important event. Spectators, market-women; workmen and bloused
peasants, homeward bound with baskets emptied of eggs, chickens and
shapeless lumps of butter, began to congregate, mingling with some
score or so of that minor bourgeoisie that lives frugally on its
modest income and having overmuch leisure is greedy for a sight of
any street spectacle. There were idle troopers too belonging to the
cavalry, whose trumpets rang out shrilly ever and anon from the
barracks hard by; while a milk-woman on her rounds, with glittering
brass cans in the little green cart that her sturdy mastiff with his
brass-studded harness and red worsted tassels drew so easily, forgot
her customers as she secured for herself a place in the foremost
rank. Then children suddenly appeared, basket-laden, strewing the
street with flowers and cut fragments of colored paper until the rough
paving-stones all but disappeared beneath an irregular mosaic of red
and green and blue. The bells of neighboring churches sent forth with
common accord a joyous peal which was echoed by those of a monastery
on the farther side of my hotel, and through the gate of which I had
often seen the poor--such beggars as Sterne depicted--going in for
their daily dole of bread and soup. From afar came the boom and clang
of music, blended with the deep rich notes of chanting, as the head of
a procession came in sight.
It was difficult to believe that the town could have contained so many
girls--young, well dressed and pretty, as had been, by ecclesiastical
influence, or by social considerations, induced to walk in that
procession. They were of all ages, from the lisping child ill at
ease in her starched frock and white shoes, to the tall maiden,
carrying a heavy flag with the air of a Joan of Arc; but there they
were--squadrons of girls in white; bevies of girls in blue; companies
of girls in pink or lilac or maize color; all either actually bearing
some emblem or badge, or feigning to assist the progress of some shrine
or reliquary, or colossal crucifix, or group of images, by grasping
the end of one of the hundreds of bright ribbons that were attached to
these the central features and rallying points of the show. On, on they
streamed, walking demurely to the musical bassoon and serpent cornet
and drum, of clashing cymbal and piping clarionet, while the musicians,
collected from many a parish of city and suburbs, beat and blew their
best. Anon the music was hushed, and nothing broke the silence save the
deep voices of the chanting priests, and then arose the shrill singing
of many children as school after school, well drilled and officered
by nuns or friars, as the case might be,--marched on to swell the
apparently interminable array.
A marvellous effect was there of color and grouping, and a rare display
too of treasures ecclesiastic that seldom see the light of day. There
is nothing now in the market, were an empress the bidder, to equal
that old point lace just drawn forth from the oaken chest in which it
usually reposes, and which was the pious work of supple fingers that
crumbled to dust two centuries ago. Where can you find such goldsmith's
work as yonder casket, that in bygone ages was consecrated as the
receptacle of some wonder-working relic; or see such a triumph of art
as that jewelled chalice, the repoussé work of which was surely wrought
by fairy hammers, so light and delicate is the tracery?
... On, and onwards still, as if the whole feminine population of the
kingdom--between the ages of seven, say, and seven-and-twenty--had been
pressed into the service, swept the procession. Fresh bands of music,
new companies of chanting priests, of deep-voiced deacons whose scarlet
robes were all but hidden by costly lace, awakened the echoes of the
quiet streets. Chariots with bleeding hearts conspicuously borne aloft;
chariots with gigantic crucifixes; chariots resplendent as the sun,
with lavish display of cloth of gold, and tenanted by venerated images,
went lumbering by.
And still the children sang and the diapason of the chanting rolled
out like solemn thunder on the air, while at every instant some novel
feature of the ever varying spectacle claimed its meed of praise.
Prettiest, perhaps, of all the sights there was a little--a very
little--child, a beautiful boy with golden curls, fantastically clad
in raiment of camel's hair, who carried a tiny cross and led by a blue
ribbon a white lamb, highly trained, no doubt, since it followed with
perfect docility and exemplary meekness. A more charming model of
innocent infancy than this youthful representative of John the Baptist,
as with filleted head, small limbs seemingly bare, and blue eyes that
never wandered to the right or left, he slowly stepped on, none of the
great Italian masters ever drew....
The spectators, I noticed, behaved very variously. There were _esprit
forts_ clearly among the bourgeoisie looking on, who seemed coldly
indifferent to what they saw, if not actually hostile, and who declined
to doff their hats as the holiest images and the most hallowed
emblems were borne by. But the peasants one and all bared their heads
in reverence; and the milk-woman, with her cart and her cans, had
pulled her rosary, with its dark beads and brass medals, out of her
capacious pocket and was telling her beads as devoutly as her own
great-grandmother could have done.
