Christmas Every Day

Judging by the numerous prohibitions issued against it by Church authorities through the centuries, people have wanted to dance to celebrate Christmas for a long time. Dancing in churches was prohibited by the Council at Toledo in 590; in 692 another council in Byzantium warned against dancing during the Twelve Nights as did the Faculty of Theology in Paris in 1445 — in both cases they linked dancing to cross-dressing. In sixteenth-century Iceland, church decrees were issued against dancing on Yule Eve and in Scotland in 1574 fourteen women were arrested for “playing, dancing and singing filthy carols on Yule Day.” Despite these strictures Christmas and dancing continue to be linked.

In 1325 church authorities in Paris forbade clerics under pain of excommunication from participating in dances except at Christmas and the feasts of St Nicholas and Saint Catherine when certain round dances were part of the liturgy.

Nowadays, in Spain it is the “Dance of the Six” in the cathedral of Seville that opens the Christmas season — in front of the altar ten boys dance through a series of postures and movements that symbolize the mysteries of the Incarnation and Nativity. (In a rather less solemn manner in Cordoba, other Spaniards engage in “El Baile de los Locos”, the Dance of the Madmen. Led by El Loco Mayor, the chief madman, a mob of folk pretending to be demented dance though people’s houses during the Christmas season.) Dancing opens the Christmas season in Honduras as well — the Warini, the Christmas Herald is a masked dancer who goes house-to-house accompanied by singers and drummers. In Lalibela, Ethiopia on Christmas Day ceremonies include a dance by some of the priests who have accompanied the procession of the Coptic Ark of the Covenant. The Matachine dancers perform during Christmas in Mexico while in Canada numerous aboriginal tribes hold competitive powwows; in Tirol men dressed as bears dance in the streets while in northeastern Brazil the Bumba Meu-Boi involves dancers guised as bulls and donkeys. In Scotland “guisers” went door to door dancing at singing; in Cornwall such folk were called “geese dancers”.

 In Provence, at special Christmas services to honour their profession and its connection to the original Nativity, traditionally clad shepherds and shepherdesses sing and dance behind a ram pulling a cart with a lamb. Scandinavian families link hands on Christmas Eve and dance around the tree singing carols. In the United States there are few cities without a ballet company who will performThe Nutcracker over the Christmas holidays while in the rural west of the country those with a yen to dance can attend the Texas Cowboys’ Christmas Ball or the Sheepherders’ Overall Dance.

St Barbara is the patron saint of blowing things up and of men concerned with explosions — miners, artillerymen, engineers, and firemen. Barbara was a legendary virgin of Lebanon at a time when Christianity was persecuted by the Roman authorities. Her father kept her locked in a tower where she was comforted by the sight of a fruit tree in bloom. Having converted to Christianity, she refused the pagan husband she was offered, an act for which she was punished by torture. When Barbara persisted in her faith, her father beheaded her — an unwise move because he was instantly struck dead by a bolt of lightning (thus explaining her patronage).

Her saint’s day, December 4, is the start of the Christmas season for the Christians of the Middle East and the occasion for a tradition involving blossoms.. In Germany, Austria, the Czech lands, and Slovakia a “Barbara twig” is cut from a cherry tree and placed in water. If it blooms on or before Christmas Eve the family will see a marriage in the year to come. In Provence and parts of the Middle East, wheat and lentils are sown on St. Barbara’s Day and if they germinate are served on Christmas

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.

This is the world’s first oil painting of Santa Claus. It dates from 1837; the work is “Santa Claus or Saint Nicholas” by Robert Weir.  Weir (1803-89) was a member of the Knickerbocker circle and taught art at West Point Military Academy, where one of his pupils was James McNeil Whistler. His gift-bringer is caught in the act of ascending the chimney and (in homage to a gesture attributed to Saint Nicholas in both the Knickerbocker History and Moore’s poem) has turned to lay his finger aside of his nose. Weir produced several versions of this painting over the next few years which were exhibited to favourable response. Only in the first one could Santa Claus be described as jolly; all later depictions by Weir replace the amiable face with one wearing a manic leer.

This is not a comforting midnight visitor. With wild eyebrows, jagged teeth, and an ample collection of switches he might well be one of the sinister forest creatures of a Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale but there are signs of his bishop’s rank and his Dutch origins as well. A rosary dangles from his waist while a processional cross (or sword, say some) is stuck in his belt. His cloak is an ecclesiastical mozzetta, coloured the official episcopal red and trimmed with white fur, (though few bishops are seen sticking a stump of a pipe in their hood.) Dutch tiles, the image of a windmill above the mantle, a broken pipe on the floor and a peeled orange (signifying the ruling Dutch dynasty) make clear Santa’s ethnic origins.

 A seventeenth-century English tract, written as part of the intense debate on the propriety of celebrating Christmas. The devout Protestants known as Puritans argued that Christmas was a popish and heathen invention and spoke against the feasting, merriment and revelry of the holiday. For a time under the Commonwealth of the 1650s they succeeded in making it illegal.

