THE BEGINNING OF WINTER
[_Bibliographical Note._--I have largely followed the conclusions
of A. Tille, _Deutsche Weihnacht_ (1893) and _Yule and Christmas_
(1899). The Roman winter feasts are well treated by J. Marquardt
and T. Mommsen, _Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer_ (3rd
ed. 1881-8), vol. vii; W. W. Fowler, _The Roman Festivals of
the Period of the Republic_ (1899); G. Wissowa, _Religion
und Kultus der Römer_ (1902); and the Christian feasts by L.
Duchesne, _Origines du Culte chrétien_ (2nd ed. 1898). On the
history of Christmas, H. Usener, _Das Weihnachtsfest_, in
_Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen_, vol. i (1889), and F.
C. Conybeare’s introduction to _The Key of Truth_ (1898) should
also be consulted. Much information on the Kalends customs
is collected by M. Lipenius, _Strenarum Historia_, in J. G.
Graevius, _Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum_ (1699), vol. xii. I
have brought together a number of ecclesiastical references to
the Kalends, from the third to the eleventh century, in Appendix
N.]
So far this study has concerned itself, on the one hand with the
general character of the peasant festivals, on the other with the
special history of such of these as fall within the summer cycle of the
agricultural year, from ploughing to harvest. The remaining chapters
will approach the corresponding festivals, centring around Christmas,
of winter. These present a somewhat more difficult problem, partly
because their elements are not quite so plainly agricultural, partly
because of the remarkable dislocations which the development and clash
of civilizations have brought about.
It must, I think, be taken as established that the Germano-Keltic
tribes had no primitive mid-winter feast, corresponding directly to
the modern Christmas[792]. They had no solstitial feast, for they knew
nothing of the solstices. And although they had a winter feast of the
dead, belonging rather to the domestic than to the elemental side of
cult, this probably fell not at the middle, but at the beginning of the
season. It was an aspect in the great feast with which not the winter
only but the Germano-Keltic year began. This took place when the
advance of snow and frost drove the warriors back from foray and the
cattle from the pastures. The scarcity of fodder made the stall-feeding
of the whole herd an impossibility, and there was therefore an economic
reason for a great slaughtering. This in its turn led to a great
banquet on the fresh meat, and to a great sacrifice, accompanied with
the usual perambulations, water-rites and fire-rites which sacrifice
to the deities of field and flock entailed[793]. The vegetation spirit
would again be abroad, no longer, as in spring or summer, in the form
of flowers and fresh green boughs, but in that of the last sheaf or
‘kern-baby’ saved from harvest, or in that of such evergreens or rarer
blossoms as might chance to brave the snows. The particular ‘intention’
of the festival would be to secure the bounty of the divine powers for
the coming year, and a natural superstition would find omens for the
whole period in the events of the initial day. The feast, however,
would be domestic, as well as seasonal. The fire on the hearth was
made ‘new,’ and beside it the fathers, resting from the toils of war,
or herding or tillage, held jollification with their children. Nor
were the dead forgotten. _Minni_ were drunk in honour of ancestors and
ancestral deities; and a share of the banquet was laid out for such
of these as might be expected, in the whirl of the wintry storm, to
revisit the familiar house-place.
