Christmas Every Day

February 2; since the sixth century the day of the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and now known as the Feast of the Presentation, marked the ritual in the Temple required by Jewish law law forty days after the birth of a male child.

When the infant Jesus was brought to the Temple, Simeon spoke of him as “a light to lighten the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32) and so light is the theme of the day. Believers bring a candle to the church to be blessed; these candles are thought to possess magical powers against sickness and thunder storms.  In England the Yule log for the next Christmas was selected and set to dry; in Mexico it is the Dia de Candelaria when the image of the baby Jesus is removed from the cradle. On Candlemas, Scottish school children used to bring money to their teacher to buy candles to light the school room, a practice that turned into simply bringing gifts to the master. The boy who brought the most money (the term for this gratuity was bleeze-money) was named Candlemas King whose reign lasted six weeks and who was allowed to remit punishments.

The custom of predicting the weather based on conditions on Candlemas has turned into Groundhog Day wherein North Americans watch the emergence of particular groundhogs from their hibernation — if they see their shadows on February 2, six more weeks of winter will follow. (Americans scrutinize the reaction of the Pennsylvania groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil while Canadians observe Ontario’s Wiarton Willie.) Candlemas was also believed to be a time when the soul of Judas was temporarily allowed out of Hell to ease his torment in the sea.

Across many cultures it is the last day of the Christmas season when all ornaments must be taken down and greenery burnt. My friend and Tudor history colleague John Murphy tells me that In Ireland holly was kept from the greenery to use as kindling for the fire to make the pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. The Irish originally burnt this holly exclusively at the shines to the goddess Brigid whose festival was kept at Imbolc – again at early February – Goddess Brigid was patroness of poets and healing amongst many things – attributes passed over to the Irish Saint Brigid whose feast day is 1st Feb. I think at these dates were originally a bit moveable as they conformed rather to the interface of solar and lunar cycles. St Blaise on 3rd February has blessing of throats – so the healing powers associated with the holy candles of Candlemas looked beyond its place in the Christian sanctoral calendar to the ceremonies from a pagan past.

In the modern world many tend to see the Christmas season over on December 26th. In fact, it is just beginning. One hears of the Twelve Days of Christmas which end on Epiphany but really Christmastide is forty days long and only comes to completion on Candlemas, February 2. Here is a 15th-century English carol to remind us.

1. The first day of Yule have we in mind,
How God was man born of our kind;
For he the bonds would unbind
Of all our sins and wickedness.

2. The second day we sing of Stephen,
Who stoned was and rose up even
To God whom he saw stand in heaven,
And crowned was for his prowess. [bravery]

3. The third day belongeth to Saint John,
Who was Christ’s darling, dearer none,
To whom he entrusted, when he should gone, [when he had to die]
His mother dear for her cleanness. [purity]

4. The fourth day of the children young,
Whom Herod put to death with wrong;
Of Christ they could not tell with tongue,
But with their blood bore him witness.

5. The fifth day belongeth to Saint Thomas,
Who, like a strong pillar of brass,
Held up the church, and slain he was,
Because he stood with righteousness.

6. The eighth day Jesu took his name,
Who saved mankind from sin and shame,
And circumcised was, for no blame,
But as example of meekness.

7. The twelfth day offered to him kings three,
Gold, myrrh, and incense, these gifts free,
For God, and man, and king was he,
Thus worshipped they his worthiness.

8. On the fortieth day came Mary mild,
Unto the temple with her child,
To show herself clean, who never was defiled,
And therewith endeth Christmas.

Adam and Eve, the ancestors of the human race, were first honoured as saints in the churches of Eastern Christianity and during the Middle Ages their cult spread into the West. Though the Catholic church never officially recognized them with a feast day, popular veneration of Adam and Eve was widespread, particularly on December 24 when it was thought fitting that those responsible for the Fall of mankind be linked with the birth of the Saviour who came to redeem humanity.

