observances suffered to remain unanswered. Many a squib was directed
against the Roundheads; and the popular regret for the suppression of
their high festival was skilfully appealed to by Royalist politicians
and favorers of the ancient religion. The connection between the new
condition of things in Church and State and the extinction of all the
merriment of the land was carefully suggested in publications that
stole out in spite of penalties and were read in defiance of
prohibitions. As an example, that curious little tract from which we
have more than once quoted under the title of "An Hue and Cry after
Christmas," bears the date of 1645; and we shall best give our readers
an idea of its character by setting out that title at length, as the
same exhibits a tolerable abstract of its contents. It runs thus: "The
arraignment, conviction, and imprisoning of Christmas on St. Thomas day
last, and how he broke out of prison in the holidayes and got away,
onely left his hoary hair and gray beard sticking between two iron bars
of a window. With an Hue and Cry after Christmas, and a letter from Mr.
Woodcock, a fellow in Oxford, to a malignant lady in London. And divers
passages between the lady and the cryer about Old Christmas; and what
shift he was fain to make to save his life, and great stir to fetch him
back again. Printed by Simon Minc'd Pye for Cissely Plum-Porridge, and
are to be sold by Ralph Fidler Chandler at the signe of the Pack of
Cards in Mustard Alley in Brawn Street." Besides the allusions contained
in the latter part of this title to some of the good things that follow
in the old man's train, great pains are taken by the "cryer" in
describing him, and by the lady in mourning for him, to allude to many
of the cheerful attributes that made him dear to the people. His great
antiquity and portly appearance are likewise insisted upon. "For age
this hoarie-headed man was of great yeares, and as white as snow. He
entered the Romish Kallendar, time out of mind, as old or very neer as
Father Mathusalem was,--one that looked fresh in the Bishops' time,
though their fall made him pine away ever since. He was full and fat as
any divine doctor on them all; he looked under the consecrated lawne
sleeves as big as Bul-beefe,--just like Bacchus upon a tunne of wine,
when the grapes hang shaking about his eares; but since the Catholike
liquor is taken from him he is much wasted, so that he hath looked very
thin and ill of late." "The poor," says the "cryer" to the lady, "are
sory for" his departure; "for they go to every door a-begging, as they
were wont to do (_good Mrs., Somewhat against this good time_); but Time
was transformed, _Away, be gone; here is not for you_." The lady,
however, declares that she for one will not be deterred from welcoming
old Christmas. "No, no!" says she; "bid him come by night over the
Thames, and we will have a back-door open to let him in;" and ends by
anticipating better prospects for him another year.
And by many a back-door was the old man let in to many a fireside during
the heaviest times of all that persecution and disgrace. On the
establishment of the Commonwealth, when the more settled state of things
removed some of the causes which had opposed themselves to his due
reception, the contests of opposition between the revived spirit of
festival and the increased sectarian austerity became more conspicuous.
There is an order of the Parliament in 1652 again prohibiting the
observance of Christmas day, which proves that the practice had revived;
and there are examples of the military having been employed to disperse
congregations assembled for that purpose. In the "Vindication of
Christmas," published about this time, the old gentleman, after
complaining bitterly of the manner in which he was "used in the city,
and wandering into the country up and down from house to house, found
small comfort in any," asserts his determination not to be so repulsed:
"Welcome or not welcome," says he, "I am come." In a periodical
publication of that day entitled "Mercurius Democritus, or a True and
Perfect Nocturnall, communicating many strange wonders out of the World
in the Moon, etc.," the public are encouraged to keep Christmas, and
promised better days. No. 37 contains some verses to that effect, of
which the following are the first two:--
"Old Christmass now is come to town,
Though few do him regard;
He laughs to see them going down,
That have put down his Lord.
"Cheer up, sad heart, crown Christmass bowls,
Banish dull grief and sorrow;
Though you want cloaths, you have rich souls,
The _sun_ may shine to-morrow."
And again in No. 38:--
"A gallant crew, stir up the fire,
The other winter tale,
Welcome, Christmass, 'tis our desire
To give thee more spic'd ale."