Originally, no doubt, the time of the feast was determined by the
actual closing of the war-ways and the pastures. Just as the first
violet or some migratory bird of March was hailed for the herald of
summer, so the first fall of snow gave the signal that winter was
at hand[794]. In the continental home of the Germano-Keltic tribes
amongst the forests of central Europe this would take place with
some regularity about the middle of November[795]. A fixed date for
the feast could only arise when, at some undefined time, the first
calendar, the ‘three-score-day-tide’ calendar of unknown origin, was
introduced[796]. Probably it was thenceforward held regularly upon
a day corresponding to either November the 11th or the 12th in our
reckoning. If it is accurately represented by St. Martin’s day, it was
the 11th[797], if by the Manx _Samhain_, the 12th[798]. It continued
to begin the year, and also the first of the six tides into which
that year was divided. As good fortune will have it, the name of that
tide is preserved to us in the Gothic term _Iiuleis_ for November and
December[799], in the Anglo-Saxon _Giuli_ or _Geola_ which, according
to Bede, applied both to December and to January[800], and in _Yule_,
the popular designation, both in England and Scandinavia, of Christmas
itself[801]. The meaning of this name is, however, more doubtful. The
older philology, with solstices running in its brain, supposed that
it applied primarily to a mid-winter feast, and connected it with the
Anglo-Saxon _hwéol_, a wheel[802]. Bede himself, learned in Roman
lore, seems to hint at such an explanation[803]. The current modern
explanation derives the word from a supposed Germanic _jehwela_,
equivalent to the Latin _ioculus_[804]. It would thus mean simply a
‘feast’ or ‘rejoicing,’ and some support seems to be lent to this
derivation by the occasional use of the English ‘_yule_’ and the
Keltic _gwyl_ to denote feasts other than that of winter[805]. Other
good authorities, however, prefer to trace it to a Germanic root
_jeula_-from which is derived the Old Norse _él_, ‘a snowstorm’; and
this also, so far as its application to the feast and tide of winter
is concerned, seems plausible enough[806]. It is possible that to
the winter feast originally belonged the term applied by Bede to
December 24 of _Modranicht_ or _Modraneht_[807]. It would be tempting
to interpret this as ‘the night which gives birth to the year’; but
philologists say that it can only mean ‘night of mothers,’ and we must
therefore explain it as due to some cult of the _Matres_ or triad of
mother-goddesses, which took place at the feast[808].
The subsequent history of the winter feast consists in its gradual
dislocation from the original mid-November position, and dispersion
over a large number of dates covering roughly the whole period between
Michaelmas and Twelfth night. For this process a variety of causes are
responsible. Some of these are economic. As civilization progressed,
mid-November came to be, less than of old, a signal turning-point in
the year. In certain districts to which the Germano-Keltic tribes
penetrated, in Gaul, for instance, or in Britain with its insular
climate, the winter tarried, and the regular central European closing
of the pastures was no longer a law. Then again tillage came gradually
to equal or outstrip pasturage in importance, and the year of tillage
closed, even in Germany, at the end of September rather than in
mid-November. The harvest feast began to throw the winter feast rather
into the shade as a wind-up of the year’s agricultural labours.
This same development of tillage, together with the more scientific
management of pasturage itself, did more. It provided a supply of
fodder for the cattle, and by making stall-feeding possible put off
further and further into the winter the necessity of the great annual
slaughter. The importance in Germany, side by side with St. Martin’s
day (November 11), of St. Andrew’s day (November 30), and still more
St. Nicholas’ day (December 6)[809], as folk-feasts, seems to suggest a
consequent tendency to a gradual shifting of the winter festival.
These economic causes came gradually into operation throughout a number
of centuries. In displacing the November feast, they prepared the way
for and assisted the action of one still more important. This was the
influence of Roman usage. When the Germano-Keltic tribes first came
into contact with the Roman world, the beginning of the Roman year was
still, nominally at least, upon the Kalends, or first of March. This
did not, so far as I know, leave any traces upon the practice of the
barbarians[810]. In 45 B.C. the Julian calendar replaced the Kalends of
March by those of January. During the century and a half that followed,
Gaul became largely and Britain partially Romanized, while there was
a steady infiltration of Roman customs and ideas amongst the German
tribes about and even far beyond the Rhine. With other elements of the
southern civilization came the Roman calendar which largely replaced
the older Germanic calendar of three-score-day-tides. The old winter
festival fell in the middle of a Roman month, and a tendency set in to
transfer the whole or a part of its customs either to the beginning
of this month[811] or, more usually, to the beginning of the Roman
year, a month and a half later. This process was doubtless helped by
the fact that the Roman New Year customs were not in their origin,
or even at the period of contact, essentially different from those
of their more northerly cousins. It remained, of course, a partial
and incomplete one. In Gaul, where the Roman influence was strongest,
it probably reached its maximum. But in Germany the days of St.
