In the Yule log glow – Part 4

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 4
By William Mauir Ald


To our ancestors of the Latin Church Christmas was the Feast of Lights, so called after a Jewish Festival by that name, whose forms of illumination were early incorporated into the Nativity celebration and made to symbolize the fact that the darkness of the world was past and the true light now shone.

The candle lights on the Christmas tree find their best explanation from this background. Everything about the Christmas fire and lights was considered very sacred. People in old England would not take the ashes out on Christmas Day "for fear of throwing them in our Saviour’s face”!

Many attempts have been made to explain this curious notion. It has been classed with another which held it unlucky to give out fire at the season; because the household spirits might in that way be banished from the home; and they were not to be treated in that manner. Without disputing this, another context of thought and sentiment may be suggested.

The sense that what was once sacrosanct could not cease to be so was very strong with those of other days. Anyone familiar with sacramental history knows how troublesome a thought it was to know what to do with the remainder of holy elements. Almost any method of disposal seemed irreverent. The aversion from throwing out the ashes on Christmas day is probably indicative of a similar misgiving.

But the Christmas fire was also the author of peace and concord. Chambers in his Book of Day: records that if a wayfarer chanced to see the great log being carried into a house he doffed his hat with becoming reverence; because he knew how potent were its powers for good at the Christmas season.

Within the sphere of its genial warmth old wrongs would be forgotten, animosities would disappear, and families alienated through misunderstanding, jealousy and strife would again be united. Under the spell of the burning Yule log friendships were renewed and loves reborn. These beautiful sentiments of Charles Mackay could equally well have been thrown by him around the smiling hearth:

Ye who have scorned each other
Or injured friend or brother,
In this fast-fading year;
Ye who, by word or deed,
Have made a kind heart bleed,
Come gather here.
Let sinned against and sinning,
Forget their strife's beginning;
Be links no longer broken,
Be sweet forgiveness spoken,
Under the holly bough.

Ye who have loved each other,
Sister and friend and brother,
In this fast-fading year:
Mother, and sire, and child,
Young man and maiden mild,
Come gather here;
And let your hearts grow fonder,
As memory shall ponder
Each past unbroken vow.
Old loves and younger wooing,
Are sweet in the renewing,
Under the holly bough.'

Nor were those who had gone from the family circle forgotten. With their voices wanting and their chairs vacant, how could they be? "Would they were with us still," says the old ballad. Though such thoughts belonged more properly to All-Hallows, yet they followed the Christmas fire.

At an early stage in the history of the Yule log the spirits of the departed were believed to be present and actually imminent in the glowing embers of the hearth. Thoughts of the departed are present, if unexpressed, in the ceremonies of the father of Frédéric Mistral.

The glass of wine poured over the wood is clearly a link with the times when such libations were offered to those no longer visibly present in the home, but still there.

Not thus would any now conceive "those whom they have loved and lost awhile"; yet, in the light of a purer faith, still "Mounting on love’s perpetual fire."

In the Yule log glow – Part 3

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 3
By William Mauir Ald

In old England Christmas was indeed happy, hilariously merry. It was, of course, no new thing in human experience for feast and frolic to be conjoined with religious rejoicing; but seldom have they had so congenial an association as among the English in Plantagenet and Tudor times.

All through the Middle Ages the two rivers of riot and religion, from whida many, high and low, rich and poor, contrived to drink deeply at Christmas, flowed together till they were parted at the Reformation. In the Puritan Era the former ran underground. At the Restoration of Charles II it reappeared and was hailed with joy and acclamation.

Alas! it was no longer the mountain torrent of roaring cataracts and sparkling cascades, but a comparatively prosaic stream wending its sluggish way through fen country, until weired up by Dickens and made to tumble merrily once more in the sunlight of his genius.

It is curious that many of the old Christmas games which enlivened the time are now mere names. Antiquarians look with inquisitive eyes at these intriguing words—-Feed the Dove, Rowland Bo, Shoeing the Wild Mare, Steal the White Loaf, the Parson has lost his Cloak, and have not the remotest idea what they mean.

But even if they did they might not appeal, like Hot Cockles, to this age of ours, less interested in entertaining itself than in being entertained. Yet the reader can decide. Hot Cockles was not only a favorite gambol in old time Christmas, but a game of great antiquity. It was evidently popular with the ancient Egyptians, as representations on their tombs suggest; and writers have loved to depict the shepherds in Arcady delighting in this disport.

Imagine a large room and a goodly number of guests assembled. One -person, blindfolded, and in a kneeling posture, puts his head in the lap of another sitting on a stool or chair. Placing his hand on his back, palm upwards, he cries, "Hot cockles, hot!”

