearer down. The enemy’s line, nearly half cavalry, and including a howitzer, opened fire at four hundred yards, and still advanced, and had fired three rounds, before fire was returned within effective range. Victory seems to have been decided by a charge of Captain Reid with twenty cavalry which he had managed to mount, and another charge by a dismounted company which captured the howitzer. The enemy fled, with loss of forty-three killed and one hundred and fifty wounded; our loss seven wounded, who all recovered.”

  
  
• 1884 Evelyn Nesbit “The Girl on the Velvet Swing” is born in Natrona, Pennsylvania. A beautiful artist’s model she will marry a mentally-unstable millionaire Harry Thaw who will murder the architect Stanford White out of a jealous rage.
  
  
• 1899 Englishman George O’Brien murders 3 miners on the Yukon River trail during the Klondike Gold Rush. Arrested by the Northwest Mounted Police, O’Brien will hang for his crime in 1901. 

• 1712 Puritan preacher Cotton Mather lashes out at Christmas excesses telling his congregation, “Can you in your conscience think that our Holy Saviour is honoured by Mad Mirth, by long Eating, by hard Drinking, by lewd Gaming, by rude Revelling? If you will yet go on and will do Such Things, I forewarn you That the Burning Wrath of God will break forth.”
  
  
• 1717 Floods ravage the Netherlands killing over 13,000. An Emden clergyman, Gerhardus Outhof, lamented witnessing “thousands of people of every age, men and women, drown in the salty seawater, many of whom were overtaken in their beds by the rushing waters.” Other ministers interpreted the disaster as divine punishment. It was God, they said, who was responsible for “the roar of this hurricane that brought the furious waves, it is God who brought the water and thrust it over the dike, and it is God who took the reins of the winds and floods.“
  
  
• 1739 Evangelist George Whitefield is in the mission field in America. His diary records: Tuesday, December 25. Endeavoured still to keep my Mind as much as possible in Union with all those pious Souls who I knew I were rejoicing in the Glad Tidings of Salvation by Jesus Christ The People were uncommonly attentive, most melted into Tears, and shewed what a great Impression the Word made upon their Hearts. … The Woman where we lodged would take nothing for our Christmas Dinner, and wished we could stay with them longer Oh how will it rejoice me to hear that some poor Soul this Day was born again! Then it would be Christmas Day indeed!
  
• 1744 Henry Brydges, the Duke of Chandos, who has bought a woman, a chambermaid, at a wife sale, marries her and makes her a duchess. The Duke of Chandos and a companion dined at the Pelican, Newbury, on the way to London. A stir in the Inn yard led to their being told that a man was going to sell his wife, and they are leading her up with a halter around her neck. They went to see. The Duke was smitten with her beauty and patient acquiescence in a process which would (as then supposed) free her from a harsh and ill-conditioned husband. He bought her, and subsequently married her (at Keith’s Chapel) Christmas Day, 1744.
  
  
• 1770 In Lodge Bay, Labrador, Captain George Cartwright, a merchant and British officer complains about local Yuletide behaviour: “At sun-set the people ushered in Christmas, according to the Newfoundland custom. In the first place, they built up a prodigious large fire in their house; all hands then assembled before the door, and one of them fired a gun, loaded with powder only; afterwards each of them drank a dram of rum; concluding the ceremony with three cheers. These formalities being performed with great solemnity, they retired into their house, got drunk as fast as they could, and spent the whole night in drinking, quarrelling, and fighting. It is but natural to suppose that the noise which they made (their house being but six feet from the head of my bed) together with the apprehension of seeing my house in flames, prevented me from once closing my eyes. This is an intolerable custom; but as it has prevailed from time immemorial, it must be submitted to. By some accident my thermometer got broke.”
  
  
• 1776 George Washington crosses the Delaware to attack Hessian forces in Trenton, New Jersey. He is successful and captures 900.
  
• 1793 French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre argues for a dictatorship. “Revolution is the war waged by liberty against its enemies; a constitution is that which crowns the edifice of freedom once victory has been won and the nation is at peace.” But until the enemies of the people have been defeated, the government had to have unlimited powers. “Those who call them arbitrary or tyrannical are foolish or perverse sophists who seek to reconcile white with black and black with white: They prescribe the same system for peace and war, for health and sickness”

• 1607 The Thames is frozen over: Many fanciful experiments are daily put in practice; as certain youths burnt a gallon of wine upon the ice, and made all the passengers partakers. But the best is, of an honest woman (they say) that had a great longing to encrease her family on the Thames.
  

