“At Christmas play, and make good cheer,
For Christmas comes but once a year.”
So said good Thomas Tusser, many generations ago, and his words have
echoed in the hearts of old and young, rich and poor, from his day up
to this blessed Year of Our Lord, 1898. Let us thank God and take
courage when we remember that the Power of Evil has no one Book to set
off against the Bible, and no one day to match Christmas. It is one of
the gladdest and fairest signs of the times that this merry holiday,
so full of good-will to men, is drawing closer and closer to the heart
of the nation. For this one season in the year, everybody is thinking
of everybody else, instead of himself, and we join the wise men in
their march across the desert, following the Star, until we, too, find
ourselves upon our knees before the manger in which the young Child
was.
It is among the nations of the North, the Germans, the Swedes, the
Norwegians and the English, that the finest and deepest significance
has been attached to this holy day. Among the German peasantry,
especially, are found numerous home legends, beliefs and superstitions
which even the nineteenth century, with its growth of science and
liberal thought, has been unable to reach. Many of these customs and
beliefs have never been told in any language save that of the country
in which they took their rise; the folk-lore of the Teutonic nations
is still a rich storehouse of treasures for the antiquarian, and for
those who love Christmas for its own truest meaning, the day when
Christ was born.
The concurrence of the winter solstice with Christmas gave rise in the
earliest times to many of the tales of Norse mythology. In the summer
the good gods, Woden and Freia, with thousands of friendly elves,
brought flowers and fruits to cheer the heart of man. But as winter
came on, and the days grew ever shorter and the dark nights longer,
the evil spirits held the good gods, enchanted by their power, far up
among the snowy mountains, and prevented the passage of pious souls to
their rest. Then came storms, and awful things upon the earth. A
many-headed monster roamed the village, seizing the children, throwing
them into a sack, and devouring them at its leisure. Giants descended
from the hills and robbed the lonely traveler. In Denmark a frightful
creature covered with a hairy robe was wont to creep into houses after
dark to steal the products of the harvest, and, if it found nothing,
would utter maledictions and threats, showing at the same time from
beneath its covering a black face and mouth full of fire.
As Christmas time draws near, and the sun turns northward once more,
Woden issues forth upon a white horse, and, followed by howling packs
of dogs, drives the evil spirits to their hiding-places in the
mountains. Sometimes in his wild hunt he sweeps through a house and
leaves behind him a dog, who crouches upon the hearth and stays there
for one year, whining, moaning, feeding on ashes, and snapping at all
who approach. On the next Christmas, Woden comes for him again, and
the dog leaps through the chimney to rejoin the howling pack in the
tree-tops.
To this day the Germans associate the coming of Christ with the return
of the sun, and the approach of spring. One of their poets sings:
“The sun in winter is God in grief,
Is Christ who cometh to bring relief.
Beneath its blessed radiance, man
Forgets that his life is but a span.
“The sun in winter is Christmastide,
Which scatters its blessings far and wide,
And sheds, through faith, o’er time’s dark sea,
The morning rays of eternity.”
“That Christmas is a holiday of light and victory,” begins Cassel, in
his account of the day,[1] “every one who has lived within its
influence knows full well. This victory is more sure than the return
of spring, to which we look forward in December with such cheerful
hope. The Spirit of Truth dwells upon loftier heights than does the
creature, and its brightness chases away the shadows of many a gloomy
hour, darker than the longest night of midwinter.”
[1] _Weihnachten: Ursprunge, Brauche und Aberglauben._--Cassel,
Leipzig.
And now the wonderful hour draws nigh. It is Christmas Eve. All nature
is hushed. As the shepherds once sat around their fire upon the plains
of Bethlehem, discussing, perchance, the strange portents attending
the birth of the son of Zacharias, so to-night the peasants in their
huts along the shores of the Baltic, or in the shadows of the Black
Forest, sit before the Yule log, and talk of the birth of the Son of
man. Suddenly the village bells toll for midnight. The sun appears
upon the horizon and leaps three times for joy; the birds throughout
the forest break forth into singing; every fir-tree blossoms into
fairest flower and fruitage, and is clothed once more in soft leaves,
in place of the sharp, spearpointed needles into which they were
condemned to shrink when a fir-tree was used for the Saviour’s cross.
All the good people of the village are praying; and hark! the cattle,
upon their knees in the stable, are talking together in low tones. “_A
child is bo-or-rn!_” lows the cow. “_True-e-e_,” returns the ass.
“_Where, where, where?_” calls the shrill voice of the cock--and the
lambs answer, “_In Be-e-t-t-’lem!_” The horses alone have nothing to
say, and are upright on their feet; for when Christ was born, so the
story goes, the horses who happened to be near the manger stamped and
were rude, while the great, sweet-breathed oxen gazed upon the wee
Baby with their mild eyes, and, with the asses and lambs, knelt in
worship. For this hardness of heart horses are condemned to never have
their fill of grass, and to this day they feed eagerly in the fields,
but are never satisfied.
