[Transcriber's Note: superscripted letters are preceded by a caret and
surrounded by curly braces: w^{th}. Bold text is surrounded by =equal
signs= and italic text by _underscores_.]
[Illustration: CHRISTMAS AND HIS CHILDREN.]
THE BOOK of CHRISTMAS.
[Illustration]
Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
This bird of dawning singeth allnight long.
_Shakspeare._
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1888.
THE
BOOK OF CHRISTMAS;
DESCRIPTIVE OF THE
CUSTOMS, CEREMONIES, TRADITIONS, SUPERSTITIONS, FUN, FEELING, AND
FESTIVITIES OF
The Christmas Season.
BY THOMAS K. HERVEY.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. SEYMOUR.
[Illustration: _Galantee Show._]
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1888.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 7
Part First.
THE CHRISTMAS SEASON 29
Mingled Origin of the Christmas Festival; Good Cheer
of the Ancient Festival; Court Celebrations of
Christmas; Celebrations at the Inns of Court; Lord of
Misrule and Christmas Prince; Abbot of Unreason;
Influence of the Festival on the Social Relations; Ben
Jonson's Masque of Christmas; Father Christmas
summoning his Spirits; Extinction of the Ancient
Festival; Partial Revival; Summary of the Causes of
its final Decline.
FEELINGS OF THE SEASON 134
Religious Influences; Assembling of Friends; Church
Services of the Season; lengthened Duration of the
Festival; Memories of the Season; Natural Aspects of
the Season.
SIGNS OF THE SEASON 157
Domestic Preparations; Mince Pie; Travellers on the
Highways; coming Home from School; Norfolk Coach;
Evergreens for Christmas Decoration; Kissing under the
Mistletoe; Christmas Minstrelsy; Waits; Carol Singing;
Christmas Carols; Annual Carol Sheets; London Carol
Singers; Bellman.
Part Second.
THE CHRISTMAS DAYS 223
ST. THOMAS'S DAY 225
Various Country Customs on this day; St. Thomas's Day
in London; City Parochial Elections; Lumber Troop and
other City Associations.
SPORTS OF THIS SEASON 233
Ancient Jugglers; Galantee Show; Card Playing; Ancient
Bards and Harpers; Modern Story-telling and Music;
out-door Sports of the Season; Theatre and Pantomime;
Mummers; Play of St. George.
CHRISTMAS EVE 267
London Markets on Christmas Eve; the Yule-clog;
Christmas Candles; Wassail Bowl; Omens and
Superstitions; Old Christmas Eve; Midnight Mass.
CHRISTMAS DAY 285
Religious Services; Plum Pudding; Charities of the
Season; Old English Gentleman; Ancient Baronial Hall;
Bringing in the Boar's Head; Modern Christmas Dinner.
ST. STEPHEN'S DAY 302
Boxing Day (origin of the name); Christmas-boxes;
Christmas Pieces; Hunting the Wren (Isle of Man);
Droleens, or Wren Boys (Ireland); Greek Songs of the
Crow and Swallow.
NEW YEAR'S EVE 315
Scottish Observances; Night of Omens; Hogmanay;
Seeing-in the New Year.
NEW YEAR'S DAY 335
Morning Congratulations; New-Year's Gifts.
TWELFTH DAY AND TWELFTH NIGHT 339
Observances on the Virgil of the Epiphany; Humors of
the Street; Twelfth Night Party; Twelfth Cake; Drawing
for Characters; Three Kings of Cologne.
SAINT DISTAFF'S DAY 351
Rustic Sports.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
CHRISTMAS AND HIS CHILDREN _Frontispiece_
THE BOOK OF CHRISTMAS _Titlepage_
"MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU" 29
SNAP-DRAGON 31
BARONIAL HALL 42
ENJOYING CHRISTMAS 46
MUMMERS 65
GATE OF THE "OLD ENGLISH GENTLEMAN" 109
FAMILY CONGRATULATION 134
COUNTRY CAROL SINGERS 157
COMING HOME FROM SCHOOL 163
NORFOLK COACH AT CHRISTMAS 170
TOO LATE FOR THE COACH 172
BRINGING HOME CHRISTMAS 173
THE MISTLETOE BOUGH 191
WAITS 197
LONDON CAROL SINGERS 215
BELL-RINGING 219
THE LORD OF MISRULE 223
CHRISTMAS PRESENTS 224
ST. THOMAS'S DAY 233
STORY TELLING 239
CHRISTMAS PANTOMIME 249
GALANTEE SHOW 266
MARKET--CHRISTMAS EVE 267
WASSAIL BOWL 275
OLD CHRISTMAS 285
CHRISTMAS PUDDING 286
COUNTRY CHURCH, CHRISTMAS MORNING 290
BRINGING IN THE BOAR'S HEAD 295
CHRISTMAS DINNER 300
BOXING DAY 302
SEEING-IN THE NEW YEAR 331
TWELFTH NIGHT KING 339
TWELFTH NIGHT IN LONDON STREETS 343
TWELFTH NIGHT 347
RETURNING TO SCHOOL 355
THE BOOK OF CHRISTMAS.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
We take no note of time
But from its loss; to give it, then, a tongue
Is wise in man.