• 1621 Game playing on Christmas Day is banned in Plymouth colony by Governor William Bradford. On the day called Christmas Day, the Governor called [the settlers] out to work as was usual. However, the most of this new company excused themselves and said it went against their consciences to work on that day. So the Governor told them that if they made it [a] matter of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed; so he led away the rest and left them. When Bradford returned and found them still playing games, he confiscated their equipment and sent them indoors.
  
• 1628 Japanese Jesuit Michaël Nakashima Saburoemon is martyred by being scalded to death.
  
• 1638 Baghdad is taken after a siege of 40 days by the Ottomans under Sultan Murad IV who, with his army of over 100,000, drives out the Persians on the 118th anniversary of his great-great-great-grandfather Suleiman’s conquest of Rhodes.
  
  
• 1644 The English Parliament meets on Christmas Day to set an example for neglecting seasonal celebrations. It has commanded that December 25 be kept as a fast rather than a celebration – because it may call to Remembrance our Sins, and the Sins of our Forefathers, who have turned this Feast, pretending the Memory of Christ into an extream Forgetfulness of him, by giving Liberty to carnal and sensual Delights, being contrary to the Life which Christ led here on Earth, and to the Spiritual Life of Christ in our Souls, for the Sanctifying and Saving whereof Christ was pleased both to take a Human Life and to lay it down again.

  
• 1667 In Bayárcal, Spain, Juan Muñoz, a tailor from Santander swore that at midnight, he saw a cross, behind which there was a banner, followed by four lights like wicks that flashed on and off. His neighbours too saw strange lights in the sky and all concluded that the only possible explanation was that God sent them as signs to commemorate the lives of martyrs from the area.
  
• 1672 Sir Charles Fawcett is astonished to discover no churches open for Christmas services in the Portuguese colony of Goa, India. 
When I returned to the Carmelite Fathers, I did not fail to express my astonishment at this to the Father Superior, who, being French, knew well with what solemnities and crowds of worshippers we celebrate Christmas in our churches in France. He laughed at hearing my complaints of the want of devotion I had found that day in Goa; and told me that I must not be surprised, as it was the custom of the Portuguese. They sat up on the night of Christmas Eve for the Midnight Mass, and considered that God owed them a day’s rest after this effort, and therefore passed Christmas Day in repose or in feasting in their houses – laity as well as priests – which was the reason why so few people were in the streets and the churches were shut. He also told me that high-born ladies, if they were zealous and pious, and wished to hear Mass on that day, had an altar raised in their bedrooms and brought in a priest to say Mass at the foot of their beds. They stay in bed all day, in case of an indisposition which they feared might result from the hard work they had undergone in keeping awake in order to attend Midnight Mass. In this state they received visits from relations and friends, who came to pass the day in feasting with the doors shut. 

  
• 1680 Manchu soldier Dzengseo’s diary records an astrological event which he believes portends well for an end to fighting a Chinese rebellion.
On the night of the fifth a star appeared in the west; it had a white mist that spread across an area of over 20 da [c. 30 meters]. One could see that in shape it resembled a sword, and it was red at the base. Everyone said that if it advanced towards the imperial palace it would be a bad omen. [But] this was an auspicious sign for the pacification of Yunnan. 
This has been identified as the “Great Comet” that astonished European astronomers.

  
• 1683 Paying for his failure to capture Vienna, the Turkish vizier Kara Mustapha Pasha is executed. He is stripped of his imperial seal, the banner of Muhammad, and keys to the ka’aba, signs of imperial favour. He removes his turban and orders the executioner to enter. After being strangled by a silken noose, his head is cut off and sent to Mehmed IV in Edirne. It will placed at the palace gate to serve as a warning to others of the price for disappointing the emperor.

1502 Cesare Borgia has ordered the execution of Spanish mercenary Ramiro de Lorca for plotting to kill him. In Rome, Cesare’s father, Pope Alexander VI, is enjoying a banquet –  “after dinner thirty actors took part in a masquerade in the piazza before St. Peter’s. Many of them were wearing long large noses in the form of penises, all virile and erect. . . . The Pope watched from a window.”

1509 Henry VIII of England marks his first Christmas as king with 3 plays and a concert. The lavish festivities will consume almost all of the country’s annual tax revenue. Among those receiving royal largesse are a blind court poet, Chapel Royal choristers, and a woman who brought a perfumed ball to keep the air fresh.


