Christmas Every Day

In Denmark it would be difficult to be unaware of the approach of Christmas. Every child has an Advent calendar which when opened reveals a candy or a picture and most familes have an Advent candle or wreath. Charitable Danes buy Children’s Developing Country Calendars with the profits going to a Third World project. Danish television broadcasts the “Children’s Christmas Calendar” starting on December 1 with a different puppet show or fairy tale every day until Christmas. At the beginning of the month Christmas lights adorn buildings and Christmas trees and displays are set up outdoors.

Danes spend December preparing for the celebrations to come: gift buying and wrapping, Christmas card sending, with each card marked by a Christmas Seal ( a Danish invention) and baking. Among the cookie favourites are pebbernødder (like the German pfeffernüsse), vanilla cookies, deeep-fried klejne and honey-cakes. Danes also like to make home-made candies and cakes such as marzipan, rum balls and apple cake.  Many decorations are homemade, especially the red-and-white Christmas heart. A recent (since 1945) imported custom from Sweden is the St Lucia procession which takes place in schools and public institutions on December 13. A girl dressed in white with a wreath of fir and candles leads children in singing. Some families cling to the tradition of erecting the Christmas tree at the last moment to surprise the children but other families decorate the tree together, with the Christmas hearts, Danish flags, tinsel and candles with a star at the top.

 The Christmas lunch — usually in the form of an office party — is a popular custom which, despite the name, can be held at any time of the day. The menu will include herring, liver paté, ham, sausage, cheese and biscuits with plenty of beer (often a Christmas beer brewed only for that time of year) and schnapps. These parties have a reputation for being on the wild side but most are quite tame events. On December 23, Little Christmas Eve, it is common to invite guests to drink glögg, a spiced red wine.

On Juleaften, Christmas Eve, shops close early and people rush home to be with their families. Some will spend the afternoon in church, others in trimming the tree but all will look forward to the traditonal dinner. Roast goose is the main course, accompanied by potatoes and red cabbage but the meal must contain, either as a starter or dessert, rice porridge. Hidden in the porridge is an almond and the one who finds it is considered lucky for the coming year and gets a small prize, often a marzipan pig. When dinner is over and the washing up is done, the tree is revealed and presents are opened. Many Danish families preserve the lovely custom of walking, with joined hands, around the tree singing a Christmas carol. Another Christmas Eve custom that has been kept for centuries is the setting out the juleneg, a sheaf of grain for the birds.

In Denmark gifts are brought by a Santa Claus figure called the Julemanden who is reputed to live in Greenland, a Danish possession, and travel by reindeer sleigh. He is assisted in his efforts by native sprites known as Nisser. These are elves dressed in red and grey with pointed red hats who live in attics and barns; they have a mischievous side and need to be placated, preferably by leaving out a bowl of rice pudding for them.

Juleaften is the high point of Danish Christmas celebrations. The next two days, Christmas Day and Second Christmas, are official holidays, spent visiting,  relaxing with family and friends and eating smørrebrod, open-faced sandwiches and drinking aquavit.

   Like the British the Danes will sit down for a few minutes to listen to a royal broadcast which the monarch gives at 6 p.m. on December 31. New Year’s Eve is a time of parties, dining out and pranks — the Danish sense of humor finds great pleasure in the practical jokes played on Nytaarsaften.

On January 6, Epiphany or Three Kings’ Day, the tree is taken down and disposed of — sometimes it is turned into firewood and sometimes it is hung with suet and seeds for the birds. Candles are lit in the house in honour of the Magi and the Christmas season is over for another year.

The last Sunday before Advent, deriving its name from the first two words of the Church of England reading for that day: “Stir up we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people that they plenteously bring forth the fruit of good works.” This has been parodied by generations of choirboys as “Stir up we beseech thee the pudding in the pot. And when we get home, we’ll eat it up all hot.” An English tradition requires that the Christmas pudding be stirred up, with each family member taking a turn — some insist that the stirring must be performed clockwise and with eyes closed. The day also announces to school children the approach of the Christmas holidays.

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

A traditional English form of holiday entertainment, particularly associated with Boxing Day, December 26th. Pantomime or “panto”, developed in the 18th century and grew out of the commedia dell’arte harlequin plays popular at the time. Such plays were usually preceded by scenes of mimed and danced action. The first true panto is said to have been the 1717 “Harlequin Executed” presented by John Rich. Gradually, as words, comic turns and stage effects were added, the pantomime grew more popular than the plays that gave them birth, emerging as colourful, costumed spectacles based on fairy tales.

