I found a nice second hand book on Christmas Traditions from 1931 at the Guide Dogs for the Blind biggest book sale, and around this Christmas season, thought it might be interesting to share it with my readers. Instead of my regular blog, I'm taking time off and posting some extracts from this here.
In the Yule log glow – Part 1
By William Mauir Ald
CHRISTMAS Eve was the most hallowed night in all the Church year. In Hamlet, Shakespeare alludes to its great sanctity, and indeed to the whole season, which was then twelve nights long. Marcellus declares:
Some ‘say that ever ’gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
Horatio replies: ,
So have I heard and do in part believe it.‘
Some, however, have been at a loss to know where the great dramatist could have gotten this idea; for such were the weird beings that roamed at large during this season of darkness, moaning winds and howling tempests, that nights were to many far from wholesome. To our forbears, elfins, goblins, ghosts, dragons and other sinister and nameless beings were very real.
St. Paul in his Epistle: and Robert Burns in his Tam O’Sban1er show a like familiarity with the demons of darkness. At all times, especially at Christmas, they delighted by their mischievous pranks in disturbing the peace and happiness of mankind.
With all this in view Shakespeare's lines have little justification; but when a glance is cast in the direction of Christian thought and sentiment they do not appear at all unnatural. At the moment of the Saviour's birth it was fondly believed a great calm ensued, as if Nature paused in reverent adoration.
Milton, in his magnificent "Hymn to the Nativity," alludes to this universal tranquillity:
But peaceful was the night,
Wherein the Prince of light
His reign of peace upon the earth began:
The winds with wonder whist
Smoothly the water kist
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.
And when at the hour of midnight the Babe was born celestial music was conceived to break forth from the skies, while all Nature joined in the spirit of celebration. Even the animals were given a voice suitable to the time.
A beautiful old English Broadsheet pictures the Holy Family on the night of the Nativity surrounded by angels and shepherds, and also by other peculiarly interesting attendants. A woman is depicted carrying a basket of fruit on her head. Close by is a man with a pair of bagpipes. But the most curious touch of all appears in connection with certain birds and beasts which are shown with Latin inscriptions coming from their mouths.
The cock crows Christus natus est (Christ is born). The raven inquires Quamdo (When)? The crow replies Hac nocte (This' night). An ox moos Ubi (Where)? and a lamb in the foreground bleats out Bethlehem. In a kneeling posture a group of angels gaze upon the Infant, while a voice from above sings Gloria in exclesis (Glory be on high). Encircling the picture is an explanatory verse, half of which runs: "Here's a Wonder never knowne, a King a Manger makes his Throne." “
All these sentiments variously expressed in Scripture, Milton and the old Carol Sheet, belong to the very essence of poetry. Poets have always sought and found in Nature a sense of correspondence with their own feelings. As on the first Sacred Night, so on every recurring Christmas Eve. In Christian thought at its best there seemed no place for aught else but rejoicing. The cattle in their stalls, the farmers of old verily believed, fell down on their knees in homage to the new born King; while husbandmen declared that the hybernating bees awoke from their winter slumbers to hum their canticle of praise; but this was only heard by the pure in heart.
These are but so many naive expressions of the common belief in the wonderful sanctity of Christmas Eve. Many would have little difficulty in descending from these fancies of poetry to the facts of prose. The coming of Christ into the world, it would be shown, did mean the consecration of the whole universe, the cleansing of the human imagination and the eventual end of all supernatural enemies. The tormentors lingered long, it is true, and they have not all disappeared yet; but to those who hold the faith of the Incarnation the air and the heavens have been washed of a hundred abominations. "
There is no other religion,” writes T. R. Glover, "with anything like the bright atmosphere of love that the Incarnation makes. The terrors go like the night-fears of children when the room is flooded with light, and one they love stands by them." ' The Christmas Gospel is Immanuel, God with us, in all and over all, blessed for evermore.
But it is high time to put the lighted taper to the Yule Log. No little of the charm of Christmas lies in the fact that it belongs to the season of frost and snow. Transplanted to another time of the year, or into another clime which knows not the icy blasts of Boreas, it would be something altogether different.
Thrice happy is the home, however humble, that possesses an open hearth. This is the very soul of the house and nothing can ever be made to take its place. A radiator is extremely effective in our cold climate; but it is utterly devoid of poetry; while the gas log, that blazing block of utility, knows not even the name of romance. It was not beside either that James Russell Lowell was moved to write:
O thou of home and guardian Lat!