Martin[812] and St. Nicholas[813] have fully maintained their position
as folk-feasts by the side of New Year’s day, and even Christmas
itself; while St. Martin’s day at least has never been quite forgotten
in our islands[814]. The state of transition is represented by the
isolated Keltic district known as the Isle of Man. Here, according to
Professor Rhys, the old _Samhain_ or Hollantide day of November 12 is
still regarded by many of the inhabitants as the beginning of the year.
Others accept January 1; and there is considerable division of opinion
as to which is the day whereon the traditional New Year observances
should properly be held[815].
A final factor in the dislocation of the winter feast was the
introduction of Christianity, and in especial the establishment of
the great ecclesiastical celebration of Christmas. When Christianity
first began to claim the allegiance of the Roman world, the rulers of
the Church were confronted by a series of southern winter feasts which
together made the latter half of December and the beginning of January
into one continuous carnival. The nature and position of these feasts
claim a brief attention.
To begin with, there were the feasts of the Sun. The _Bruma_
(_brevissima_) or _Brumalia_ was held on November 24, as the day
which ushered in the period of the year during which the sun’s light
is diminished. This seems to have been a beginning of winter feast,
adopted by Rome from Thrace[816]. The term _bruma_ was also sometimes
applied to the whole period between November 24 and the solstice,
and ultimately even to the solstitial day itself, fixed somewhat
incorrectly by the Julian calendar on December 25[817]. On this day
also came a festival, which probably owed its origin to the Emperor
Aurelian (270-75), whose mother was a semi-Oriental priestess of
the Sun, in one of his Syrian forms as Baal or Belus[818], and who
instituted an official cult of this divinity at Rome with a temple on
the Quirinal, a _collegium_ of _pontifices_, and _ludi circenses_ held
every fourth year[819]. These fell on the day of the solstice, which
from the lengthening of the sun’s course was known as the ‘birthday’
of _Sol Novus_ or _Sol Invictus_[820]. This cult was practised by
Diocletian and by Constantine before his conversion, and was the
rallying-point of Julian in his reaction against Christianity[821].
Moreover, the _Sol Invictus_ was identified with the central figure
of that curious half-Oriental, half-philosophical worship of Mithra,
which at one time threatened to become a serious rival to Christianity
as the religion of the thinking portion of the Roman world[822]. That
an important Mithraic feast also fell on December 25 can hardly be
doubted, although there is no direct evidence of the fact[823].
The cult of the _Sol Invictus_ was not a part of the ancient Roman
religion, and, like the _Brumalia_, the solstitial festival in his
honour, however important to the educated and official classes of the
empire, was not a folk-festival. It lay, however, exactly between two
such festivals. The _Saturnalia_ immediately preceded it; a few days
later followed the January _Kalends_.
The _Saturnalia_, so far as the religious feast of Saturn was
concerned, took place on December 17. Augustus, however, added two
days to the _feriae iudiciariae_, during which the law-courts were
shut, and popular usage extended the festival to seven. Amongst the
customs practised was that of the _sigillariorum celebritas_, a kind of
fair, at which the _sigillaria_, little clay dolls or _oscilla_, were
bought and given as presents. Originally, perhaps, these _oscilla_ were
like some of our feasten cakes, figures of dough. Candles (_cerei_ or
_candelae_) appear also to have been given. On the second and third
days it was customary to bathe in the early morning[824]. But the
chief characteristic of the feast was the licence allowed to the lower
classes, to freedmen and to slaves. During the _libertas Decembris_
both moral and social restraints were thrown off[825]. Masters made
merry with their servants, and consented for the time to be on a
footing of strict equality with them[826]. A _rex Saturnalitius_,
chosen by lot, led the revels, and was entitled to claim obedience for
the most ludicrous commands[827].