It was then the privilege of each player to strike the open hand; and if the kneeling one guessed right, the striker took his place, if not a forfeit might be exacted. The sentiments provoked varied a good deal according to the nature and force of the impact.

One man, seemingly much distressed by a particular slap which he received, appealed to Mr. Spectator (1711) and said: "I am a footman in a great family and am in love with the housemaid. We were all at hot-cockles last night in the hall these holidays, when I lay down and was blinded she pulled off her shoe and hit me with the heel such a rap as almost broke my head to pieces. Pray, Sir, was this love or spite?"

What comforting word reached him by way of reply is not stated. He, unfortunate man, hoped, no doubt, to be able to say like Cuddy in one of John Gay's poems, belonging to about the same year:

As at hot-cockles once I laid me down
I felt the weighty hand of many a clown.
Buxoma gave a gentle tap and 1
Quick rose and read soft mischief in bet eye.‘

During the eighteenth century, however "among persons of distinction," there would seem to have been as little enthusiasm about Christmas as about religion itself. It is not infrequently referred to as a rather dreary day, almost the acme of insipidity, a day to be thankful for—when over. A Christmas game appropriate to this mood was called "yawning for a Cheshire cheese."

Near the hour of midnight, when all were beginning to succumb to the seductions of the sandman, the languid sport commenced. Whoso yawned the widest and the longest, "and at the same time so naturally as to produce the most yawns in the spectators, was pronounced the victor and carried home the cheese as his reward!"

But the Yule Log had other meanings than those associated with the Wassail Bowl, omens of matrimony, feast and frolic. Its light was sacramental. People loved to see the firelight dance on the roof and walls and would even bring their pewter, and also silver, if they were fortunate to possess any, within the orbit of its gleaming grace.

Of what ancient pagan sacrament or belief was this the pleasant survival? For long the wood fire was the only form of illumination in the homes. The candles appeared much later and though prettier could never mean any more than the glowing flames of the immemorial block on the family hearth.

The practice of placing burning candles in the windows on Christmas Eve is a continuation of an Irish custom, bound up with the thought of the Christ Child out alone in the cold and dark and requiring to be lighted on His way. What charm this had on a desolate heath is largely lost in a great city.

This is only to say that the real romance of Christmas belonged to the countryside; and as this has slowly, but surely, changed, the other has tended to fade away. When the candles came to be used they were lit with the Yule Log and placed in any conspicuous place, on the mantelpiece, or the dais.

In Norway as the candles burned they were conceived to radiate blessing. Many things, including clothes and food, were spread out so that the beneficent rays might fall upon them. The blazing block, however, radiating warmth, and turning, as it were, night into day, was also emblematic of Christ as the light of the world.

In the Yule log glow – Part 2

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 2
By William Mauir Ald
Once a number of friends seated around the fireside fell to discussing what after all was the crowning glory of Christmas.

Many and varied were the views expressed. Some declared in favour of the “flowing bowl." Others leaned toward the more substantial wares of the table, mince pie, plum pudding, roast beef, turkey and the like. One maiden lady, some- what timidly, announced her preference for the bewitching mistletoe! But when all opinions were sifted and weighed it was found that the place of supreme importance was accorded to the Christmas fire.

This was pronounced the burning heart of the season, the living symbol of all the warm emotions and bright thoughts appropriate to the time and the one amalgamator of age and sex. Tastes might vary concerning matters of food; but who is there who can gainsay a fire? Even to-day, from the domestic point of view, Christmas is as much as ever the time for family gatherings around the old fireside.

Certain it is that the gleaming hearth was the centre of social gravity to our ancestors in days past. Many of the old customs associated with the burning of the Yule Log have passed away; but it is pleasant to recall some of them, for they are both interesting and meaningful. The kind of wood used varied a good deal in different parts of Europe and even in the same country; but as a rule it consisted of oak, pine, ash, or olive. In Scotland the birch was the popular wood.

But for some reason the log was stripped of its bark; whence the proverb descriptive of the person devoid of this world's gear, "He's as bare as the birk at Yule.” Not infrequently it was the rugged root of one of these trees, and the more fantastically shaped it was, the better. As to size it was consistent with the capacity of the fireplace, which was always ample. The bringing in of the Yule Log was everywhere a joyous occasion, accompanied with much fun and frolic, especially among the younger members of the family.

Clement A.Miles, drawing upon the Memoir: of Frédéric Mistral (b. 1830), affords us a picture of how it was done in the boyhood days of this Provencal poet. The account will show an interesting mixture of pagan and Christian sentiment.

