Christmas Every Day

The feast of Saints Adam and Eve

Adam and Eve, the ancestors of the human race, were first honoured as saints in the churches of Eastern Christianity and during the Middle Ages their cult spread into the West. Though the Catholic church never officially recognized them with a feast day, popular veneration of Adam and Eve was widespread, particularly on December 24 when it was thought fitting that those responsible for the Fall of mankind be linked with the birth of the Saviour who came to redeem humanity.

Medieval dramas which told the story of Adam and Eve had as a stage prop a tree representing the Garden of Eden and the Tree of the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This tree was decorated with apples or round wafers representing the host of the Mass and it is this “Paradise Tree” which some historians see as a precursor to the modern Christmas tree. This link is evident when we note that as late as the nineteenth century some American and German Christmas trees had images of Adam and Eve and the Serpent underneath them. Godey’s magazine claimed “an orthodox Christmas-Tree will have the figures of our first parents at its foot, and the serpent twining itself. The apples were placed on the table on Christmas Eve to recall those through whose sin mankind first fell as well as the Virgin Mary, the new Eve.”

The last of our Christmas in wartime excursions presents four out-of-the-ordinary glimpses of the sacred season in the midst of bloodshed.

The first is the cover of the Ustase Youth magazine. The Ustase was a pro-Nazi Croatian movement, ultranationalist, ultra-Catholic, and fascist, which allied its region of Yugoslavia to the Germans during the Second World War. 

You are not going to see too many images of the New Year’s baby, Stalin, Chiang Kai-she, Uncle Sam, and John Bull in together in a single illustration in your lifetime. Therefore, enjoy this version from the Canadian Home Journal, December 1943 edition. 

“Christmas Greetings” come from this Finnish cavalryman at a time in the war when that nation was allied to Germany and thus was, on paper at least, at war with Canada and the United States. 

“Happy Norwegian Christmas” cry this little nissen elves as they fly the flag of Nazi-occupied Norway. Both the flag and overtly patriotic cards were banned by the Germans so this would have been an underground production.

Wassail

The term wassail is derived from the Anglo-Saxon toast “waes hael”, or “good health” (the expected reply is “drinc-heil” or “drink well”). To wassail is to ceremonially drink someone’s health at Christmas, especially from a decorated bowl filled with a seasonal drink. The wassail bowl was traditionally filled with mulled ale or “lamb’s wool” and was adorned with ribbons. “Wassailers” often referred to those who went door-to-door at Christmas with a wassail bowl expecting a gratuity for a drink or those who expected the householder to fill the bowl at each stop.

The tradition of wassailing the apple trees or livestock is a vernerable one. In the seventeenth century the poet Robert Herrick noted: Wassail the trees, that they may bear/ You many a plum, and many a pear:/ For more or less fruits they will bring,/ As you do give them wassailing.

In order to ensure fertility for the coming year English farmers developed a number of variations on the wassail. In Devonshire, on Twelfth Night, men got out their weapons and went to the orchard. Selecting the oldest tree, they would form a circle and chant:  Here’s to thee, old apple tree/ Whence thou mayst bud and whence thou mayst blow/ And whence thou mayst bear apples enow:/ Hats full, caps full,/ Bushels, bushels, sacks full,/ And my pockets full too!/ Huzza! Huzza!

After drinking some cider the men would discharge their (unloaded) weapons at the tree and head home. Traditionally the women of the house were to deny the men entrance until they had guessed what sort of roast was being prepared for them. The man with the correct guess presided over the evening’s entertainment.  In other  parts of England fruit trees were wassailed by being sprinkled with cider, beaten with sticks and bidden in rhyme to bear well. In Cornwall the song was sung with a cider jug in one jug in one hand and a branch in the other. In south Hampshire they threatened the fruit tree: Apple tree, apple tree/ Bear good fruit,/ or down with your top/ And up with your root.

This threatening of the orchard is reminiscent of a custom in Romania. The farm husband and wife will go through the orchard at Christmas, she with her hands covered in dough and he with an axe. The man will go from one barren tree to another, each time threatening to cut it down. Each time, the wife will plead for the tree by saying:  “Oh no, I am sure that this tree will be as heavy with fruit next spring as my fingers are with dough this day.”

In the West Country it was also customary to wassail the oxen: on Twelfth Night men and women went into the stalls. They drank from the wassail bowl and took a cake from a basket decorated with greenery and placed it the ox’s horns. If the ox remained quite it was considered good luck. In Hereford, a cake was stuck on the horns of the ox while the oldest person present chanted: Here’s to thy pretty face , and to thy white horn,/ God send thy master a good crop of corn,/ Both wheat, rye and barley, of grains of all sort,/ And next year if we live we’ll drink to thee again. The rhyme was repeated in chorus, then the oldest threw a pint of cider in the beast’s face. If he tossed the cake forward it was a good sign.

In Sussex and Hertfordshire we also have mention of wassailing the bee-hives.

