abolition and doing away with altogether of those consolatory
interstices and sprinklings of freedom through the four seasons--the
_red-letter_ days, now become to all intents and purposes
_dead-letter_ days.'--CHARLES LAMB.
While we accord a certain historical or ethical significance to our
holidays, we also feel their casual tenure, their want of recreative rest,
of enjoyable spirit, and of cordial popular estimation; and are
irresistibly prompted to discuss their claims as one of the neglected
elements of our national life. It is an anomalous fact in our civilization
that we have no one holiday, the observance of which is unanimous. It is
an exceptional trait in our nationality that its sentiment finds no annual
occasion when the hearts of the people thrill with an identical emotion,
absorbing in patriotic instinct and mutual reminiscence all personal
interests and local prejudices. It is an unfortunate circumstance that no
American festival, absolutely consecrated and universally acknowledged,
hallows the calendar to the imagination of our people. Anniversaries
enough, we boast, of historical importance, but they are casually
observed; events of glorious memory crowd our brief annals, but they are
not consciously identified with recurring periods; universal celebrities
are included in the roll of our country's benefactors; but the dates of
their birth, services, and decease, form no saints' days for the Republic.
How often in the crises of sectional passion does the moral necessity of
a common shrine, a national feast, a place, a time, or a memory sacred to
fraternal sympathies of general observance, appal the patriotic heart with
regret, or warm it with desire! How much of sectional misunderstanding,
hatred, and barbarism culminating in a base and savage mutiny, will the
future historian trace in the last analysis to the absence of a common
sentiment and occasion of mutual pleasure and faith. Were such a nucleus
for popular enthusiasm, such a goal for a nation's pilgrimage, such a day
for reciprocal gratulation our own--a time when the oath of fealty could
be renewed at the same altar, the voice of encouragement be echoed from
every section of the Union, the memory of what has been, the appreciation
of what is, and the hope of what may be, simultaneously felt,--what a bond
of union, a motive to forbearance, and a pledge of nationality would be
secured! Were there not in us sentiments as well as appetites, reflection
as well as passion, humanity might rest content with such 'note of time'
as is marked on a sun-dial or in the almanac; but constituted as we are, a
profound and universal instinct prompts observances wherewith faith, hope,
and memory may keep register of the fleeting hours and months. In
accordance with this instinct, periodical sacrifice, song, prayer, and
banquet, in all countries and ages, have inscribed with heartfelt ceremony
the shadowy lapse of being. Without law or art, the savage thus identifies
his consciousness with the seasons and their transition; anniversaries
typifying vicissitude; the wheel of custom stops awhile; events,
convictions, reminiscences, and aspirations are personified in the
calendar; and that reason which 'looks before and after' asserts itself
under every guise, from the barbarian rite to the Christian festival, and
begets the holiday as an institution natural to man. If the ballads of a
people are the essence of its history, holidays are, on similar grounds,
the free utterance of its character; and, as such, of great interest to
the philosopher, and fraught with endearing associations to the
philanthropist.
The spontaneous in nations as well as individuals is attractive to the eye
of philosophy, because it is eminently characteristic. The great charm of
biography is its revelation of the play of mind and the aspect of
character, when freed from conventional restraints; and in the life of
nations how inadequate are the records of diplomacy, legislation, and
war--the official and economical development--to indicate what is
instinctive and typical in character! It is when the armour of daily toil,
the insignia of office, the prosaic routine of life, are laid aside, that
what is peculiar in form and graceful in movement become evident. In the
glee or solemnity of the festival, the soul breaks forth; in the fusion of
a common idea, the heart of a country becomes freely manifest.
