Christmas Every Day

A parasitic shrub, Viscum album, mistletoe has a long history in folklore and legend. The Druids supposedly solemnly collected it around midwinter and it was deemed to have magical healing powers and be a token of peace. It is perhaps from this origin that the Christian use of it at Christmas proceeded. Like many evergreens it was used a church decoration (despite prejudice against it in some parts). At York Minster during the Middle Ages a branch of mistletoe was laid on the altar during the Twelve Days of Christmas and a public peace proclaimed in the city for as long as it remained there.

The custom of kissing under the mistletoe was long in developing. Some medieval English homes hung an effigy of the Holy Family inside a wooden hoop decorated with winter greenery under which it was customary to exchange an embrace or kiss. After the Reformation when the image of the Holy Family disappeared,  the kissing bunch or bough, a collection of greenery which often included mistletoe, remained as a Christmas custom. Kissing beneath it, or just a sprig of mistletoe, seems to have been a custom confined to the servant class until the nineteenth century when it was more generally adopted. In the Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens describes its use in the early nineteenth century:

From the centre of the ceiling of this kitchen, old Wardle had just suspended with his own hands a huge branch of mistletoe, and this same branch of mistletoe instantaneously gave rise to a scene of general and most delightful struggling and confusion; in the midst of which, Mr. Pickwick, with a gallantry that would have done honour to a descendant of Lady Tollimglower herself, took the old lady by the hand, led her beneath the mystic branch, and saluted her in all courtesy and decorum.

Each kiss necessitated the removal of a berry from the sprig and when all berries were gone the merriment ceased. The custom was for a long time confined to the English-speaking world though it has spread abroad in recent years. The only European tradition that appears similar is the Austrian New Year’s custom when the Sylvester figure is permitted a kiss under any sort of greenery.

A large fortress-like church complex on Manger Square in Bethlehem centred on the site where Jesus was said to have been born.

As early as the second century local tradition claimed that the Nativity of Christ had taken place in a stable-cave, the location of which was sufficiently well-known that the Roman emperor Hadrian established a pagan grove there dedicated to Adonis in order to discourage Christian worship on the site. In the third century Origen and other visitors were still being directed to the spot. The theologian reported: “In Bethlehem the cave is pointed out where He was born, and the manger in the cave where He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, and the rumor is in those places and among foreigners of the Faith that indeed Jesus was born in this cave.”

The first Church of the Nativity was built over the cave by Saint Helena, mother of the emperor Constantine. This church was later damaged in an uprising and was rebuilt in the sixth century at the command of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. When the area was overrun by Persian invaders in 614 legend claims that the Church of the Nativity was spared because of depictions in a mosaic of Magi in Persian dress.

The cross-shaped Church of St Mary of the Nativity, 170 feet long and 80 feet wide, stands above the small grotto where a silver star marks the spot where Jesus was born; the inscription reads Hic De Virgine Maria Jesus Christus Natus Est — “Here Jesus Christ was Born of the Virgin Mary.”  Nearby is a chapel where the manger stood in which the infant was placed. Surrounding the Church of the Nativity are other chapels and convents of the Catholic, Orthodox and Armenian churches; these three denominations share the administration of various parts of the complex. Quarrels between them in the nineteenth century took on dangerous overtones. The Russian goverment supported the Orthodox claims while the Catholics were backed by the French government; these hard feelings were one of the reasons for the outbreak of the Crimean War in the 1850s

For over a century the town of Oaxaca, Mexico has held the Noché del Rábano, Night of the Radishes, a festival dedicated to the carving of the large twisted local radishes which are shaped by artists into Nativity scenes, images of the Virgin of Guadelupe, Aztec gods or local geography. Thousands of townspeople and tourists crowd the town square during the Christmas season to tour the stalls, visit the hundreds of vendors and enjoy the music and fireworks that accompany this fiesta. Recently prizes have been offered for works made from corn husks and dried flowers.

Ginger was one of the spices brought back to Europe from the Middle East by returning Crusaders in the twelfth century. Though it had other uses in medicine and the kitchen it was the baking of gingerbread that made it a popular treat and one eventually associated with Christmas. During the Middle Ages it became so popular that special guilds of bakers were granted exclusive rights to produce the food. When it began to appear at Christmas markets in Germany in the sixteenth century, especially in Nuremberg which was a centre of the ginger trade, it began to be linked in the public mind with holiday eating.