 Medieval dramas which told the story of Adam and Eve had as a stage prop a tree representing the Garden of Eden and the Tree of the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This tree was decorated with apples or round wafers representing the host of the Mass and it is this “Paradise Tree” which some historians (not me) see as a precursor to the modern Christmas tree. This link is evident when we note that as late as the nineteenth century some American and German Christmas trees had images of Adam and Eve and the Serpent underneath them. Godey’s magazine claimed “an orthodox Christmas-Tree will have the figures of our first parents at its foot, and the serpent twining itself. The apples were placed on the table on Christmas Eve to recall those through whose sin mankind first fell as well as the Virgin Mary, the new Eve.

In the early 20th century German parties of the left opposed Christmas. The Communist Party liked to use the holiday to attack capitalism by vandalizing stores and interrupting church services. The Social Democrat Party was less violent but criticized middle class attitudes to Christmas, reminding their followers that it was the workers who provided all the goods: the real Weihnachtsmann was the “working proletariat’. A 1900 collection entitled The Worker’s Christmas in Song published “Arbeiter-Stille-Nacht” – “The Worker’s Silent Night”, by Boleslaw Strzelewicz (1857-1938). 

 

Silent night, sorrowful night,
All around splendid light.
In the hovels just torment and need,
Cold and waste, no light and no bread.
The poor are sleeping on straw.
The poor are sleeping in straw.

Silent night, sorrowful night,
The hungry babe cries out his plight,
Did you bring us home some bread?
Sighing the father shakes his head,
“I’m still unemployed.”
“I’m still unemployed.”

Silent night, sorrowful night,
Working folk, arise and fight!
Pledge to struggle in all holiness
Until humanity’s Christmas exists
Until peace is here.
Until peace is here.

Aguinaldo is a  word with a number of Christmas associations: in Cuba it is a vine with blue flowers that blooms in the winter; in the Philippines and Puerto Rico it is an early morning mass in Advent; in much of Spanish America it is a name for Christmas presents; in Honduras, Costa Rica and Ecuador the term refers to the annual Christmas bonus given by employers; and in Spain and the Spanish Caribbean it is a song sung by visiting carolers.

Here is an example of a Spanish aguinaldo:

Todo los años venimos,
A cantar por este tiempo
Las coplas del aguinaldo
De Divine Nacimiento.

 A esta casa liegamos
Casa rice y principal.
Cantaremos y principal,
Tomaremos si nos dan.

De la sacrista sale
El cura bien revestido
A darle felices pascuas
Al Nino recien nacido.

Every year we come
To sing at this time
The verses of the aguinaldo
Of the divine birth.

 We come to this house,
A rich and illustrious house,
We will sing and we will drink,
If you give us something.

From the sacristy comes
The priest, finely attired,
To give Christmas greetings
To the new-born babe.

Robert Ingersoll (1833-99) was the most famous atheist of his generation, outraging American Christians with his attacks on their religion. In December, 1891 the Evening Telegraph printed the following “sermon”, sparking rebuttals and counter-rebuttals in the press.

The good part of Christmas is not always Christian — it is generally Pagan; that is to say, human, natural.

Christianity did not come with tidings of great joy, but with a message of eternal grief. It came with the threat of everlasting torture on its lips. It meant war on earth and perdition hereafter.

It taught some good things — the beauty of love and kindness in man. But as a torch-bearer, as a bringer of joy, it has been a failure. It has given infinite consequences to the acts of finite beings, crushing the soul with a responsibility too great for mortals to bear. It has filled the future with fear and flame, and made God the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, destined to be the home of nearly all the sons of men. Not satisfied with that, it has deprived God of the pardoning power.

And yet it may have done some good by borrowing from the Pagan world the old festival called Christmas.

Long before Christ was born the Sun-God triumphed over the powers of Darkness. About the time that we call Christmas the days begin perceptibly to lengthen. Our barbarian ancestors were worshipers of the sun, and they celebrated his victory over the hosts of night. Such a festival was natural and beautiful. The most natural of all religions is the worship of the sun. Christianity adopted this festival. It borrowed from the Pagans the best it has.

I believe in Christmas and in every day that has been set apart for joy. We in America have too much work and not enough play. We are too much like the English.

I think it was Heinrich Heine who said that he thought a blaspheming Frenchman was a more pleasing object to God than a praying Englishman. We take our joys too sadly. I am in favor of all the good free days — the more the better.