“Walking in line we bore it home, headed by the oldest at one end, and I the last born, bringing up the rear. Three times we made the tour of the kitchen, then, arrived at the flagstones of the hearth, my father solemnly poured over the log a glass of wine, with the dedicatory words: ‘Joy, joy. May God shower joy upon us, my dear children. Christmas brings us all good things. God give us grace to see the New Year, and if we do not increase in numbers may we at all events not decrease.’

“In chorus we responded: ‘Joy, joy, joy!’ and lifted the log on the fire dogs. Then as the first flame leapt up my father would cross himself, saying, ’Burn the log, O fire’ and with that we all sat down to the table.‘

In England the ceremonies were quite pagan, but none the less delightful on that account. The poet Herrick tells us all about them, and even descends into many niceties of detail. The approach of the Christmas block was hailed with music and general rejoicing:

Come, bring with a noise,
My merric merrie boyes,
The Christmas Log to the firing . . .
On your Psaltries play,
That sweet luck may
Come while the Log is a teending.

When placed in the hearth it could only be lighted with a last year's brand; and this oflice required clean hands:

Wash your hands, or else the fire
Will not teend to your desire;
Unwasht hands, ye Maidens, know,
Dead the Fire, though ye blow.‘
(c. 1650)

It was intended that the Log should keep smouldering through the twelve days of Christmas; and so be easily blown into flame, as occasion might require, by the aid of a pair of bellows.

In certain parts of England it was an ashen fagot that was used, and the accompanying merriment assumed a form all its own. The single block of wood, or it might be a number of sticks, were bound, or hooped, with strips of the same tree, or the hazel, and the number was seven, or nine. The strips were carefully prepared in different degrees of size and strength. The barrel-like log was then laid in the spacious reredos and was soon ablaze. The bands were the first to be attacked by the flames, and as each snapped with a loud report, the master of the house was expected to furnish a fresh bowl of cider:

The pond'rous ashcn-fagot, from the yard,
The jolly farmer to his crowded hall
Conveys with speed; where, on the rising flames
(Already fed with store of massy brands)
It blazes soon; nine bandages it bears;
And as they each disjoin (so custom wills),
A mighty jug of sparkling cyder's brought,
With brandy mixed, to elevate the guests.

The matrimonial element, too, had a place in these ceremonies. The rings were often associated with pairs of lovers; and the order in which they surrendered to the flames announced the sequence of their weddings to the great excitement of all concerned.

The particular choice of an ashen fagot is variously explained. According to one legend it was by an ash wood fire that the Christ Child was first washed and dressed at Bethlehem. Having thus cheered and brightened the original Holy Night, it was only proper that it should ever after be used to warm and lighten the hearth on Christmas Eve.

It would take long to tell of all that was enjoyed while the Yule log flickered on the hearth, not only on Christmas Eve, but throughout the whole Season to Epiphany. Bores and wallflowers were not welcome anywhere:

Make we may bothe more and lasse,
For now is tbe time of Cristémas.’

Lett no man cum into this hall,
Grome, page, nor yet marshall,
But that sum sport he bring with all;
For now is the time of Cristémas!

If that he say he can not sing,
Some oder sport then lett him bring,
That it may please at this festing;
For now is the time of Cristémas!

If he say he can nought do,
Then for my love aske him no mo,
But to the stokkes then let him go;
For now is the time of Cristémas! "

(Before 1536)

[“Stokkes". The Lord of Misrule at Christmas kept stocks, like the Earl of Gloucester in King Lear or any other lord, and exercised his festival jurisdiction by condemning to them ofienders against the amenities of the revel." Early English Lyrics, p. 373 ]

In the Yule log glow – Part 1

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!

A History of Carols – Part 4

I found a nice second hand book on Christmas Traditions from 1931 at the Guide Dogs for the Blind biggest book sale, and as Christmas approaches, 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.

A History of Carols - Part 4

By William Mauir Ald

The Franciscans entered England in the year 1224; " The Child is laid in the crib, so hearty and so rare! My little Hans would be nothing by His side, were he finer than he is. Coal-black as cherries are His eyes, the rest of Him is white as chalk. His pretty hands are right tender and delicate, I touched Him carefully. Then He gave me a smile and a deep sigh too. If you were mine, thought I, you'd grow a merry boy. At home in the kitchen I'd comfortably house you; out here in the stable the cold wind comes in at every corner. (Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, pp. 46-7.) and their appearance "surpassed romance in its fascinations."

Though the Grey Friars afterwards turned aside from the straight and narrow path, nothing could altogether destroy the homely and wholesome impulse which they communicated to the Church, to Christianity, and to learning, or could ever dim the luster of St. Francis.