1511 In Korea, Chief State Councillor Kim Sudong reports worrying events in China. I have recently ascertained that there is rebellion in Shandong. If this is the case, then the overland route to the Central Plains will be impassable [thus severing normal diplomatic relations]. Further, Shandong is close by our country. We cannot take this lightly… If the rebels occupy Shandong, they are certain to want our country to acknowledge them as our sovereign.


1518 In Spain, mystic nun Magdalena de la Cruz announces that in a virgin birth she has borne a son who radiated a blinding light and then disappeared. Midwives confirm both the childbirth and the virginity; the miracle brings wealth and prestige to her convent. Twenty-five years later she will confess that she has had sex with a devil for decades and that the child she bore was really a monstrous caterpillar. She will be exorcised and die repentant.


1521 The Wolof rebellion, by captured Senegalese Muslims, breaks out on the island of Hispaniola – America’s first slave revolt. Africans and natives unite against the Spanish. Though this uprising is soon put down, it frightens Spain enough to ban the introduction of Muslim/Wolof slaves, termed “arrogant, disobedient, rebellious, and incorrigible”, to the New World. 


1522 The Ottoman Turks have taken the great fortress of Rhodes from the crusading order, the Knights of St. John. Philippe de Villiers l’Isle-Adam, the grand master of the Order lamented: “Ce jour de Nohel ledit grand Turq entra dedans la ville, et le premier jour de l’an avons faict voyle noz navires désarmez, et aprez avoir passé en mer plusieurs fortunes, sommes arrivez tous espars en ceste isle de Candie.” (On this Christmas day, the Great Turk entered the city, and on the first of the year our disarmed ships set sail. After having countered several misfortunes at sea, we arrived, disheveled, on the island of Crete).

1535 French explorer Jacques Cartier and crew celebrate their first Christmas in Canada at Stadacona (present-day Québec City). Deposed English Queen Katharine of Aragon is very ill with pains in the stomach, so violent and acute that she cannot eat or drink. She will die in two weeks.

1541 The Portuguese expedition to Ethiopia led by Dom Christovão da Gama rests on “a mountain in the lordship of the Barnaguais”.
 Dom Christovão had a large tent fitted up with an altar, with a very reverential picture of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, where Mass was said by the patriarch and the Portuguese Mass-priests, who were in our company. We remained all night armed before the altar, and the matins were very solemn for such a country, as we had bagpipes (charamellas), kettledrums (atabales), flutes, trumpets, and the full Mass that night we all confessed, and at midnight Mass received the holy sacrament. The Queen looked on at all this from her tent, which was pitched in front; she was much astonished at our customs, which appeared to her very fitting; she was so delighted to see them and our Mass that, to get a better view, she and one of her ladies, both muffled, left the tent so secretly that her own servants did not miss her, for those who knew what had happened made the greater fuss thus the ladies in the tent, as well as those outside, kept moving the people from the line of sight of the tent. Thus she went about, seeing all that passed, as several other ladies did, and in this had much pleasure. 


1558 Queen Elizabeth I walks out of Christmas mass when the presiding bishop Owen Oglethorpe refuses her demand to omit elevating the Host. “You shall understand that yesterday, being Christmas Day, the Queen’s Majesty repaired to her great closet with her nobles and ladies, as hath been accustomed in such high feasts; and she, perceiving a bishop preparing himself to mass, all in the old form, tarried there until the gospel was done, and when all the people looked for her to have offered according to the old fashion, she with her nobles returned again from the closet and the mass, on to her privy chamber, which was strange unto divers. Blessed be God in all His gifts.”


1568 Spanish Moriscos rise against the government of Philip II and his policy of forced conversion from Islam. For over two years a rebellion will rage in the mountains of Granada with atrocities committed by both sides. A Spanish veteran of the campaign remarked “Day by day we fought our enemies, in the cold or the heat, hungry, lacking munitions, suffering continual injuries and deaths until we could confront our enemies: a warlike tribe, well-armed and confident in terrain which favoured them. Finally they were driven from their houses and possessions; men and women were chained together; captured children were sold to the highest bidder or carried away to distant places… It was a dubious victory, with such consequences that one might doubt whether those whom God wished to punish were ourselves or the enemy.”


1569 Thomas Pounde falls trying to execute a tricky step during a dance at the English court and is kicked by Queen Elizabeth who sneers “Arise, Sir Ox”. He mutters “Sic transit gloria mundi” (“So pass the glories of this world”), subsequently leaves England and converts to Catholicism, joining the Jesuit order.


1594 An agent of the Fugger banking house reports an uproar in Silesia over the eruption of a mountain and the rising of the dead.

