Christmas Every Day

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 Wales the Mari Llwyd (“Grey Mare”, pictured above) 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 humourous 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.

Though Arthur Conan Doyle sold his first Sherlock Holmes story in 1887 to Beeton’s Christmas Annual, “Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” is the only account of the great detective which deals with Christmas. We learn, in this short piece written for the January 1892 edition of the Strand Magazine, how a battered hat and a Christmas goose lead Holmes to the solution of a mystery, the freeing of an innocent man and the recovery of a giant blue jewel.

In 567 the Council of Tours proclaimed the twelve days between Christmas and Epihany to be a sacred and festive season. Since then it has been widely accepted as a time of holiday and merriment; in many times and places all non-essential work was forbidden. In German-speaking territories the time is Die Zwölf Raunächte, the Twelve Rough Nights, a time to take precautions against the evil spirits (especially the sky-borne Wild Hunt) with noise, masks and smoke.

The Twelve Days are not calculated in the same way everywhere. In some places Christmas is counted making Epiphany the thirteenth day. In England it is particularly confusing because January 6 is Twelfth Day but January 5 is Twelfth Night.

The most widely-served Christmas entrée today is the turkey, Meleagris gallopavo, a bird first domesticated in Mexico by the Aztecs and exported to Europe in the sixteenth century by the Spanish. It derives its English name from confusion with the guinea fowl which was imported about the same time by merchants trading with Turkey. William Strickland, a Yorkshireman, introduced the bird into England and, in recognition, was granted a turkey cock on his family coat of arms in 1550. Before too long it was accepted as a seasonal dish: Thomas Tusser in 1573 speaks of it as “Christmas husbandlie fare” but for centuries the goose remained the primary Christmas bird. The bird was raised in great numbers on farms in Norfolk and East Anglia with huge flocks driven to market in London every Christmas — walking on the roads was difficult for the birds who were fitted with special shoes for the journey which could last as long as three months. It was not until the nineteenth century with the advent of rail travel and refrigeration that these drives ceased and were replaced by slaughtering on the farm. In 1851 the British royal family ate their first Christmas turkey which from that time on replaced swan as the seasonal dish.

 Americans are the world’s greatest consumers of turkeys since the two great end-of-year festivals, Thanksgiving and Christmas, both feature the fowl whom Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the national bird of the United States — he deplored the bald eagle’s “bad moral character” and claimed the turkey was a “much more respectable bird, and withal a true original native of America.” Since 1947, the National Turkey Federation has presented the President of the United States with a live turkey and two dressed birds at Thanksgiving. The annual presentation signals the unofficial beginning of the “holiday season”; after the ceremony, the National Thanksgiving Turkey retires to a historical farm to spend its declining years in comfort.

The bird is eaten all around the world. In Portugal poultry farmers walk the streets of Lisbon with their their flocks. When a buyer has chosen the turkey he wants, the farmer catches the bird,  forces alcohol into it, and briefly releases it. The inebriated turkey soon collapses; its throat is then slit; it is plucked and eviscerated, before being soaked in salt water, perfumed with lemon and bay leaves, for twelve hours. The bird is then hung for twelve hours before being cooked. The Brazilians have a similar love of turkey tenderized from within: they feed the bird a kind of rum called cachaça on Christmas Eve. In the southern United States the custom of deep-frying the bird is growing while in Mexico they eat the bird with a sauce made of chocolate and chili peppers. In Spain they stuff the bird with truffles; in Burgundy they stuff it with chestnuts. In 1969 the Apollo astronauts’ first meal on the moon was roast turkey.

In many parts of the world Christmas is associated with gunpowder: fireworks and firearms have been “shooting in” the holiday for centuries.

 One reason for this is the belief that demonic forces can be driven away with loud noises. The ringing of bells, snapping of whips and shouting are all very well but for for real devil-dispersing noise many Germans rely on rifles. In southern Germany marksmen’s clubs in traditional costume gather on Christmas Eve to fire off antique rifles at midnight. In Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps before midnight mass, 60,000 shots are fired in the space of one hour. In the southwestern United States the parishioners of the Church of San Geronimo at Taos Pueblo carry the statue of the Virgin in a procession accompanied by an honour guard of men in ceremonial dress who periodically fire into the air in order to protect the Virgin and chase away evil spirits. In rural areas of Norway shooting in Christmas takes the form of young men sneaking up to farm houses and discharging their guns to give the inhabitants a shock before being invited in for a drink. Every December 8 in Torrejoncillo, Caceres, Spain the youth of the town wrap themselves in sheets, carry the banner of the Virgin and ride through the streets shooting off shotguns to the cheers of the populace. In Ireland it was once the custom to fire a salute from a shotgun at noon on Christmas Eve

 An account of Labrador in 1770 reads: “At sunset the people ushered in Christmas, according to the Newfoundland custom.  In the first place, they built up a prodigious large fire in their house; all hands then assembled before the door, and one of them fired a gun, loaded with powder; afterwards, each of them drank a dram of rum; concluding the ceremony with three cheers. These formalities being performed with great solemnity, they retired into their house, got drunk as fast as they could, and spent the whole night in drinking, quarrelling, and fighting.” A similar Newfoundland custom was Blowing the Pudding.

Christmas in the southern United States is a more popular time for fireworks than July 4 as can be seen from the numerous displays south of the Mason-Dixon line. The most spectacular are probably in Louisiana where the feux de joie (fires of joy) are a traditional part of Cajun Christmas Eve. Huge wooden structures in the form of riverboats, houses and teepees are set on fire, ostensibly to light Papa Noël’s way to the bayous. During the days of slave-owning, slaves would inflate a pig bladder and then explode it in lieu of fire-crackers.

