Christmas Every Day

Illex aquifolium, a plant whose greenery has long been associated with Christmas and magical powers.

 During bleak Decembers, the red berries and green leaves of the holly make the plant a natural choice for decorating homes and churches for the Christmas season. Holly can be found in wreaths, on altars and tables, in doorways and accompanying the mistletoe or Kissing Bunch;  its image can be seen on Christmas cards, gift wrap and seasonal art.

Holly reminded medieval Christians of both the Incarnation and the Passion: its berries seeming to be drops of blood and its prickles reminiscent of the Crown of Thorns that circled Christ’s brow at his crucifixion. In fact, in one legend, holly was the tree that was used for the cross, a dubious distinction also given in other legends to the mistletoe.

Supernatural virtues are attributed to holly in many countries. It can be used for divining the future: a ritual for determining one’s mate calls for the curious to pick nine berries in silence at Friday midnight, to then tie the berries with nine knots in a three-cornered handkerchief, and place them under the pillow. If one can remain silent until next morning one will dream of the future spouse. Holly is a weapon against witchcraft and English girls used to tie the plant to their beds to ward off demons. In Louisiana berries were said protect folk from the evil eye and lightning — a belief that was echoed in Germany as long as the holly had previously been used in decorating the church. Tossing a sprig of holly on the Christmas fire would guarantee an end to troubles and the plant was also looked to a cure for rheumatism, asthma, bad dreams, coughing and the gout.

 In folkore the prickly-leafed holly is considered “male” and the smooth-leafed variety “female”. Which type was brought first into the house at Christmas would determine who ruled the roost that year, the husband or the wife. Moreover, while ivy was considered a female plant which brought luck to women, the holly was said to bring good fortune to men.

Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox; that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home. – G.K. Chesterton

December 25 — Christmas Day! “Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth, peace and goodwill towards men.” So no great shells were fired into the Boer entrenchments at dawn, and the hostile camps remained tranquil throughout the day. Even the pickets forbore to snipe each other, and both armies attended divine service in the morning and implored Heaven’s blessing on their righteous causes. In the afternoon the British held athletic sports, an impromptu military tournament, and a gymkhana, all of which caused much merriment and diversion, and the Boers profited by the cessation of the shell fire to shovel away at their trenches. In the evening there were Christmas dinners in our camp—roast beef, plum pudding, a quart of beer for everyone, and various smoking concerts afterwards. I cannot describe the enemy’s festivities. – Winston Churchill, “London to Ladysmith via Pretoria”, 1900

The voluntarist-nominalist movement of the fourteenth century has more to its credit than the fostering of scientific thought. It was the philosophical inspiration also for the Reformers. It gave them the tools to attack the Thomist epistemology which allowed that in principle (and in fairness to St. Thomas one should stress the phrase ‘in principle’), natural man might perceive natural values and natural meanings without the aid of revelation. To this the Reformers reacted with a powerful and authentically Christian stress on the decisiveness of revelation. But revelation for them was really a Christological matter: to question the need of revelation was to question the need of Christ. The meaning of the world, the ‘Logos’, came down at Christmas; the man without Christmas is a man without meaning. The bestowal of meaning is part of God’s saving work in history, for in nature man can discern no meaning. – Oliver O’Donovan, “The Natural Ethic”, in Essays in Evangelical Social Ethics, 1983

Charles Lamb, in one of his most delightful essays, sets high worth on the observance of All Fools’ Day, because says to a man: “You look wise. Pray correct that error!” Christmas brings the universal message to men: “You look important and great; pray correct that error.” It overturns the false standards that have blinded the vision and sets up again in their rightful magnitude those childlike qualities by which we enter the Kingdom. Christmas turns things inside out. Under the spell of the Christmas story the locked up treasures of kindliness and sympathy come from the inside of the heart, where they are often kept imprisoned, to the outside of actual expression in deed and word. . . It is the vision of the Christ-child which enables all men to get at the best treasures of their lives and offer them for use. – Halford Edward Luccock, “Everything Upside Down”, 1915

Yesterday’s post was on Italian Epiphany (Befana) in 1921. This was the year before the fascist takeover of that country. Under the Duce (dictator) Benito Mussolini, Christmas customs were changed and the holiday was appropriated for the purposes of the totalitarian state. Lavish New Year’s dinners were discouraged, the Christmas tree was derided as a nasty foreign import from the north, and the nativity scene was promoted in its stead.

In January 1928, the Befana Fascista was instituted. The children of the working class were given presents by the state and Mussolini’s picture replaced any traditional gift-giver such as the kindly Befana witch or any saint. In this image the traditional Befana is shown putting the portrait of il Duce in her bag.