Christmas is a good day to forgive and forget — a good day to throw away prejudices and hatreds — a good day to fill your heart and your house, and the hearts and houses of others, with sunshine.

Robert G. Ingersoll.

No part of Europe suffered as much from the fall of the Roman Empire to the barbarian invasions as did Britain. After the last legion pulled out in 410, the island was left to its own resources which proved insufficient to repel the waves of Picts, Saxons, Irish, Angles and Jutes that assailed the Romano-Britons. Civilization gradually died; literacy almost vanished; the barter system replaced coinage; and Christianity retreated into the Welsh hills and the remoter regions; Germanic petty kingdoms were established on the ruins.

The task of reintroducing Christianity fell to Irish monks who evangelized the north and to a mission sent out from Rome in the 590s. Aethelbert, a barbarian king in Kent, had married a Frankish princess who had won permission to include Christian priests in her retinue. Pope Gregory the Great took the opportunity to send monks from his own monastery to the Kentish capital at Canterbury and the expedition was to be led by the abbot Augustine. On the way to his post Augustine apparently heard stories of the bloodthirsty people to whom he was being sent and wanted to turn back. His spine was stiffened by exhortations from Gregory so the monk continued to Britain, arriving in 597.

Augustine’s mission was made easier by a change in Church attitudes to pagan customs. Hitherto, the Church had resolutely resisted the pressures of local culture on the Christian message. Early believers had spent centuries refusing to take part in Roman civic religion, the sacrifices, holiday celebrations, and the bloody arena sports, and suffered for it. But by the start of the 7th century, the papacy was willing to become more accommodating in order to meet the challenge of evangelizing the Germanic barbarians. Pope Gregory sent the following message to Augustine:

By no means destroy the temples of the gods but rather the idols within those temples. Let him, after he has purified them with holy water, place altars and relics of the saints in them. For, if those temples are well built, they should be converted from the worship of demons to the service of the true God. Thus, seeing that their places of worship are not destroyed, the people will banish error from their hearts and come to places familiar and dear to them in acknowledgement and worship of the true God. Further, since it has been their custom to slaughter oxen in sacrifice, they should receive some solemnity in exchange. Let them therefore, on the day of the dedication of their churches, or on the feast of the martyrs whose relics are preserved in them, build themselves huts around their one-time temples and celebrate the occasion with religious feasting. They will sacrifice and eat the animals not any more as an offering to the devil, but for the glory of God to whom, as the giver of all things, they will give thanks for having been satiated. Thus, if they are not deprived of all exterior joys, they will more easily taste the interior ones. For surely it is impossible to efface all at once everything from their strong minds, just as, when one wishes to reach the top of a mountain, he must climb by stages and step by step, not by leaps and bounds.

This policy helped ensure Christmas celebrations over the ages would be syncretic, varied with many local flavours. Moreover, Christmas Day was the date in 597 when Augustine was able to baptize Aethelbert and thousands of his Saxon followers.

The word Christmas is derived from the Anglo-Saxon “Christes Maessan”, an eleventh-century term meaning Christ’s Mass. Though there is a similar Dutch word for Christmas — “Kersmis” – most languages have derived their name for the holiday from different roots. The orginal Latin term was Festum Nativitatis Domini Nostri Jesu Christi — the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ — which was shortened to Dies Natali Domini, the Birthday of the Lord. From this Latin phrase comes the name for Christmas in a number of European languages: Il Natale (Italian), La Navidad, (Spanish), Natal (Portuguese), Nadal (Provençal), Nollaig (Irish), Nadolig (Welsh). The French Noël may be derived from this source or from “nowel”, meaning “news”. In eastern Europe the name for the season also refers to a birthday: Karacsony in Hungarian; Boze Narodzenie (God’s Birth) in Polish; Greek, Russian and Ukrainian terms for Christmas also refer to the birth of Jesus.

“Holy Night” is the meaning of the German Weihnacht as well as the Czech Veselé Vánoce and the Slovak Veselé Vianoce. The Lithuanian Kaledos is likely derived from the Latin “Kalends”, referring to the Roman New Year festivities. Yule, the ancient northern winter festival, lent its name to Christmas in the Scandinavian lands: Jul (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian), Jól (Icelandic), Joula (Finnish) and even Estonian — Jõule. Ziemassvetki is the Latvian winter festival whose name has become synonymous with Christmas there.