 

In 20th-century America two acronymous groups tried to rein in holiday spending madness.

Society for the Prevention of Useless Giving (S.P.U.G.)

The Progressive movement of early 20th-century America sought to reform a number of capitalist institutions and SPUG’s desire to modify aspects of Christmas giving grew out of this impulse. Formed in 1912 it aimed at the elimination of the practice of supervisors expecting to receive gifts from their underlings at Christmas. SPUG complained that this was a form of corruption and did not reflect any real affection on the part of the employees toward their superiors. Their publicity attempted to shame the supervisors and persuade the clerks not to buy these offerings; the campaign was ultimately a success.

Society to Curtail Ridiculous, Outrageous and Ostentatious Gift Exchanges (S.C.R.O.O.G.E.)

An American group founded in 1979 which sought to reform Christmas by eliminating much of its commercialism. Charles Langham of SCROOGE suggested spending a maximum of 1% of income on Christmas gifts. Its Four Principles are:

1. Try to avoid giving (and receiving extremely expensive gifts, particularly the heavily advertised fad/status symbol items that are often not very useful or practical.
2. Make every effort to use cash rather than credit cards to pay for the items that you do purchase.
3. Emphasize gifts that involve thought and originality, such as handicraft items that you make yourself.
4. Celebrate and enjoy the holidays but remember that a Merry Christmas is not for sale in any story for any amount of money.

Action-packed Christmas Days during the Late Middle Ages, 1250-1500.

• 1261 Having driven the Latin knights out of Constantinople, Byzantine emperor Michael VIII blinds rival John IV Lascaris whose 11th birthday it is. The boy will become a monk and be recognized as a saint. The Patriarch of Constantinople will excommunicate Michael. In 1284 Michael’s son, Andronikos II Palailogos will visit John and apologize.

• 1287 A murder in Shropshire: John de Quercubus of Scottes Acton killed Hugh de Weston, chaplain, in self defence. On Christmas day 16 Edward I [1287] after sunset there were some men singing outside a tavern kept by Richard son of William de Skottesacton in that town. And Hugh came by the door immensely drunk, and quarrelled with the singers. Now John was standing by, singing, and Hugh hated him a little because he sang well, and desired the love of certain women who were standing by in a field and whom Hugh much affected. So Hugh took a naked sword in his hand and ran at John, striking him once, twice, thrice, on the head, and nearly cutting off two fingers of his left hand. And John went on his knees, and raised his hands asking God’s peace and the king’s, and then ran into a corner near the street under a stone wall. And Hugh ran after him and tried to kill him, so he drew his knife and wounded Hugh in the chest, killing him instantly.

• 1309 Pope Clement V has moved the papacy from Rome and spends his first Christmas in the Holy See’s new location in Avignon.

• 1349 The bubonic plague, Black Death, continues to ravage western Europe. A young Irishman writes: One thousand three hundred and fifty years from the birth of Christ till this night: and this is the second year since the coming of the plague into Ireland. I have written this in the twentieth year of my age. I am Hugh, son of Conor MacEagen, and whosoever reads it let him offer a prayer of mercy for my soul. This is Christmas night, and I place myself under the protection of the King of heaven and earth, beseeching that He will bring me and my friends safe through this plague. Hugh, son of Conor MacEagan, who wrote this in his father’s book in the year of the great plague.

• 1391 A dolphin “came foorth of the Sea and played himselfe in the Thames at London to the bridge.”  John Stowe in his Annals goes on to say ” the which dolphin, being seen of the citizens and followed, was with much difficulty intercepted and brought again to London, showing a spectacle to many of the height of his body, for he was ten foot in length. These dolphins are fishes of the sea, that follow the voices of men, and rejoice in playing of instruments, and are wont to gather themselves at music. These, when they play in rivers, with hasty springings or leapings, do signify tempests to follow. The seas contain nothing more swift or nimble, for oftentimes with their skips they mount over the sails of ships.”

• 1400 Henry IV keeps Christmas at Eltham Palace where 12 aldermen of London and their sons ride in a mumming for the entertainment of the king and the visiting Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Palaiologos who has come seeking aid against the Turks. This was the first visit by a Roman emperor to England since the 4th century. Manuel will be given financial assistance but no military support.

Skirmishes take place in Syria between the Egyptian Mamluk army and forces of the Mongol invader Tamerlane.

• 1429 Joan of Arc spends Christmas at the Dauphin Charles’ court at Bourges. He gives her and her family the right to a coat of arms with the royal lilies of France.

