distance in one of the public coaches, on the day preceding
Christmas. The coach was crowded, both inside and out, with
passengers, who, by their talk, seemed principally bound to the
mansions of relations or friends to eat the Christmas dinner. It
was loaded also with hampers of game, and baskets and boxes of
delicacies; and hares hung dangling their long ears about the
coachman’s box—presents from distant friends for the impending feast.
I had three fine rosy-cheeked schoolboys for my fellow-passengers
inside, full of the buxom health and manly spirit which I have
observed in the children of this country. They were returning home
for the holidays in high glee, and promising themselves a world
of enjoyment. It was delightful to hear the gigantic plans of
pleasure of the little rogues, and the impracticable feats they
were to perform during their six weeks’ emancipation from the
abhorred thraldom of book, birch, and pedagogue. They were full of
anticipations of the meeting with the family and household, down to
the very cat and dog; and of the joy they were to give their little
sisters by the presents with which their pockets were crammed; but
the meeting to which they seemed to look forward with the greatest
impatience was with Bantam, which I found to be a pony, and,
according to their talk, possessed of more virtues than any steed
since the days of Bucephalus. How he could trot! how he could run!
and then such leaps as he would take—there was not a hedge in the
whole country that he could not clear.
[Illustration:
_Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York_
A CHRISTMAS GIFT ON THE WAY TO A CHRISTMAS DINNER]
They were under the particular guardianship of the coachman, to
whom, whenever an opportunity presented, they addressed a host of
questions, and pronounced him one of the best fellows in the whole
world. Indeed, I could not but notice the more than ordinary air of
bustle and importance of the coachman, who wore his hat a little on
one side, and had a large bunch of Christmas greens stuck in the
buttonhole of his coat. He is always a personage full of mighty care
and business, but he is particularly so during this season, having so
many commissions to execute in consequence of the great interchange
of presents....
Perhaps the impending holiday might have given a more than usual
animation to the country, for it seemed to me as if everybody was in
good looks and good spirits. Game, poultry, and other luxuries of
the table were in brisk circulation in the villages; the grocers’,
butchers’, and fruiterers’ shops were thronged with customers. The
housewives were stirring briskly about, putting their dwellings
in order; and the glossy branches of holly, with their bright red
berries, began to appear at the windows. The scene brought to mind an
old writer’s account of Christmas preparations: “Now capons and hens,
besides turkeys, geese, and ducks, with beef and mutton—must all
die; for in twelve days a multitude of people will not be fed with a
little. Now plums and spice, sugar and honey, square it among pies
and broth. Now or never must music be in tune, for the youth must
dance and sing to get them a heat, while the aged sit by the fire.
The country maid leaves half her market, and must be sent again, if
she forgets a pack of cards on Christmas Eve. Great is the contention
of Holly and Ivy, whether master or dame wears the breeches. Dice and
cards benefit the butler; and if the cook do not lack wit, he will
sweetly lick his fingers.”
I was roused from this fit of luxurious meditation by a shout from
my little travelling companions. They had been looking out of the
coach windows for the last few miles, recognizing every tree and
cottage as they approached home, and now there was a general burst of
joy—“There’s John! and there’s old Carlo! and there’s Bantam!” cried
the happy little rogues, clapping their hands.
At the end of a lane there was an old sober-looking servant in livery
waiting for them; he was accompanied by a superannuated pointer, and
by the redoubtable Bantam, a little old rat of a pony, with a shaggy
mane and long rusty tail, who stood dozing quietly by the roadside,
little dreaming of the bustling times that awaited him.
I was pleased to see the fondness with which the little fellows
leaped about the steady old footman, and hugged the pointer, who
wriggled his whole body for joy. But Bantam was the great object
of interest; all wanted to mount at once; and it was with some
difficulty that John arranged that they should ride by turns, and the
eldest should ride first.
Off they set at last; one on the pony, with the dog bounding and
barking before him, and the others holding John’s hands; both talking
at once, and overpowering him by questions about home, and with
school anecdotes. I looked after them with a feeling in which I do
not know whether pleasure or melancholy predominated; for I was
reminded of those days when, like them, I had neither known care nor
sorrow, and a holiday was the summit of earthly felicity. We stopped
a few moments afterwards to water the horses, and on resuming our
route, a turn of the road brought us in sight of a neat country-seat.