Below is a 1938 picture of two “Sons of the Wolf” (the fascist equivalent of the Boy Scouts) receiving their Befana Fascista gifts.

In Italian, Befana can refer either to Epiphany (January 6), the traditional time for Christmas gift-giving, or to the kindly witch of that name who delivers the presents. 

In this 1921 image a kindly rich woman delivers presents to children of the working class who have been orphaned by World War One.

During the Second World War, all sides made propaganda appeals to enemy soldiers to weaken their morale, to encourage desertion, or to promote the idea of voluntary surrender. Here is a particularly duplicitous example printed by the Soviets for distribution across enemy lines to German troops.

Note the use of Christmas images — German prisoners with Santa Claus, gaily decorating a huge Christmas tree. The food is lavishly plentiful and letters from home are read. The reality for Germans captured by the Red Army was much more grim. Of those soldiers taken prisoner at Stalingrad, 95% died in captivity. Hundreds of thousands of Wehrmacht soldiers were kept as slave labour in the USSR for 10 years after the war.

As part of their drive against the practice of religion, Soviet leaders did their best to discourage the observance of Christmas but the people’s lingering love of the holiday and the need for social unity in the fight against the Nazi invasion, led the Kremlin create a pseudo-Christmas centred on New Year’s. Thus the Christmas tree became the New Year’s tree, Christmas cards became New Year’s cards, gifts were exchanged on January 1, and St Nicholas was replaced by the secular Des Moroz, or Grandfather Frost. Because the Soviet state had converted to the Gregorian calendar while the Orthodox Church clung to the Julian calendar, the Communist New Year celebrations took place BEFORE Orthodox Christmas. This allowed the state to provide holiday goodies for January 1 but cut off the supplies for Christmas on January 7.

A number of New Year’s cards published during the war show a very militant Grandfather Frost routing the German invaders.

The caption reads: ‘Grandfather Frost Makes a Fearsome Tour To Get The Entire Pack of Fascists To Disappear Forever Soon’

Monday is a gift of socks under life’s Christmas tree. – maggiesfarm.com, 2021

To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation — above all, on the same grim condition, to keep friends with himself — here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. – Robert Louis Stevenson, “A Christmas Sermon”, 1887

I could go on and on about the suffering we’ve endured and the adaptations we’ve made, but to me, our species’ crowning jewel is that on the shortest day of the year, when the sun spends most of its time swallowed, when everything is frozen, when nothing can grow, when the air is so cold our voices stop right in front of our faces we put a string of lights on a universe that is currently doing nothing to earn it. We not only salvage an otherwise desolate time of year, we make it the best time of year. – Dan Harmon, “Drunk High Christmas Greetings!”, 2008

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, then I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six. – Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, 1952

For children, Christmas is everything they might be given; for an adult, Christmas is everything we have lost. – Mark Forsyth, A Christmas Cornucopia

A clear signal that social inversion is in effect and that festive misrule and license will be tolerated temporarily is for one sex to assume the dress of another. This has its origins in the Roman feast of Saturnalia held in late December and it continued after the Christianization of Europe. Numerous edicts exist from the Middle Ages in which authorities decry transvestism at Christmas amongst the lower clergy and popular folk customs. In 1445 by the Paris Faculty of Theology complained: “Priests and clerks may be seen wearing masks and monstrous visages at the hours of office. They dance in the choir dressed as women, panders or minstrels.” The Staffordshire Horn Dance has a cross-dressing cast member called Maid Marian while guisers on the Scottish borders provide comic relief with the figure of Bessie the Besom, a man dressed as an old woman. In Newfoundland mumming both sexes will participate dressed as the other, with young women disguised as sailors and men known as “ownshooks” clad as women. In Nova Scotia the females who went belsnickling dressed as Wise Men were called Kris Kringles.

1965

A Charlie Brown Christmas debuts.

“All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share,” says Lucy in this little animated film on the dangers of a materialistic view of Christmas. Though there are some chuckles over Charlie Brown’s direction of the school pageant and his search for a suitable tree, A Charlie Brown Christmas is more of a morality play than a light-hearted romp. CBS apparently had misgivings about the religious content of the show — one of the few explicitly Christian animated films about Christmas — but this Charles Schulz creation won an Emmy for Best Children’s Program and went on to become an enduring holiday favourite.

The overtly religious content which alarmed network executives comes when the question is asked about the real meaning of Christmas and Linus declaims:

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for behold I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapping in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

“…That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

Though the program is a Yuletide classic, its Christian message still vexes the irreligious who continue to complain about school children being taken to see it performed.