• 1430 Joan of Arc is imprisoned in a tower at Rouen.

• 1444 London streets are wreathed with greenery: “Against the feast of Christmas every man’s house, as also the parish churches, were decked with holm, ivy, bays, and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be green. The conduits and standards in the streets were likewise garnished” including, at the Leadenhall in Cornhill, “a standard of tree being set up in midst of the pavement, fast in the ground, nailed full of holm and ivy, for disport of Christmas to the people.” At the end of the Christmas season the latter will “torn up, and cast down by the malignant spirit (as was thought), and the stones of the pavement all about were cast in the streets, and into divers houses, so that the people were sore aghast of the great tempests.”

• 1492 Christopher Columbus’s ship “Santa Maria” runs aground on Hispaniola and has to be abandoned. Columbus writes in his log: I sailed in a slight wind yesterday and at the passing of the first watch, 11 o’clock at night …I decided to lie down to sleep because had not slept for two days and one night. Since it was calm, the sailor who was steering the ship also decided to catch a few winks and left the steering to a young ship’s boy…. I felt secure from shoals and rocks…. Our Lord willed that at midnight, when the crew saw me lie down to rest and also saw that there was a dead calm and the sea was as 25 in a bowl, they all lay down to sleep and left the helm to that boy. The currents carried the ship upon one of these banks…. Although there was little or no sea, I could not save her. A fort is built with the ship’s timbers. It is named Fuerte Navidad (Christmas Fort), the first Spanish settlement in the Americas.

This post is for fans of the High Middle Ages, 1000-1250.

• 1006 English King Aethelred the Unready meets with the Witanagemot in Shropshire where it is decided to pay £36,000 in Danegeld. A supernova, the brightest in recorded history, which first appeared in May, has returned in the skies.

• 1022 French king Robert the Pious and Queen Constance preside over a purge of heretics at Orléans. The accused are clerics including the Queen’s confessor. They will be burnt at the stake, the first time this punishment will be used against heresy.

• 1066 Coronation of William I “the Conqueror” of England. William, as Duke of Normandy, had invaded England and killed King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The coronation was marred by a bloody misunderstanding. The chronicler Orderic Vitalis explains:

But at the prompting of the devil, who hates everything good, a sudden disaster and portent of future catastrophes occurred. For when Archbishop Ealdred asked the English, and Geoffrey bishop of Coutances asked the Normans, if they would accept William as their king, all of them gladly shouted out with one voice if not in one language that they would. The armed guard outside, hearing the tumult of the joyful crowd in the church and the harsh accents of a foreign tongue, imagined that some treachery was afoot, and rashly set fire to some of the buildings. The fire spread rapidly from house to house; the crowd who had been rejoicing in the church took fright and throngs of men and women of every rank and condition rushed out of the church in frantic haste. Only the bishops and a few clergy and monks remained, terrified, in the sanctuary, and with difficulty completed the consecration of the king who was trembling from head to foot. Almost all the rest made for the scene of the conflagration, some to fight the flames and many others hoping to find loot for themselves in the general confusion. The English, after hearing of the perpetration of such misdeeds, never again trusted the Normans who seemed to have betrayed them, but nursed their anger and bided their time to take revenge.

• 1086 In Constantinople, Patriarch Nicholas III Grammatikos is clamping down on unruly celebrations at Christmas in the great Hagia Sophia church. He complains this behaviour threatens to turn churches “into places of business and a den of thieves and the holy festivals into outrageous gatherings.”

• 1141 In China a peace treaty is signed between representatives of the Song dynasty and the Jurchen dynasty. The terms greatly favour the Jurchen who win territory in northern China and who are to be paid an annual subsidy.

• 1155 Fredrick Barbarossa holds court at Worms where he will punish wayward nobles – he will force a ritual humiliation on the Count-Palatine and ten others by making them carry a dead dog for a mile. In Constantinople, Michael the Rhetor urges the emperor to give to the poor at Christmas time.

• 1170 Archbishop Thomas Becket preaches in Canterbury Cathedral and prophesies his own murder (he is killed 4 days later).

I have spoken to you today, dear children of God, of the martyrs of the past, asking you to remember especially our martyr of Canterbury, the blessed Archbishop Elphege; because it is fitting, on Christ’s birthday, to remember what is that peace which he brought; and because, dear children, do not think that I shall ever preach to you again; and because it is possible that in a short time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the last. I would have you keep in your hearts these words that I say, and think of them at another time.