On the return of the royal family to England, the court celebrations of
Christmas were revived both there and at the Inns of Court; and the Lord
of Misrule came again into office. We have allusions to the one and the
other in the writings of Pepys and of Evelyn. The nobles and wealthy
gentry, too, once more at their country-seats, took under their
protection such of the ancient observances as had survived the
persecution, and from time to time stole out of their hiding-places
under the encouragement of the new order of things. But in none of its
ancient haunts did the festival ever again recover its splendor of old.
The condition of Charles's exchequer, and the many charges upon
it,--arising as well out of the services of his adherents as from his
own dissolute life,--left him little chance of imitating the lavish
appointments of the court pageantries in the days of Elizabeth and
James; and the troubles out of which the nation had emerged had made
changes as well in the face of the country as in the condition and
character of society, alike opposed to anything like a general and
complete revival of the merry doings of yore. In the country, estates
had passed into new hands, and the immemorial ties between the ancient
families and the tenants of the soil had been rudely severed. Many of
the old establishments in which these celebrations had been most
zealously observed, were finally broken up; and friends who had met
together from childhood around the Christmas fire, and pledged each
other year by year in the wassail-bowl, were scattered by the chances of
war. But out of this disturbance of the old localities and disruption of
the ancient ties of the land, a result still more fatal to these old
observances had arisen, promoted besides by the dissipation of manners
which the restored monarch had introduced into the country. Men rooted
out from their ancestral possessions and looking to a licentious king
for compensation, became hangers-on about the court; and others who had
no such excuse, seduced by their example and enamoured of the gayeties
of the metropolis and the profligacies of Whitehall, abandoned the
shelter of the old trees beneath whose shade their fathers had fostered
the sanctities of life, and from "country gentlemen" became "men about
town." The evils of this practice, at which we have before hinted as one
of those to which the decay of rural customs is mainly owing, began to
be early felt, and form the topic of frequent complaint and the subject
of many of the popular ballads of that day. The song of the "Old and
Young Courtier" was written for the purpose of contrasting the good old
manners with those of Charles's time; and the effects of the change upon
the Christmas hospitalities has due and particular notice therein. We
extract it from the Percy collection for our readers, as appropriate to
our subject and a sample of the ballads of the time:--
THE OLD AND YOUNG COURTIER.
An old song made by an aged old pate,
Of an old worshipful gentleman who had a greate estate,
That kept a brave old house at a bountifull rate,
And an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate;
Like an old courtier of the Queen's,
And the Queen's old courtier.
With an old lady, whose anger one word assuages;
They every quarter paid their old servants their wages,
And never knew what belong'd to coachmen, footmen, nor pages,
But kept twenty old fellows with blue coats and badges;
Like an old courtier, etc.
With an old study fill'd full of learned old books,
With an old reverend chaplain,--you might know him by his looks,--
With an old buttery hatch worn quite off the hooks,
And an old kitchen, that maintained half-a-dozen old cooks;
Like an old courtier, etc.
With an old hall, hung about with pikes, guns, and bows,
With old swords, and bucklers that had borne many shrewde blows,
And an old frize coat, to cover his worship's trunk hose,
And a cup of old sherry to comfort his copper nose;
Like an old courtier, etc.
With a good old fashion, when Christmasse was come,
To call in all his old neighbours with bagpipe and drum,
With good chear enough to furnish every old room,
And old liquor able to make a cat speak, and man dumb;
Like an old courtier, etc.
With an old falconer, huntsman, and a kennel of hounds,
That never hawked, nor hunted, but in his own grounds,
Who, like a wise man, kept himself within his own bounds,
And when he dyed gave every child a thousand good pounds;
Like an old courtier, etc.
But to his eldest son his house and land he assign'd,
Charging him in his will to keep the old bountifull mind,
To be good to his old tenants, and to his neighbours be kind;
But in the ensuing ditty you shall hear how he was inclined;
Like a young courtier, etc.