I could just distinguish the forms of a lady and two young girls in
the portico, and I saw my little comrades, with Bantam, Carlo, and
old John, trooping along the carriage road. I leaned out of the coach
window, in hopes of witnessing the happy meeting, but a grove of
trees shut it from my sight.
God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen
God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
Was born upon this day;
To save us all from Satan’s power,
When we were gone astray.
_O tidings of comfort and joy,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born on Christmas Day._
In Bethlehem in Jewry
This blessed babe was born,
And laid within a manger
Upon this blessed morn;
The which His mother Mary
Nothing did take in scorn.
From God, our Heavenly Father,
A blessed Angel came,
And, unto certain shepherds,
Brought tidings of the same;
How, that in Bethlehem was born
The Son of God by name.
The Shepherds at those tidings,
Rejoiced much in mind,
And left their flocks a-feeding
In tempest, storm, and wind,
And went to Bethlehem straightway,
This blessed Babe to find.
But when to Bethlehem they came,
Where as this Infant lay,
They found him in a manger
Where oxen feed on hay,
His mother Mary kneeling
Unto the Lord did pray.
Now to the Lord sing praises
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace,
This holy tide of Christmas
All others doth deface.
_O tidings of comfort and joy,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born on Christmas Day._
[Illustration:
_Correggio_
THE HOLY NIGHT]
The Date of Russia’s Christmastide
Real winter in Russia is supposed to start on the feast of St.
Nicholas of which the date, written in Russian style, is December
6/19. The first figure gives the date of the month as it is known in
Russia and Greece, the second the date according to the calendar in
use in all other civilized countries.
The calendar which was brought into use by Julius Cæsar, and was
carried all over the then known world by the Romans, aimed to measure
the year by the time it takes the earth to move once around the sun.
His Egyptian astronomer figured that this required 365¼ days, so the
practice was begun of having three years of 365 days, followed by a
leap year, to which an extra day is given. As a matter of fact, the
length of the average year is _not exactly_ 365¼ days. To be sure,
that is only 11¼ seconds or so out of the way, and this may seem a
very small matter out of a whole year; but what happens is that every
128 years or so the calendar of Julius Cæsar or the Julian Calendar,
as it is called, gets a day behind. By the year 1582, when Gregory
XIII was Pope, the calendar was ten days slow. So Pope Gregory issued
an order that the year was to take a new start and that thereafter
three leap years out of every four centuries should be omitted, which
keeps the calendar very nearly correct. But though Pope Gregory might
decree, it did not follow that every one would obey at once; the
ignorant thought that by the change of date they were losing ten
days of time and, of course, of wages. After some confusion all the
Roman Catholic countries obeyed. England, being a Protestant country,
ignored Pope Gregory’s commands. But it could not so easily dismiss
the knowledge of its own astronomers that the Gregorian Calendar,
as it is called, is nearer the truth than the Julian. In 1752,
therefore, the date of the day of the year was changed by an Act of
Parliament. The day after September 3 was to be called September
14, which it would have been if the calendar had not been slow. And
naturally the change was also made in America, to which the new style
had been brought already by French and Spanish settlers from Catholic
countries.
There were always hot jealousies between the Eastern Church, ruled
from Constantinople, and the Western, ruled from Rome. The Eastern
or Greek churches refused to change their calendar on the order of a
Latin Pope, and to this day retain the old style, the Julian dates.
This is why their Christmas follows our Twelfth Day, for by this time
their calendar is thirteen days behind the Gregorian. But to avoid
confusion the double date is very generally in use.