• 1202 The diverted Fourth Crusade is wintering in Zara which the knights have conquered for Venice. They are considering a morally-fraught proposition from Byzantine prince Alexius who asks them to put him back on the throne in Constantinople:

Since you are on the march in the service of God, and for right and justice, it is your duty to restore their possessions to those who have been wrongfully dispossessed. The Prince Alexius will make the best terms with you ever offered to any people and give you the most powerful support in conquering the land overseas . . . Firstly, if God permits you to restore his inheritance to him, he will place his whole empire under the authority of Rome, from which it has long been estranged. Secondly, since he is aware that you have spent all your money and now have nothing, he will give you 200,000 silver marks, and provisions for every man in your army, officers and men alike. Moreover, he himself will men, or, if go in your company to Egypt with 10,000 you prefer it, send the same number of men with you; and furthermore, so long as he lives, he will maintain, at his own expense, 500 knights to keep guard in the land overseas.

• 1223 St Francis of Assisi assembles the first live Nativity crèche at Greccio, Italy

The gifts of the Almighty were multiplied at Greccio, and a wonderful vision was seen by a virtuous man who was present at the Mass. He saw the little Child lying in the manger seemingly lifeless, and then Francis, the holy man of God, went up to it and roused the Child as from a deep sleep. This vision was not unfitting, for the Child Jesus, who had been forgotten in the hearts of many, was brought to life again by God’s grace working through his servant Francis and was stamped deeply upon his memory. And when the solemn vigil of Christmas was brought to a close, each one returned home with unspeakable joy. 

The hay that had been placed in the manger at Greccio was kept,  so that the Lord might save beasts of burden and other animals through it. And in truth it happened that many animals throughout that region, beasts of burden and others with various illnesses, were freed from their ailments after eating of this hay. Indeed, even some women who had been labouring for a long time in a difficult birth delivered their children easily when some of this hay was placed upon them; and a large number of persons of both sexes, suffering from various illnesses, obtained the health they sought in the same way.

• 1248 In Nicosia Cyrus, Louis IX of France on crusade entertains an embassy from a Mongol commander in Persia. The envoys are Nestorian Christians. A chronicle declares: The king then called these envoys into his presence and they spoke for some time in their own language. Brother Andrew translated their words into French and told the king what they said: that the greatest prince of the Tartars had been christened at Epiphany and many Tartars with him, even including some of their greatest lords. They also said that Eljigidei would bring his whole Tartar army to support Christendom and the king of France against the caliph of Baghdad, because he wanted to avenge the terrible acts of shame and hatred done to Our Lord Jesus Christ by the Khwarazmians and other Saracens. Their lord, they said, also wanted to tell the king that when spring came he should enter Egypt to attack the sultan of Babylon, and at exactly the same time the Tartars would invade and make war on the caliph of Baghdad, and so they would be able to help each other.

Today’s post about exciting doings on December 25 will concentrate on the Early Middle Ages, 500-1000

• 567 Beginning of the “Twelve Days of Christmas” as decreed by Council of Tours. The days from Christmas to Epiphany on January 6, containing commemorations of St Stephen, St John, the Holy Innocents, the Holy Family, and the Virgin Mary, are united in one festal cycle.

• 597 Augustine of Canterbury baptizes thousands of Saxons in Kent. The Italian monk Augustine was sent to England to evangelize the Anglo-Saxon pagans whose king had married a Frankish princess. She has persuaded her husband Æthelberht to allow Augustine’s mission which will prove successful in starting the conversion of the barbarians who had overrun Britain.

• 683 Emperor Gaozong of the Chinese Tang dynasty is ailing, perhaps dying of a slow poison. On his death two days later, his consort, Wu, will seize power and become the only empress regnant in Chinese history.

• 691 The controversial Church Council of Trullo has banned the giving of Christmas presents.

• 764 The weather is so cold that the Black Sea “froze over hundred miles and over thirty miles, the ice thickness was one cubit [45cm or 18 inches] and it was hard as stone. People walked on it as they were on solid earth. Snow was so abundant that it formed mountains and exceeded 20 cubits [about 9 m or 30’]”.

• 768 The Caliph of Baghdad, Al-Mansur, orders that his physician Jurjis be given three beautiful slave girls to console him for the absence of his old and frail wife. Jurjis was not pleased. “

Pupil of Satan!”, he yelled at his student, “Why did you let them into my house? Go at once and take them back to their owner.” Mounting his mule, he rode with his pupil and the slave-girls to the caliph’s palace and handed the girls over to the eunuch. When al-Mansur heard of the matter, he sent for Jurjis and asked him why he had returned the slave-girls. “Such persons cannot stay in the same house with me,” answered Jurjis, “because we Christians marry one woman only, and as long as she lives, we take no other wife.” A1-Mansür was filled with admiration, and immediately gave orders that Jurjis should be allowed admittance to the quarters of his wives and concubines and that he should serve as their physician. This incident enhanced his prestige even further in the caliph’s eyes.