The similarity of the _Saturnalia_ to the folk-feasts of western Europe
will be at once apparent. The name _Saturnus_ seems to point to a
ploughing and sowing festival, although how such a festival came to be
held in mid-December must be matter of conjecture[828]. The _Kalends_,
on the other hand, are clearly a New Year festival. They began on
January 1, with the solemn induction of the new consuls into office. As
in the case of the _Saturnalia_, the _feriae_ lasted for more than one
day, covering at least a _triduum_. The third day was the day of _vota_
or solemn wishes of prosperity for the New Year to the emperor. The
houses were decked with lights and greenery, and once more the masters
drank and played dice with their slaves. The resemblance in this
respect between the _Kalends_ and the _Saturnalia_ was recognized by a
myth which told how when Saturn came bringing the gifts of civilization
to Italy he was hospitably received by Janus, who then reigned in the
land[829]. Another Kalends custom, the knowledge of which we owe to the
denunciations of the Fathers, was the parading of the city by bands
of revellers dressed in women’s clothes or in the skins of animals.
And, finally, a series of superstitious observances testified to the
belief that the events of the first day of the year were ominous for
those of the year itself. A table loaded all night long with viands
was to ensure abundance of food; such necessaries of life as iron
and fire must not be given or lent out of the house, lest the future
supply of them should fail. To this order of ideas belonged, ultimately
at least, if not originally, the central feature of the whole feast,
the _strenae_ or presents so freely exchanged between all classes of
society on the Kalends. Once, so tradition had it, the _strenae_ were
nothing more than twigs plucked from the grove of the goddess Strenia,
associated with Janus in the feast[830]; but in imperial times men
gave honeyed things, that the year of the recipient might be full of
sweetness, lamps that it might be full of light, copper and silver and
gold that wealth might flow in amain[831].
Naturally, the Fathers were not slow to protest against these feasts,
and, in particular, against the participation in them of professing
Christians. Tertullian is, as usual, explicit and emphatic in his
condemnation[832]. The position was aggravated when, probably in the
fourth century, the Christian feast of the Birthday of Christ came to
be fixed upon December 25, in the very heart of the pagan rejoicings
and upon the actual day hitherto sacred to _Sol Invictus_. The origin
of Christmas is wrapped in some obscurity[833]. The earliest notices
of a celebration of the birth of Christ in the eastern Church attach
it to that of his baptism on the Epiphany. This feast is as old as
the second century. By the fourth it was widespread in the East, and
was known also in Gaul and probably in northern Italy[834]. At Rome
it cannot be traced so early; but it was generally adopted there by
the beginning of the fifth, and Augustine blames the Donatists for
rejecting it, and so cutting themselves off from fellowship with the
East[835]. Christmas, on the other hand, made its appearance first at
Rome, and the East only gradually and somewhat grudgingly accepted it.
The Paulician Christians of Armenia to this day continue to feast the
birth and the baptism together on January 6, and to regard the normal
Christian practice as heretical. An exact date for the establishment of
the Roman feast cannot be given, for the theory which ascribed it to
Pope Liberius in 353 has been shown to be baseless[836]. But it appears
from a document of 336 that the beginning of the liturgical year then
already fell between December 8 and 27[837]. Christmas may, therefore,
be assumed to have been in existence at least by 336.
It would seem, then, that the fourth century witnessed the
establishment, both at Rome and elsewhere, of Christmas and Epiphany
as two distinct feasts, whereas only one, although probably not
everywhere the same one, had been known before. This fact is hardly to
be explained by a mere attempt to accommodate varying local uses. The
tradition of the Armenian doctors, who stood out against Christmas,
asserts that their opponents removed the birthday of Christ from
January 6 out of ‘disobedience[838].’ This points to a doctrinal reason
for the separate celebration of the birth and the baptism. And such a
reason may perhaps be found in the Adoptionist controversies. The joint
feast appeared to lend credence to the view, considered a heresy, but
still adhered to by the Armenian Church, that Christ was God, not from
his mother’s womb, but only from his adoption or spiritual birth at
the baptism in Jordan. It was needful that orthodox Christians should
celebrate him as divine from the very moment of his carnal birth[839].