Accordingly, the manner, the spirit, and the object of festal observances
are among the most significant illustrations of history. An accurate chart
of these, from the earliest time, would afford a reliable index to the
progress of humanity, and suggest a remarkable identity of natural wants,
tendencies, and aspirations. There is, for instance, a singular affinity
between the Saturnalia of the ancient and the Carnival of the modern
Romans, the sports of the ancient circus and bull-fights of Spain; while
so closely parallel, in some respects, are Druidical and Monastic vows and
fanaticism, that one of the most popular of modern Italian operas, which
revived the picturesque costume and sylvan rites of the Druids, was
threatened with prohibition, as a satire upon the Church. It would,
indeed, well repay antiquarian investigation to trace the germ of holiday
customs from the crude superstitions of barbarians, through the usages
incident to a more refined mythology, to their modified reappearance in
the Catholic temples, where Pagan rites are invested with Christian
meaning, or the statue of Jupiter transformed into St. Peter, and the
sarcophagus of a heathen becomes the font of holy baptism. Gibbon tells
us how shrewd Pope Boniface professed but to rehabilitate old customs when
he revived the secular games in Rome. Not only are traces of Pagan forms
discoverable in the modern holidays, but the mediæval taste for
exhibitions of animal courage and vigour still lives in the love of
prize-fights and horse-racing, so prevalent in England; and the ring and
the cockpit minister to the same brutal passions which of old filled the
Flavian amphitheatre with eager spectators, and gave a relish to the
ordeal of blood. In the abuses of the modern pastime we behold the relics
of barbarism; and the perpetuity of such national tastes is evident in the
combative instinct which once sustained the orders of chivalry, and in our
day has lured thousands to the destructive battle-fields of the Crimea and
Virginia.
Not only do the social organizations devoted to popular amusements and
economies thus give the best tokens of local manners and average taste,
but they directly minister to the culture they illustrate. The gladiator,
'butchered to make a Roman holiday,' nurtured with his lifeblood and dying
agonies the ferocious propensities and military hardihood of the imperial
cohorts. The graceful posture and fine muscular display of the wrestler
and discus-player of Athens reappeared in the statues which peopled her
squares and temples. The equine beauty and swiftness exhibited at Derby
and Ascot keep alive the emulation which renders England famous for breeds
of horses, and her gentry healthful by equestrian exercise. The custom of
musical accompaniments at every German symposium has, in a great measure,
bred a nation of vocal and instrumental performers. The dance became a
versatile art in France, because it was, as it still is, the national
pastime.[16] The Circassian is expert with steed and rifle from the habit
of dexterity acquired in the festive trials of skill, excellence in which
is the qualification for leadership. The compass, flexibility, and
sweetness of the human voice, so characteristic of the people of Italy,
have been attained through ages of vocal practice in ecclesiastical and
rural festivals; and the copious melody of their language gradually arose
through the _canzoni_ of troubadours and the rhythmical feats of
_improvisatori_. The deafening clang of gongs, the blinding smoke of
chowsticks, and the dazzling light of innumerable lanterns, wherewith the
Chinese celebrate their national feasts, are to European senses the most
oppressive imaginable token of a stagnant and primitive civilization; the
festive elements of the semi-barbarism artistically represented by their
grotesque figures, ignorance of perspective, interminable alphabet,
pinched feet, bare scalps, and implacable hatred of innovation, both in
the processes and the forms of advanced taste.
Even the aboriginal feasts of this continent were the best indication of
what the American Indians, in their palmy days, could boast of strength,
agility, and grace. Thus, from the most cultivated to the least developed
races, what is adopted and expressed in a recreative or holiday
manner--what is thus done and said, sought and felt,--the rallying-point
of popular sympathy, the occasion of the universal joy or reverence,--is a
moral fact of unique and permanent interest; on the one hand, as
illustrative of the kind and degree of civilization attained, and of the
instinctive direction of the national mind, and, on the other, as
indicative of the means and the processes whereby the wants are met and
the ideas realized, which stimulate and mould a nation's genius and faith.
The testimony of observation accords with that of history in this regard.