Some rivalry there may possibly have been between the different
parishes which had sent forth their boys and girls, their bands and
flags, and the jealously guarded treasures from crypt and chancel and
sacristy to swell the pomp--Saint Jossé, with its famed old church, to
which pilgrims resort even from the banks of Loire and Rhine, could not
permit itself to be outshone by fashionable Saint Jacques, where it is
easy for a bland abbé, who knows the world of the salons, to collect
subscriptions that are less missed by the givers than a lost bet on
the races, or a luckless stake at baccarat. And Saint Ursula, grim
patroness of a network of ancient streets, where aristocratic mansions
of the mediæval type are elbowed by mean shops and hucksters' stalls,
yet tries to avoid the disgrace of being overcrowded by moneyed,
pushing parvenu All Saints, where tall new houses, radiant with terra
cotta and plate glass, shelter the rich proprietors of the still taller
brick chimneys that dominate a mass of workmen's dwellings on the
outskirts of the parish. But such a spirit of emulation only serves to
enhance the glitter of the show.
And now the clashing cymbals, and the boom and bray of the brass
instruments lately at their loudest, are hushed, that the rich thunder
of the chanting may be the better heard, and the spectators press
forward, or stand on tiptoe, to peer over the shoulders of those in
the foremost rank. Something was plainly to be looked for that was
regarded as the central pivot, or kernel, of the show. And here it
comes,--surrounded by chanting priests, and preceded by scarlet capped
and white robed acolytes swinging weighty censers, under his canopy
of state borne over his head by four stronger men, some dignitary of
the Church goes by. He wears no mitre--not even that of a bishop _in
partibus infidelium_--and therefore I conjecture him to be a dean. He
is at any rate splendid as jewels, and gold embroideries, and antique
lace can make him; and he walks beneath his gorgeous baldaquin of gold
and purple, chanting too, but in a thin reedy voice, for he is old,
and his hair, silver white, contrasts somewhat plaintively with the
magnificence that environs him as amidst clouds of steaming incense he
totters on. The bystanders begin to disperse, for it is getting late
and cold, and the shadows are beginning to creep from darkling nooks
and corners, and the spectacle is over. The procession is out of sight,
and fainter grow the sounds of the music and of the chanting. The last
spectator to depart was a young monk, with a pale face and dreamy eyes,
clad in the brown robes of his order, who during all this time had
knelt on the cold stones at the monastery gate, his lips moving as his
lean fingers grasped his rosary, and an expression of rapt devotion on
his wan countenance, that would have done credit to some hermit saint
of a thousand years ago when the crown of martyrdom was easy to find.
From _All the Year Round_
Christmas at the Cape
Your Christmas comes with holly leaves
And snow about your doors and eaves;
Our lighted windows, open wide,
Let in our summer Christmas tide;
And where the drifting moths may go--
Behold our tiny flakes of snow;
But carol, carol in the cold;
And carol, carol as ye may,--
We sing the merry songs of old
As merrily on Christmas Day.
Your hills are wrapped in rainy cloud,
Your sea in anger roars aloud;
But here our hills are veiled with haze
In harmonies of blues and grays;
The waters of two oceans meet
With friendly murmurs by our feet;
But carol, carol, Christmas Waits,
And carol, carol, as ye may,--
The Crickets by our doors and gates
Sing in the grace of Christmas Day.
The rain and sunshine of the Cape
Lie folded in the ripening grape,
And Stellenbosch and Drakenstein,
With bounteous orchard, field of vine,
And every spot that we pass by--
Lie burnished 'neath our Christmas sky;
So carol, carol in your snow
And carol, carol as ye may,--
We carol 'mid our blooms ablow,
The grace of Summer's Christmas Day.