The choice of December 25 as the day for the Roman feast cannot be
supposed to rest upon any authentic tradition as to the historic
date of the Nativity. It is one of several early patristic guesses
on the subject. It is not at all improbable that it was determined
by an attempt to adopt some of the principal Christian festivals
to the solstices and equinoxes of the Roman calendar[840]. The
enemies of Roman orthodoxy were not slow to assert that it merely
continued under another name the pagan celebration of the birthday
of _Sol Invictus_[841]. Nor was the suggestion entirely an empty
one. The worshippers of _Sol Invictus_, and in particular the
Mithraic sect, were not quite on the level of the ordinary pagans by
tradition. Mithraism had claims to be a serious and reasonable rival
to Christianity, and if its adherents could be induced by argument
to merge their worship of the physical sun in that of the ‘Sun of
Righteousness,’ they were well worth winning[842]. On the other hand
there were obvious dangers in the Roman policy which were not wholly
averted, and we find Leo the Great condemning certain superstitious
customs amongst his flock which it is difficult to distinguish from
the sun-worship practised alike by pagans and by Saint Augustine’s
heretical opponents, the Manichaeans[843].
From Rome the Christmas feast gradually made its way over East and
West. It does not seem to have reached Jerusalem until at least the
sixth century, and, as we have seen, the outlying Church of Armenia
never adopted it. But it was established at Antioch about 375 and at
Alexandria about 430[844]. At Constantinople an edict of 400 included
it in the list of holy days upon which _ludi_ must not be held[845].
In 506 the council of Agatha recognized the Nativity as one of the
great days of the Christian year[846], while fasting on that day was
forbidden by the council of Braga in 561 as savouring of Priscillianist
heresy[847]. The feast of the Epiphany, meanwhile, was relegated to a
secondary place; but it was not forgotten, and served as a celebration,
in addition to the baptism, of a number of events in the life of
Christ, which included the marriage at Cana and the feeding of the
five thousand, and of which the visit of the _Magi_ gradually became
the leading feature. The _Dodecahemeron_, or period of twelve days,
linking together Christmas and Epiphany, was already known to Ephraim
Syrus as a festal tide at the end of the fourth century[848], and was
declared to be such by the council of Tours in 567[849].
To these islands Christmas came, if not with the Keltic Church, at
least with St. Augustine in 592. On Christmas day, 598, more than ten
thousand English converts were baptized[850], and by the time of Bede
(†734) Christmas was established, with Epiphany and Easter, as one of
the three leading festivals of the year[851]. The _Laws_ of Ethelred
(991-1016) and of Edward the Confessor ordain it a holy tide of peace
and concord[852]. Continental Germany received it from the synod of
Mainz in 813[853], while Norway owed it to King Hakon the Good in the
middle of the tenth century[854].
Side by side with the establishment of Christmas proceeded the
ecclesiastical denunciation of those pagan festivals whose place it was
to take. Little is heard in Christian times of the _Saturnalia_, which
do not seem to have shared the popularity of the Kalends outside the
limits of Rome itself. But these latter, and especially the Kalends,
are the subject of attack in every corner of the empire. Jerome of
Rome, Ambrose of Milan, Maximus of Turin, Chrysologus of Ravenna,
assail them in Italy; Augustine in Africa; Chrysostom and Asterius and
the Trullan council in the East. In Spain, Bishop Pacian of Barcelona
made a treatise upon one of the most objectionable features of the
festival which, as he says with some humour, probably tended to
increase its vogue. In Gaul, Caesarius of Arles initiated a vigorous
campaign. To cite all the ecclesiastical pronouncements on the subject
would be tedious. Homily followed homily, canon followed canon,
capitulary followed capitulary, penitential followed penitential, for
half a thousand years. But the Kalends died hard. When Boniface was
tackling them amongst the Franks in the middle of the eighth century,
he was sorely hampered by the bad example of their continued prevalence
at the very gates of the Vatican; and when Burchardus was making his
collection of heathen observances in the eleventh century, those of
the Kalends were still to be included. In England there is not much
heard of them, but a reference in the so-called _Penitential of Egbert_
about 766 proves that they were not unknown. It need hardly be said
that all formal religious celebration of the Kalends disappeared with
the official victory of Christianity. But this element had never
been of great importance in the feast; and the terms in which the
ecclesiastical references from beginning to end are couched prove that
they relate mainly to popular New Year customs common to the Germanic
and the more completely Latinized populations[855].
