Christmas Every Day

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries an often-heard complaint was that Christmas charity was becoming less frequent, that the rich aristocratic and gentry families who at one time had feasted their tenants at Christmas were now abandoning their estates for the bright lights of London. The result was that the poor were suffering. Here are the beginning verses of a 1624 ballad protesting that change. The balladeer had the English monarchy on his side as both Elizabeth I and James I commanded wealthy landowners to remain in their manor during Yuletide.

A Song Bewailing theTime of Christmas , So Much Decayed in England

Christmas is my name, for have I gone, have I gone, have I gone,
Have I gone without regard;
   Whereas great men by flocks they be flown to Londonward
   Where in pomp and pleasure do waste
That which Christmas had wont to feast,
   Welladay!
Houses where music was wonted to ring,
   Nothing but bats and owls now do sing.
Welladay, welladay, welladay, where should I stay?

Christmas bread and beef is turned into stones, into stones, into stones,
   Into stones and silken rags.
And Lady Money, it doth sleep, it doth sleep, it doth sleep,
   It doth sleep in misers’ bags.
Where many gallants once abound,
   Nought but a dog and shepherd is found,
      Welladay!
Places where Christmas revels did keep
   Are now become habitations for sheep.
Welladay, welladay, welladay, where should I stay?

Pan, the shepherds’ god, doth deface, doth deface, doth deface,
   Doth deface Lady Ceres’ crown;
And tillages doth decay, doth decay, doth decay,
   Doth decay in every town;
Landlords their rents so highly enhance
   That Piers the ploughman barefoot doth dance,
      Welladay!
Farmers that Christmas would entertain
   Hath scarcely withal themselves to maintain.
Welladay, welladay, welladay, where should I stay?

There has for many decades considerable disquiet in many Christian circles about the pre-eminence of Santa Claus as a Christmas figure. Starting in the 1940s many Catholics in America and Europe protested about the triumph of the North Pole over Bethlehem. In 1951 Catholic bishops in Dijon, France staged an execution of Père Noël, burning him in effigy in front of the cathedral. Later in the century Protestant evangelicals began to evince the same concern. We can see this in the country and western song by Toby Keith, entitled “Jesus Gets Jealous of Santa Claus”. 

In order to rectify this tension in Christian families that still support Santa mythology, artists and decoration makers have placed Santa Claus in a reverent position beside the cradle, showing his proper subordination to the Baby Jesus. The ornament below is from my collection:

Eddi’s Service
(A.D. 687)

Eddi, priest of St. Wilfrid
In his chapel at Manhood End,
Ordered a midnight service
For such as cared to attend.

But the Saxons were keeping Christmas,
And the night was stormy as well.
Nobody came to service,
Though Eddi rang the bell.

“Wicked weather for walking,”
Said Eddi of Manhood End.
“But I must go on with the service
For such as care to attend.”

The altar-lamps were lighted, —
An old marsh-donkey came,
Bold as a guest invited, 
And stared at the guttering flame.

The storm beat on at the windows,
The water splashed on the floor,
And a wet, yoke-weary bullock
Pushed in through the open door.

“How do I know what is greatest,
How do I know what is least?
That is My Father’s business,”
Said Eddi, Wilfrid’s priest.

“But — three are gathered together —
Listen to me and attend.
I bring good news, my brethren!” 
Said Eddi of Manhood End.

And he told the Ox of a Manger
And a Stall in Bethlehem,
And he spoke to the Ass of a Rider,
That rode to Jerusalem.

They steamed and dripped in the chancel,
They listened and never stirred,
While, just as though they were Bishops,
Eddi preached them The Word,

Till the gale blew off on the marshes
And the windows showed the day,
And the Ox and the Ass together
Wheeled and clattered away.

And when the Saxons mocked him,
Said Eddi of Manhood End,
“I dare not shut His chapel
On such as care to attend.”

In seeking to understand the foundations of the psychological disorders that appear in December, Dr. James Caltrell notes that the holiday season and the presence of one’s father, God, Christ, Santa Claus and Father Time produces a syndrome marked by “diffuse anxiety, numerous regressive phenomena including marked feelings of helplessness, possessiveness, and increased irritablity, nostalgia or bitter rumination about holiday experiences of youth, depressive affect, and a wish for magical resolution of problems.”

 For psychoanalyst Bryce Boyer the key to Christmas depression is found in unresolved sibling rivalries. He concludes that his patients sought to obtain penises which they hoped would win their mother’s love that had previously been given to other siblings. The worship of the Christ child, adored by his mother Mary, awakens a frustration of never being as good as the favourite child.

In an article entitled “Father Christmas: a Ritual Aimed at Transitionalising Separation”, Sébastien Chapellon explains why Santa Claus has been instituted as a family tradition in most homes in the world. The author shows that this custom enacts the violence inherent to the adult-child relationship. Even when remodelled by the consumer society, this rite, which a priori is an emblem of parental devotion, externalises the underlying hostility in the family relationships. By lying to the child on the subject of Santa, adults arouse his hatred without realising it. 