By the fourteenth century, due to a variety of influences, the Franciscan not the least, English carols are well on the way. At first they are freely interlaced by Latin phrases and betray a clerical origin. This touch is very interesting and would tend, for the writers at least, to keep the new forms of praise linked with the old wellsprings of devotion. Nor would they be entirely meaningless to the people; for they were such as belonged to the stated forms of worship with which they were more or less familiar.

In time, however, as English became quite adequate to voice the popular spiritual mood, the Latin lines decrease in number and eventually disappear. Then came the pure English carols -those "masterpieces of tantalizing simplicity." That clerics were busy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in England helping people to enter with spiritual joy into the meaning of Christmas is a matter of considerable interest. We are able to form a fairly clear picture of one who lived to help on the movement. John Audelay of Haughmond Abbey, Shropshire, placed (c. 1430) over a collection of twenty-five Christmas carols this inscription in red letters:

I pray yow syrus boothe moore and las

syng these caroles in cristemas.

This group of carols was printed for the first time about twenty years ago. Not much is known of

Audelay, save what can be gleaned from his manuscript. He may have been a gay Goliard in his early days; but his writings show him in later life engrossed with more spiritual themes and labouring under acute distress of body and mind:

As I lay seke in my langure

In an abbay here be west,

This boke I made with gret dolour,

When I myght not slep ne haue no rest.

[From MS Douce 302, preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, by E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick, Modern Language Review, Vol. V. No. 4, October, 1910; Vol. VI. No. 1, January, 1911.]

Though "deeff, seik, and blynd," as he described himself, he was yet able to make "this bok by goddus grace." Sir Edmund Chambers pictures him turning from a "tedious versifying of the whole duty of man" to Christmas carols and marking the change in the manuscript with the rubricated couplet already quoted.

How the old priest expected "these caroles" to be used is not so clear; but probably "by wassailing neighbours," as has been suggested, "who made their rounds at Christmastide to drink a cup and bring good fortune on the house." Yet not all would be very suitable for this purpose. Some are severely ethical in tone, as much so as anything the author of Piers Ploughman wrote, or John Wycliffe. Others are deeply penitential. The last verse of XXV may be given; and it is not the only one in which composition proceeded with "teer of ye" by this pioneer of English Christmas Song:

I pray youe seris par charyte

redis this caral reuerently

ffore I mad hit with wepyng eye

your broder ion the blynd awdlay.

The brightest are those which sing the praises of the Virgin and the Child and the Christmas Saints. The four lines just quoted belong to a carol addressed to St. Francis. This is revealing. Though an inmate of an Augustinian Abbey he was devoted to the Umbrian Saint, that "sweet-voiced troubadour of the Holy Spirit, the joculator Dei," whose joyous gospel wherever known and loved broke inevitably into happy Christmas song. It is not difficult to see what John Audelay was striving after.

Like others, no doubt, whose names have been lost, he was trying on the one hand to redeem Christmas from its too pagan character, and on the other to import into it new strains of holy mirth. As people were wont on the return of Yuletide to eat and drink, sing and make merry, within and without the houses and halls; so he would have them hail the happy season, also sacred, with notes of religious rejoicing. He desired that through all the fleshly and material dress of the Festival there might shine "bright shoots of everlastingness."

This was to be accomplished in part by providing spiritual songs modeled after the manner of secular ones. The new praise would not supplant but supplement outside the Church the Latin hymns and rites. To the plain-song melodies, more appropriate, doubtless, when eyes and hearts strained toward the place of the "tabernacle," would be added the more rollicking rhythms of folk song in which all could heartily share in their homes and in the open air. To this end labored John Audelay at the beginning of the fifteenth century and not in vain. "Already," writes Sir Edmund Chambers, "the chanted question comes nearer and nearer along the crooked medieval street; and the clear voices peal out the exultant answer to the tingling stars":

What tythyngis bryngst us messangere

Of cristis borth this new eris day?

-Seche wonder tydyngus ye mow here,

That maydon & modur is won i fere,

And lady is of hye aray . . .

A babe is borne of hye natewre,

A prynce of pese that ever schal be,

Off heven & erthe he hath the cewre.

His lordchip is eternete,-

Seche wonder tythyngis ye may here . . . "

[Tythyngis, tidings. I fere, together, i.e. while a mother still a virgin. Natewre, nature. Cewre, cure, i.e. care of souls.]

[Percy Dearmer, R. Vaughan Williams and Martin Shaw (Ox. Univ. Press, 1928). No lover of carols can afford to be without this book.]