Like a flourishing young gallant, newly come to his land,
Who keeps a brace of painted madams at his command,
And takes up a thousand pound upon his father's land,
And gets drunk in a tavern, till he can neither go nor stand;
Like a young courtier, etc.
With a new-fangled lady, that is dandy, nice, and spare,
Who never knew what belong'd to good housekeeping or care,
Who buys gaudy-color'd fans to play with wanton air,
And seven or eight different dressings of other women's hair;
Like a young courtier, etc.
With a new-fashion'd hall, built where the old one stood,
Hung round with new pictures, that do the poor no good,
With a fine marble chimney, wherein burns neither coal nor wood,
And a new smooth shovelboard, whereon no victuals ne'er stood;
Like a young courtier, etc.
With a new study, stuff'd full of pamphlets and plays,
And a new chaplain, that swears faster than he prays,
With a new buttery-hatch that opens once in four or five days,
And a new French cook, to devise fine kickshaws and toys;
Like a young courtier, etc.
With a new fashion, when Christmasse is drawing on,
On a new journey to London straight we all must begone,
And leave none to keep house, but our new porter John,
Who relieves the poor with a thump on the back with a stone;
Like a young courtier, etc.
With a new gentleman usher, whose carriage is compleat,
With a new coachman, footmen, and pages to carry up the meat,
With a waiting-gentlewoman, whose dressing is very neat,
Who when her lady has din'd, lets the servants not eat;
Like a young courtier, etc.
With new titles of honour bought with his father's old gold,
For which sundry of his ancestors' old manors are sold;
And this is the course most of our new gallants hold,
Which makes that good housekeeping is now grown so cold,
Among the young courtiers of the King,
Or the King's young courtiers.
In a word, the old English feeling seemed nearly extinct for a time; and
the ancient customs which had connected themselves therewith, one by one
fell more or less into disuse. The chain of _universal_ sympathy and
_general_ observance, which had long kept the festival together in all
its parts, was broken; and the parts fell asunder, and were by degrees
lost or overlooked. Let no man say that this is scarcely worth
lamenting! Let none imagine that, in the decay of customs useless or
insignificant in themselves, there is little to regret! "The
affections," says Sterne, "when they are busy that way, will build their
structures, were it but on the paring of a nail;" and there is no
practice of long observance and ancient veneration--whether among
nations or individuals--round which the affections have not in some
degree twined themselves, and which are not therefore useful as supports
and remembrancers to those affections. There are few of the consequences
springing from civil war more lamentable than the disturbance which it
gives to the social arrangements, were it but to the meanest of them. It
is impossible that customs long identified with the feelings should
perish without those feelings (though from their own eternal principle
they will ultimately revive and find new modes of action) suffering some
temporary injury. It was a beautiful assertion of Dr. Johnson that his
feelings would be outraged by seeing an old post rooted up from before
his door which he had been used to look at all his life,--even though it
might be an incumbrance there. How much more would he have grieved over
the removal of a village Maypole, with all its merry memories and all
its ancient reverence!
The Christmas festival has languished from those days to this, but never
has been, and never will be extinct. The stately forms of its
celebration in high places have long since (and, in all probability,
forever) passed away. The sole and homely representative of the gorgeous
Christmas prince is the mock-monarch of the Epiphany,--the laureate of
our times, with his nominal duties, in the last faint shadow of the
court bards and masque-makers of yore; and the few lingering remains of
the important duties once confided to the master of the royal revels are
silently and unostentatiously performed in the office of the Lord
Chamberlain of to-day. But the spirit of the season yet survives, and,
for reasons which we shall proceed to point out, _must_ survive. True,
the uproarious merriment, the loud voice which it sent of old throughout
the land, have ceased; and while the ancient sports and ceremonies are
widely scattered, many of them have retreated into obscure places, and
some perhaps are lost. Still, however, this period of commemoration is
everywhere a merry time; and we believe, as we have already said, that
most of the children of Father Christmas are yet wandering up and down
in one place or another of the land. We call upon all those of our
readers who know anything of the "old, old, very old, gray-bearded
gentleman" or his family to aid us in our search after them; and with
their good help we will endeavor to restore them to some portion of
their ancient honors in England.
