The conversion of a savage people to Christianity was not an overnight process. We can see this in the reactions of some Scandinavian leaders to the new behaviours required of believers at Christmas time. Consider the case of King Sigurd of Norway who had some difficulty with Christian strictures on eating meat in Advent and consorting with concubines on Christmas Eve.
So befell on a time on Yule-eve, as the king sat in the hall and the boards were set, that the King said: “Fetch me fleshmeat.” “Lord,” said they, “it is not wont in Norway to eat flesh-meat on Yule-eve.” He answered : “If it be not the wont, then will I have it the wont.” So they came and had in porpoise. The king stuck his knife into it, but took not thereof. Then said the king : “Fetch me a woman into the hall.” They came thither and had a woman with them, and she was coifed wide and side. The king laid his hand to her head, and looked on her, and said : “An ill-favoured woman is this, yet not so that one may not endure her.” Then he looked at her hand and said : “An ungoodly hand and ill-waxen, yet one must endure it.’ Then he bade her reach forth her foot he looked thereon, and said “A foot monstrous and mickle much ; but one may give no heed thereto ; such must be put up with.” Then he bade them lift up the kirtle, and now he saw the leg, and said : “Fie on thy leg; it is both blue and thick, and a mere whore must thou be.” And he bade them take her out, “for I will not have her.”
I do wonder what it was liked to be “coifed wide and side”.
You might think that Judas, who sold Jesus to the authorities for thirty pieces of silver, would be the last of the associates of Christ to figure in the legends of Christmas but there are two stories told about the unfortunate fellow and the holy season.
The oldest of these says that on the Feast of Candlemas, February 2 and the last day of Christmas-tide, Judas is allowed out of Hell and given a respite from the torments he was sentenced to suffer. The poor soul is allowed to cool himself in the sea for a day before he returns to the infernal regions.
The Victorian poet Matthew Arnold took that legend and reworked in a piece called “St Brandan”. St Brandan, or Brendan as he is more commonly called, was an Irish monk (c. 484-c.577) who was supposed to have crossed the Atlantic in a small boat in search of the Isle of the Blessed. On his voyage, says Arnold, on Christmas night he spies an iceberg with a man on it. It is Judas who tells him that because he was once kind to a leper the angels allow him temporary relief from the fires of Hell.
There are a number of customs relating to hunting during the Christmas season. One of the most curious comes from Venice where the city’s ruler, the Doge, was obliged to go duck hunting every Christmas and to present each member of the Grand Council (essentially every Venetian noble) with 5 birds. This meant that the Doge and his party had to come up with about 12,000 ducks and if he couldn’t kill that many he had to buy them from somewhere. This was proving both expensive and tiresome – each set of five birds had to contain the same proportion of fat and lean fowl, lest it appear that the Doge was showing favour to some nobles more than others.
In 1521 Doge Antonio Grimani found a way around this irksome custom. He replaced the donation of 5 birds with the presentation of a medal, worth a quarter-ducat, instead. This custom of the silver coin called an “Osella” (Venetian slang for “duck”) continued until the fall of the republic in the 1790s. Pictured above is such a medallion with a portrait of the Doge being presented with a banner by St Mark (patron saint of the city) and being blessed by Christ.
The publisher’s motto is “Humor Heals Us.” Noble words, but count me as one who is sceptical about either the risibility or the medical efficacy of its publications. Consider Fritz the Farting Reindeer, subtitled “A Story About a Reindeer Who Farts” – one must imagine the side-splitting antics that ensue when Santa has to choose his team for his Christmas run and Comet comes down with a broken leg. Imagine more unbridled mirth in the same author’s Santa’s Tooting Tooshie: A Story About Santa’s Toots. Conceive, if you possibly can, of the jocundity to be found in Ellie the Tooting Elf: A Story About an Elf Who Toots. Stand back Voltaire, P.G. Wodehouse, and Ogden Nash, you are no match for the literary mind that can turn a phrase like this:
Farting without you is like…. Elmer without glue Detective without a clue Crying without “Boo-hoo!”
The author is modestly anonymous but he (or she) has emitted a whole series of books aimed at the children’s market, involving unicorns, penguins, turkeys, puffer fish and other fauna plagued by uncontrollable gaseous emissions. Not since the fabled Le Pétomane, consummate farter of the French musical hall scene in the 19th century, has flatulence been monetized so nakedly. I can only recommend that the author purchase a barrel of industrial-strength Gas-X and stay away from beans, prunes, and cabbage.
The annual Hallmark Channel Christmas movie season is upon us again. Here is a way to really enjoy these cheesy seasonal offerings: play Christmas Movie Bingo.
You can print out your own sets of these cards online at sites like https://www.playpartyplan.com/movie-christmas-bingo-cards/ or https://www.peanutblossom.com/blog/hallmark-christmas-movie-bingo/.
When the Nazi forces were driven from Ukraine in the Second World War, anti-communist partisans continued to fight for independence from the Soviet Union and the occupying Red Army. Their struggle went on for years until they were eventually crushed, but their Christmas cards served to remind Ukrainians of their national and Christian identity.
Some of these groups, though brave, were not the most morally irreproachable. Some had collaborated with the Germans during the war; some were involved in ethnic cleansing against Polish populations but they endured for years against KGB forces because of the wide support they were given by the Ukrainian people. It appears that more recently Vladimir Putin underestimated the strength of Ukrainian nationalism,
In 1809 a young New York writer named Washington Irving published to great acclaim a satirical history of his city entitled A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by Diedrich Knickerbocker. Poking good-natured fun at the expense of the Dutch colonial families, Irving introduced his readers to Saint Nicholas as the local patron and guardian. It was St Nicholas whose image was carved on the prow of the vessel which brought the colonists to the New World, a ship which Irving claimed was built “by the ablest ship carpenters of Amsterdam, who, it is well known, always model their ships after the fair forms of their country-women. Accordingly, it had one hundred feet in the beam, one hundred feet in the keel, and one hundred feet from the bottom of the sternpost to the tafferel … full in the bows, with a pair of enormous cat-heads, a copper bottom, and withal a most prodigious poop!”