What warm protection dost thou bend
Round curtained talk of friend with friend,
While the gray snow-storm, held aloof,
To softest outline rounds the roof,
Or the rude North with baffled strain
Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane!
Some, however, have been at a loss to know where the great dramatist could have gotten this idea; for such were the weird beings that roamed at large during this season of darkness, moaning winds and howling tempests, that nights were to many far from wholesome. To our forbears, elfins, goblins, ghosts, dragons and other sinister and nameless beings were very real.
St. Paul in his Epistle: and Robert Burns in his Tam O’Sban1er show a like familiarity with the demons of darkness. At all times, especially at Christmas, they delighted by their mischievous pranks in disturbing the peace and happiness of mankind.
With all this in view Shakespeare's lines have little justification; but when a glance is cast in the direction of Christian thought and sentiment they do not appear at all unnatural. At the moment of the Saviour's birth it was fondly believed a great calm ensued, as if Nature paused in reverent adoration.
Milton, in his magnificent "Hymn to the Nativity," alludes to this universal tranquillity:
But peaceful was the night,
Wherein the Prince of light
His reign of peace upon the earth began:
The winds with wonder whist
Smoothly the water kist
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.
And when at the hour of midnight the Babe was born celestial music was conceived to break forth from the skies, while all Nature joined in the spirit of celebration. Even the animals were given a voice suitable to the time.
A beautiful old English Broadsheet pictures the Holy Family on the night of the Nativity surrounded by angels and shepherds, and also by other peculiarly interesting attendants. A woman is depicted carrying a basket of fruit on her head. Close by is a man with a pair of bagpipes. But the most curious touch of all appears in connection with certain birds and beasts which are shown with Latin inscriptions coming from their mouths.
The cock crows Christus natus est (Christ is born). The raven inquires Quamdo (When)? The crow replies Hac nocte (This' night). An ox moos Ubi (Where)? and a lamb in the foreground bleats out Bethlehem. In a kneeling posture a group of angels gaze upon the Infant, while a voice from above sings Gloria in exclesis (Glory be on high). Encircling the picture is an explanatory verse, half of which runs: "Here's a Wonder never knowne, a King a Manger makes his Throne." “
All these sentiments variously expressed in Scripture, Milton and the old Carol Sheet, belong to the very essence of poetry. Poets have always sought and found in Nature a sense of correspondence with their own feelings. As on the first Sacred Night, so on every recurring Christmas Eve. In Christian thought at its best there seemed no place for aught else but rejoicing. The cattle in their stalls, the farmers of old verily believed, fell down on their knees in homage to the new born King; while husbandmen declared that the hybernating bees awoke from their winter slumbers to hum their canticle of praise; but this was only heard by the pure in heart.
These are but so many naive expressions of the common belief in the wonderful sanctity of Christmas Eve. Many would have little difficulty in descending from these fancies of poetry to the facts of prose. The coming of Christ into the world, it would be shown, did mean the consecration of the whole universe, the cleansing of the human imagination and the eventual end of all supernatural enemies. The tormentors lingered long, it is true, and they have not all disappeared yet; but to those who hold the faith of the Incarnation the air and the heavens have been washed of a hundred abominations. "
There is no other religion,” writes T. R. Glover, "with anything like the bright atmosphere of love that the Incarnation makes. The terrors go like the night-fears of children when the room is flooded with light, and one they love stands by them." ' The Christmas Gospel is Immanuel, God with us, in all and over all, blessed for evermore.
But it is high time to put the lighted taper to the Yule Log. No little of the charm of Christmas lies in the fact that it belongs to the season of frost and snow. Transplanted to another time of the year, or into another clime which knows not the icy blasts of Boreas, it would be something altogether different.
Thrice happy is the home, however humble, that possesses an open hearth. This is the very soul of the house and nothing can ever be made to take its place. A radiator is extremely effective in our cold climate; but it is utterly devoid of poetry; while the gas log, that blazing block of utility, knows not even the name of romance. It was not beside either that James Russell Lowell was moved to write:
O thou of home and guardian Lat!
What warm protection dost thou bend
Round curtained talk of friend with friend,
While the gray snow-storm, held aloof,
To softest outline rounds the roof,
Or the rude North with baffled strain
Shoulders the frost-starred window-pane!
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