While these strange things are happening in the stables of the little
German village, the gnomes are busy in the mountains, throwing out
gold and precious treasures of the earth where men shall find them the
coming year.
When Christmas morning dawns, which in the northern countries is not
before nine or ten in the forenoon, the first loaves that come smoking
from the housewife’s oven are given to the cattle. In Sweden it is the
custom to tie a sheaf of grain to a pole and set it up where the birds
may alight and take part in the joy and good cheer of the day. Before
long the village beggars are knocking at the door, and the humblest
peasant, remembering that it is the day on which God gave his
only-begotten Son to the world, dispenses with a free hand his gifts
to all that come.
Evergreen, and, in particular, the fir-tree, has been from the
earliest times associated with Christmas, and countless tales and
legends are perfumed with its spicy odors. Many are the German songs
that are full of its praises.
“O northern fir, O northern fir,
In thee my heart delighteth,
How oft thy boughs at Christmastide
Have shed their blessings far and wide;--
In thee my heart delighteth.”
Hans Christian Andersen, whose happiest hours were those spent in
writing pure and sweet fairytales for children, has told the story of
the fir-tree in his own gentle way. Here is one more child-song,
freely translated from Cassel’s notes:
Within the wood a fir-tree stands,
So stately to be seen;
In summer, spring and winter, too,
Its cloak is ever green.
Its tiny needles, fine and sharp--
Some pointing up, some down--
The thistle-finch doth take, to sew
Her pretty yellow gown.
Through snow and ice the Christ-child sends
The good old Santa Klaus,
Who straightway hews the fir-tree down
And bears it to the house.
With loving hand, the Christ-child hangs
The nuts and apples there;
A taper small upon each twig,
And cakes and dainties rare.
Then comes the blessed Christmas night,
The bell is rung--and lo!
There stands the fir-tree, green and still,
Its branches all aglow.
Thou fir-tree in the forest dark,
Soon shalt thou hence be borne.
Rejoice! for then thy branches, too,
The Christ-child shall adorn.
In Scandinavia two fir boughs are nailed crosswise before the door on
Christmas day. Children go about the village, knocking at the windows
with fir twigs, and receiving gifts of sugar plums. The Alsatian
peasantry relate that the apostle to the people on the Rhine and
Moselle was the son of the widow of Nain. Long after his miraculous
resurrection he was sent westward by Saint Peter. One day he came to
the steep banks of the Rhine, and, stopping to rest, fell asleep from
weariness, in the shade of a fir-tree. On awaking, he found that his
pilgrim’s staff had grown into the trunk of the fir, and thus plainly
indicated that he had reached the appointed end of his journey.
In England, the same veneration seems to have been bestowed, time out
of mind, upon the holly. Its glossy, pointed leaves symbolize the
crown of thorns, and the berries the crimson blood-drops that gathered
upon the Saviour’s brow. Like the fir, it is ever green and full of
life--as the love of Christ to mankind. Indeed this almost instinctive
association of green boughs and all bright, growing things with the
joy and beauty of religious life, extends throughout written history.
The Israelites in the desert were taught (if they had not already
adopted a custom which was thus merely confirmed and sanctified) to
“take the boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the
boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and ye shall rejoice
before the Lord your God seven days” (Leviticus 23: 40).
So, too, the wreaths of green leaves attributed to the Greek and Roman
deities, and awarded to those who seemed most godlike, in peace or
war. When Christ entered Jerusalem, the fittest expressions of the
joy, the thanksgiving and the reverent worship of the multitude were
the palm branches, strewn in the path of him who was victorious over
Evil, and who--not conquered death, but showed him to be only the
angel of Life, with the shadowy side of his face turned towards us, as
he comes between us and the Everlasting Light.
In the early days of England the Druids were accustomed to go forth at
Christmas and gather the sacred mistletoe; while even the poor and
humbler folk brought evergreen and hung it up in their cottages, that
the gentle spirits of the forest might dwell there in safety till the
sun should shine again. In these modern days it has become the fashion
to use evergreens more and more generously. The two largest of the
Boston markets are surrounded, for a week preceding Christmas day,
with a spicy forest of spruce and fir-trees, while the sidewalks are
half hidden beneath great fragrant heaps of “princess pine” and
“creeping Jenny,” in the form of wreaths, crosses and trimming. Holly,
too, is used in larger quantities every year, and altogether the times
seem to be returning, which dear old Sir Walter longed for when he
sung:
Heap on more wood!--the wind is chill
But let it whistle as it will,
We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.
Each age has deemed the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer.
And well our Christian sires of old
Loved when the year its course had rolled,
And brought blithe Christmas back again,
With all its hospitable train.