It is a far cry from John Audelay in the second quarter of the fifteenth century to the present day editors of The Oxford Book of Carols," but the spirit in both is strikingly the same. In the Preface they pay tribute to "Francis of Assisi-that most Christian of saints, who as scenic artist at the Greccio  crib was the precursor if not the parent of the carol" ; and to the Chantry Priest of Haughmond Abbey, who lived to encourage, if he did not institute, the practice of singing spiritual carols at Christmas time in England. They are avowedly the modern successors of both.

From the fifteenth century onward the use of carols at the happy festival was held in the highest esteem by all classes of the people. In their way and place they would seem to have been as much enjoyed as the ballads. Not only did they grace the Christmas board in royal and academic circles; they also brightened the season "for the industrious maid and humble laborer." With the seventeenth century a change set in; and by the middle of the nineteenth the time honored custom had passed out almost completely.

"There is no doubt," writes Miss Edith Rickert, "that Puritanism is to blame for the extinction of the practice of carol-singing, both in that it discouraged the excesses of Christmas revelry and in that it made but scant use of music as a means of religious experience. I doubt whether any good carols, either religious or secular, originated between the end of the seventeenth century and the middle of the nineteenth." [Ancient English Christmas Carols, xxiif.]

The passing away of the fine old English custom of men and women going out on Christmas Eve to sing to people "Love and Joye, come to you," and of the beautiful Welsh practice of caroling to the music of the harp at the doors of houses, is a story which even a Puritan must read with some resentful sadness.

Sixty years ago when William Henry Husk was editing his Songs of the Nativity he expressed the hope that carol singing in the best sense would yet revive. It is, happily, coming to its own once more. The time would seem to be ripe for a revival of the old Broadsheet, or something like it, which rendered such valuable service in days past. Never before in the history of this type of song has such rich provision been made for genuine caroling at the Christmas season.

In the Oxford Book of Carols there is a choice collection, old, traditional and new, "clean and merry as the sunshine," and all set to unspeakably beautiful airs. The modern editors are anxious in our day, as John Audelay was in his, to add that brighter note to festive song characteristic of the carol. And in the tones of Robert Herrick, the last of the old English Carol writers:

What sweeter music can we bring

Than a carol, for to sing

The birth of this our heavenly King?

Awake the voice! Awake the string:

We see him come, and know him ours,

Who with his sunshine and his showers

Turns all the patient ground to flowers.

Dark and dull night, fly hence away,

And give the honour to this day,

That sees December turned to May,

If we may ask the reason, say:

The darling of the world is come,

And fit it is we find a room

To welcome him. The nobler part

Of all the house here is the heart:

Which we will give him, and bequeath

This holly and this ivy wreath,

To do him honour who's our King,

And Lord of all this revelling: "

[As arranged in the Oxford Book of Carols, pp. 246-7]

A History of Carols – Part 3

I found a nice second hand book on Christmas Traditions from 1931 at the Guide Dogs for the Blind biggest book sale, and as Christmas approaches, 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.

A History of Carols – Part 3

By William Mauir Ald

To the plain people Bethlehem seemed far away. They missed the magnificent strains of the Latin hymns and offices. He would bring the Nativity near, near, right home to their hearts, as the Blessed Francis had dramatically done at Greccio. "Come" he sings again in words which suggest, and may well have inspired, many a celebrated painting:

Come and look upon her child

Nestling in the hay!

See his fair arms opened wide,

On her lap to play!

And she tucks him by her side,

Cloaks him as she may;

Gives her paps unto his mouth,

Where his lips are laid . . .

She with left hand cradling

Rocked and hushed her boy,

And with holy lullabies

Quieted her toy . .

Little angels all around

Danced, and carols flung;

Making verselets sweet and true,

`Still of love they sung."'

[John Addington Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, Italian Literature, Pt. I, Appendix IV, p. 469f. " "On the Blessed Virgin's Bashfulness."]

The picture is perfect, recalling Crashaw's striking line:

'Twas once look up, 'tis now look down to Heaven."

Yet, as already hinted, it would be a great mistake to think of Jacopone, St. Francis, or any early Minorite, as sensible only to the human charm and pathos of the Nativity. They also felt it, so to speak, in their numinous consciousness, as holy, wonderful, mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is this peculiar blending, absent in the ancient Latin hymns, of homely feeling and numinous feeling, or as Yrjo Hirn would phrase it, "pious familiarity and reverent worship," that is the striking thing.

Precisely that for which the Christmas Collect renders thanks"the shining forth of the mysterious divine light from the bosom of Eternity" in the face of the Infant Christ-is what the poet and others see, but with an intimate and tender realism all their own.

A real Child is pictured lying naked in the thorny hay (nudo nel pungente s pino) , who kicks and cries to tears ; but the dear angels (gli Angeli diletti) are described caroling around Him with bashful wonder (tutti riverenti timidi e subietti) ; because after all He is the little Infant Prince of the elect (Bambolino Principe de gli eletti), a huomo divino, A Divine Man.

