Christmas Every Day

The personification of Christmas in the British Isles is Father Christmas. Some have pointed to a pagan origin (a perceived resemblance to Saturn, Neptune and Odin) but the term only comes into use in the fifteenth century when a carol addresses him: “Hail, Father Christmas, hail to thee!” He appears again the sixteenth century when social critics began to bemoan the loss of traditional Christmas hospitality. Ben Jonson’s Christmas His Masque written in 1616 for James I opens with a parade of the sons and daughters of Father Christmas: Mis-Rule, Carol, Minc’d Pie, Gamboll, Post and Paire (a card game), New-Yeares-Gift, Mumming, Wassall, Roast Beef, Plum Pudding, Offering and Babie-Cake.

After his children have been led in by Cupid Father Christmas enters despite attempts to bar him and tries to establish his credentials as a native Englishman:

“Why, gentlemen, do you know what you do? Ha! would you have kept me out? CHRISTMAS! — Old Christmas– Christmas of London and Captain Christmas! Pray let me be brought before my Lord Chamberlain; I’ll not be answered else. ‘ ‘Tis merry in hall , when beards wag all.’ I have seen the time you have wished for me, for a merry Christmas, and now you have me, they would not let me in: I must come another time! A good jest — as if I could come more than once a year. Why I am no dangerous person, and so I told my friends of the guard. I am old Gregory Christmas still, and though I come out of the Pope’s Head-alley, as good a Protestant as any in my parish.”

In Jonson’s play Father Christmas is described as a man with a long, thin beard in a costume of round hose, long stockings, close doublet, high-crowned hat, with a brooch, a truncheon, little ruffs, white shoes, with his scarves and garters tied cross, and his drum beaten before him but later seventeenth-century illustrations picture a more sedately distinguished bearded man in a long robe with a round cap. By the late eighteenth century he has grown quite fat, has holly in his hair and is dressed in a fur-trimmed robe — the image that Dickens uses for the Ghost of Christmas Present.

Father Christmas was not associated with gift-bringing until the nineteenth century when, under competitive pressure from the North American Santa Claus, he evolved into a friend of children rather than of feasting, drink and merriment. His costume is similar to that of Santa Claus but where his American counterpart has a short, belted jacket he wears a longer, open robe with a pointed hood.

The “Kings’ Cake”, or galette des rois, was so called because it was traditionally served at Epiphany, the celebration of the Three Kings, the Magi who visited the baby Jesus. It is first mentioned in the early 1300s in France, from which it spread to Germany and then much of the rest of Europe.

 In 1792 French revolutionaries tried to suppress the selling of “king cakes” as irreconcilable with the republican sentiment they wished to foster. In Bourdeaux they were called instead “cakes of liberty”. Epiphany was stripped of its religious connections and celebrated as part of “la fête des sans-culottes” (the festival of the revolutionary working class). In Paris 1794 on Christmas Eve (4 Nivôse III in the new republican calendar) the mayor ordered the arrest of pastry cooks for their “liberticidal tendencies”. Taverns named after the Three Kings, who had come to be regarded as the patron saints of inns, changed their names to avoid incurring the wrath of radicals.

It was sometimes the custom in France for the first two pieces of the cake to be set aside for the bon Dieu and the Virgin and for these pieces to be given to the poor who knocked on the door at Epiphany.

The custom crossed the Atlantic to New Orleans where the King Cake now contains a bean or plastic baby. He who finds the prize must host the next King Cake party, hundreds of which are held every Epiphany. One Mardi Gras organization even uses the King Cake tradition to choose the queen of its annual ball.

For those unhappy few who missed my appearance on CBC Radio on Christmas Eve, here is a link to the audio:

http://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/cross-country-checkup/episode/15314696

“John Canoe”, “Junkanoo”, “Jonkonnu”, “Koonering”, etc., are terms for carnival-like celebrations held in the Caribbean, Honduras, Belize, and North Carolina derived from a holiday and period of social inversion for slaves during the Christmas seasons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Slave owners used the custom as a safety valve, much like Saturnalia in the Roman empire; slaves used it to subvert and mock the the established order.

There is no agreement whatsoever on the origins of the name. Some hold it to be derived from African deities, others from Mayan ritual, others from the name of a slave owner and still others assert that it was the name of a slave. Today participants dance and parade in elaborate costumes and attract thousands of tourists to these spectacles.

The Feast of the Fools was usually held on January 1 and was under the direction of the lower clergy who used the occasion to elect a Bishop of Fools or Fools’ Pope and carry on outrageously, making fun of sacred ceremonies and revelling in a hierarchy turned upside down. However, what began as an exercise in social relaxation eventually turned into burlesque and excess. Church leaders complained in 1445 that

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. They sing wanton songs. They eat black puddings at the horn of the altar while the celebrant is saying Mass. They play at dice there. They cense with stinking smoke from the soles of old shoes. They run and leap through the church, without a blush at their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby traps and carts, and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gesture and verses scurrilous and unchaste.

Such behaviour was legislated against by king and church but proved very hard to eradicate — records of the Feast of the Fools endured into the eighteenth century.

Evil monsters of Greek Christmas foklore whose description varies — in some places they are viewed as half-human with hoofs and claws, in others they are wolf-like or simian. They spend most of the year in the underworld, chopping away at the tree that supports the earth. This tree is renewed at Christmas by the birth of Christ so the demons come to earth for revenge: they urinate on fires, ride on folks’ backs, force them to dance to exhaustion and commit other enormities. They may be kept out of the chimney (through which they enter) by keeping the Christmas log alight or by burning salt or old shoes whose smell repels them; the lower jaw of a pig or certain herbs such as hyssop hung behind the door or inside the chimney will also keep them out. They roam the earth until January 6 when the Blessing of the Waters drives them underground.