The foreign scenes which haunt the memory, as popular illustrations of
character, are those of holidays. The government, literature, art, and
society of a country may be individually represented to our minds; but
when we discuss national traits, we instinctively refer to the pastimes,
the religious ceremonials, and the festivals of a people. Where has the
pugilistic hilarity of the Irish scope as at Donnybrook Fair?[17] Is a
dull parliamentary speech, or an animated debate at the racecourse, most
vivid with the spirit of English life? Market-day, and harvest-home, and
saintly anniversaries, evoke from its commonplace level the life of the
humble and the princely, and they appear before the stranger under a
genuine and characteristic guise. We associate the French, as a people,
with the rustic groups under the trees of Montmorency, or the crowds of
neatly-dressed and gay _bourgeoise_ at the _Jardin d'Hiver_,--finding in
the green grass, lights, cheap wine and comfits, a flower in the hair, a
waltz and saunter, more real pleasure than a less frugal and mercurial
people can extract from a solemn feast, garnished with extravagant
upholstery, and loaded with luxurious viands. We recall the Italians and
Spaniards by the ceaseless bells of their _festas_ vibrating in the air,
and the golden necklace and graceful _mezzano_ of the peasant's holiday;
the tinkle of guitars, the _bolero_ and processions, or the lines of stars
marking the architecture of illuminated temples, the euphonious greeting,
the light-hearted carol, the abundant fruit, the knots of flowers, the gay
jerkin and bodice, which render the urbane throng so picturesque in aspect
and childlike in enjoyment. The sadness which overhung the very idea of
Italy, considered as a political entity, exhaled like magic before the
spectacle of a Tuscan vintage. The heaps of purple and amber fruit, the
gray and pensive-eyed oxen, the reeking butts, the yellow vine-leaves
waving in the autumn sun, form studies for the pencil; but the human
interest of the scene infinitely endears its still life. Kindred and
friends, in festal array, celebrate their work, and rejoice over the
Falernian, _Lachryma Christi_, or _Vino Nostrale_, with a frank and
_naïve_ gratitude akin to the mellow smile of productive Nature: the
distance between the lord of the soil and the peasant is, for the time,
lost in a mutual and innocent triumph; they who are wont to serve become
guests; the dance and song, the compliment and repartee, the toast and the
smile, are interchanged, on the one side with artless loyalty, and on the
other with a condescension merged in graciousness. It seems as if the hand
of Nature, in yielding her annual tribute, literally imparted to prince
and peasant the touch which makes 'the whole world kin.'
The contrast, in respect of pastime, is felt most keenly when we observe
life at home, with the impressions of the Old World fresh in our minds. We
have perhaps joined the laughing group who cluster round Punch and Judy on
the Mole of Naples; we have watched the flitting emotions on swarthy
listeners who greedily drink in the story-teller's words on the shore of
Palermo; we have made an old gondolier chant a stanza of Tasso, at sunset,
on the Adriatic; our hostess at Florence has decked the window with a
consecrated branch on Palm Sunday; we have seen the poor _contadini_ of a
Roman village sport their silver knobs and hang out their one bit of
crimson tapestry, in honour of some local saint; we have examined the last
mosaic saint exhumed from Pompeii, brilliant with festal rites, and thus,
as an element both of history and experience, of religion and domesticity,
the recreative side of life appears essential and absolute, while the
hurrying crowd, hasty salutations, and absorption in affairs around us,
seem to repudiate and ignore the inference, and to confirm the opinion of
one whose existence was divided between this country and Europe, that 'the
Americans are practical Stoics.'
To appreciate the value of holidays merely as a conservative element of
faith, we have but to remember the Jewish festivals. Ages of dispersion,
isolation, contempt, and persecution--all that mortal agencies can effect
to chill the zeal or to discredit the traditions of the Hebrews--have
not, in the slightest degree, lessened the sanction or diminished the
observance of that festival, to keep which the Divine Founder of our
religion, nineteen centuries ago, went up to Jerusalem with his disciples.
And it is difficult to conceive a more sublime idea than is involved in
this fact. On the day of the Passover, in the Austrian banker's splendid
palace, in the miserable Ghetto of Rome, under the shadow of Syrian
mosques, in the wretched by-way hostel of Poland, at the foot of Egyptian
pyramids, beside the Holy Sepulchre, among the money-changers of Paris and
the pawnbrokers of London, along the canals of Holland, in Siberia,
Denmark, Calcutta, and New York, in every nook of the civilized world, the
Jew celebrates his holy national feast; and who can estimate how much this
and similar rites have to do with the eternal marvel of that nation's
survival?