 Fireworks are a part of Christmas celebrations all through Latin America but who would have thought they were once a part of the holiday in Switzerland? One worshipper complained in the nineteenth century about a church service where the Christmas tree was decorated with “serpent squibs” and where it was “difficult for the minister to conduct the service, for at all times, except during the prayers, the people were letting off fireworks.”

The American Civil War was conducted economically as well as on the battlefield. The Northern forces attempted to strangle the South by blockading its ports, denying it the wealth from its cotton exports and forbidding any imports. Poverty was the result for many families and they were unable to provide Christmas gifts for their children; the kids of the Confederacy naturally wondered why Santa Claus had ignored them.

One explanation was offered in a children’s book by Louise Clack, entitled General Lee and Santa Claus. Three little girls, Lutie, Birdie and Minnie (the latter still a hardened rebel because of the memory of her father who died fighting for the South) wonder at the absence of Santa Claus during the war years. They write to General Robert E. Lee as “the goodest man who ever lived” to ask him “whether Santa Claus loves the little rebel children, for we think that he don’t; because he has not come to see us for four Christmas Eves.” General Lee replies that he himself was responsible for Santa’s actions. One December 24, 1861, he says, he spied “the queerest, funniest-looking little old fellow riding along in a sleigh through the air” and bade him stop. He forbade Santa from heading south and told him: “Santa Claus, take every one of the toys you have back as far as Baltimore, sell them, and with the money you get buy medicines, bandages, ointments and delicacies for our sick and wounded men; do it and do it quickly — it will be all right with the children.” Santa replied: “I obey orders, General” and for four years he took the toy money and used it to clothe and feed Confederate soldiers.

Though Christmas was celebrated almost  universally in the United States in the 19th century, the notion of a magical gift-bringer was not so wide-spread. By the time that the Civil War broke out between North and South, Santa Claus had not completely penetrated all of the nooks and crannies of the American continent and he was a novelty to many of the troops on both sides. In a Union military hospital the approach of Christmas produced a wave of interest and excitement. A volunteer nurse noted:

Some of the boys had never heard of Santa Claus and his visits down the chimney at this merry season; and when his descent through the pipes, and passage through the stove-doors, and appearance in the tents became possibilities, there was as much amusement and anticipation among them as ever gladdened a nursery full of children. On the morning of this happy festival every man found a sock hanging by his side stuffed with mittens, scarfs, knives, suspenders, handkerchiefs, and many little things. Out of the top of each peeped a little flag; and as the men awoke, one by one, and examined the gifts of Santa Claus, shouts of merriment rang through the wards, and they were satisfied that he was a friend worth having.”

A Gift-Bringer’s Helper who first appeared in a 1668 German play and was condemned as a manifestation of the devil by the Catholic church in 1680. Knecht Ruprecht is the intimidating figure, dressed like a dark-bearded monk, with a long dark coat of animal skins and a filthy beard that reaches the floor, carrying a switch. He quizzes children as to their behaviour. He is sometimes identified with Belsnickel or Pelznickel (“Nicholas in Furs”) and Ru-Klas (“Rough Nicholas”) indicating that he was originally not just a companion to St Nicholas but a darker version of him.

The English poet Thomas Coleridge visited north Germany in the early nineteenth century and witnessed local Christmas ceremonies. He mentioned that it was the custom in smaller centres of north Germany for presents to be given by Knecht Ruprecht  “in high buskins, a white robe, a mask, and an enormous flax wig…On Christmas-night he goes round to every house, and says that Jesus Christ, his master, sent him hither. The parents and elder children receive him with great pomp and reverence while the little ones are most terribly frightened. He then inquires for the children , and, according to the character which he hears from the parents, he gives them the intended present as if they came out of heaven from Jesus Christ. Or, if they should have been bad children, he gives the parents a rod and, in the name of his master, recommends them to use it frequently. About seven or eight years old the children are let into the secret, and it is curious how faithfully they keep it.”

Under the Nazi regime, the German government tried to replace Santa Claus and St Nicholas with their version of Knecht Ruprecht, pictured above.

Three cities each claim to possess the remains of St Nicholas, Bishop of Bari, and the prototype of Santa Claus. Myra, in Turkey, the site of Nicholas’s home church, asserts that it is the true location of the saint’s tomb, but churches in Venice and Bari in Italy both say that they acquired the real relics in the 11th century.

In 2004 the bones housed in Bari’s cathedral were subjected to a forensic technology that claims to be able to reconstruct an original facial image from skeletal remains. St Nicholas, it now appears, was about 5’ 6” (1.68 metres) in height with a wide chin and brow and, perhaps unsurprisingly in a saint known for his forthright interventions, a broken nose.

A version of the Lord of Misrule in clerical garb, a popular name for the leader of Christmas revels in late medieval Scotland (where he was also known as the Master of Unreason). In 1489 Henry VII of England had an Abbot of Misrule to direct his holiday events. The office was officially banned in England in 1555, but continued into the seventeenth century and only vanished during the reign of the Puritan faction in the 1640s and 1650s.  In France the “Abbot of Misrule” was called L’Abbé de Liesse (jollity). In Cambrai of the late medieval period the festivities during the Twelve Nights were run by “Fools’ Abbots” and “Simpletons’ Bishops” but this practice of riotous good fun and social inversion was ended by the Catholic Reformation.