JOHN RUNCIE
[Illustration: THE HOLY FAMILY WITH THE SHEPHERDS. _Titian._]
The "Good Night" in Spain
Who is he that has seen a Nativity and has not felt it? Who has not
found himself in his own home, in his own domain, there in that
fantastic world of cork and gummed paper, with its shadowy caves,
where a saintly anchorite prays before a crucifix--sweet and simple
anachronism, like that of the hunter who in a thicket of rosemary
shrubs aims his gun at a partridge large as a stork perched on
the tower of a hermitage, or that of the smuggler with his Spanish
cloak and slouch hat, who with a load of tobacco hides behind a paper
rock to give free passage to the three kings journeying in all their
glory along the lofty summits of those cork Alps? Who does not feel
an inexplicable pleasure at seeing that little donkey, laden with
firewood, passing over a proud bridge of paper stone? And that meadow
of milled green baize in which feed so tranquilly those little white
lambs! Does not that hoar frost so well imitated with steel filings
turn you cold? Do you not take comfort in the heat of that ruddy
bonfire which the shepherds are kindling to warm the Holy Child? Who
is not startled to discover, under the strips of glass which represent
so well a frozen river, the fish, the tortoises, the crabs, reposing
with all ease upon a bed of golden sand and swollen to dimensions
unknown to naturalists? Here is a crab under whose claws can pass an
eel, his neighbor, as under the arch of a bridge. Here is a colossal
rat regarding with a bullying air a diminutive and peaceful kitten.
Over yonder a donkey is disputing with a rabbit about the respective
magnificence of their ears, which are, in fact, of the same size, and
a bull is holding a similar discussion, on the subject of horns, with
a snail, while a stout duck refuses to yield the honors to a rickety
swan. And these birds of all colors, gladdening that profound forest of
little evergreens which forms the background of this enchanting scene,
would you not think that they had gathered here from the four quarters
of the earth? Does it not make you happy to see the shepherds dance?
And, above all, do you not adore with tender reverence the Divine
Mystery contained in that humble porch with its thatch of straw and,
in its depths, a halo or glory of light? I say it frankly,--on that
holy and merry Christmas Eve, all these things seem to me to live and
feel; these little figures of clay, shaped by clumsy hands, placed
there with such faith and such devotion, seem to me to receive breath
and being from the joy and enthusiasm that reign. The star which guides
the Magi, tinsel and glass though it is, seems to me to shine and shoot
forth rays. The aureole surrounding the manger where the Holy Child is
lying seems to glow not as a transparency with candles placed behind
it, but with a reflection of celestial light. The tambourines and drums
and songs give out melodies as simple and as pleasing as if they were
echoes of those heard by the shepherds on that first blest Christmas
Eve.
Could there be a festival more joyous, more natural, more tender in
appeal and at the same time more exalted in significance--the birth
of the Child in the rude stable, with only shepherds to wish him joy;
innocence, poverty, simplicity, the very foundations of the magnificent
structure of Christianity? Well may children and the poor keep a merry
Christmas. They bring to God the gifts which please him best,--purity,
faith and love. O, night, well called in Spain "The Good Night,"
blither than the carnival and holy as Holy Week itself!
From _Holy Night_, by FERNAN CABALLERO. Translated by Katharine Lee
Bates
Christmas in Rome
What is the meaning of our English Christmas? What makes it seem so
truly Northern, national, and homely, that we do not like to keep the
feast upon a foreign shore? These questions grew upon me as I stood
one Advent afternoon beneath the Dome of Florence....
The same thought pursued me as I drove to Rome by Siena, still and
brown, uplifted mid her russet hills and wilderness of rolling plain;
by Chiusi, with its sepulchral city of a dead and unknown people;
through the chestnut forests of the Apennines; by Orvieto's rock,
Viterbo's fountains, and the oak-grown solitudes of the Ciminian
heights, from which one looks across the broad Lake of Bolsena and the
Roman plain. Brilliant sunlight, like that of a day in late September,
shone upon the landscape, and I thought--Can this be Christmas? Are
they bringing mistletoe and holly on the country carts into the towns
in far-off England? Is it clear and frosty there, with the tramp of
heels upon the flag, or snowing silently, or foggy, with a round red
sun and cries of warning at the corners of the streets?
I reached Rome on Christmas-eve in time to hear midnight services in
the Sistine Chapel and St. John Lateran, to breathe the dust of decayed
shrines, to wonder at doting cardinals begrimed with snuff, and to
resent the open-mouthed bad taste of my countrymen, who made a mockery
of these palsy-stricken ceremonies. Nine cardinals going to sleep,
nine train-bearers talking scandal, twenty huge, handsome Switzers in
the dress devised by Michael Angelo, some ushers, a choir caged off
by gilded railings, the insolence and eagerness of polyglot tourists,
plenty of wax candles dripping on people's heads, and a continual nasal
drone proceeding from the gilded cage, out of which were caught at
intervals these words, and these only--"Sæcula Sæculorum, amen." Such
was the celebrated Sistine service. The chapel blazed with light, and
very strange did Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, his Sibyls, and his
Prophets appear upon the roof and wall above this motley and unmeaning
crowd.