DR. YOUNG.
TO give a language to time, for the preservation of its records and the
utterance of its lessons, has been amongst the occupations of man from
the day when first he found himself in its mysterious presence down to
these latter ages of the world; and yet, all the resources of his
ingenuity, impelled by all the aspirations of his heart, have only
succeeded in supplying it with an imperfect series of hieroglyphics,
difficult in their acquirement and uncertain in their use. Ages upon
ages of the young world have passed away, of which the old hath no
chronicle. Generations after generations of men have "made their bed in
the darkness," and left no monuments. Of the crowded memorials reared by
others along the stream of time, many (and those the mightiest) are
written in a cipher of which the key is lost. The wrappings of the mummy
are letters of a dead language; and no man can translate the ancient
story of the pyramid!
We have learnt to speak of time, because it is that portion of eternity
with which we have _presently_ to do,--as if it were a whit more
intelligible (less vague, abstract, and unimaginable) than that eternity
of which it is a part. He who can conceive of the one, must be able to
embrace the awful image of the other. We think of time as of a section
of eternity, separated and intrenched by absolute _limits_; and thus we
seem to have arrived at a definite idea, surrounded by points on which
the mind can rest. But when the imagination sets out upon the actual
experiment, and discovers that those limits are not assignable, save on
one only side, and finds but a single point on which to rest its failing
wing, and looks from thence along an expanse whose boundaries are
nowhere else within the range of its restricted vision,--then does the
mortal bird return into its mortal nest, wearied with its ineffectual
flight, and convinced that a shoreless ocean and one whose shores it
cannot see are alike formless and mysterious to its dim and feeble gaze.
And yet notwithstanding the connection of these two ideas,--of time and
of eternity,--(the notion of the former being only reached through the
latter) we deal familiarly, and even jestingly, with the one, while the
mind approaches the other with reverential awe. Types, and symbols, and
emblems--and those ever of a grave meaning--are the most palpable
expressions which we venture to give to our conceptions of the one;
whilst the other we figure and personify,--and that, too often, after a
fashion in which the better part of the moral is left unrepresented. Yet
who shall personify time? And who that has ever tried it, in the silence
of his chamber and the stillness of his heart, hath not bowed down in
breathless awe before the solemn visions which his conjuration has
awakened? Oh, the mysterious shapes which Time takes, when it rises up
into the mind as an image, at those hours of lonely inquisition!--"And
he said unto her, 'What form is he of?' And she said, 'An _old man_
cometh up; and he is _covered with a mantle_.'"--The mysterious presence
which it assumes "in thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep
sleep falleth on men"! Who, as he strove to collect the mournful
attributes about which his fancy had been busy into an impersonation,
hath not suddenly felt as if "a spirit passed before _his_ face! . . .
It stood still, but _he_ could not discern the form thereof; an image
was before his eyes, there was silence;" and out of that silence hath
seemed to come a voice like that which whispered to Job, "They that
dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are
crushed before the moth, they are destroyed from morning to evening;
they perish for ever, without any regarding it."
Time, abstractedly considered as what in truth it is,--a portion of the
vast ocean of eternity, a river flowing from the sea and flowing to the
sea, a channel leading from deep to deep, through shores on which the
races of the world are permitted to build for awhile, until the great
waters shall once more cover all, and time, _as_ time, "shall be no
more,"--must long have defied the skill of man to map out its surface,
and write his memorials upon its impalpable bosom. The thousand keels
that sweep over the visible waters of the world leave on their face
traces of their passage more legible and enduring than do the
generations of men as they come and go on that viewless and voiceless
stream. The ingenuity which has taught man to lay down the plan of the
material ocean, to assign to each spot on its uniform surface its
positive whereabout and actual relation, and by a series of imaginary
lines and figures to steer his way across its pathless solitudes with a
knowledge as certain as that which guides him amidst the substantive and
distinctive features of the solid earth, is scarcely more admirable than
that which, by a similar device, has enabled him to measure out the
expanse of the silent river, to cover, as it were, its surface with a
crowd of imaginary latitudes and longitudes intersecting each other at
all points, and to ascertain at any moment, by observation, his relative
position on the great stream of time.
