FATHER CHRISTMAS AND HIS FAMILY
The English, as I have said, have no Saint Nicholas, no Santa Klaus, no
Chris-kinkle to act as a distributor of gifts on Christmas eve. They
hail as the patron of the season a vague allegorical being, usually
called Father Christmas, though he has, sometimes, been known also as
Old Christmas, Captain Christmas, and by other titles.
He appears only in picture, in poetry, and in dramatic pieces specially
got up for the holidays. In the latter he has played an important part
from a very early period. The most famous of such pieces was a “masque”
written by Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s friend and rival, and produced at
the court of King James I in the year 1616. That, by the way, is the
very year of Shakespeare’s death.
Christmas festivities at that time were frowned down upon by many of
the more zealous Protestants--just then beginning to earn the name of
“Puritans”--who fancied that these mummeries and rejoicings smacked
too strongly of “Papist” or Roman Catholic tendencies. Indeed many
fanatics had striven to abolish Christmas altogether, and had partly
succeeded in doing so, at least among the people who believed as they
did. But James I, though a foolish person in some respects, was a
learned man and a great lover of the traditions of the past.
It is in allusion to the Puritan attempt to suppress him altogether
that Ben Jonson’s Father Christmas utters these words as he makes his
entrance upon the stage:
“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 you 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.”
He must have been a quaint looking figure, this same Father Christmas,
for we are told that his costume consisted of
“round hose, long stockings, close doublet, high-crowned hat, with a
brooch, long, thin beard, truncheon, little ruffs, white shoes,
with his scarfs and garters tied cross, and his drum beaten before
him,”
[Illustration: Father Christmas.
Drawn by Kenny Meadows.
From the Illustrated London News, December, 1847.]
And now, to the sound of the drum, in troop all his merry family--sons
and daughters and nephews and nieces. Among them are the Lord of
Misrule, who in old days directed the Christmas revels; Roast Beef,
“that English Champion bold,” who has saved many a sturdy Englishman
from starvation; Plum Pudding, a blackamoor, with rich round face
and rosemary cockade; and Minced Pie, and Baby Cake, and Mumming and
Wassail and Offering and Carol, and New Year’s Gift, and others too
numerous to mention.
Many members of this robust family will be recognized as contributors
to the Christmas cheer of to-day. Others have disappeared forever.
The Lord of Misrule, for example, the “Grand Captain of Mischief,” as
the Puritans called him, no longer summons around him all the madcap
youths of town or village for a brief period of lawless revelry.
In Scotland this personage was known as the Abbot of Unreason, a
name which clearly shows that he was a direct descendant from the
chief performer in the mediæval Feast of Fools, and as such was a
great-great-etc.-grandson of Silenus, the merrymaker in the Greek
Bacchanalia.
King James I of England was succeeded by his son Charles I. During
the reign of the latter unhappy monarch, the Puritan party in England
gathered so much strength that, under the lead of Oliver Cromwell, they
hurled Charles from his throne and cut off his head, sending his entire
family into exile for a period of a dozen years. Father Christmas
shared the exile of his royal patrons, or if he dared show his face in
England at all, it was only here and there in remote country places
or behind locked doors in the obscurer parts of the great cities.
Meanwhile his absence was greatly deplored by that part of the English
people who had remained loyal to the crown. One of these put forward
a curious little book entitled “An Hue and Cry after Christmas.” The
following paragraph shows the spirit in which the book was written:
“Any man or woman, that can give any knowledge, or tell any tidings of
an old, old, very old grey-bearded gentleman, called Christmas, who was
wont to be a very familiar guest and visit all sorts of people, both
poor and rich, and used to appear in glittering gold, silk and silver,
in the court, and in all shapes in the theatre in White Hall, and had
ringing, feasts and jollity in all places, both in the city and the
country, for his coming--whoever can tell what is become of him, or
where he may be found, let him bring him back again into England.”
[Illustration: Father Christmas, another conception.
Drawing by Kenny Meadows.]
Well, Father Christmas did come back to England in the train of Charles
I’s son, Charles II who shortly after Cromwell’s death was restored to
the English throne by the wish of the majority of the English people.
When he resumed the rule that had been wrested by the Puritans from his
father the old celebrations of Christmas were to some extent revived in
the royal and other mansions and at the theatres.
“To some extent”--that is too often a sad phrase!
It means, in this case, that pretty much all the life and spirit of the
old ceremonies had departed so that no revival could restore them to
their former vitality.
The changes wrought by the troublous times through which England had
passed were fatal to the old-time splendors of the Christmas season.
In the country many of the great old estates had passed into new hands
and the old ties between the lord of the manor and his tenants had
been forever sundered. The rafters of the old baronial halls no longer
rang with the merriment which had graced the meeting of master and
servants on a holiday basis of equality. Friends and relatives who from
childhood had gathered together around the Yule log were now scattered
or had been slain by the chances of war. Members of old country
families deprived by Cromwell of their estates and driven into exile,
now flocked to London to become hangers-on at the court of a “Merry
Monarch” whose mirth was often bought at the expense of his subject’s
years.