During the time between the Day of St. Nicholas and Christmas it
seems as if half Russia streams out upon the ice of the river
Neva in St. Petersburg. All through the summer the boats come and
go, bringing food, fuel, building materials, everything the city
needs, from the interior; but the river is frozen for six months
of the year, and in those months it is used as if it were public
land. St. Petersburg is a very gay capital in winter, when the
wealthier Russian nobles have left their country estates, and come
down to exchange visits, to give balls, or go dashing about in gay
sleighs to join the sleighing or skating contests for which a part
of the frozen river is reserved. All around the cleared spaces on
the ice, merchants have set up temporary booths; here you may buy
tea and nutcakes; there holy pictures, or ikons, pictures of all
the possible saints, some costing a few pennies, others with gold
and silver backgrounds costing many roubles, a rouble being worth
about fifty cents. On another part of the river a great provision
market is held a little before Christmas, and the booths stretch
for miles. Everything is frozen. Countless oxen, piles of sheep and
goats, pyramids of pigs, form a frozen range of hillocks to which
the butcher comes to make his choice. With hatchet or saw he divides
the animal, ox, or pig, or it may be a bear, into sections which
his customers store in the ice-cellars which have all been freshly
filled. Thousands of workmen are engaged during the winter in cutting
and drawing the ice from yet another part of the Neva, and on a still
frosty morning the clink of their axes against iron ice-breakers can
be heard at a long distance from the river.
A great ceremony of the Greek Church takes place each year at the
end of their Christmas season—the Benediction of the Waters—in every
town and village in Russia and down along the coasts of Greece. In
St. Petersburg the ceremony is performed by the Czar outside the
Winter Palace. A wooden temple is put up out on the ice, decorated
with gilt and paintings within, and surrounded by a hedge of fir
boughs without. A hole is made in the ice, and to this a long
procession makes its way; troops with bright banners, gorgeously
robed bishops, and priests carrying lighted tapers and big ikons,
are followed by more soldiers, the Czar and Czarina in magnificently
jewelled robes, and after them their Court brilliant in uniforms and
beautiful fur-trimmed dresses. They have all attended one service
in the Imperial Chapel; they now have another on the ice. The water
is blessed, evil spirits flee away, the soldiers fire a salute,
and every one is sprinkled with the now holy water. The procession
returns to the city, carrying with it great vessels of the holy water
to be used later in all the churches. Then the people who have been
looking on try to get to the hole; some draw up pailfuls of the cold
liquid; others plunge bodily into the icy water, believing that so
they will be cleansed from sin or sickness; many have even plunged
delicate babies into it, content, if the child does not survive the
shock, in the belief that its soul is forever saved. And over every
door in the great city on that day rests the sign of the cross, lest
the evil spirit expelled from the water should enter any home.
[Illustration: Decoration]
[Illustration: Men and women]
St. Barbara’s Grain
Only in the south of France, they say, is to be found the custom of
planting St. Barbara’s grain on the fourth of December. Earthenware
dishes an inch or two in depth are half filled with water, on the
surface of which wheat is scattered, or the small, flattened seeds of
the lentil, a leafy-stemmed plant whose honey-laden blossoms will,
later in the year, draw swarms of golden bees to the fields where it
is planted. The dish is then set in the warm ashes of the fireplace,
or on the deep stone sill of a sunny window, and the grain is left
to sprout and grow so that on the table of the Christmas Eve supper
there may be this tender promise of the harvest of the year to come—a
pale, delicate young greenness in strong contrast with the darker
evergreens. The bent old _gran’mère_ by the hearth will tell you,
that as the growth is thick and sturdy or scattered and thin, so will
be the later harvests of grain, or honey.
The yellow daffodil, or narcissus, is a plant which first grew in
southern France, and along the Mediterranean, and it may be that it
was some early settler from Languedoc or Provence, who introduced
into Louisiana a custom common half a century ago, that had a dim
resemblance to this planting of St. Barbara’s grain. The daffodil
bulbs were planted in shallow earthenware dishes on the eve of All
Saints, and set for three weeks in the warm dark, and later in the
sun. The older creoles foretold a fruitful year if the flower bud
were well formed by St. Barbara’s day.
Before the Paling of the Stars
Before the paling of the stars,
Before the winter morn,
Before the earliest cockcrow,
Jesus Christ was born:
Born in a stable,
Cradled in a manger,
In the world His hands had made
Born a stranger.