How long the unaided genius of man might have been ere it could have
fallen upon a scheme for the one achievement or the other, if left to
struggle with its own resources and unassisted by hints from without, we
need not conjecture. But in each case the solution of the problem was
suggested to him, as the materials for working it are still furnished,
by the finger of God himself. The great architect of the universe hath
planted in its frame all necessary models and materials for the guidance
and use of its human inhabitants, leaving them to the exercise of those
powers and capacities with which they have been furnished to improve the
lessons and apply the examples thus conveyed. In each of the cases of
which we have spoken, the constellations which surround the world and
"are the poetry of heaven" have been the sources of the inspiration, as
they are still the lights by which that inspiration works. The hand that
fashioned the "two great lights," and appointed to them their courses,
and gave them to be "for signs and for seasons and for days and years,"
pointed out to man how he might, by the observation of their
revolutions, direct his course along the unbroken stream of time or
count its waves as they flowed silently and ceaselessly away. The sun
and moon were the ancient and at first the only measures of time, as
they are the essential foundations of all the modes by which man
measures it now; and in the order of the world's architecture, the
"watches of the element" which guide us yet were framed and "set in the
firmament of heaven" at that distant and uncertain period whose
"evening and morning were the fourth day."
Nor did the beneficent power which erected these great meters of time in
the constitution of the universe leave the world without suggestions how
their use might be improved in the business of more minute subdivision.
The thousand natural inequalities of the earth's surface, and the
vegetable columns which spring from its bosom, furnish--as do the spires
and towers and columns which man rears thereon--so many gnomons of the
vast dial, on which are unerringly written with the finger of shadow the
shining records of the sky. There is something unutterably solemn in
watching the shade creep, day by day, round a circle whose diameter man
might measure with his grave or even cover with his hand, and
contrasting the limits within which it acts with the spaces of time
which its stealing tread measures out, and feeling that it is the
faithful index of a progress before which the individual being and the
universal frame of things are alike hastening to rapid and inevitable
decay. There are few types more awfully representative of that which
they typify than is the shadow. It is Time almost made visible. Through
it the mind reaches the most vivid impersonation of that mysterious idea
which it is capable of containing. It seems as if flung directly from
his present and passing wing. The silent and ceaseless motion--gliding
for ever on and on, coming round again and again, but reverting never
and tarrying never, blotting out the sunshine as it passes and leaving
no trace where it has passed--make it the true and solemn symbol of him
(the old unresting and unreturning one) who receded not, even when that
same shadow went back on the dial of the king of Judah, nor paused when
the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and the moon lingered over
the valley of Ajalon! Of that mysterious type and its awful morals a
lost friend of ours[1] has already spoken better than we can hope to
speak; and as he is ("alas, that _he_ is so!") already one whose "sun
shall no more go down, neither shall _his_ moon withdraw itself," we
will avail ourselves of a language which deserves to be better known,
and sounds all the more solemnly that he who uttered it hath since
furnished in his own person a fresh verification of the solemn truths
which he sung so well.
"Upon a dial-stone,
Behold the shade of Time,
For ever circling on and on
In silence more sublime
Than if the thunders of the spheres
Pealed forth its march to mortal ears!
"It meets us hour by hour,
Doles out our little span,
Reveals a presence and a power
Felt and confessed by man:
The drop of moments, day by day,
That rocks of ages wears away.
"Woven by a hand unseen
Upon that stone, survey
A robe of dark sepulchral green,
The mantle of decay,
The fold of chill oblivion's pall,
That falleth with yon shadow's fall!
"Day is the time for toil,
Night balms the weary breast,
Stars have their vigils, seas awhile
Will sink to peaceful rest;
But round and round the shadow creeps
Of that which slumbers not, nor sleeps!
"Effacing all that's fair,
Hushing the voice of mirth
Into the silence of despair,
Around the lonesome hearth,
And training ivy-garlands green
O'er the once gay and social scene.
"In beauty fading fast
Its silent trace appears,
And where--a phantom of the past,
Dim in the mist of years--
Gleams Tadmor o'er oblivion's waves,
Like wrecks above their ocean-graves.
"Before the ceaseless shade
That round the world doth sail
Its towers and temples bow the head,
The pyramids look pale,
The festal halls grow hushed and cold,
The everlasting hills wax old!
"Coeval with the sun
Its silent course began,
And still its phantom-race shall run,
Till worlds with age grow wan,
Till darkness spread her funeral pall,
And one vast shadow circle all!"
To the great natural divisions of time (with their aid, and guided by
these hints) the ingenuity of man, under the direction of his wants, has
been busy since the world began in adding artificial ones, while his
heart has been active in supplying impulses and furnishing devices to
that end. Years, and months, and days--the periods marked out by the
revolutions of our celestial guides--have been aggregated and divided
after methods almost as various as the nations of the earth. Years have
been composed into cycles and olympiads and generations and reigns, and
months resolved into decades and weeks, days into hours, and hours into
subdivisions which have been again subdivided almost to the confines of
thought. Yet it is only in these latter ages of the world that a
measurement has been attained, at once so minute and so closely
harmonizing with the motions and regulated by the revolutions of the
dials of the sky, that, had the same machinery existed from the
commencement of time,--with the art of printing to preserve its
results,--the history of the past might be perused, with its
discrepancies reconciled and many of its blanks supplied. And could the
world agree upon its uniform adoption now, together with that of a
common epoch to reckon from, comparative chronology would be no longer a
science applicable to the future; and history, for the time to come (in
so far as it is a mere record of facts), would present few problems but
such as "he who runs may read."
