Christmas Every Day

Christmas is enthusiastically celebrated by the Basque inhabitants of northern Spain. Manyt of the customs are common to Spain but two apsects of the Basque celebrations stand out: the many Christmas songs in their unique language and the figure of the Olentzero.

Carols have been composed in the Basque tongue since at least the sixteenth century and since then the region has produced a number whose fame has reached beyond its borders.  They include “Oi! Betllem” (O Bethehem), “Aur txiki” (Lovely Baby Mary Bore Him), “Belen’en sortu zaigu” (In Mid-winter They Set Out); and “Birjinia gaztettotbat zegoen” (The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came.) Basque tunes were used by the English composer Sabine Baring-Gould for three of his carols: “Gabriel’s Message”, “The Infant King” and “Lullay My Liking”.

 The Olentzero is a legendary figure, usually portrayed as a charcoal burner or a shepherd, who comes down from the mountains at Christmas time to announce the coming of the joyful season, to partake in its festivities and hand out gifts. He is not a handsome figure, but a vigorous one dressed in beret and typical Basque garb, capable of prodigious feats of celebrating. In many villages his image is carried through the streets on the shoulders of folk who take it from house to house singing carols.

Numerous fiestas are held in the Basque country during the Christmas season beginning with those on St. Nicholas Day, December 6, when parades of children will process through the streets singing songs about the saint and telling the stories of his amazing career. Saint Lucia fairs (December 13) and Saint Thomas fairs (December 21) will bring farmers into towns to show their produce. On Christmas Eve in  village of Labastida groups of shepherds, draped in pelts, will recite ancient verses and perform dances which are likely remmants of medieval pastoral drama.

In the Middle Ages it was customary during the Christmas season for marginalized groups such as old women, unmarried women, students, or children to be given license to go questing.  These begging visits saw groups go door-to-door and demand food or money. In the sixteenth century Barnabe Googe wrote disapprovingly in rhyme of the custom:

Three weekes before the day whereon was born the Lorde of Grace,

And on the Thursday Boyes and Girles do runne in every place,

And bounce and beate on every doore, with blowes and lustie snaps,

And crie, the advent of the Lorde not borne as yet perhaps,

And wishing to the neighbours all, that in the houses dwell,

A happie yeare, and every thing to spring and prosper well:

Here have they peares, and plumbs, and pence, each man gives willinglee …

Sometimes the young carried branches or mistletoes, reminiscent of the strenae twigs of the Roman Kalends (which is why to this day the French call New Year’s gifts étrennes). It was considered good luck to give to questers, especially as their demands were often backed up by threats: “May God plague you with diarrhea until next Christmas!” “May God send you rats with neither cat nor dog to catch them nor stick to kill them!” On the Greek island of Chios the householder who skimped on Christmas treats would be wished cloven feet and on the Scottish island of South Uist this chilling malediction was laid on the tight-fisted:

The curse of God and the New Year be on you

And the scath [harm] of the plaintive buzzard,

Of the hen-harrier, of the raven, of the eagle,

And the scath of the sneaking fox.

The scath of the dog and cat be on you,

Of the boar, of the badger and of the ghoul,

Of the hipped bear and of the wild wolf,

And the scath of the foul polecat.

It should not be surprising that most houses gave what they could, providing the treat lest the trick fall on them.

An adaptation of Psalm 98 by the prolific English hymnist Isaac Watts (1674-1748) who in his youth wrote a hymn each week for 222 consecutive weeks. In his life he produced fifty-volumes of published works including Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 1707, and the 1719 Psalms of David in the Language of the New Testament, from which “Joy to the World” is taken.

The hymn has been extremely popular over the centuries though various denominations have seen fit to alter some lyrics to suit their theological preoccupations. Some Unitarians, for example, took umbrage at the notion of Original Sin contained in the fourth line of the third verse and Adventists, looking to an imminent return of Christ, felt more comfortable singing “Joy to the world! the Lord will come.” There is even a nineteenth-century version adapted to let atheists sing with a clear conscience.