Priest and King lay fast asleep
In Jerusalem,
Young and old lay fast asleep
In crowded Bethlehem:
Saint and Angel, ox and ass,
Kept a watch together
Before the Christmas daybreak
In the winter weather.
Jesus on His Mother’s breast
In the stable cold,
Spotless Lamb of God was He,
Shepherd of the fold:
Let us kneel with Mary Maid,
With Joseph bent and hoary,
With Saint and Angel, ox and ass,
To hail the King of Glory.
A Midnight Mass in France
The great time for making gifts in France is the _Jour de l’An_, the
day of the year, our New Year’s Day, when there is a great exchange
of cards, good wishes, visits, and presents. On Christmas Eve,
everything else used to pale before the exciting adventure of going
to the church at midnight. After church came the Grand Supper, a
family gathering from which the children were sent to bed long before
they were ready to go, comforting themselves as they climbed the
stair by asking each other, “What do you think P’tit Noël will put in
your shoe?” But they were always too sleepy to lie awake long enough
to see whose hand it was that dropped into each little shoe under
the mantelpiece a few goodies or bits of silver coin. Sometimes one
was guiltily afraid that a black record of naughtiness deserved the
disgracing gift of a few pebbles, but then,—surely Petit Jesus was
forgiving and next year one would be very good, yes, of a certainty,
_most_ good.
Earlier in the evening the children had been allowed to play any
game they liked, however noisy, quite up to eleven o’clock, which
was unusual enough by itself. Then began a great bundling up in furs
and mufflers before the plunge from the warm candle-lighted room
into the frosty night, where stars shone like gold nails driven
into blue-black velvet; the frost crunched under wooden shoes; the
lanterns threw strange, wavering shadows; a dry branch fell with a
sudden crackle; far away a horse whickered and stamped just as one
was coming toward the deepest blackness of all, where the great gray
church and the tall buildings about it threw the Grande Place into
densest shadow. Nothing in that sound should frighten one, but every
child had heard the peasants tell of this enchanted hour when animals
in their stables could talk like men; still, nothing could harm a
child on the way to mass, of course, so one plucked up courage and
sang out extra loudly in the refrain of whatever carol was being rung
on the chimes in the ivy-covered tower.
The old church had always seemed large, very large for the few who
worshipped in it, but now it was majestic, reaching up toward the
skies as if to gather from the angelic choir the great waves of music
that rolled down the valley to be heard miles away. And how could one
help gasping when a gust of wind swept him suddenly into the porch;
there through the open door he was caught and drawn forward, adoring,
by the full splendor of the altar, studded with lights, dazzling
against dark walls, green with pine and laurel.
At one side was the crêche, the miniature stable scene, where the
mother ever watched in wondering love the Holy Child. Down the long
nave, from the damp stone floor which had never known the luxury
of matting, great pillars lost themselves in the blackness of the
arches. But each who entered brought his lantern and set it on the
stones in front of him; one after another the little lights like
stars came twinkling out all over the church. And each newcomer
joined in the carols sung before the mass was begun—old, old
carols with beloved refrains which one heard only at Christmas time.
[Illustration:
_Blashfield_
THE BELLS]
The old mysteries, quaint plays in which long ago the peasants of
Southern France acted the simple stories of the adoration of the Babe
by the angels, the shepherds, and the Wise Men, are seen no more,
but it is said that until very recently, in some of the provinces,
at a certain pause in the mass, a shepherd knocks loudly on the
great church door, the hollow sound echoing in the solemn hush. From
without is heard singing, the voices of shepherds asking to come in.
Slowly the doors swing back, the people part and the shepherds enter,
passing up the nave between a double row of worshippers. In front
are two or three boys playing softly on simple musical instruments,
one has a flute, another a tambourine. Then begins a quaint musical
dialogue between these peasants in their long, weather-stained
cloaks, and those who stand on either side.
From one hand comes the question, in high treble,
_Where hast thou been?_
And it is echoed from the other,
_What hast thou seen?_
And the deep musical voices of the shepherds answer:—
“_Deep in a manger, a little child,
On the dry straw, slumbered and smiled._”
So they move slowly, carrying a little fruit, a measure of grain, a
pair of pigeons, to where the priest stands waiting to bless their
simple gifts and lay them at the foot of the altar.