But out of these conventional and multiplied divisions of time, these
wheels within the great wheel, arise results far more important than the
verification of a chronological series or the establishment of the
harmonies of history. Through them not only may the ages of the world be
said to intercommunicate, and the ends of the earth in a sense to meet,
but by their aid the whole business of the life of nations and of
individuals is regulated, and a set of mnemonics established upon which
hinges the history of the human heart. By the multiplied but regular
system of recurrences thus obtained, order is made to arise out of the
web of duties and the chaos of events; and at each of the thousand
points marked out on these concentric circles are written their
appropriate duties and recorded their special memories. The calendar of
every country is thus covered over with a series of events whose
recollection is recalled and influence kept alive by the return of the
cycles, in their ceaseless revolution, to those spots at which the
record of each has been written; and acts of fasting or of festival, of
social obligation or of moral observance,--many of which would be surely
lost or overlooked, amidst the inextricable confusion in which, without
this systematic arrangement, they must be mingled,--are severally
pointed out by the moving finger of Time as he periodically reaches the
place of each on his concentric dials.
But besides the calendar of general direction and national observance,
where is the heart that has not a private calendar of its own? Long ere
the meridian of life has been attained, the individual man has made many
a memorandum of joy or pain for his periodical perusal, and established
many a private celebration, pleasant or mournful, of his own. How many a
lost hope and blighted feeling which the heart is the better for
recalling, and would not willingly forget, would pass from the mind amid
the crowd and noise and bustle of the world, but for these tablets on
which it is ineffaceably written and yearly read! How many an act of
memory, with its store of consolations and its treasure of warnings,
would remain postponed, amid the interests of the present, till it came
to be forgotten altogether, but for that system which has marked its
positive place upon the wheels of time, and brings the record certainly
before the mental eye, in their unvarying revolution! Many are the uses
of these diaries of the heart. By their aid something is saved from the
wrecks of the past for the service of the present; the lights of former
days are made to throw pleasant reflections upon many an after period of
life; the weeds which the world and its cares had fostered are again and
again cleared away from the sweet and wholesome fountain of tears; the
fading inscriptions of other years are renewed, to yield their morals to
the future; and the dead are restored, for a fleeting hour of sweet
communion, or hold high and solemn converse with us from the graves in
which we laid them years ago.
And this result of the minute and accurate partitions of time, which
consists in the establishment of a series of points for periodic
celebration, is, as regards its public and social operation, more
important than may at first sight appear. The calendar of almost every
country is, as we have observed, filled with a series of anniversaries,
religious or secular, of festival or abstinence, or instituted for the
regulation of business or the operations of the law. In England,
independently of those periods of observance which are common to the
realm and written in her calendar, there are few districts which are
without some festival peculiar to themselves, originating in the grant
of some local charter or privilege, the establishment of some local
fair, the influence of some ancient local superstition, or some other
cause, of which, in many cases, the sole remaining trace is the
observance to which it has given rise,--and which observance does not
always speak in language sufficiently clear to give any account of its
parent. Around each of these celebrations has grown up a set of customs
and traditions and habits, the examination into which has led to many a
useful result, and which are for the most part worth preserving, as well
for their picturesque aspect and social character as for the sake of the
historic chambers which they may yet help us to explore. Their close
resemblance, as existing amongst different nations, has formed an
element in the solution of more than one problem which had for its
object a chapter of the history of the world; and they may be said, in
many cases, to furnish an apparent link of connection between
generations of men long divided and dwelling far apart. They form, too,
amid the changes which time is perpetually effecting in the structure of
society, a chain of connection between the present and former times of
the same land, and prevent the national individuality from being wholly
destroyed. They tend to preserve some similarity in the moral aspect of
a country from epoch to epoch, and, without having force enough to act
as drags on the progress of society towards improvement, they serve for
a feature of identification amid all its forms. Curious illustrations
they are, too, of national history; and we learn to have confidence in
its records when we find in some obscure nook the peasant of to-day, who
troubles himself little with the lore of events and their succession,
doing that which some ancient chronicler tells us his ancestors did a
thousand years ago, and keeping in all simplicity some festival, the
story of whose origin we find upon its written page.
To the philosophic inquirer, few things are more important in the annals
of nations than their festivals, their anniversaries, and their public
celebrations of all kinds. In nothing is their peculiar character more
strikingly exhibited. They show a people in its undress, acting upon
its impulses, and separated from the conventions and formalities of its
every-day existence. We may venture to say that could we, in the absence
of every other record, be furnished with a complete account of the
festivals, traditions, and anniversaries of any given nation now
extinct, not only might a correct estimate be therefrom made of their
progress in morals and civilization, but a conjectural history of their
doings be hazarded, which should bear a closer resemblance to the facts
than many an existing history constructed from more varied materials.