[Illustration: FAMILY CONGRATULATION.--_Page 134._]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] The evergreen holly is meant, a bearing peculiarly appropriate to
the lord of Christmas sports.
[3] His motto or impress.
FEELINGS OF THE SEASON.
OF all the festivals which crowd the Christian calendar there is none
that exercises an influence so strong and universal as that of
Christmas; and those varied superstitions, and quaint customs, and
joyous observances, which once abounded throughout the rural districts
of England, are at no period of the year so thickly congregated or so
strongly marked as at this season of unrestrained festivity and extended
celebration. The reasons for this are various and very obvious. In the
case of a single celebration, which has to support itself by its own
solitary influence long, perchance, after the feeling in which it
originated has ceased to operate, whose significance is perhaps dimly
and more dimly perceived (through the obscurity of a distance, year
after year receding further into shadow) by its own unaided and
unreflected light, the chances are many that the annually increasing
neglect into which its observance is likely to fall, shall finally
consign it to an entire obliteration. But a cluster of festivals,
standing in a proximate order of succession, at once throwing light upon
each other and illustrated by a varied and numerous host of customs,
traditions, and ceremonies,--of which, as in a similar cluster of stars,
the occasional obscuration of any one or more would not prevent their
memory being suggested and their place distinctly indicated by the
others,--present greatly multiplied probabilities against their
existence being ever entirely forgotten or their observation wholly
discontinued. The arrangement by which a series of
celebrations--beautiful in themselves, and connected with the paramount
event in which are laid the foundations of our religion--are made to
fall at a period otherwise of very solemn import (from its being assumed
as the close of the larger of those revolutions of time into which man
measures out the span of his transitory existence), and the chance which
has brought down to the same point and thrown together the traces of
customs and superstitions both of a sacred and secular character,
uniting with the crowd of Catholic observances, off-shoots from the
ancient Saturnalia, remains of old Druidical rites, and glimpses into
the mythology of the Northern nations, have written a series of
hieroglyphics upon that place of the calendar, which, if they cannot be
deciphered in every part, are still, from their number and
juxtaposition, never likely to be overlooked.
But though these causes are offered as accounting for the preservation
of many customs which, without them, would long since have passed into
oblivion, which exist by virtue of the position they occupy on the
calendar, yet the more conspicuous celebrations of this season need no
such aid and no such arguments. Nothing can be added to their intrinsic
interest, and they are too closely connected with the solemn warnings of
man's temporal destiny, and linked with the story of his eternal hopes,
ever to lose any portion of that influence, a share of which (without
thereby losing, as light is communicated without diminution) they throw
over all the other celebrations that take shelter under their wing.
In every way, and by many a tributary stream, are the holy and
beneficent sentiments which belong to the period increased and
refreshed. Beautiful feelings, too apt to fade within the heart of man
amid the chilling influences of worldly pursuit, steal out beneath the
sweet religious warmth of the season, and the pure and holy amongst the
hopes of earth assemble, to place themselves under the protection of
that eternal hope whose promise is now, as it were, yearly renewed. Amid
the echoes of that song which proclaimed peace on earth and good-will
towards men, making no exclusions, and dividing them into no classes,
rises up a dormant sense of universal brotherhood in the heart; and
something like a distribution of the good things of the earth is
suggested in favor of those, destitute here, who are proclaimed as joint
participators in the treasure thus announced from heaven. At no other
period of the year are the feeling of a universal benevolence and the
sense of a common Adam so widely awakened; at no season is the
predominant spirit of selfishness so effectually rebuked; never are the
circles of love so largely widened.
