The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Christmas, by Thomas K. Hervey This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Book of Christmas descriptive of the Customs, Ceremonies, Traditions, Superstitions, Fun, Feeling, and Festivities of the Christmas Season Author: Thomas K. Hervey Illustrator: R. Seymour Release Date: April 30, 2013 [EBook #42622] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF CHRISTMAS *** Produced by Emmy, Heather Clark and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) The Book of Christmas frontispiece CHRISTMAS AND HIS CHILDREN. Title page 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 Title The Christmas Season [i] BY THOMAS K. HERVEY. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. SEYMOUR. man and woman carrying boxes on their backs 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 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. [ii] [iii] [iv] 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 [iv] [v] [vi] 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 [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] 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 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, [12] [13] [1] [14] 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. [15] [16] [17] [18] 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 [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] 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. [24] [25] [26] Part First. THE CHRISTMAS SEASON. Two gentlement shaking hands "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 [27] [28] [29] [30] 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. children standing around a glowing bowl on a table feeding themselves 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 [31] [32] [33] 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 [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] 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. The Christian festival of the Nativity, with which these ancient celebrations have been incorporated, appears to have been appointed at a very early period after the establishment of the new religion. Its first positive footsteps are met with in the second century, during the reign of the Emperor Concordius; but the decretal epistles furnish us with traces of it more remote. At whatever period, however, its formal institution is to be placed, there can be no doubt that an event so striking in its manner and so important in itself would be annually commemorated amongst Christians from the days of the first apostles, who survived our Lord's resurrection. As to the actual year of the birth of Christ, as well as the period of the year at which it took place, great uncertainty seems to exist, and many controversies have been maintained. One of the theories on the subject, held to be amongst the most probable, places that event upwards of five years earlier than the vulgar era, which latter, however, both as regards the year and season of the year, was a tradition of the primitive Church. In the first ages of that Church, and up till the Council of Nice, the celebration of the Nativity and that of the Epiphany were united on the 25th of December, from a belief that the birth of Christ was simultaneous with the appearance of the star in the East which revealed it to the Gentiles. The time of the year at which the Nativity fell has been placed, by contending opinions, at the period of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, at that of the Passover, and again at that of the Feast of the Expiation, whose date corresponds with the close of our September. Clemens Alexandrinus informs us that it was kept by many Christians in April, and by others in the Egyptian month Pachon, which answers to our May. Amongst the arguments which have been produced against the theory that places its occurrence in the depth of winter, one has been gathered from that passage in the sacred history of the event which states that "there were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night." It is an argument, however, which does not seem very conclusive in a pastoral country and Eastern climate. Besides the employment which this question has afforded to the learned, it has, in times of religious excitement, been debated with much Puritanical virulence and sectarian rancor. For the purposes of commemoration, however, it is unimportant whether the celebration shall...