For these reasons--and some others, which are more personal and less
philosophical--we love all old traditions and holiday customs. Like
honest Sir Andrew Aguecheek, we "delight in masques and revels,
sometimes altogether." Many a happy chance has conducted us
unpremeditatedly into the midst of some rustic festival, whose
recollection is amongst our pleasant memories yet,--and many a one have
we gone venturously forth to seek,--when we dwelt in the more immediate
neighborhood of the haunts to which, one by one, these traditionary
observances are retiring before the face of civilization! The natural
tendency of time to obliterate ancient customs and silence ancient
sports, is too much promoted by the utilitarian spirit of the day; and
they who would have no man enjoy without being able to give a reason for
the enjoyment which is in him, are robbing life of half its beauty and
some of its virtues. If the old festivals and hearty commemorations in
which our land was once so abundant--and which obtained for her, many a
long day since, the name of "merrie England"--had no other
recommendation than their _convivial_ character, the community of
enjoyment which they imply, they would on that account alone be worthy
of all promotion, as an antidote to the cold and selfish spirit which is
tainting the life-blood and freezing the pulses of society. "'Tis good
to be merry and wise;" but the wisdom which eschews mirth, and holds the
time devoted to it as so much wasted by being taken from the
schoolmaster, is very questionable wisdom in itself, and assuredly not
made to promote the happiness of nations. We love all commemorations. We
love these anniversaries, for their own sakes, and for their uses. We
love those Lethes of an hour which have a virtue beyond their gift of
oblivion, and while they furnish a temporary forgetfulness of many of
the ills of life, revive the memory of many a past enjoyment, and
reawaken many a slumbering affection. We love those milestones on the
journey of life beside which man is called upon to pause, and take a
reckoning of the distance he has passed, and of that which he may have
yet to go. We love to reach those free, open spaces at which the
cross-roads of the world converge, and where we are sure to meet, as at
a common rendezvous, with travellers from its many paths. We love to
enter those houses of refreshment by the way-side of existence, where we
know we shall encounter with other wayfarers like ourselves,--perchance
with friends long separated, and whom the chances of the world keep far
apart,--and whence, after a sweet communion and lusty festival and
needful rest, we may go forth upon our journey new fortified against its
accidents, and strengthened for its toils. We love those festivals which
have been made, as Washington Irving says, "the season for gathering
together of family connections, and drawing closer again those bonds of
kindred hearts which the cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world
are continually operating to cast loose; of calling back the children of
a family who have launched forth in life and wandered widely asunder,
once more to assemble about the paternal hearth, that rallying place of
the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing
mementos of childhood." Above all, we love those seasons ("for pity is
not common!" says the old ballad) which call for the exercise of a
general hospitality, and give the poor man his few and precious glimpses
of a plenty which, as the world is managed, his toil cannot buy; which
shelter the houseless wanderer, and feed the starving child, and clothe
the naked mother, and spread a festival for all,--those seasons which in
their observance by our ancestors, kept alive, by periodical
reawakenings, that flame of charity which thus had scarcely time wholly
to expire during all the year. We love all which tends to call man from
the solitary and chilling pursuit of his own separate and selfish views
into the warmth of a common sympathy, and within the bands of a common
brotherhood. We love these commemorations, as we have said, for
themselves; we love them for their uses; and still more we love them for
the memories of our boyhood! Many a bright picture do they call up in
our minds, and in the minds of most who have been amongst their
observers; for with these festivals of the heart are inalienably
connected many a memory for sorrow or for joy, many a scene of early
love, many a merry meeting which was yet the last, many a parting of
those who shall part no more, many a joyous group composed of materials
which separated only too soon and shall never be put together again on
earth, many a lost treasure and many a perished hope,--
"Hopes that were angels in their birth,
But perished young, like things of earth."
Happy, happy days were they!--"Oh, their record is lively in my
soul!"--and there is a happiness, still, in looking back to them:--
"Ye are dwelling with the faded flowers
Ye are with the suns long set,
But oh, your memory, gentle hours,
Is a living vision yet!"
Yet are they, for the most part, eras to count our losses by. Beside
them, in the calendar of the heart, is written many a private note, not
to be read without bitter tears:--
"There's many a lad I loved is gone,
And many a lass grown old;
And when, at times, I think thereon,
My weary heart grows cold."
"Oh, the mad days that I have spent," says old Justice Shallow, "and to
see how many of mine old acquaintance are dead!" Yet still we love these
commemorations and hail them, each and all, as the year restores them to
us, shorn and scarred as they are. And though many and many a time the
welcome has faltered on our lips as we "turned from all they brought to
all they could not bring," still by God's help we will enjoy them, as
yet we may,--drawing closer to us, and with the more reason, the friends
that still remain, and draining to the last--
"One draught, in memory of many
A joyous banquet past."