Domestic and religious rite
Gave honor to the holy night;
On Christmas eve the bells were rung;
On Christmas eve the mass was sung;
That only night in all the year,
Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear.
The damsel donned her kirtle sheen;
The hall was dressed with holly green;
Forth to the wood did merry men go,
To gather in the mistletoe.
Then opened wide the baron’s hall
To vassal, tenant, serf, and all;
Power laid his rod of rule aside,
And ceremony doffed his pride;
All hailed with uncontrolled delight
And general voice the happy night
That to the cottage, as the crown,
Brought tidings of salvation down.
England was merry England, when
Old Christmas brought his sports again.
’Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale;
’Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;
A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man’s heart through half the year.
Of all the supernatural visitors who roused old Scrooge from his
slumbers in Dickens’ immortal “Carol,” by far the most interesting was
the Ghost of Christmas Present. The Past is a memory; the Future a
dream; the Present is ours. With its ghost--or its spirit, to free
ourselves from uncanny associations with the name--we are intimately
associated: it is the key-note, or rather the theme, which determines
the harmony or discord of the year.
What, then, is the spirit of our own Christmas Present? what the
underlying motive and thought, the impulse that turns our population
out of their comfortable homes in the snowy streets during the most
inclement month of our New England year, and then as universally
gathers each family circle within doors on that one supreme Day of
days? which decks counter, wall, window, and altar with evergreen,
type of Eternal Life; which loosens the purse-strings of rich and
poor; which brings the name of Christ tenderly to the lips of young
and old? With all this we have much to do. Here it is, the spirit of
Christmas, analyzable or not, for good or for evil.
There is much outcry nowadays against the extravagant mysticism which
pervades the observance of the day. Christmas cards have run wild with
grotesque fancies. Christmas games, legends, stories, plays,--even the
columns of the daily press are full of them. At this season, the
compositor may keep standing the words “Christmas,” “Bethlehem,”
“Christ,” so often are they called into service.
There is the mysticism, the revival of the ancient myth and
folk-belief; and there is the rush of “the trade” for the pecuniary
advantages of the public tender-heartedness. One man gazes at the Star
until he stumbles in the highway: his neighbor stands at the gates of
Bethlehem on Christmas morning and takes toll. These are the extremes,
never more marked, more obtrusive, than in this year of our Lord 1898.
But between the two, hurrying over the fields toward the city by the
light of the Star, and thronging through the gates toward the little
manger throne, are the vast numbers of honest, earnest, sincere men
and women who find at Christmastide their perplexed lives made clear,
their hopes brightened, their burdens lightened, their strength
renewed for the twelvemonth to come.
To the mysticism, the love for glorified myth and legend, that
characterizes the Spirit of Christmas Present, they find an answering
chord in their own hearts, which will not be satisfied with shallow
interpretations of the day; which demands something deeper, and cannot
rest content with the broken clause, “On earth peace, good will toward
men,” but must echo the wonderful song that rang out over the dark
hill-slopes of Judæa, “Glory to God in the highest.”
As we gather about the cradle of every wee human child, born by such
wondrous miracle, so on each Christmas Eve the world gathers at the
rude manger where its Baby is laid, gazing into the gentle, radiant
face, and whispering, “There is born this day a Saviour, which is
Christ the Lord!”
“Mysticism,”--life is clothed in mystery! The birth of the poorest,
meanest child, in the shabbiest attic of your street of ill repute, is
a mystery far too sacred for man to divine. How shall we smile at
those who find in Christmas the consummate Mystery, the holiest
miracle that the weary, wondering earth has known?
The holiest, the deepest, and yet the simplest! For Christmas Day is
pre-eminently a day for entering the kingdom as a child. The door of
the stable is low; and we must stoop as we enter hand in hand with
little folk,--so sweet, so humble, so dear to everyday, plain
home-living is this Christian season of merrymaking.
The august features of the wise astrologers of the East relax, as they
turn from the Star to the face of the Child. The tax-gatherer forgets
his calling, and at last joins the throng of Christmas joy-makers and
joy-receivers, who find kindly impersonation in “Santa Claus.”
Let the card-dealers, then, and the writers of pretty fancies--the
students of folk-lore, the devotees of mystic rite--have their way;
let the tradesman prosper in the time of gift-giving; and every toiler
in the wide business field reap his golden harvest or glean his few
sheaves, as he may. We will not cast out from the Spirit of Christmas
Present its solemnity, its prosperity, its simple and innocent gayety.
There is no danger at present that Christmas shall be too much
observed in America: there is only the danger that its good cheer and
deeper thought, its impulse of benevolence and good will toward men,
shall be confined to a few days or weeks of the year.
Extremes of enthusiasm will ripen into earnest living. It is
narrowness and coldness, the mere humanitarian spirit of good morals,
the sneer at Christmas sentiment, that are to be dreaded. It is the
spirit of “Christmas all the year round” that is to be prayed for.