Popular throughout the 18th and 19th centuries panto remains a customary part of the English Christmas season despite, or perhaps because of, its predictability. In plays such as “Cinderella”, “Jack and the Beanstalk”, or Aladdin” the hero or “principal boy” is always played by an attractive actress in a form-fitting costume while the “Dame”, an ugly old woman, is played by a male comedian. Other features of the panto include atrocious puns, ritual shouted exchanges between the actors and the audience, appearances by celebrities and references to current events.

An early nineteenth-century account of a family in attendance: “But oh, the rapture when the pantomime commences! Ready to leap out of the box, they joy in the mischief of the clown, laugh at the thwacks he gets for his meddling, and feel no small portion of contempt for his ignorance in not knowing that hot water will scald and gunpowder explode; while with head aside to give fresh energy to the strokes, they ring their little palms against each other in testimony of exuberant delight.”

Two animals whose presence legend ascribes to the stable where the baby Jesus was laid. The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew claims that they knelt in adoration at the manger. They are frequently depicted in Nativity art and symbolically represent Jews and Christians or the sacrificial and the redemptive aspects of Jesus. Isaiah 1:3 is held to be a prophecy of the ox and ass. A mistranslation of the Greek version of Habakkuk 3:2 led some to read “between two beasts thou art made known” instead of “in the midst of the years make (it) known.”

 The notion that oxen (and other animals) go down on their knees at midnight on Christmas Eve in memory of the Nativity is a widespread legend but it has its regional variations. In some places folk insist that tears run down the cheeks of their cattle as they kneel while others claim that only the three-year old oxen (or seven-year old) bend low, as this was the age of the animals in the Bethlehem stable.

A Christmas novelty popular in Britain and countries of the Commonwealth. A Christmas cracker takes the form of a small cardboard tube covered in decorative wrap and containing a strip of chemically-impregnated paper which, when pulled, creates a miniature explosive snap. When opened the cracker reveals a paper hat, a motto or joke and a small prize.

The cracker was invented in 1847 by a London confectioner named Tom Smith. The idea began with the “bon bon”, a French candy in a twist of paper. To this Smith added a small motto and then conceived the idea of a noise when throwing a log on a crackling fire. After much experiment Smith came up with the right chemical formula and the cracker was born. He soon discarded the candy and began to call his invention “cosaques”, after the crack of the Cossack whip.

Since the 1840s the Christmas cracker has contained mottos humorous, romantic, artistic and puzzling with prizes ranging from inexpensive plastic toys to decorated boxes to real musical instruments to expensive jewelry with special lines prepared annually for the Royal Family. It is now an indispensable part of Christmas dinner in millions of houses around the world.

This is a very peculiar 1966 Italian-American musical fantasy directed by veteran actor Rosanno Brazzi who must have had a bad childhood experience with Christmas. It seems that Santa Claus (Alberto Rabagliatti) is depressed because an evil businessman Phineas T. Prune (Brazzi himself) has bought the North Pole and will soon evict St Nick and his elves. In order to pay his back rent Santa takes a job as a department store Santa Claus but discovers he doesn’t relate well to children.

Writer Paul Tripp must share some of the infamy as it is his book that was the basis of his script. The theme song is sung by Glenn Yarborough of the Limelighters folk group.

A Maxim Gorkystory about a writer who has blithely continued to write his annual Christmas tales about freezing beggars and orphan children and who is visited by the ghosts of these creations. He insists that his stories were meant to inspire readers to acts of charity but the phantoms deride his theory: if cruel reality will not move men to kindness, fiction will not work either.

Continuing on the theme of chilly poor folk at Christmas time is this 1876 story by Feodor Dostoevsky in which a poor orphan child freezes to death on Christmas Eve and goes to heaven where he encounters other children:

And he discovered that these boys and girls were all children like  himself; that some had frozen to death in the baskets in which they had  been deposited on doorsteps; others had died in wretched hovels, whither  they had been sent from the Foundlings’ Hospital; others again had  starved to death at their mothers’ dried-up breasts; had been suffocated  in the foul air of third-class railroad carriages. And now, here they  were all angels, Christ’s guests, and He Himself was in their midst, extending His hands to them, blessing them and their poor, sinful  mothers…. And the mothers stand there, a little apart, weeping; each one knows her little boy or girl; and the children fly up to them, and  kiss them, and wipe away their tears with their tiny hands, and beg them  not to weep, for they, the children, are so happy.

Written by Denmark’s Hans Christian Andersen, this is one of a number of famous nineteenth-century short stories on the theme of childen freezing to death over the Christmas season.

But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall — frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. “She wanted to warm herself,” people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new year.