Before Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, he dealt with the holiday in The Pickwick Papers, a first published in serial form in 1836-37 with the December 1836 issue containing a description of a Christmas spent by Samuel Pickwick and his friends at the home of Mr. Wardle at Dingley Dell. The description of the dance, the parlor games and the story-telling are reminiscent of a traditional rural holiday and lack the notion of Christmas as a time for charity that dominates Dickens’ 1843 A Christmas Carol.

Now, the screaming had subsided, and faces were in a glow, and curls in a tangle, and Mr Pickwick, after kissing the old lady as before mentioned, was standing under the mistletoe, looking with a very pleased countenance on all that was passing around when the young lady with the black eyes, after a little whisper with the other young ladies, made a sudden dart forward, and putting her arm round Mr Pickwick’s neck, saluted him affectionately on the left cheek; and before Mr Pickwick distinctly knew what was the matter, he was surrounded by the whole body, and kissed by every one of them.

It was a pleasant thing to see Mr Pickwick in the centre of group, now pulled this way, and then that, and first kissed on the chin, and then on the nose, and then on the spectacles: and to hear the peals of laughter which were raised on every side; but it was a still more pleasant thing to see Mr Pickwick, blinded shortly afterwards with a silk handkerchief; falling up against the wall, and scrambling into corners, and going through all the mysteries of blind-man’s buff, with the utmost relish for the game, until at last he caught one of the poor relations, and then had to evade if blind-man himself; which he did with a nimbleness and agility that elicited the admiration and applause of all beholders. The poor relations caught the people who they thought would like it, and when the game flagged, got caught themselves. When they were all tired of blind-man’s buff, there was a great game at snap­dragon, and when fingers enough were burned with that, and all the raisins were gone, they sat down by the huge fire of blazing logs to a substantial supper, and a mighty bowl of wassail, something smaller than an ordinary wash-house copper, in which the hot apples were hissing and bubbling with a rich look, and a jolly sound, that were perfectly irresistible.

‘This,’ said Mr Pickwick, looking round him, ‘this is, indeed, comfort.’

‘Our invariable custom,’ replied Mr Wardle. ‘Everybody sits down with us on Christmas eve, as you see them now — servants and all; and here we wait, until the clock strikes twelve, to usher Christmas in, and beguile the time with forfeits and old stories. Trundle, my boy, rake up the fire.’

Many 19th-century American religious denominations initially resisted the celebration of Christmas and the appearance of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve but, over time, most came to embrace the holiday.  Some preachers found in Santa Claus the expression of Christian values of grace and generosity. Some literary works , such as the  Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley’s “Santa Claus”, elevated Santa to a near-divine status, one to whom prayers might be addressed and in whom solace might be sought.

“Most tangible of all the gods that be,/ Santa Claus – our own since Infancy!/ As first we scampered to thee – now, as then,/ Take us as children to thy heart again.”

This sort of confusion between Santa Claus and God found expression in “Annie and Willie’s Prayer”, a poem by Sophia P. Snow which was printed on the back of an advertisement for a dry goods store in the 1870s. On Christmas Eve two motherless (of course) children go to bed crying because their father has denied the existence of Santa Claus. But they persist in their belief: “Now we know there is, and it can’t be denied,/ For he came every year before mamma died.” Perhaps, they reason, their mother’s prayers had caused God to send Santa, so the two of them pray to Jesus to send gifts and the magical gift-bringer. Father, who that very day had suffered a reverse on his stock portfolio which had made him grumpy, overhears the children’s prayers and repents, going out and buying a plethora of presents. “I am happier tonight than I have been for a year. / I’ve enjoyed more pleasure than ever before./ What care I if bank stock falls ten per cent, more? / Hereafter I’ll make it a rule, I believe,/ To have Santa Claus visit us each Christmas eve.” The poetess concludes: “Blind father! who caused your stern heart to relent? / And the hasty word spoken so soon to repent? ‘Twas the Being who bade you steal up-stairs, / And made you his agent to answer their prayers.”