Beatings at Christmas

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. 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 “[W]here 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. The threat of corporal punishment was inherent in the role played by such figures as Black Pete, Krampus, Cert or Père Fouettard (Father Switch) who accompany the gift-giver.

 On Childermas, December 28, which commemorates the Massacre of the Innocents by King Herod 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.

It is worth noting that fruit trees also came in for ritual beatings at Christmas. See tomorrow’s post on“Wassailing”.

The Atheist Critique

Not everyone likes Christmas. Aggressive atheists are particularly vexed by the season in which the claims of Christianity are most publicly on display and held in good repute. The most famous infidel of the late 19th century was Robert Ingersoll (1833-99) who lectured frequently on the virtues of unbelief. Here is his “Christmas Sermon” of December 19, 1891. His notion that Christmas was borrowed from pagan sun worship is no longer taken seriously by historians but it still lives on the internet.

The good part of Christmas is not always Christian — it is generally Pagan; that is to say, human, natural.

Christianity did not come with tidings of great joy, but with a message of eternal grief. It came with the threat of everlasting torture on its lips. It meant war on earth and perdition hereafter.

It taught some good things — the beauty of love and kindness in man. But as a torch-bearer, as a bringer of joy, it has been a failure. It has given infinite consequences to the acts of finite beings, crushing the soul with a responsibility too great for mortals to bear. It has filled the future with fear and flame, and made God the keeper of an eternal penitentiary, destined to be the home of nearly all the sons of men. Not satisfied with that, it has deprived God of the pardoning power.

And yet it may have done some good by borrowing from the Pagan world the old festival called Christmas.

Long before Christ was born the Sun-God triumphed over the powers of Darkness. About the time that we call Christmas the days begin perceptibly to lengthen. Our barbarian ancestors were worshipers of the sun, and they celebrated his victory over the hosts of night. Such a festival was natural and beautiful. The most natural of all religions is the worship of the sun. Christianity adopted this festival. It borrowed from the Pagans the best it has.

I believe in Christmas and in every day that has been set apart for joy. We in America have too much work and not enough play. We are too much like the English.

I think it was Heinrich Heine who said that he thought a blaspheming Frenchman was a more pleasing object to God than a praying Englishman. We take our joys too sadly. I am in favor of all the good free days — the more the better.

Christmas is a good day to forgive and forget — a good day to throw away prejudices and hatreds — a good day to fill your heart and your house, and the hearts and houses of others, with sunshine.

Christmas Baking

Baking has become an essential part of the celebration of Christmas for a number of reasons. Historically it relates to the midwinter veneration of grain and grain products in hopes that the next year’s harvest will be bountiful. We can see this in the eastern European custom of placing wheat and hay about the house, even under the table-cloth, on Christmas Eve and in the widespread practice of preparing a grain porridge, such as kutya or frumenty, at Christmastime. This notion carries over to baked goods, especially bread. In the nineteenth century German peasants believed there was particular power in bread baked at Christmas: thrown into a fire, it would quench the flames; given to cattle, it would keep them healthy. Similar beliefs attached to the oplatek wafer in Slavic Europe and Christmas cake in Flanders. As a result special breads and other baked goods became identified with Christmas in many countries: the German Christstollen which was said to represent the swaddling clothes of the baby Jesus; the Greek christopsomo which is often decorated with a cross; the medieval English mince pies which were made in the shape of a crib and adorned with a dough figure of the Holy Child; the Belgian cougnou or pain de Jesus in the shape of the baby Jesus; the Ukrainian kolach, which is sometimes stacked in threes as a reminder of the Trinity. Many cakes are baked in the shape of wreaths and circles to symbolize everlasting life.

 Christmas-tide is a feast and a feast means food and abundance. Christmas baking is therefore an expression of indulgence and the celebration of a full pantry after a year’s hard work. This is a time when the richest ingredients and most costly spices can be employed with a guilt-free conscience: the effort and expense lavished on Christmas baking is unmatched by food preparation at any other time of year. The weeks of Advent are scarcely time enough for the marshalling of resources — flour, fruit, nuts, butter, cream, chocolate, alcohol, sugar, etc., etc. — and the preparation of the cakes, cookies, breads and pies that are consumed in such quantities. It is little wonder than an Irish term for Christmas Eve is Oidhche na ceapairi, “Night of Cakes.” In Norway no less than seven kinds of cookies must be prepared.

Baking at Christmas is also a community activity. Most families will prepare at least some goodies together, as in the custom of the Stir-Up Sunday pudding, and on many occasions members of a whole village, church or other group will be involved. Eating Christmas baking is, of course, a communal activity as well, binding the family together in present enjoyment and often linking them to those who are dead or absent. The oplatek wafers of Poland are shared ritually with those around the table but some are reserved for those away from the home; in many countries families leave bread out for the spirits of those departed or for the Holy Family. Sharing with those less fortunate is often part of the Christmas tradition: either by setting a place for the unexpected visitor or by giving baked goods away — the “soul cakes” of England and the French pain calendeau are examples of charity foods.