The conservatism inherent in traditional festivals not only binds together
and keeps intact the scattered communities of a dispersed race, but saves
from extinction many local and inherited characteristics. I was never so
impressed with this thought as on the occasion of an annual village _fête_
in Sicily. Perhaps no territory of the same limits comprehends such a
variety of elements in the basis of its existent population as that
luxuriant and beautiful but ill-fated island. Its surface is venerable
with the architectural remains of successive races. Here a Grecian temple,
there a Saracenic dome; now a Roman fortification, again a Norman tower;
and often a mediæval ruin of some incongruous order attracts the
traveller's gaze from broad valleys rich with grain, olive-orchards, and
citron-groves, vineyards planted in decomposed lava, hedges of aloe,
meadows of wild-flowers, a torrent's arid path, a holly-crowned mountain,
a cork forest, or seaward landscape. But the more flexible materials left
by the receding tide of invasion are so blended in the physiognomies, the
customs, and the _patois_ of the inhabitants, that only nice
investigation can trace them amid the generic phenomena of nationality
now recognized as Sicilian. Yet the people of a village but a few miles
from the capital have so identified their Greek origin with the costume of
a holiday, that, as one scans their festal array, it is easy to imagine
that the unmixed blood of their classic progenitors flushes in the dark
eyes and mantles in the olive cheeks. This ancestral dress is the endeared
heirloom in the homes of the peasantry, assumed with conscious pride and
gaiety to meet the wondering eyes of neighbouring _contadini_, curious
Palermitans, and delighted strangers, who flock to the spectacle.
The love of power is a great teacher of human instincts; and despotism,
both civil and spiritual, has, in all ages, availed itself of the natural
instinct for festivals, to multiply and enhance shows, amusements, and
holidays, in a manner which yields profitable lessons to free communities
intent on adapting the same means to nobler ends. The stated pilgrimage to
the tomb of the Prophet is an important part of the superstitious
machinery of the Mohammedan tyranny over the will and conscience; and it
is difficult to conceive now to what an extent the zeal and unity of the
early Christians were enforced by specific days of ceremonial, and by such
a hallowed goal as Jerusalem.
Imperial authority in France is upheld by festive seductions, adapted to a
vivacious populace; and by masque balls, municipal banquets, showers of
bon-bons, and ascent of balloons, contrives to win attention from
republican discontent. Mercenary rulers of petty states, by the gift of
stars and red ribbons, and liberal contributions to the opera, obtain an
economical safeguard. The policy of the Romish Church is nowhere more
striking than in her holiday institutions, appealing to native sentiment
through pageantry, music, and impressive rites in honour of saints,
martyrs, and departed friends, to propitiate their intercession or to
endear their memories.
While the pastimes in vogue typify the national mind, and are to serious
avocations what the efflorescence of the tree is to its fruit--a bountiful
pledge and augury of prolific energy,--it is only when kept as holidays,
set apart by law and usage, consecrated by time and sympathy, that such
observances attain their legitimate meaning; and to this end, a certain
affinity with character, a spontaneous and not conventional impulse is
essential. The Tournament, for instance, was the natural and appropriate
pastime of the age of chivalry; it fostered knightly prowess, and made
patent the twinborn inspiration of love and valour. As described in
_Ivanhoe_, it accords intimately with the spirit of the age and the
history of the times; as exhibited to the utilitarian vision and
mercantile habits of our own day, in Virginia, it comes no nearer our
associations than any theatrical pageant chosen at hap-hazard. What other
species of grown men could, in this age, enact every year, in the
neighbourhood of Rome, the scenes which make the artists' holiday? As a
profession, they retain the instincts of childhood, with little warping
from the world around. But imagine a set of mechanics or merchants
attempting such a masquerade. The invention, the fancy, the independence,
and the _abandon_ congenial with artist-life, gives unity,
picturesqueness, and grace to the pageant; and the speeches, costumes,
feasting, and drollery, are pre-eminently those of an artist's carnival.