The author of An Hue and Cry After Christmas uses Old Christmas as the personification of the season and asks: “Any man or woman, that can give any knowledge or tell any tidings of an old, old, very old grey-bearded gentleman, called Christmas, who was wont to be a a very familiar guest and visit all sorts of people, both poor and rich, and used to appear in glittering gold, silk and silver, in the court, and in all shapes in the theatre in White Hall, and had ringing, feasts and jollity in all places, both in the city and the country for his coming — whoever can tell what is become of him, or where he may be found, let him bring him back again into England.”

A renowned French short story of 1875, “Les trois basses messes” by Alphonse Daudet (1840-97), supposedly based on a Provençal folk tale. The seventeenth-century priest Dom Balaguère is so greedy for his Christmas réveillon feast of truffled turkeys, pheasant, peacock, eel, trout and wine that he falls prey to the tempting of the Devil and rushes through his performance of the required three masses. God then decrees that the priest shall not enter heaven until he has celebrated 300 Christmas masses in his chapel where for centuries his ghost haunts the altar.

An elegant reading of the story can be found by clicking on this link.

 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 historians 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 1941 the United States of America had just entered World War Two. The Japanese Empire was rapidly expanding across east Asia and had attacked American possessions in the Pacific including Hawaii, the Philippines, and Wake Island. In Europe the fascist armies of Germany and Italy had occupied much of the continent and were at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad. At this critical moment British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sailed across the Atlantic to spend Christmas in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s White House.

Both Roosevelt and Churchill made radio addresses. Said Roosevelt: “There are many men and women in America—sincere and faithful men and women—who asked themselves this Christmas: ‘How can we light our trees? How can we meet and worship with love and with uplifted hearts in a world at war, a world of fighting and suffering and death?'”  “Our strongest weapon in this war”, said Roosevelt, “is that conviction of the dignity and brotherhood of man which Christmas day signifies—more than any other day or any other symbol. Against enemies who preach the principles of hate and practice them, we set our faith in human love and in God’s care for us and all men everywhere.” 

Churchill spoke of his American heritage and noted: “This is a strange Christmas Eve.  Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other.  Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field.  Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart.  Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm.  Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.

“Let the children have their night of fun and laughter.  Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play.  Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

“And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.”

Yule was the time amongst the pagan Teutons for the sacrifice of a white horse. Christmas too has ceremonies that focus on horses, though not in such a fatal fashion.

For reasons that remain unclear St Stephen has come to be regarded as the patron saint of horses and therefore his day, December 26, is given over to horse parades, races and special treatment for the animals. In England it is a time to bleed horses to ensure their health for the coming year. In the sixteenth century Tusser noted: “Ere Christmas be passed,/ let Horsse be lett blood,/ For many a purpose/ it dooth him much good/ The day of St. Steeven,/ old fathers did use./ If that do mislike thee,some other day chuse.”

In Wales the Mari Llwyd (Grey Mare) ceremony involves a man under a white sheet carrying a pole topped by a horse’s head with snapping jaws — it capers, ringing the bells on its sheet, and bites people who have to pay a forfeit to be released. According to legend, the Mari Lwyd is the animal turned out of its stable to make room for the Holy Family; it has been looking for shelter ever since. Accompanied by a group of men, often in mummers’ costumes or bearing bells the Mari Lwyd will approach a house during the Christmas season and the group will beg admittance. After a ritual negotiation that may involve the exchange of humorous verses they will be let inside where the horse will dart about while hospitality is shared.

In England similar horse figures are Old Hob, who went about with a group of men singing and ringing hand bells for a gratuity, and the Hodening Horse of Kent. On the Isle of Man it is the Laare Vane or White Mare which appeared on New Year’s Eve. In Germany the hobby-horse is called Schimmel (or in some places Schimmelreiter to emphasize the rider). Like the Mari Lwyd it takes part in house visits; jumping about to entertain the children and dancing with pretty girls.

The image of Jesus as the light of the world and the mid-winter longing for the return of the sun has led to the candle being associated inextricably with Christmas. This can be seen in church ceremonies such as Candlemas, Christingle or candle-lit carol services and in numerous home devotions. In countries such as Ireland it is the custom to place a candle in the window during the Christmas season; in eastern Europe a large candle is placed in the centre of the table, sometimes stuck in a loaf of bread. In Germany the Advent wreath, the Lichstock or Christmas pyramid and Christmas tree all employ candles while in the southwestern U.S. and Mexico luminaria and farolitas light up the night. Australians flock in their hundreds of thousands to Carols by Candlelight while Filipinos place candles in their parols.

 A beautiful custom is carried on in the Auvergne on Christmas eve. A candle is lit by the oldest member of the family and used to make the sign of the cross. It is then extinguished and passed on to the eldest son who does the same and who then passes the candle to his wife, and so on. When the candle finally reaches the youngest, it is lit and placed in the middle of the table, a signal for the feast to begin. In Norway the thick Christmas candle must burn all night through on Christmas Eve or, it is believed, a family member will die that year. Gouda, the centre of Dutch candle industry, turns off all electrical lights in the city centre on Christmas Eve while the mayor, by candle-light, reads the Nativity story to the crowd.