The Merry Monarch, himself (that was the name given to Charles II), was
a prodigal and a spendthrift, who found all sorts of new ways in which
to squander the money raised by taxes from his subjects. He had little
left, therefore, to imitate the splendid pageants that distinguished
the courts of Queen Elizabeth and James I at the ancient holiday
seasons.
A famous song called “The Old and Young Courtier” was written shortly
after Charles II had regained his throne. It sadly contrasts the good
old times and the good old people with the bad new times and the bad
new people of the Restoration.
The old courtier is lovingly described as “a worshipful old gentleman
who had a great estate,” with a lovely old wife by his side, and a
great band of servants around them. Then followed this verse:
With a good old fashion when Christmas was come,
To call in all his old neighbors with bagpipe and drum,
With good cheer enough to furnish every room,
And old liquor able to make a cat speak, and man dumb;
Like an old courtier of the queen’s
And the queen’s old courtier.
[Illustration: The Old and the New Christmas.
From London Punch, Dec. 24, 1881.]
A contrast is drawn between this old courtier of the queen’s and the
young courtier of the king’s, with all his new-fangled notions, and
especially
With a new fashion, when Christmas is drawing on,
On a new journey to London we must straight all begone
And leave none to keep house but our new porter John
Who relieves the poor with a thump in the back with a stone.
Like a young courtier of the king’s
And the king’s young courtier.
From time to time, even in periods nearer to our own, complaints have
been raised in England that the spirit of the old-time Christmas
merriment has departed forever, and that good old Father Christmas is
once more an exile from his own.
A cartoon by Linley M. Sambourne published in the _London Punch_ for
December 24, 1881, shows the Old-Fashioned Christmas holding a lively
conversation with the New.
This prose bit is printed beneath the picture:
_Christmas_ (_New Style_). “WE ARE THE MODERN CHRISTMAS CARDS--WE ARE!
WE ARE! WE ARE!”
_Christmas_ (_Old Style_). “YOU REPRESENT CHRISTMAS! POOH! WHAT DO YOU
MEAN BY COMING OUT LIKE THAT AT THIS TIME OF YEAR?”
Then follows this poem, which still further explains the meaning of the
picture:
Says the Old-fashioned Christmas to the New-fangled Christmas,
“’Pon my word, my boy, I don’t think much of you.”
Says the New-fangled Christmas to the Old-fashioned Christmas,
“Well, with tastes like yours, I don’t suppose you do.
For, to celebrate a season, very fortunately brief,
At _your_ age too,--with an orgie of plum-pudding and roast beef,
Crowned with holly, in a dressing-gown! The thing’s past all belief!”
Says Old Christmas, with a nod, “My boy, that’s true.”
Says the New-fangled Christmas to the Old-fashioned Christmas,
“For tomfoolery like yours we have no zest.”
Says the Old-fashioned Christmas to the New-fangled Christmas,
“What now! _You_ to talk like that! Well, I am blest!
‘Tomfoolery’? Why, what do you call all this here modern fad,--
Sending gimcrack cards by dozens, dauby, glaring, good, and bad,
Nymphs--and what not? Why, between you, you drive friends and Postmen mad.”
Says Young Christmas, “When it’s over, they can rest.”
[Illustration: Bringing in Old Christmas.
From the Illustrated London News.]
Says the Old-fashioned Christmas to the New-fangled Christmas,
“Where’s the jollity of twenty years ago?”
Says the New-fangled Christmas to the Old-fashioned Christmas,
“How on earth, now, do you think that _I_ should know?
For to-day, with Art and Culture’s dainty trifles by the score,
We just manage to scrape through the time, confessing it’s a bore;
But, by Jove, if _you_ came back again, ’twould soon be something more!”
Says Old Christmas, “Well, I really call that low.”
Says the New-fangled Christmas to the Old-fashioned Christmas,
“I don’t see the day a bit, you know, like you.”
Says the Old-fashioned Christmas to the New-fangled Christmas,
“Never mind, my boy, there’s something you can do.
Have your fads; but copy me, my boy. Go on as I’ve begun.
Remember, when your table’s spread, the thousands that have none.
So, get your cheque-book out, my boy. Show you’re your father’s son.”
Says Young Christmas, “Well, I don’t mind if I do.”
After all, may it not be safe for us to decide that it is not the
spirit but the fashion which alters, that the heart of Old Father
Christmas still beats warm under the new garb wherein changing tastes
have clothed him? Surely, if we have dropped some of the revellings
of the past, we have dropped also the abuses which gradually made
distasteful the horse play that attended those revelries.
On the whole the “new-fangled Christmas” has many points that show an
improvement over the old-fashioned Christmas while in all essentials
the two remain one and the same.
Some humble members of Father Christmas’ family still surviving to
a small extent in London are the “waits” or wandering musicians who
play dismal tunes under the windows of the well-to-do in the hopes of
obtaining a few pennies.
These are direct descendants from the “jongleurs” or minstrels who in
the Middle Ages celebrated the birth of Christ on Christmas night with
song and dance.
[Illustration: The Christmas Waits.
Drawing by Kenny Meadows.
From the Illustrated London News, December, 1848.]