Musicologists still debate the origins of the tune and some assert a similarity to a portion of Handel’s Messiah. The American composer Lowell Mason (1792-1872) combined Watt’s poetry with the mystery music in 1836.

Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven and nature sing,
and heaven, and heaven and nature sing.

Joy to the earth! the Savior reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
while fields and floods,
rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessing flow
far as the curse is found,
far as the curse is found,
far as, far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
and makes the nations prove
the glories of His righteousness,
and wonders of His love,
and wonders of His love,
and wonders, wonders of His love.

A part of the  celebration of Christmas in medieval French churches when parody of sacred services and social inversion were allowed and when clergymen were given license for light-hearted behaviour that was unthinkable during the rest of the year.

 The Feast of the Ass, usually held on January 14, celebrated the role played in the Nativity by the humble donkey, the beast who carried Mary to Bethlehem, who stood over the baby Jesus in the stable and who carried the Holy Family to safety in Egypt when King Herod was bent on killing the infant. As the clergy or students paraded toward the church where the ass was to be honoured they sang a “hymn of praise”:

From Oriental country came/ A lordly ass of highest fame,/  So beautiful, so strong and trim,/ No burden was too great for him./  Hail, Sir Donkey, hail!

 For the ceremony itself a donkey was often brought into the church and during the Mass which ended the service the congregation made donkey noises. Like the Feast of Fools, with which the Feast of the Ass was linked, this sort of behaviour eventually grew too outrageous to be tolerated and the church moved to suppress it. By the sixteenth century it had almost entirely disappeared from the Christmas scene.

The investigative talents of Philomena Cunk are turned on Christmas. Ronald Hutton, a genuine expert on paganism and English historical festivities, is the first interviewee.

A southwestern English variant on the Yule Log is the ashen faggot, a bundle of ash sticks tied together with bark bands. It was burnt on one of the Twelve Nights and it was customary that a fresh round of drinks was served every time one of the bands broke in the fire. The faggot could be quite large, taking hours to burn, and the bands could number over a dozen. Like the Yule Log the faggot must traditionally be lit with a piece of last year`s wood. In a Devonshire custom, the unmarried women of the household each choose a band and the girl whose band is the first to catch fire is the next one to be married; a more recent tradition holds that a woman who steps over the bundle will become pregnant within the year.

Though many of the ceremonies surrounding the bringing in of the Yule Log have disappeared, the burning of the ashen faggot is preserved in Devon and Somerset, especially in pubs where the conviviality and drinks now come at a price. Also known as the ashton faggot.

“All I Want for Christmas is You” is a piece of holiday music sung by Mariah Carey that holds a number of significant records for popularity. Written and first issued in 1994, it was not until 2019 that it reached No. 1 on the hit parade, the longest journey to the top by any song. According to Wikipedia: “With an estimated sales of over 14 million copies worldwide, “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is the best-selling holiday song by a female artist, and one of the best-selling physical singles in music history. The song is certified 12 times platinum by RIAA, denoting sales of 12 million copies in the United States, becoming the first and only holiday song to accomplish this feat. By 2022, it had reportedly earned $80 million in royalties.”

Though I personally loathe the tune, it has achieved iconic status and has evoked this 2015 piece of adulation in Atlantic magazine: “Carey’s masterpiece is an incredible feat of philosophical subterfuge. Christmas is a time of material and affection-based excess, yet the song is narrowly focused on just one thing: getting to be with a specific person, e.g., you. It rejects the idea of love in general in favor of love in particular, simultaneously defying and defining pop-music conventions. With infinitely more economy of expression and undoubtedly catchier lyrics, ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You’ is a sort of Hegelian dialectic of Christmastime desire, taking the conflicting notions of abundance and specificity and packaging them neatly into an earworm for the generations.”