Next morning I put on my dress-clothes and white tie and repaired,
with groups of Englishmen similarly attired, and of Englishwomen in
black crape (the regulation costume), to St. Peter's. It was a glorious
and cloudless morning; sunbeams streamed in columns from the southern
windows, falling on the vast space full of soldiers and a mingled
mass of every kind of people. Up the nave stood double files of the
pontifical guard. Monks and nuns mixed with the Swiss cuirassiers and
halberds. _Contadini_ crowded round the sacred images, and especially
round the toe of St. Peter. I saw many mothers lift their swaddled
babies up to kiss it. Valets of cardinals, with the invariable red
umbrellas, hung about side chapels and sacristies. Purple-mantled
_monsignori_, like emperor butterflies, floated down the aisles from
sunlight into shadow. Movement, color, and the stir of expectation
made the church alive. We showed our dress-clothes to the guard,
were admitted within their ranks, and solemnly walked up towards the
dome. There, under its broad canopy, stood the altar, glittering with
gold and candles. The choir was carpeted and hung with scarlet. Two
magnificent thrones rose ready for the Pope. Guards of honor, soldiers,
attachés, and the élite of the residents and visitors in Rome were
scattered in groups, picturesquely varied by ecclesiastics of all
orders and degrees. At ten a stirring took place near the great west
door. It opened, and we saw a procession of the Pope and his cardinals.
Before him marched the singers and the blowers of the silver trumpets,
making the most liquid melody. Then came his Cap of Maintenance and
three tiaras; then a company of mitred priests; next the cardinals in
scarlet; and last, aloft beneath a canopy upon the shoulders of men,
and flanked by the mystic fans, advanced the Pope himself, swaying to
and fro like a Lama or an Aztec king. Still the trumpets blew most
silverly, and still the people knelt; and as he came, we knelt and had
his blessing. Then he took his state and received homage. After this
the choir began to sing a mass of Palestrina's, and the deacons robed
the Pope. Marvellous putting on and taking off of robes and tiaras
and mitres ensued, during which there was much bowing and praying and
burning of incense. At last, when he had reached the highest stage of
sacrificial sanctity, he proceeded to the altar, waited on by cardinals
and bishops. Having censed it carefully, he took a higher throne and
divested himself of part of his robes. Then the mass went on in earnest
till the moment of consecration, when it paused, the Pope descended
from his throne, passed down the choir, and reached the altar. Every
one knelt; the shrill bell tinkled; the silver trumpets blew; the
air became sick and heavy with incense, so that sun and candle-light
swooned in an atmosphere of odorous cloud-wreaths. The whole church
trembled, hearing the strange subtle music vibrate in the dome, and
seeing the Pope with his own hands lift Christ's body from the altar
and present it to the people. An old parish priest, pilgrim from some
valley of the Apennines, who knelt beside me, cried and quivered with
excess of adoration. The great tombs around, the sculptured saints
and angels, the dome, the volumes of light and incense and unfamiliar
melody, the hierarchy ministrant, the white and central figure of the
Pope, the multitude, made up an overpowering scene.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS
Christmas in Burgundy
Every year at the approach of Advent, people refresh their memories,
clear their throats, and begin preluding, in the long evenings by
the fireside, those carols whose invariable and eternal theme is the
coming of the Messiah. They take from old closets pamphlets, little
collections begrimed with dust and smoke, to which the press, and
sometimes the pen, has consigned these songs; and as soon as the first
Sunday of Advent sounds, they gossip, they gad about, they sit together
by the fireside, sometimes at one house, sometimes at another, taking
turns in paying for the chestnuts and white wine, but singing with
one common voice the grotesque praises of the _Little Jesus_. There
are very few villages even, which, during all the evenings of Advent,
do not hear some of these curious canticles shouted in their streets,
to the nasal drone of bagpipes. In this case the minstrel comes as a
reinforcement to the singers at the fireside; he brings and adds his
dose of joy (spontaneous or mercenary, it matters little which) to the
joy which breathes around the hearth-stone; and when the voices vibrate
and resound, one voice more is always welcome. There, it is not the
purity of the notes which makes the concert, but the quantity,--_non
qualitas, sed quantitas_; then (to finish at once with the minstrel)
when the Saviour has at length been born in the manger, and the
beautiful Christmas Eve is passed, the rustic piper makes his round
among the houses, where every one compliments and thanks him, and,
moreover, gives him in small coin the price of the shrill notes with
which he has enlivened the evening entertainments.