The temper of mind involved is difficult to describe fully. But in addition to Rudolf Otto's sense of the holy, it is akin to what Wordsworth calls "natural piety" and Ruskin theoria, the mood of reverent contemplation, which appreciates the golden glory of old romance, discerns That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, That Beauty in which all things work and move," produced the original Idylls of Bethlehem-those "matchless pictures of earthly beauty and pathos illumined and sublimed by heavenly love," conceived and communicated to that most hallowed Gospel of St. John its deathless transcendental glamour.

Nor does our rough, roving minstrel miss the fullness of the Christmas message; for he was a preacher of fine evangelical fervor. He will sing wondrously of the Nativity, as in his Cantico de la Nativity de Iesii Cristo, in strains that remind one of Paul Gerhardt's "All my heart this night rejoices" ; but ere his song is done he will cry:

O ye sinners, erring throng,

Serving evil lords so long,

Come and hail this Infant Birth!

Come to Him in penitence.

Penitence your hearts shall stay,

Driving every sin away,

Purging heart, and soul, and sense.

Verily the humble mind

Penitent, the truth shall find,

Blessedness and piety.'

[Shelley, Adonait, LIV.]

Sometimes the message is couched in more kindly notes, thus passing the more readily in at lowly

doors; and to that end chiefly Jacopone and his followers tuned their rustic Christmas lyres:

Now since He's here,

Show your heart's cheer

And high content . . .

Sweep hearth and floor;

Be all your vessels' store

Shining and clean.

Then bring the little guest

And give Him of your best

Of meat and drink. Yet more

Ye owe than meat.

One gift at your King's feet

Lay now. I mean

A heart full to the brim

Of love, and all for Him,

And from all envy clean."

[Evelyn Underhill, Jacopone da Todi, p. 417. Translated by Mrs. Theodore Beck." ° A. Macdonell, Sons of Francis, pp. 371-2. " Chapters II and III.]

Mr. Clement A. Miles, in his Christmas in Ritual and Tradition,' "gives numerous examples of these fresh and fragrant lyrics, wild flowers of song he calls them, gathered in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, England, and even in "dour Scotland." The German medieval carols are peculiarly interesting. Jacopone's little angels hovering around are not so noticeable; but the kindly sentiments which breathe through them are certainly unique and suggest scenes of cotters' homes, which only Robert Burns could describe:

Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;

Th' expectant wee things, toddlin' . . .

To meet their dad, wi' flichterin' noise an' glee.

His wee bit ingle, blinkin' bonnily,

His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's smile ...

Into such surroundings the Christ Child is welcomed by all; and to these singers farther north there is always an intense sense of the cold on the first Weihnacht:

Da Jesu Krist geboren wart,

do was es kalt.

[Christian Singers of Germany, p. 85]

The fourteenth-century allegorical carol beginning, Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, familiar in Miss Catherine Winkworth's rendering: "A spotless rose is blowing,"" is still popular at Christmas time all over the world; but it is not so good a sample of the German rustic carol of the Middle Ages as this one:

Das Kind is in der Krippen glogn,

So herzig and so rar!

Mei klaner Hansl war nix dgogn,

Wenn a glei schener war.

Kolschwarz wie d'Kirchen d'Augen sein,

Sunst aber kreidenweiss;

Die Hand so hiibsch recht zart and fein,

I hans angriirt mit Fleiss.

Aft hats auf mi an Schmutza gmacht,

An Hoscheza darzue;

O warst du mein, hoan i gedacht,

Werst wol a munter Bue.

Dahoam in meiner Kachelstub

Liess i brav hoazen ein,

Do in den Stal kimt liberal

Der kalte Wind herein."

A History of Carols – Part 2

I found a nice second hand book on Christmas Traditions from 1931 at the Guide Dogs for the Blind biggest book sale, and as Christmas approaches, 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.

A History of Carols – Part 2

By William Mauir Ald

Toward the close of his all too brief apostolate two scenes in our Lord's career, Bethlehem and Calvary, engaged his deepest attention. Before the vision of the Cross came to him on Mount Alverno, leaving upon his body the stigmata of the crucified Redeemer, he had planned to observe to the very life the memories of the Holy Nativity. The place chosen was Greccio, not far from Assisi, in the year 1223. Mrs. Oliphant writes:

“In this village, when the eve of the Nativity approached, Francis instructed a certain grave and worthy man, called Giovanni, to prepare an ox and an ass, along with a manger and all the common fittings of a stable, for his use, in the church. When the solemn night arrived, Francis and his brethren arranged all these things into a visible representation of the occurrences of the night at Bethlehem. The manger was filled with hay, the animals were led into their places; the scene was prepared as we see it now through all the churches of Southern Italy-a reproduction, as far as the people know how, in startling realistic detail, of the surroundings of the first Christmas.” [Francis of Assisi, p. 223.]