The revels of merry England are fast subsiding into silence, and her
many customs wearing gradually away. The affectations and frivolities of
society, as well as its more grave and solemn pursuits,--the exigences
of fashion, and the tongue of the pedagogue,--are alike arrayed against
them; and, one by one, they are retreating from the great assemblies
where mankind "most do congregate," to hide themselves in remote
solitudes and rural nooks. In fact, that social change which has
enlarged and filled the towns at the expense of the country, which has
annihilated the yeomanry of England, and drawn the estated gentleman
from the shelter of his ancestral oaks, to live upon their produce in
the haunts of dissipation, has been, in itself, the circumstance most
unfavorable to the existence of many of them, which delight in bye-ways
and sheltered places, which had their appropriate homes in the old manor
house or the baronial hall. Yet do they pass lingeringly away. Traces of
most of them still exist, and from time to time reappear even in our
cities and towns; and there are probably scarcely any which have not
found some remote district or other of these islands in which their
influence is still acknowledged, and their rites duly performed. There
is something in the mind of man which attaches him to ancient
superstitions even for the sake of their antiquity, and endears to him
old traditions even because they are old. We cannot readily shake off
our reverence for that which our fathers have reverenced so long, even
where the causes in which that reverence originated are not very obvious
or not very satisfactory. We believe that he who shall aid in preserving
the records of these vanishing observances, ere it be too late, will do
good and acceptable service in his generation; and such contribution to
that end as we have in our power it is the purpose of these volumes to
bestow. Of that taste for hunting out the obsolete which originates in
the mere dry spirit of antiquarianism, or is pursued as a display of
gladiatorial skill in the use of the intellectual weapons, we profess
ourselves no admirers. But he who pursues in the track of a receding
custom,--which is valuable either as an historical illustration or
because of its intrinsic beauty, moral or picturesque,--is an antiquary
of the beneficent kind; and he who assists in restoring observances
which had a direct tendency to propagate a feeling of brotherhood and a
spirit of benevolence, is a higher benefactor still. Right joyous
festivals there have been amongst us, which England will be none the
merrier--and kindly ones which she will be none the better--for losing.
The following pages will give some account of that season which has, at
all times since the establishment of Christianity, been most crowded
with observances, and whose celebration is still the most conspicuous
and universal with us, as well as throughout the whole of Christendom.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The late John Malcolm, of Edinburgh.
Part First.
THE CHRISTMAS SEASON.
[Illustration: "MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU!"--_Page 29._]
THE CHRISTMAS SEASON.
This Book of Christmas is a sound and good persuasion
for gentlemen, and all wealthy men, to keep a good
Christmas.
A HA! CHRISTMAS! BY T. H. LONDON, 1647.
Any man or woman . . . that can give any knowledge, or
tell any tidings, of an old, old, very old
gray-bearded gentleman, called Christmas, who was wont
to be a verie familiar ghest, and visite all sorts of
people both pore and rich, and used to appeare in
glittering gold, silk, and silver, in the Court, and
in all shapes in the Theater in Whitehall, and had
ringing, feasts, and jollitie in all places, both in
the citie and countrie, for his comming: . . . whosoever
can tel what is become of him, or where he may be
found, let them bring him back againe into England.
AN HUE AND CRY AFTER CHRISTMAS.
IN Ben Jonson's "Mask of Christmas," presented before the court in
1616,--wherein the ancient gentleman so earnestly inquired after in one
of the quotations which heads this chapter, and a number of his
children, compose the _dramatis personæ_,--that venerable personage (who
describes himself as "Christmas, Old Christmas, Christmas of London,
and Captain Christmas") is made to give a very significant hint to some
parties who fail to receive him with due ceremony, which hint we will,
in all courtesy, bestow upon our readers. "I have seen the time you have
wished for me," says he; . . . "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!_" Over and over again, too, has this same very
pregnant argument been enforced in the words of the old ballad, quoted
in the "Vindication of Christmas,"--
"Let's dance and sing, and make good cheer,
For _Christmas comes but once a year_!"
Now if this suggestion was full of grave meaning in the days of
Jonson,--when the respectable old man was for the most part well
received and liberally feasted, when he fed with his laughing children
at the tables of princes, and took tribute at the hands of kings, when
he showed beneath the snows of his reverend head a portly countenance
(the result of much revelling), an eye in which the fire was unquenched,
and a frame from which little of the lustihood had yet departed,--we
confess that we feel its import to be greatly heightened in these our
days, when the patriarch himself exhibits undeniable signs of a failing
nature, and many of his once rosy sons are evidently in the different
stages of a common decline. A fine and a cheerful family the old man
had; and never came they within any man's door without well repaying
the outlay incurred on their account. To us, at all times, their "coming
was a gladness;" and we feel that we could not, without a pang, see
their honest and familiar faces rejected from our threshold, with the
knowledge that the course of their wanderings could not return them to
us under a period so protracted as that of twelve whole months.