More or less until Christmas Eve, all goes on in this way among our
devout singers, with the difference of some gallons of wine or some
hundreds of chestnuts. But this famous eve once come, the scale is
pitched upon a higher key; the closing evening must be a memorable
one. The toilet is begun at nightfall; then comes the hour of supper,
admonishing divers appetites; and groups, as numerous as possible, are
formed to take together this comfortable evening repast. The supper
finished, a circle gathers around the hearth, which is arranged and
set in order this evening after a particular fashion, and which at a
later hour of the night is to become the object of special interest to
the children. On the burning brands an enormous log has been placed.
This log assuredly does not change its nature, but it changes its
name during this evening: it is called the _Suche_ (the Yule-log).
"Look you," say they to the children, "if you are good this evening,
Noël" (for with children one must always personify) "will rain down
sugar-plums in the night." And the children sit demurely, keeping as
quiet as their turbulent little natures will permit. The groups of
older persons, not always as orderly as the children, seize this good
opportunity to surrender themselves with merry hearts and boisterous
voices to the chanted worship of the miraculous Noël. For this final
solemnity, they have kept the most powerful, the most enthusiastic, the
most electrifying carols. Noël! Noël! Noël! this magic word resounds
on all sides; it seasons every sauce, it is served up with every
course. Of the thousands of canticles which are heard on this famous
eve, ninety-nine in a hundred begin and end with this word; which
is, one may say, their Alpha and Omega, their crown and footstool.
This last evening, the merry-making is prolonged. Instead of retiring
at ten or eleven o'clock, as is generally done on all the preceding
evenings, they wait for the stroke of midnight: this word sufficiently
proclaims to what ceremony they are going to repair. For ten minutes or
a quarter of an hour, the bells have been calling the faithful with a
triple-bobmajor; and each one, furnished with a little taper streaked
with various colors (the Christmas Candle) goes through the crowded
streets, where the lanterns are dancing like Will-o'-the-Wisps, at
the impatient summons of the multitudinous chimes. It is the Midnight
Mass. Once inside the church, they hear with more or less piety the
Mass, emblematic of the coming of the Messiah. Then in tumult and
great haste they return homeward, always in numerous groups; they
salute the Yule-log; they pay homage to the hearth; they sit down at
table; and, amid songs which reverberate louder than ever, make this
meal of after-Christmas, so long looked for, so cherished, so joyous,
so noisy, and which it has been thought fit to call, we hardly know
why, _Rossignon_. The supper eaten at nightfall is no impediment,
as you may imagine, to the appetite's returning; above all, if the
going to and from church has made the devout eaters feel some little
shafts of the sharp and biting north-wind. _Rossignon_ then goes on
merrily,--sometimes far into the morning hours; but, nevertheless,
gradually throats grow hoarse, stomachs are filled, the Yule-log burns
out, and at last the hour arrives when each one, as best he may,
regains his domicile and his bed, and puts with himself between the
sheets the material for a good sore-throat, or a good indigestion, for
the morrow. Previous to this, care has been taken to place in the
slippers, or wooden shoes of the children, the sugar-plums, which shall
be for them, on their waking, the welcome fruits of the Christmas log.
In the Glossary, the _Suche_, or Yule-log, is thus defined:--
"This is a huge log, which is placed on the fire on Christmas Eve, and
which in Burgundy is called, on this account, _lai Suche de Noël_. Then
the father of the family, particularly among the middle classes, sings
solemnly Christmas carols with his wife and children, the smallest of
whom he sends into the corner to pray that the Yule-log may bear him
some sugar-plums. Meanwhile, little parcels of them are placed under
each end of the log, and the children come and pick them up, believing,
in good faith, that the great log has borne them."
M. FERTIAULT. Translated by Henry W. Longfellow
Christmas in Germany
BERLIN, _December_ 25, 1871