• 800 Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne emperor in Rome

Now when the king, upon the most holy day of the Lord’s birth, was rising to the mass, after praying before the confession of the blessed Peter the Apostle, Leo the pope, with the consent of all the bishops and priests, and of the senate of the Franks, and likewise of the Romans, set a golden crown upon his head, the Roman people also shouting aloud. And when the people had made an end of chanting the Lauds, he was adored by the pope after the manner of the emperors of old. For this also was done by the will of God. For while the said emperor abode at Rome, certain men were brought unto him, who said that the name of emperor had ceased among the Greeks, and that among them the empire was held by a woman called Irene, who had by guile laid hold of her son, the emperor, and put out his eyes, and taken the empire to herself, as it is written of Athalia in the Book of the Kings; which, when Leo the pope and all the assembled bishops and priests and abbots heard, and the senate of the Franks and all the elders of the Romans, they took counsel with the rest of the Christian people, that they should name Charles, King of the Franks, to be emperor, seeing that he held Rome, the mother of empire, where the Caesars and emperors were always used to sit, and that the heathen might not mock the Christians if the name of emperor should have ceased among the Christians.

• 820 Leo V the Armenian, Byzantine emperor, is murdered in Hagia Sophia church. Leo had arrested one of his generals, Michael the Amorian, and condemned him to be thrown into a furnace on Christmas Day but was convinced by his wife that such an act on such a day was wrong. At the Christmas morning service in Hagia Sophia, a group of Michael’s friends attacked the emperor. 

When the Emperor realized that he was being attacked, he went into the sanctuary and seized the thurible by its chains (some say it was the divine cross) with which to ward off the blows of his attackers. But the conspirators attacked all together, not one at a time. He was able to resist for some time by parrying the sword-thrusts with the divine cross, but then he was set upon from all sides, like a wild beast. He was already beginning to flag from his wounds when, at the end, he saw a gigantic person about to deal him a blow. Then, with an oath, he invoked the grace which inhabited the temple and begged to be delivered. The noble was of the Krambonitai family; “This is not the time for swearing oaths, but for killing,” he declared – and dealt him a blow which cut off the arm at the joint, not only severing the member, but also sundering an arm of the cross. Someone also cut off his head, which was already damaged by wounds and hanging down.

The corpse of Leo will be dragged through the Hippodrome. Michael, still in chains is brought from his prison and crowned emperor. Leo’s sons are exiled, castrated, and confined to a monastery as monks.  Ironically, nine years later, Theophilus, the son of the usurper, will order the death of those  those who had conspired to put his father on the throne by the murder of Leo. 

• 858 A meteorological phenomenon is recorded in a German chronicle: On the very night of Christmas and on the following day, there was a violent and recurring earth-tremor at Mainz, and a great pestilence followed. The sea threw up a certain tree, torn out by the roots, which had previously been unknown in the provinces of Gaul: it had no leaves, but instead of boughs it had little tiny branches like blades of grass, thick-spread in places but longer, and instead of leaves it had things shaped like triangles and in colour like human nails or like fishbones, quite tiny and attached to the very tips of the grasslike branches as if they had been stuck on from outside, just like those little things made of various kinds of metals which are fixed on to sword-belts or on to the body-armour of men or horses by way of ornament.

998 In Iceland a bloody Christmas: That winter at Yuletide had Thorolf a great drinking, and put the drink round briskly to his thralls; and when they were drunk, he egged them on to go up to Ulfar’s-fell and burn Ulfar his house, and promised to give them their freedom therefore. The thralls said they would do so much for their freedom if he would hold to his word. Then they went six of them together to Ulfar’s-fell, and took a brushwood stack, and dragged it to the homestead, and set fire therein. At that time Arnkel and his men sat drinking at Lairstead, and when they went to bed they saw fire at Ulfar’s-fell. Then they went thereto forthwith, and took the thralls, and slaked the fire, and the houses were but little burned. The next morning Arnkel let bring the thralls to Vadils-head, and there were they all hanged.

Today we will look at events from Late Antiquity, a period that covers the last couple centuries of the Roman Empire in the West and the early period of the barbarian incursions, so roughly 250-500.