The very presence of a lengthened festivity--for festivity can never be
_solitary_--would, apart from its sacred causes, promote these wholesome
effects. The extended space of time over which this festival is spread,
the protracted holiday which it creates, points it out for the gathering
together of distant friends whom the passing nature of an occasional and
single celebration would fail to collect from their scattered places of
the world. By this wise and beautiful arrangement the spell of home is
still made to cast its sweet and holy influence along the sterile
regions as along the bright places of after-life, and from the dark
valleys and the sunny hilltops of the world to call back alike the
spoiled of fortune and the tired and travel-stained to refresh
themselves again and again at the fountain of their calmer hopes and
purer feelings. A wise and beautiful arrangement this would be, in
whatever season of the year it might be placed! Wise and beautiful is
any institution which sets up a rallying-place for the early affections
and re-awakens the sacred sympathies of youth,--which, from that
well-head of purity and peace, sends forth, as it were, a little river
of living waters, to flow with revivifying freshness and soothing
murmur along the wastes and wildernesses of after years; which makes of
that spring-time of the heart a reservoir of balm, to which in hours of
sorrow it can return for joy, and in years of guilt for regeneration;
and which, like the widow's cruse of oil, wasteth not in all the ages of
the mind's dearth. But how greatly are the wisdom and the beauty of this
arrangement increased by the sacred season at which it has been placed!
Under the sanctions of religion the covenants of the heart are renewed.
Upon the altars of our faith the lamps of the spirit are rekindled. The
loves of earth seem to have met together at the sound of the "glad
tidings" of the season, to refresh themselves for the heaven which those
tidings proclaim. From "Abana and Pharpar" and all the "rivers of
Damascus" the affections are returned to bathe in "the waters of
Israel." In many a peaceful spot and lowly home,
"Wi' joy unfeigned, brothers and sisters meet,
An' each for other's welfare kindly spiers;"
and as the long-separated look once more into the "sweet, familiar
faces," and listen in that restored companionship to strains such as
"once did sweet in Zion glide" (even as they listened long ago, and, it
may be, with some who are gone from them for ever),--
"Hope springs, 'exulting on triumphant wing'
That thus they all shall meet in future days,
There ever bask in uncreated rays,
No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator's praise
In such society, yet still more dear,
While ceaseless time moves round in an eternal sphere."
To this tone of feeling the services of the Church have for some time
previously been gradually adapting the mind. During the whole period of
Advent a course of moral and religious preparation has been going on,
and a state of expectation is by degrees excited, not unlike that with
which the Jews were waiting for the Messiah, of old. There is, as it
were, a sort of watching for the great event, a questioning where Christ
shall be born, and an earnest looking out for his star in the East that
we may "come to worship him." The feeling awakened by the whole series
of these services--unlike that suggested by some of those which
commemorate other portions of the same sacred story--is entirely a
joyous one. The lowly manner of the Saviour's coming, the exceeding
humiliation of his appointments, the dangers which beset his infancy,
and his instant rejection by those to whom he came, are all forgotten in
the fact of his coming itself, in the feeling of a mighty triumph and
the sense of a great deliverance, or only so far remembered as to temper
the triumph and give a character of tenderness to the joy. "The services
of the Church about this season," says Washington Irving, "are extremely
tender and inspiring. They dwell on the beautiful story of the origin
of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that accompanied its announcement.
They gradually increase in fervor and pathos during the season of
Advent, until they break forth in full jubilee on the morning that
brought 'peace and good-will to men.'" "I do not know," he adds, "a
grander effect of music on the moral feelings than to hear the full
choir and the pealing organ performing a Christmas anthem in a
cathedral, and filling every part of the vast pile with triumphant
harmony." We confess that, for ourselves, very sensible as we are to the
grander and more complicated effects of harmony, we have, on the
occasion in question, been more touched by the simple song of rejoicing
as it rang in its unaided sweetness through the aisles of some village
church. We have felt ourselves more emphatically reminded, amid pastoral
scenes and primitive choirs, of the music of congratulation which was
uttered through the clear air to men "abiding in the field, keeping
watch over their flocks by night,"--
"The hallowed anthem sent to hail
Bethlehem's shepherds in the lonely vale
When Jordan hushed his waves, and midnight still
Watched on the holy towers of Zion's hill."