Gingerbread appears in many varieties, light and dark, moist and dry and can be shaped into figures such as the pigs sold in the Nuremberg market or human forms or the famous gingerbread houses that grew in popularity during the nineteenth century. It has long been a custom for gingerbread ornaments to be hung on the Christmas tree and eaten when it is taken down.

Probably the most famous of modern Christmas short stories, American author  O. Henry (1862-1910; real name William Sydney Porter) tells the tale of the young married couple Jim and Della. Money is short for presents and economies have to be made but the love each bears for the other produces willing sacrifices. Della sells her gorgeous hair to buy Jim a watch-fob while, in sad irony, Jim has sold his watch to buy combs for his wife.

It is said that O. Henry’s love of alcohol often made him late in submitting his stories and that in 1906 his Christmas story was particularly behind schedule. In desperation the artist whose job it was to illustrate O. Henry’s work went to the author to be given at least an idea of what to draw. O. Henry replied that he had not got a completed story, nor even a word of it written, but that  he did have a vision of a poorly-furnished room with a man and a woman talking about Christmas. The man had a watch fob in his hand while the woman’s principal feature was long beautiful hair. The illustrator began to draw and within a few hours O. Henry had produced a classic.

 In the 1990s Mark St. Germain and Randy Curtis produced a Christmas musical combining the plots of two O. Henry stories, “The Gifts of the Magi” and the “The Cop and The Anthem”.

An adaptation of a North Carolina folk tune by John Jacob Niles (1892-1980), the American balladeer and collector of folk music. Niles is said to have paid the young girl whom he first heard singing the song 25¢ to repeat it until he had written it down. Among his other songs are “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” and “Jesus, Jesus Rest Your Head”. Late in life he turned to art song, writing oratorio and music based on the poetry of the mystic and monk Thomas Merton.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,

How Jesus the Savior did come for to die

For poor or’n’ry people like you and like I.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

When Mary birthed Jesus, ’twas in a cow’s stall,

With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all;

But high from God’s heaven, a star’s light did fall

And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing,

A star in the sky or a bird on a wing

Or all of God’s angels in heav’n for to sing —

He surely could have it, ’cause He was the King.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,

How Jesus the Savior did come for to die

For poor or’n’ry people like you and like I.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

A 1990 religious tract from North Carolina shows Santa Claus in the form of a devil. It includes a poem called “Ho! Ho! Ho!”:

The devil has a demon,

His name is Santa Claus.

He’s a dirty old demon

Because of last year’s flaws.

He promised Jack a yo-yo,

And Jill a diamond ring.

They woke up on Christmas morning

Without a single thing…..

One day they’ll stand before God

Without their bag of tricks.

Without their red-nosed reindeer

Or their phony old Saint Nicks;

For Revelation twenty-one,

Verse eight, tells where they’ll go:

Condemned to everlasting hell,

Where there’ll be no Ho! Ho! Ho!

One of the major Italian magical Gift-Bringers is the Befana, a kindly witch who visits children on the eve of Epiphany (her name is a corruption of Epiphania). During the fascist period from 1922-45, the dictator Benito Mussolini supplanted the broom-borne crone as the provider of all good things for Italy’s little ones.

Medieval legend says that St Nicholas saved three daughters of a poor man from lives of shame by dropping bags of gold into their stockings. From this came the tradition of setting out a stocking or shoe during the Christmas season for the Gift-Bringer to fill it with treats and presents. Given Santa Claus’s usual means of entry, the fireplace was the logical location to hang up one’s stocking, as can be seen in Clement Moore’s 1821 “A Visit from Saint Nicholas”:

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,/ And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,/ And laying his finger aside of his nose,/ And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.

However, placing a stocking by the window, at the foot of one’s bed or by the family crèche also have their supporters. For a time, after the middle of the nineteenth century, the stocking was eclipsed by the Christmas tree as the place to find one’s presents but in many families the two have long coexisted with small presents and candies being put in the stocking and larger gifts ending up under the tree.

In England and in British Commonwealth countries such as South Africa or Australia, it is customary for a pillow-case to serve as a stocking. In some areas the receptacle is called a “Santa Sack.”

The Christmas season in Latvia seemed  to bring about premature beard growth in children.