[Illustration: SNAP-DRAGON.--_Page 31._]
In that long space of time, besides the uncertainty of what may happen
to ourselves, there is but too much reason to fear that, unless a change
for the better should take place, some one or more of the neglected
children may be dead. We could not but have apprehensions that the group
might never return to us entire. Death has already made much havoc
amongst them, since the days of Ben Jonson. Alas for Baby-cocke! and woe
is me for Post-and-paire! And although Carol, and Minced-pie, and
New-year's Gift, and Wassail, and Twelfth-cake, and some others of the
children, appear still to be in the enjoyment of a tolerably vigorous
health, yet we are not a little anxious about Snap-dragon, and our mind
is far from being easy on the subject of Hot-cockles. It is but too
obvious that, one by one, this once numerous and pleasant family are
falling away; and as the old man will assuredly not survive his
children, we may yet, in our day, have to join in the heavy lamentation
of the lady at the sad result of the above "Hue and Cry." "But is old,
old, good old Christmas gone?--nothing but the hair of his good, grave
old head and beard left!" For these reasons, he and his train shall be
welcome to us as often as they come. It shall be a heavy dispensation
under which we will suffer them to pass by our door unhailed; and if we
can prevail upon our neighbors to adopt our example, the veteran and his
offspring may yet be restored. They are dying for lack of nourishment.
They have been used to live on most bountiful fare,--to feed on chines
and turkeys and drink of the wassail-bowl. The rich juices of their
constitution are not to be maintained, far less re-established, at a
less generous rate; and though we will, for our parts, do what lies in
our power, yet it is not within the reach of any private gentleman's
exertions or finances to set them on their legs again. It should be made
a national matter of; and as the old gentleman, with his family, will be
coming our way soon after the publication of the present volume, we
trust we may be the means of inducing some to receive them with the
ancient welcome and feast them after the ancient fashion.
To enable our readers to do this with due effect, we will endeavor to
furnish them with a programme of some of the more important ceremonies
observed by our hearty ancestors on the occasion, and to give them some
explanation of those observances which linger still, although the causes
in which their institution originated are becoming gradually
obliterated, and although they themselves are falling into a neglect
which augurs too plainly of their final and speedy extinction.
It is, alas! but too true that the spirit of hearty festivity in which
our ancestors met this season has been long on the decline; and much of
the joyous pomp with which it was once received has long since passed
away. Those "divers plente of plesaunces," in which the genius of mirth
exhibited himself,--
"About yule, when the wind blew cule,
And the round tables began,"--
have sent forward to these dull times of ours but few, and those sadly
degenerated, representatives. The wild, barbaric splendor; the unbridled
"mirth and princely cheare" with which, upon the faith of ancient
ballads, we learn that "ages long ago" King Arthur kept Christmas "in
merry Carleile" with Queen Guenever, "that bride soe bright of blee;"
the wholesale hospitality; the royal stores of "pigs' heads and gammons
of bacon" for a Christmas largesse to the poor, at which we get glimpses
in the existing records of the not over-hospitable reign of King John;
the profuse expenditure and stately ceremonial by which the season was
illustrated in the reign of the vain and selfish Elizabeth; and the
lordly wassailings and antic mummings, whose universal prevalence, at
this period of the year, furnished subjects of such holy horror to the
Puritans in the time of the first Charles,--have gradually disappeared
before the philosophic pretensions and chilling pedantry of these sage
and self-seeking days. The picturesque effects of society--its strong
lights and deep shadows--are rapidly passing away; as the inequalities
of surface from which they were projected are smoothed and polished
down. From a period of high ceremonial and public celebration, which it
long continued to be in England, the Christmas-tide has tamed away into
a period of domestic union and social festivity; and the ancient
observances which covered it all over with sparkling points are now
rather perceived--faintly and distantly and imperfectly--by the light of
the still surviving spirit of the season than contribute anything to
that spirit, or throw as of old any light over that season from
themselves.
Of the various causes which contribute to the mingled festival of the
Christmas-tide, there are some which have their origin in feelings, and
are the remains of observances that existed previously to that event
from which the season now derives its name. After the establishment of
Christianity, its earliest teachers, feeling the impossibility of
replacing at once those pagan commemorations which had taken long and
deep root in the constitution of society and become identified with the
feelings of nations, endeavored rather to purify them from their
uncleanness, and adapt them to the uses of the new religion. By this
arrangement, many an object of pagan veneration became an object of
veneration to the early Christians; and the polytheism of papal Rome
(promoted, in part, by this very compromise, working in the stronghold
of the ancient superstition) became engrafted upon the polytheism of the
heathen. At a later period, too, the Protestant reformers of that
corrupted worship found themselves, from a similar impossibility, under
a similar necessity of retaining a variety of Catholic observances; and
thus it is that festival customs still exist amongst us which are the
direct descendants of customs connected with the classic or druidical
superstitions, and sports which may be traced to the celebrations
observed of old in honor of Saturn or of Bacchus.