 Any child born during Christmas is in danger of becoming one of the kallikantzaroi; to prevent this the child must be bound in tresses of garlic or straw or have his toenails singed.

In the influential poem “A Visit from St Nicholas” which taught North America much of what it was to learn about Santa Claus, the author notes that “down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.” That is how generations of Canadian and American children expected the gift-bringer to arrive, so much so that many fathers have been moved to clomp around on the roof or in the attic to imitate the noise of reindeer standing by the chimney.  The chimney is also the mode of entrance for a number of other of the world’s Christmas gift-bringers. In Italy Befana comes down the chimney (and in true chimney-sweep fashion carries a broom with her); in the same way Father Christmas enters homes in England and Père Noël or Le pétit Jésus in France. In Holland the gift-bringer’s helper Black Pete goes down the chimney to keep St Nicholas from getting his clothes dirty. The chimney also serves to carry messages to the gift-bringer: in England children write letters to Father Christmas and burn them in the fireplace sending their smoky wishes via the chimney; in Scotland children “cry up the lum” — they shout their wishes up the chimney on Christmas Eve.

But the chimney is not just a way in for the gift-bringer. To psychiatrists it represents the birth canal and it also admits unpleasant creatures. Norwegians feared that witches would come down the chimney and, in order to prevent this, would burn dry spruce which emits sparks, or put salt in the fire.  In Greece  the “skarkatzalos” log is burned over the Twelve Days of Christmas to keep out the Kallikantzaroi who slip down the chimney — in Scotland they use a similar trick to keep the elves out.

There are other ways in for gift-bringers besides the chimney. In Brazil, where the tropic heat renders chimneys few and far between, Papai Noel comes through the front door. The direct method is also used in Sweden (where gifts are often thrown in through the door), Finland and Australia. In Hungary the Baby Jesus brings presents through the window and, like the Befana, rings a little bell when the deed is done. Germany’s Weihnachtsmann has been known to use both the window and the chimney, while Chile’s Viejo Pascuero prefers the window.

December 26 is the feast day of the first martyr of the Christian church, St Stephen. What little we know about him can be found in the Book of Acts where we learn that he had been chosen one of the seven deacons in Jerusalem and that his defence of Christianity resulted in his being stoned to death for blasphemy. Legend, however, has surrounded the protomartyr with a host of stories which link him to Herod’s household at the time of the birth of Jesus, to horses and to the stoning of the tiny wren.

Ever since the tenth century Stephen’s Day has been associated with horses, probably because the season was a time of horse sacrifice in pagan northern Europe and a time of rest from agricultural work for both man and beast. In England it is a time to bleed horses to ensure their health for the coming year. Across Europe December 26 is a time for horses to be fed extra food, raced, decorated, blessed by the priest or ridden in ceremonies honouring their species. This is particulalry true in Sweden where “Staffan Riders” would race from village to village and sing songs in honour of the saint. Some have tried (not very successfully) to explain the connection between horses and St Stephen’s Day by claiming it has stemmed from confusion between the martyr in the Book of Acts and a later saint, Stephen of Corvey, martyred c. 1075, whose feast day June 2. This Stephen was a lover of horses and was said to ride five of them in turn. When he was murdered his unbroken colt took him home to Norrtalje which became a shrine for horse-healing.

The water and salt blessed by the priest on St Stephen’s Day would be set aside and used as medicine for horses should they fall ill during the rest of the year or to sprinkle liberally about the barn and yard to bring prosperity. The salt could also be thrown in the fire to avert danger from thunder-storms. In some places the blood drawn from horses on this day was thought to have healing powers. In Poland, the blessing of food for horses led to other peculiar rituals on St Stephen’s Day. In what has been interpreted either as a remnant of pagan fertility rites or a re-enactment of the stoning of Stephen, people would throw the consecrated oats at each other and their animals. Moreover, it was customary on December 26 for boys and girls to throw walnuts at one another.

St Stephen’s Day is also marked in Ireland and other parts of Britain by hunting a bird considered protected every other the day of the year, the wren, and parading about with its body. Wren Boys used to carry a dead wren on a branch from house to house, and sing an appropriate song which solicited money:

Other customs associated with St Stephens’s Day include holming. In Wales holming or holly-beating was the practice for young men to beat each other (or female servants) with holly branches on December 26. In Britain generally December 26 is a day for sporting events and hunting and the day observed as Boxing Day.

“And it came to pass as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which has come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger.” (Luke 2: 15-16.)

The artistic portrayal of the visit of the shepherds to the baby Jesus was at first depicted as a visitation by two or three shepherds with simple gifts such as a lamb. The number of shepherds increased in later medieval art and the scene was often conflated with the Annunciation to the Shepherds or the Adoration of the Magi. In Le Brun’s 1690 Adoration of the Shepherds the host of angels filling the air above the Virgin contrasts with the earth-bound shepherds who crawl toward the centre of the canvas. The piety and simplicity of the shepherds made the scene a favourite subject for centuries — other artists who have painted the scene include Rembrandt, Bassano and El Greco whose Adoration was his last work, meant to hang over his tomb .

The incident is also the subject of carols, movies and television specials.