Sigmund Freud is known to have celebrated Christmas, and his followers in the psychiatric profession have not ignored the season in their quest for understanding the deepest secrets of the human personality.

Dr. Adrianus de Groot, for example, claims that the folk customs surrounding St. Nicholas represent all the stages of the human reproductive cycle from courtship to the production of offspring. “The symbolism could hardly be more characteristic,” states the good doctor, who helpfully emphasizes the clues we should have noticed “the riding on the rooftops of houses, the pouring down of sweets and other presents through the chimney, so that all these good things fall into the shoe or the barrel beside the fire.” Treasure is of course semen and the story of the three murdered students whom St Nicholas revives is the story of the “male triumvirate”; their death is the “death of the phallus.”

For Dr. Richard Sterba, female imagery is the key to unlocking the heart of Christmas. The chimney and the fireplace that Santa Claus uses to enter the house are the vagina and the vulva to the unconscious mind of the child and presents therefore come out of the birth canal. Santa Claus with his great belly is thus a pregnant woman. In fact the whole process of shopping, wrapping and keeping secrets is symbolic of pregnancy just as the exhaustion that follows the opening of presents resembles that experienced after giving birth.

A Christmas Carol’s Ebenezer Scrooge, who hoarded money, is diagnosed as anal-retentive by Freudians. Michael Steig reminds us of the link between feces and money and speaks of the “excremental vision” of Charles Dickens. (Other psychiatrists have noted Dickens’s love of food and feasting and have pronounced him an “oral” personality.) Dr. Walter Bortz points out that Scrooge was cured by Dickensian psychotherapy and urges sufferers of Christmas funk to follow Dickens’s prescription of indulgence coupled with generosity.

A marvellous bit of nostalgia from the pen of E.H. Shepherd, the famed illustrator of Winnie the Pooh and The Wind in the Willows. Note the  hooded garb of the British Father Christmas that distinguishes him from the North American Santa Claus. Note too just how early the myth of the Lapland home of the Gift-Bringer rivals the North Pole.

Breaking the New Year’s Cake

In Ireland a number of curious customs were enacted on New Year’s Eve to ensure prosperity for the family in the coming year. There was the necessity of eating a huge meal that resulted in December 31 being known as the Night of the Big Portion. In some parts of Ireland a loaf of bread or a cake was used to strike the door three times while a ritual verse was chanted in which misfortune was bidden to be off and happiness to enter. A variation on this called for a cake to be smashed against the door of the house or barn. (Not to be confused with the wedding custom of breaking the cake on the Irish bride’s head.)

Breaking the Witch

In many countries it was a question of much importance as to who would be the first person across the threshold of the house on Christmas or New Year’s Day. The lucky “first-footer” was usually a dark-haired male and the unluckiest were often women. In Wales if a woman was the first to enter the house on New Year little boys were assembled (sometimes hired) to parade through the house to counteract the evil effects brought by a female first-footer. This process was called “breaking the witch”.

In many medieval churches it was the custom on December 6, St. Nicholas’s Day, to elect a choir boy as a mock bishop. During his tenure (which lasted until Holy Innocents’ Day, December 28) he would wear a bishop’s robes, go about in procession, take offerings, preach, and give his blessing.

The earliest example of this custom comes from 961 when German King Conrad spent Christmas with the Bishop of Constance and visited the monastery at St Gall. The king entertained himself during the service by rolling apples into the aisles in an attempt to distract the boy bishop and his attendants from their solemn duties but they did not take the bait.

This practice grew partly out of Jesus’s teachings on the special relationship of children to the Kingdom of Heaven and partly out of the spirit of social inversion that marked Christmas-time celebrations in the Middle Ages. This custom was not restricted to boys — in the thirteenth century English nunneries allowed prayers and ceremonies to be performed by girls on Innocents’ Day. At Carrow Abbey the female equivalent of the Nicholas Bishop was the Christmas Abbess.

 Like those other examples of misrule and social inversion, the Feast of Fools and the Feast of the Ass, the Boy Bishop was eventually suppressed. Henry VII of England had his own St. Nicholas Bishop, chosen from the choristers of the Chapel Royal, but his son Henry VIII forbade the custom in 1541, complaining that “children be strangely decked and appareled to counterfeit priests, bishops and women, and so be led with songs and dances from house to house, blessing the people and gathering of money and boys do sing mass and preach in the pulpit, with such other unfitting and inconvenient usages”. The Boy Bishop was briefly resurrected by Bloody Mary in 1555 but disappeared on her death in 1558. Vestiges remain in the Italian custom of children preaching before the Bambino and in some English churches and schools which began to revive the custom in the twentieth century.