Like many Latin American countries Panama celebrates its Christmas with a mixture of traditions from its Spanish Catholic heritage and the influence of the United States; the latter is particularly acute because of the long American occupation of the Panama Canal Zone which ended only in 1999.
In Panamanian homes, for example, the family Nativity scene, always important to Catholic families, will share space with that northern import the Christmas tree. For many years the country had to import tens of thousands of evergreens from the United States — they would arrive in mi-December on ships — but now Panama has its own tree-farming industry and they are much more wide spread. The mix of cultures can also be heard in the Christmas music broadcast by radio and television: traditional songs, the Spanish-influenced “villancicos” and “gaitas”, coexist with American English-language carols.
The approach of Christmas is marked by novenas, nine days of religious services involving special Christmas prayers, songs and devotions which take place both in churches and homes, and posadas (above) which reenact the search of the Holy Family for lodgings. It is also a time of parties, little treats from godparents to godchildren, Christmas markets, home decoration and parades. The climax is Christmas Eve with its family dinner: on the menu is sure to be tamales — cornmeal stuffed with chicken, onions and sauce and wrapped in plantain — beans, Arroz con Pollo — chicken and rice — and seafood, especially shrimp. To drink there is rum punch, piña colada, wine and beer with soft drinks for the kids. For Catholic families the Misa de Gallo, the midnight “rooster” mass, is not to be missed.
Influenced by the American example many Panamanian children now expect to find presents under the tree on Christmas, brought either by Santa Claus or the Christ Child. In other families children will have to wait until the more traditional Epiphany date. Then on Dia de los Reyes, Kings’ Day, the Magi will bring gifts and the Christmas season will come to an end with another round of parties.
One of the creepier programs of the Nazi state was the Lebensborn (Fountain of Life) project. Originally a maternity service for wives of SS men, it turned into a means to encourage the birth of racially-pure babies by every means possible. It took in unwed mothers who could pass a racial-conformity test; it encouraged young German women to be impregnated by SS officers or physically-correct strangers; it kidnapped children in conquered lands; and it sheltered women from conquered countries who had become pregnant by German soldiers.
After the end of World War II officials of the program were put on trial and attempts were made to recover kidnapped children from the Aryan families with whom they had been placed.
The image below is from a paper bag full full of goodies distributed to expectant mothers for Christmas (or in SS parlance, “Julfest”) at the Bad Polzin Lebensborn home in Pomerania.
There are a number of different types of thrashings connected with the Christmas season in many countries over the centuries. The first is a threat of chastisement and is connected with the switches and rods carried by gift-bringers and their helpers. St Nicholas was equally adept at thrashing bad children as he was in rewarding good behaviour. German families kept a Klausholz – a Nicholas stick – on which to keep track of the number of Our Fathers said by the child, both to impress the saint when he arrived and to remind the child of the conditional nature of the anticipated gifts. In England a 1483 book of saints’ legends printed by William Caxton noted that while Nicholas was humble and joyous, he was also “cruel in correctyng”.
In the sixteenth-century Germany the Christmas bundle of presents included: “things that belong to teaching, obedience, chastisement and discipline, as A.B.C tablets, Bibles and handsome books, writing materials, paper, etc. and the Christ-rod”. The first book in the United States to include a picture of Santa Claus, the 1821 Children’s Friend, has the gift-giver state that he was happy to reward good girls and boys but
Where I found the children naughty,
In manners rude, in temper haughty,
Thankless to parents, liars, swearers,
Boxers, or cheats, or base tale-bearers,
I left a long, black birchen rod,
Such as the dread command of God
Directs a parent’s hand to use
When virtue’s path his sons refuse.
December 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorates the murder of the male babies of Bethlehem by King Herod. In England the day was known as Childermas (or Dyzemas) and was considered an ill-omened time; few would want, for example, to be married on that date. Not only was no business conducted on that day, but the day of the week on which it fell was deemed unlucky for the rest of the year. In Ireland it was the “cross day of the year” when no new enterprise was begun. Many sailors would not sail on that day; on the Aran isles no one was buried on Childermas (or the day of the week on which it occurred); and in Cornwall to wash on that day was to doom one of your relatives to death. On Childermas it was once customary in England to beat children. The explanation given in the seventeenth century was that that the memory of Herod’s crime “might stick the closer; and, in a moderate proportion, to act over the crueltie again in kind” but anthropologists have noted that ritual beatings are more likely descended from pagan rituals of good luck than punishment. An old German custom called “peppering” saw children beating their parents and servants beating their masters with sticks while asking in verse form for a treat. An equally venerable tradition in Normandy allowed children to give a thrashing to those who stayed too long in bed on December 28. In Wales on St Stephen’s Day, the practice was called “holming” or “holly-beating” — the last person to get out of bed was hit with holly sprigs and made to act as servant to the rest of the family. Sometimes the purpose of the holming was to draw blood. In parts of Scotland on New Year’s Eve boys beat each other with holly branches in the belief that for every drop of blood shed a year of life was saved for the victim. In Sweden it was once customary for the first-riser on Christmas Eve to give other family members small bundles of twigs which they would use to beat each other in the spirit of imparting vitality. In France children who let themselves be caught in bed on the morning of Holy Innocents’ came in for a whipping from their parents; while in one province, Normandy, the early risers among the young people themselves gave the sluggards a beating. The practice even gave birth to a verb—innocenter.