This dramatic vigil in the forest chapel lingered like a gracious memory among the Sons of Francis. They had learned much from their master; they were to learn still more; but this event brought home to their hearts in an unforgettable manner the human side of the Birth in Bethlehem.

For them Greccio marked the renascence of Christmas. Henceforth it will have a meaning for all Christendom that it never had before, especially after the writings of St. Bonaventura have spread far and wide the Franciscan Gospel. No longer will it seem natural or proper to speak "of the Divine Child as one speaks of a dogma, or of the Mother either as a dogma, or as a moral example."

Theological rhetoric will give way for lyric poetry in which the "pious imagination will form pictures of the Mother's affection and the Child's lovableness." In other words, Greccio, or rather the heart of the Blessed Francis, is the cradle of the Christmas Carol, for out of the new appreciation of the Nativity which he there engendered this type of song sprang.

Something of the kind had appeared once before, as Yrjo Hirn reminds us. Ephraim Syrus, the fourth-century Eastern poet, in his Hymni de nativitate Christi in carne, had "expressed a purely personal and almost dramatically vivid conception of the Holy Mother's loving play with her Child" ; but in the succeeding centuries they were entirely forgotten. Incarnation poetry followed the lead of St. Ambrose whose type of Christmas song, rhetorically splendid and abstractly theological, held sway in the Church till Francis originated, or reinstituted, the cult of the Holy Manger.

Then a warm breath as of spring passed over Europe and the carol-"the folk-tune, the secular song adapted to a sacred theme"-sprang up everywhere. The first Franciscan of genius who lifted up his lyric voice in order to bring Christmas a little nearer home to the people was the Italian Jacopone da Todi (1228-1306).

Noble by birth, and educated to the legal profession, in early middle life he sharply and finally turned his back upon fame and fortune. Shocked out of his worldly, pleasure loving and religiously indifferent life, by the tragic death of his beautiful and saintly wife, he wheeled completely round and in the path of poverty and renunciation set his face steadfastly toward God. In the most assured way to achieve success, particularly when old habits are to be broken up and new ones formed, he swung into the spiritual life with a violent ardour, behaving often in a manner that laid him open to the charge of madness.

Mad he must have seemed to some of his contemporaries, as certainly he would appear to many moderns who so "easily confuse enthusiasm with insanity: especially that reckless enthusiasm which sacrifices dignity to ideal ends." But it is the soul of the man that commands attention. To see and understand this with sympathy is to pass beyond his eccentricities and feel strangely stirred by a man "drunken with the love and compassion of Christ," crazed with devotion to his Lord and Master, whose santa pazia flowered in sanctity and service and also in noble poetry, warranting the remark: "S' e pazzo, e pazzo come allodola" (If he is mad he is mad as the lark).

This wild turbulent aspect of the man is, perhaps, the one best known. It is the one celebrated on his tomb, Stultus propter Christum, nova mundum arte delusit et caelum rapuit (A fool for Christ's sake, by a new artifice, cheated the world and took heaven by storm).

But Miss Evelyn Underhill's inspiring interpretation of his spiritual development, as disclosed in his poetry, shows another side. In her biography he appears not only as a poet of high quality, a most brilliant star in the Franciscan Constellation, but also one of the great mystics of the medieval Church. He waged his spiritual battle, none more earnestly, but eventually he rose above the dust and din of conflict, passed even beyond his Santa pazia, and knew at last that ineffable peace and nameless vision which attend the fruition of mystic contemplation:

The battle is over now,

The travail that drains the blood,

The spirit's struggle for good,-

Peace hath ended the war.

With his helmet on his brow,

Behold the spirit renewed,

With tempered armour endued,

Wound cannot hurt him nor scar,

He looks on the radiance afar,

Asks not for symbol or sign;

No tapers of sense may shine,

On those heights of Eternity.' °

[Evelyn Underhill, Jacopone da Todi, p. 489. Translation by Mrs. Theodore Beck.]

Yet by far the most beautiful and winsome side of the poet appears in his charming Christmas verse. Here, at least, the sanity of his saintliness shines forth, while his mysticism becomes no less apparent.

Many are familiar with the Stabat Mater dolorosa, attributed to Jacopone, and acclaimed the most poignant of all Latin Passion hymns; but it is not so well known that it possesses a jubilant Christmas pendant -Stabat Mater speciosa. Contrasting this joyous song with the sorrowful one Paul Sabatier writes: The sentiment is even more tender, and it is hard to explain its neglect except by an unjust caprice of fate."