Hegelian dialectic, my Aunt Fanny. Here is my favourite iteration of the song:

This popular novelty tune written by Donald Gardner in 1946. Gardner was a music teacher who noticed that most of his young pupils were missing their baby teeth and speaking with a lisp. With that observation as inspiration, Gardner went home and wrote the words and music in about half an hour. As a recording, it was a success in 1948 for Spike Jones and the City Slickers, selling almost 2,000,000 copies in two months. The words were sung in a child’s voice by George Rock, one of the Slickers. Danny Kaye, the Andrews Sisters and Nat King Cole all recorded it and it was a Top Ten hit again in 1955 when it was sung by seven-year-old Barry Gordon.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,
My two front teeth, see my two front teeth.
Gee, if I could only have my two front teeth,
Then I could wish you “Merry Christmas.”

It seems so long since I could say,
“Sister Susie sitting on a thistle.”
Gosh, oh gee, how happy I’d be
If I could only whistle.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth,
My two front teeth, see my two front teeth
Gee, if I could only have my two front teeth,
Then I could wish you “Merry Christmas.”

At Christmas certain animals become more human, or express their joy at the birth of Christ in unmistakable fashion.

There was an old Scottish belief that, at the exact hour of the Saviour’s birth, bees in their hive emitted a buzzing sound . According to a Breton folk-tale the ox and the ass can converse for a single hour, between eleven and twelve on Christmas night. At the same hour, in German folk-lore, all cattle atand up; another version, however, makes them devoutly kneel.

Among the animals which folk-thought has brought into connotion with the Christ-Child is the horse. A Russian legend tells us that the flesh of the horse is deemed unclean because when the infant Saviour was hidden in the manger, the horse kept eating the hay under which the babe was concealed, whereas the ox not only would not touch it, but brought back hay on its horns to replace what the horse had eaten. From a Spanish-American miracle-play, we learn that the oxen and asses around the manger kept the little babe warm with their breath.

In Ireland the following folk-beliefs obtain regarding the ass and the cow: Joseph and Mary fled into Egypt with the infant Jesus. Since that date the ass has had a cross on its back. This same ass returned to Nazareth seven years later with them on its back, travelling in the night, since which time it has been the wisest of all animals; it was made sure-footed for Christ to ride on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and it remains the most sure-footed of all beasts. The ass and cow are looked upon as sacred, because these animals breathed upon the infant Jesus in the manger and kept the child warm. Old women sprinkle holy water on these animals to drive away disease.

• From The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought by Alexander F. Chamberlain, 1895.

ChatGPT is an Artificial Intelligence program that generates text in response to plain-language questions. It has been much in the news as a source of future trouble for university professors on the lookout for Al-written essay assignments and knowledge workers whose livelihood it may threaten. In an idle moment I asked ChatGPT, “What is an interesting Christmas custom?” Here is its reply:

There are many interesting Christmas customs around the world, but here’s one that may be unfamiliar to some: In Iceland, there is a tradition called “Jolabokaflod” or “Christmas Book Flood”. This tradition involves giving books as gifts on Christmas Eve and then spending the evening reading them while enjoying chocolates or other sweets.

The tradition dates back to World War II, when paper was one of the few things not rationed in Iceland. As a result, books became a popular gift item, and the tradition stuck even after the war ended. Today, many Icelandic publishers release new books in the months leading up to Christmas, and bookstores across the country are packed with people searching for the perfect gift.

This unique Christmas custom has helped Iceland become one of the most literate nations in the world, with a love of reading deeply ingrained in its culture. It’s a tradition that highlights the importance of learning and the joy of spending time with a good book, making a it an interesting and meaningful holiday custom.

As an aside, CHatGPT is well acquainted with the author of this website: Bowler is a frequent media commentator on matters related to Christmas, appearing on radio and television programs to discuss the history and traditions of the holiday. He is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on the history of Christmas and is a popular speaker at conferences and events around the world. You can’t say fairer than that.