Amongst those celebrations which have thus survived the decay of the
religions with which they were connected, by being made subservient to
the new faith (or purified forms) which replaced them, that which takes
place at the period of the new year--placed as that epoch is in the
neighborhood of the winter solstice--stands conspicuous. Bequeathed as
this ancient commemoration has been, with many of its forms of
rejoicing, by the pagan to the Christian world, it has been by the
latter thrown into close association with their own festival observances
in honor of the first great event in the history of their revelation;
and while the old observances and the feelings in which they originated
have thus been preserved to swell the tide of Christian triumph, their
pedigree has been overlooked amid the far higher interest of the
observances by whose side they stand, and their ancient titles merged in
that of the high family into which they have been adopted.
In most nations of ancient or modern times, the period of what is
popularly called the winter solstice appears to have been recognized as
a season of rejoicing. The deepening gloom and increasing sterility
which have followed the downward progress of the sun's place in heaven
would generally dispose the minds of men to congratulation at the
arrival of that period when, as experience had taught them, he had
reached his lowest point of influence with reference to _them_; and the
prospects of renewed light, and warmth, and vegetation offered by what
was considered as his returning march, would naturally be hailed by the
signs of thanksgiving and the voice of mirth. The Roman Saturnalia,
which fell at this period, were accordingly a season of high festivity,
honored by many privileges and many exemptions from ill. The spirit of
universal mirth and unbounded license was abroad, and had a free
charter. Friends feasted together, and the quarrels of foes were
suspended. No war was declared and no capital executions were permitted
to take place during this season of general good-will; and the very
slave, beneath its genial influence, regained for a moment the moral
attitude of a man, and had a right to use the tongue which God had
given him, for its original purpose of expressing his thoughts. Not only
in the spirit of the time but in many of the forms which it took, may a
resemblance be traced to the Christmas rejoicings of later days. The
hymns in honor of Saturn were the Roman representatives of the modern
carol; and presents passed from friend to friend, as Christmas gifts do
in our day. (It may be observed here that the interchange of gifts and
the offering of donations to the poor appear to have been, at all
periods of rejoicing or delivery, from the earliest times, one of the
modes by which the heart manifested its thankfulness; and our readers
may be referred for a single example, where examples abound, to the
directions recorded in the Book of Esther, as given by Mordecai to the
Jews in Shushan, for celebrating their escape from the conspiracy of
Haman: that on the anniversaries of "the days wherein the Jews rested
from their enemies, and the month which was turned unto them from sorrow
to joy and from mourning into a good day, they should make them days of
feasting and joy, and of sending portions one to another and gifts to
the poor.") But a more striking resemblance still between the forms
observed during the days of the Saturnalia and those by which the
Christmas festival was long illustrated may be noticed in the ruler, or
king, who was appointed, with considerable prerogatives, to preside over
the sports of the former. He is the probable ancestor of that high
potentate who, under the title of Christmas Prince, Lord of Misrule, or
Abbot of Unreason, exercised a similar sway over the Christmas games of
more recent times, and whose last descendant--the Twelfth-night
King--still rules with a diminished glory over the lingering revelries
of a single night.
In the Northern nations of ancient Europe the same period of the year
was celebrated by a festival in honor of the God Thor, which, like the
Roman Saturnalia and the festival of our own times, was illustrated by
the song, the dance, and the feast, executed after their barbarous
fashion, and mingled with the savage rites of their own religion. The
name of this celebration--Yule, Jule, Iul, or Iol--has given rise to
many disputes amongst antiquaries as to its derivation, whose arguments,
however, we need not report for the benefit of our readers till judgment
shall have been finally pronounced. When that time shall arrive, we
undertake to publish a new edition of the present work, for the purpose
of giving our readers an abstract of the pleadings and acquainting them
with the ultimate decision. In the mean time, we will let Sir Walter
Scott inform them how--
"The savage Dane,
At Iol, more deep the mead did drain;
High on the beach his galleys drew,
And feasted all his pirate-crew;
Then, in his low and pine-built hall,
Where shields and axes decked the wall,
They gorged upon the half-dressed steer,
Caroused in sea of sable beer,--
While round, in brutal jest, were thrown
The half-gnawed rib and marrow-bone;
Or listened all, in grim delight,
While Scalds yelled out the joys of fight.
Then forth in frenzy would they hie,
While wildly loose their red locks fly,
And, dancing round the blazing pile,
They made such barbarous mirth the while,
As best might to the mind recall
The boisterous joys of Odin's hall."
Amongst other traces of the northern observances which have descended to
our times, and of which we shall have occasion hereafter to speak, the
name of the festival itself has come down, and is still retained by our
Scottish brethren, as well as in some parts of England.