It appears from a decree of the council of Tours in 567 that, _ad
calcandam Gentilium consuetudinem_, the fourth-century Fathers
established on the first three days of January a _triduum ieiunii_,
with litanies, in spite of the fact that these days fell in the very
midst of the festal period of the _Dodecahemeron_[856]. At the same
time January 1 was kept as the octave of Christmas, and the early
Roman ritual-books show two masses for that day, one _in octavis
Domini_, the other _ad prohibendum ab idolis_. The Jewish custom by
which circumcision took place eight days after birth made it almost
inevitable that there should be some celebration of the circumcision
of Christ upon the octave of his Nativity. This was the case from
the sixth century, and ultimately, about the eighth, the attempt to
keep up a fast on January 1 was surrendered, and the festival of the
Circumcision took its place[857].
Some tendency was shown by the Church not merely to set up Christmas
as a rival to the pagan winter feasts, but also to substitute it
for the Kalends of January as the beginning of the year. But the
innovation never affected the civil year, and was not maintained even
by ecclesiastical writers with any consistency, for even they prefer
in many cases a year dating from the Annunciation, or more rarely
from Easter. The so-called Annunciation style found favour even for
many civil purposes in Great Britain, and was not finally abandoned
until 1753[858]. But although Christmas cannot be said to have ever
become a popular New Year’s day, yet its festal importance and its
propinquity to January 1 naturally led to a result undesired and
possibly undreamt of by its founders, namely, the further transference
to it of many of the long-suffering Germano-Keltic folk-customs, which
had already travelled under Roman influence from the middle of November
to the beginning of January[859]. Already in the sixth century it had
become necessary to forbid the abuses which had gathered around the
celebration of Christmas eve[860]; and the Christmas customs of to-day,
even where their name does not testify to their original connexion with
the Kalends[861], are in a large number of cases, so far of course as
they are not simply ecclesiastical, merely doublets of those of the New
Year.
What is true of Christmas is true also of Epiphany or Twelfth night;
and the history of the other modern festivals of the winter cycle
is closely parallel. The old Germanic New Year’s day on November 11
became the day of St. Martin, a fourth-century bishop of Tours, and
the _pervigiliae_ of St. Martin, like those of the Nativity itself,
already caused a scandal in the sixth century[862]. The observances
of the deferred days of slaughter clustered round the feasts of St.
Andrew on November 30, and more especially St. Nicholas on December
6. The _Todtenfest_, which had strayed to the beginning of November,
was continued in the feasts of All Saints or Hallowmas, the French
_Toussaint_, on November 1, and its charitable supplement of All
Souls, on November 2. That which had strayed still further to the
time of harvest became the _Gemeinwoche_ or week-wake, and ultimately
St. Michael and All Angels. Nor is this all. Very similar customs
attached themselves to the minor feasts of the _Dodecahemeron_, St.
Stephen’s, St. John the Evangelist’s, Innocents’ days, to the numerous
dedication wakes that fell on days, such as St. Luke’s[863], in autumn
or early winter, or to the miscellaneous feasts closely approaching the
Christmas season, St. Clement’s, St. Catherine’s, St. Thomas’s, with
which indeed in many localities that season is popularly supposed to
begin[864]. Nor was this process sensibly affected by the establishment
in the sixth century of the _ieiunium_ known as Advent, which stretched
for a _Quadragesima_, or period of forty days, from Martinmas onwards.
And finally, just as in May village dipping customs attached themselves
in the seventeenth century to Royal Oak day, so in the same century we
find the winter festival fires turned to new account in the celebration
of the escape of King and Parliament from the nefarious machinations of
Guy Fawkes.