• 283 Emperor Carus on campaign in Mesopotamia dies. His secretary reports his death in this way: “Carus, our dearest emperor, was confined by sickness to his bed, when a furious tempest arose in the camp. The darkness which overspread the sky was so thick, that we could no longer distinguish each other; and the incessant flashes of lightning took from us the knowledge of all that passed in the general confusion. Immediately after the most violent clap of thunder, we heard a sudden cry that the emperor was dead; and it soon appeared that his chamberlains, in a rage of grief, had set fire to the royal pavilion, a circumstance which gave rise to the report that Carus was killed by lightning.” Carus’s demise leaves the throne in the hands of his sons Carinus and Numerian. 

• 303 In Nicomedia, a large number of Christians suffer martyrdom when their basilica is burned down.

• 304 St Anastasia martyr d. Anastasia is murdered in the persecutions of the emperor Diocletian. Her cult became strong in Constantinople and she will be honoured in the second of three masses in Rome on Christmas morning in her basilica at the foot of the Palatine.

• 360 In North Africa, Optatus of Mileve delivers the earliest known Christmas sermon. The text he preaches on is the Massacre of the Innocents, chosen because Christianity was then undergoing trials at the hands of Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor. The sister of St Ambrose is consecrated as a nun by Pope Liberius. 

• 362 Emperor Julian, who has abandoned Christianity to take up the old Roman paganism, publishes his “Hymn to King Helios”, the sun god. 

What I am now about to say I consider to be of the greatest importance for all things “that breathe and move upon the earth” and have a share in existence and a reasoning soul and intelligence, but above all others it is of importance to myself. For I am a follower of King Helios. And of this fact I possess within me, known to myself alone, proofs more certain than I can give. But this at least I am permitted to say without sacrilege, that from my childhood an extraordinary longing for the rays of the god penetrated deep into my soul; and from my earliest years my mind was so completely swayed by the light that illumines the heavens that not only did I desire to gaze intently at the sun, but whenever walked abroad in the night season, when the firmament was clear and cloudless, I abandoned all else without exception and gave myself up to the beauties of the heavens.

• 386 Christmas is celebrated on this date in Antioch over much objection (locals preferred a January 6 date) as John Chrysostom asserts: “I have three convincing arguments to share with you through which we will know for sure that this is the time at which our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Word, was born.”  In Cappadocia, Gregory of Nyssa sermonizes on the nativity, saying that it is not by chance that Christ was born on the day of the winter solstice. Nature seems to me to say: “Know, oh man! that under the things which I show thee, mysteries lie concealed. Hast thou not seen the night, that had grown so long, suddenly checked? Learn hence, that the black night of Sin, which had reached its height, by the accumulation of every guilty device, is this day, stopped in its course.”

• 406 Germanic barbarians – Vandals, Suevi, and Alans – invade the Roman empire, crossing the frozen Rhine at Coblenz.

• 409 Emperor Honorius is forced to bribe the rampaging Goths with 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pieces of silver, 4,000 silk tunics, 3,000 scarlet hides, and 3,000 pounds of pepper. Imperial decree abolishes the office of “Magistrate of the Peace” as tending to corruption.

• 441 In his exile in Phrygia, Cyrus Panopolites, the bishop of Cotyaeum,  preaches a 30-second Christmas sermon in a front of a hostile congregation that had murdered four previous bishops. Here it is in its entirety:

Brethren, let the birth of God our Saviour Jesus Christ be honoured with silence, because the Word of God was conceived in the holy Virgin through hearing alone. To him be glory for ever. Amen.

The oration was greeted with great enthusiasm instead of a lynching, and Cyrus went to become a beloved bishop.

• 496 Clovis and 3,00 Franks are baptized as Catholic Christians. [pictured above] Gregory of Tours described the occasion: The public squares were draped with coloured cloths, the churches were adorned with white hangings, the baptistry was prepared, sticks of incense gave off clouds of perfume, sweet-smelling candles gleamed bright and the holy place of baptism was filled with divine fragrance. God filled the hearts of all present with such grace that they imagined themselves to have been transported to some perfumed paradise. Clovis was leader of the Frankish tribe that had occupied most of Gaul. His conversion to Roman Catholicism was a triumph over the paganism of his ancestors and the lure of Arian Christianity to which many other barbarians had been converted.  (Some historians make the case that the baptism took place in 508.) 

Yesterday, we posted this 1937 graphic mystery.

Today, the answer is revealed. “Christmas cheer” being a synonym for alcohol to which Jake was allergic.