The Christchild and the Pine Tree
On the Holy Night when the Christchild was born, the earth lay very
near to heaven; all the world was at peace, and there was no noise of
war to keep men on earth from hearing the angels sing.
Animals and birds and trees alike were glad because of the coming of
the Holy Babe, and like the shepherds and the Wise Men came to bring
to Him their gifts. Most of all the little pine tree beside the road
longed to take something to the Christchild.
The cedars, instead of pointing their branches upward in pointed
slender trees, spread their branches wide, as Cedars of Lebanon
do to this day, and bent low to shelter the Mother and Child. But
the little pine was too small to shelter anything, and though he
stretched and stretched, he was not even tall enough to keep the sun
out of the eyes of the Wonderful Babe. He was barely tall enough
for the wind to make a whispering sound in the tips of his little
branches.
The thorn, although it was midwinter, suddenly blossomed out and
brought its white flowers to make a coverlet for the Child’s cradle.
And the little pine tree tried so hard to blossom that pine-needles
came out in tufts all over him, but that was all; only the wind
through his branches now sounded like a sigh.
The “bird of God,” which we call the wren, flew quickly and brought
soft moss and feathers to make His cradle warm. “I will pull off
all my needles to make a bed for Him,” the pine tree said. But when
he began to do that, Mother Mary smiled and shook her head. “Your
needles would only prick Him, little pine,” she said. And the little
pine rocked in pain and the wind sighed through his branches.
The olive came and brought sweet-smelling oil, with which to rub the
Christchild’s little limbs; and the pine tree saw her and ached so
for something to give that the resin stood out in big drops along his
stem. “Oh!” he cried joyfully, “I, too, have oil to give.” And Mother
Mary’s smile was very tender as she shook her head again and said
gently, “But your drops are sticky, and they would hurt His tender
skin, dear little pine.” So the little pine was very unhappy because
it had nothing to offer the Christchild. And year by year as he grew
taller, and remembered the Holy Night, the wind swept through his
branches with a sound that was almost a moan; and ever since you can
hear that sound from pine trees all the world over.
Now for hundreds of years after, on each Christmas Eve, the
Christchild comes again, in the likeness of a poor child, gathering
fallen sticks in the forest. Up and down the hills He goes, shivering
in the icy cold, knocking at every door, whether it is of a cabin
or a castle, until He finds some one who, remembering His lesson of
love, calls Him in to find warmth and shelter; and such a home He
blesses. Some there are who, like the pine tree, long to serve Him,
and these place a candle in the window, that if He pass along their
way, He may see it and come in.
But one night there was no door open and as He walked wearily through
the pine wood the wind shrieked through the trees bending before Him.
Then the Christchild turned aside and crept under the low branches of
a pine tree, which was large enough now to shelter Him; and the moss
lifted itself from the snow to make a soft bed for the tired Child.
And the pine tree, drawing its branches close above Him, was so happy
that tears of joy ran down his branches and freezing, hung in slender
icicles. And as the first red rays of the sun on Christmas morning
shone upon them they glittered like the candles on your Christmas
tree, and the Christchild opened His eyes and smiled.
A Birthday Gift
What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can give Him,—
Give my heart.
[Illustration: Decoration]
[Illustration:
_Hunt_
THE TRIUMPH OF THE INNOCENTS]
The Christmas Fire in Servia
Servia is one of the countries in which the old, old customs have
lasted longest. They began in the times when men looked forward
longingly to “the days in which the sun, having gone far enough into
the snowy plains of the winter, turns back toward the green fields
of summer.” The celebration begins on the day before Christmas,
which the older Servian songs call “the day of the old Badnyak.” No
one seems to know who Badnyak was; but some have believed that the
fast-day was first kept in honor of the old sun-god, who was thought
of as grown weak and faint, and as giving place to a younger. For on
the next day was the feast of “the little God,” the new sun who was
to bring summer back again. Nowadays, the name is given to logs cut
for the Christmas fire.