It is indispensable that the spirit of a holiday should be native to the
scene and the people; and hence all endeavours to graft local pastimes
upon foreign communities signally fail. This is illustrated in our
immediate vicinity. The genial fellowship and exuberant hospitality with
which the first day of the year is celebrated in New York were
characteristic among the Dutch colonists, and have been transmitted to
their posterity, while the tone of New England society, though more
intellectual, is less urbane and companionable; accordingly, the few
enthusiasts who have attempted it have been unable, either by precept or
example, to make a Boston New Year's day the complete and hearty festival
which renders it _par excellence_ the holiday of the Knickerbockers.
Charitable enterprise, for several years past, in the Puritan city, has
distinguished May-day as a children's floral anniversary; but who that is
familiar with the peasant-songs that hail this advent of summer in the
south of Europe ever beheld the shivering infants and the wilted leaves,
paraded in the teeth of an east wind, without a conscious recoil from the
anomalous _fête_? The facts of habit, public sentiment, natural taste,
local association, and of climate, cannot be ignored in holiday
institutions, which, like eloquence, as defined by Webster, must spring
directly from the men, the subject, and the occasion. Any other source is
unstable and factitious. Of all affectations, those of diversion are the
least endurable; and there is no phase of social life more open to satire,
nor any that has provoked it to more legitimate purpose, than the
affectation of a taste for art, sporting, the ball-room, the bivouac, the
gymnasium, foreign travel, country life, nautical adventure, and literary
amusements; an affectation yielding, as we know, food for the most spicy
irony, from Goldoni's _Filosofo Inglese_ to Hood's cockney ruralist and
_Punch's_ amateur sportsman or verdant tourist. And what is true of
personal incongruities is only the more conspicuous in social and national
life.
When our literary pioneer sought to waken the fraternal sentiment of his
countrymen towards their ancestral land, he described with sympathetic
zest an English Christmas in an old family mansion; and the most popular
of modern novelists can find no more potent spell whereby to excite a
charitable glow in two hemispheres than a _Christmas Carol_. In New as
well as in Old England the once absolute sway of this greatest of
Christian festivals has been checked by Puritan zeal. We must look to the
ancient ballads, obsolete plays, and musty church traditions, to ascertain
what this hallowed season was in the British islands, when wassail and the
yule-log, largess and the Lord of Misrule, the mistletoe bough, boars'
heads, holly wreaths, midnight chimes, the feast of kindred, the anthem,
the prayer, the games of children, the good cheer of the poor,
forgiveness, gratulation, worship--all that revelry hails and religion
consecrates,--made holiday in palace, manor, and cottage, throughout the
land; winter's robe of ermine everywhere vividly contrasting with
evergreen decorations, the frosty air with the warmth of household fires,
the cold sky with the incense of hospitable hearths; when King Charles
acted, Ben Jonson wrote a masque, Milton a hymn, lords and peasants
flocked to the altar, parents and children gathered round the board, and
church, home, wayside, town, and country bore witness to one mingled and
hearty sentiment of festivity. Identical in season with the Roman
Saturnalia, and the time when the Scalds let 'wildly loose their red locks
fly,' Christmas is sanctioned by all that is venerable in association as
well as tender and joyous in faith. It is deeply to be regretted that with
us its observance is almost exclusively confined to the Romanists and
Episcopalians. The sentiment of all Christian denominations is equally
identified with its commemoration, the event it celebrates being
essentially memorable alike to all who profess Christianity; and although
the forlorn description by Pepys of a Puritan Christmas will not apply to
the occasion here, its comparative neglect, which followed Bloody Mary's
reign, continues among too many of the sects that found refuge in America.
There are abundant indications that if the clergy would initiate the
movement, the laity are prepared to make Christmas among us the universal
religious holiday which every consideration of piety, domestic affection,
and traditional reverence unite to proclaim it.
The humanities of time, if we may so designate the periods consecrated to
repose and festivity, were thoroughly appreciated by the most quaint and
genial of English essayists. The boon of leisure, the amenities of social
intercourse, the sacredness and the humours of old-fashioned holidays,
have found their most loving interpreter, in our day, in Charles Lamb.
Hear him:--