These few lines from J. M. Neale's translation will indicate its spirit:

Full of beauty stood the Mother,

By the Manger, blest o'er other,

Where her little One she lays,

For her inmost soul's elation,

In its fervid jubilation,

Thrills with ecstasy of praise."

But like Dante, Jacopone found the common speech a more fluent medium of poetical expression. In the Italian tongue he wrote his ascetic, mystical and Christmas songs. Alluding to the Nativity poems Miss Underhill ranks them "among the most perfect creations of thirteenth-century feeling; expressing that assured faith, that tenderness and intimacy, that happy enjoyment of Christ, of which St. Francis, in such an incident as the setting up of the Crib at Greccio, had been the perfect interpreter."

She proceeds to note their characteristics: "the spirit of play, the accent of romance, a new delicate joy in the human aspect of the Incarnation, in the flowering Life of St. Francis, p. 286. N. B. Some songs hereafter cited, or alluded to, may be by Jacopone's followers and imitators; but in any case they and the master's are all illustrative of the new Franciscan appreciation of the Nativity of Christ for the renewing of Man's faded fields."

In these happy songs Jacopone is not extolling Lady Poverty, or the delicious transports of Love, but bending in adoring wonder over Dio fatto piccino (God made a little thing). In deep mystic mood he gazes into that magnum mysterium et admirabile sacramentum at Bethlehem till

The earth and all the skiey space

Break into flowery smiles-

and not only into smiles, but into the most ravishing harmonies, which he is sure we too might hear did we but listen. The Sacred Babe comes through the portal of birth, not trailing clouds of glory, but like a sweet and fragrant lily, transplanted, as it were, from the celestial paradise to the garden of humanity, there to bloom in unearthly beauty and release among men the subtle aroma of heaven:

Egli e lo giglio de l'umanitade,

de suavitate-

e de perfetto odore.

Odor divino da ciel n'ha recato,

da quel giardino la ove era piantato."

[Trans:` He is the flower-de-lute of humanity, of delicate and perfect fragrance. Divine sweetness from heaven he has brought, from that garden there where he was planted. (Le Laude, da Todi, seconda edizione riveduta e aggiornata, da S. Caramella, Bari, 1930, C., p. 243])

A History of Carols – Part 1

I found a nice second hand book on Christmas Traditions from 1931 at the Guide Dogs for the Blind biggest book sale, and as Christmas approaches, 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.

A History of Carols – Part 1

By William Mauir Ald

The sweetest sounding name for Christmas song in English is "carol." It comes down the centuries laden with the happy memories of the great midwinter feast and is as deeply woven into its romance as the evergreens and the Yule log.

The question, What is a carol? is often asked; but a simple answer is by no means easy to give. The very term itself has occasioned much comment; but "it is clearly associated at first with the idea of choric song."( Edith Rickert, Ancient English Christmas Carols). In the Preface to The Oxford Book of Carols, Percy Dearmer writes: "The word 'carol' once meant to dance in a ring: it may go back, through the Old French `caroler' and the Latin 'CHORAULA,' to the Greek 'CHORAULES,' a flute player for chorus dancing, and ultimately to the 'CHOROS' which was originally a circling dance and the origin of the Attic drama." '

In France in the twelfth century the word denoted an "amorous song dance which hailed the coming of Spring," and in Italy at the same period it meant "a ring or song dance." By Dante this conception of carolling is carried up into the Heaven of the Fixed Stars and transfigured. There in that realm of perfect love he sees groups of holy and translucent souls form themselves into carole, that is, choirs, who, expressive of the harmony and joy of the supernal life, dance and sing before him and around the radiant Beatrice. Sometime during the thirteenth century the French word carole passed into English in its normal nonreligious sense. In Chaucer dancing and carolling are synonymous terms:

Upon the carole wonder faste

I gan biholde; till atte laste

A lady gan me for to espye,

And she was cleped Curtesye . . .

Ful curteisly she called me,

"What do ye there, beau sire?" quod she,

"Come [nere], and if it lyke yow

To dauncen, daunceth with us now"

And I, withoute tarying,

Wente into the caroling.'

[ Skeat's Student Chaucer, "The Romaunt of the Rose," p. 9, 11. 793-804. Faste, eagerly. Cleped, called.]

It seems as if the word ought to have continued in this secular atmosphere; but by the beginning of the fifteenth century it comes to be applied in an increasingly exclusive manner to Christmas songs, sacred and secular alike.

Some explanation of its appropriation in this connection may be due to the fact that many of the earliest examples were modelled after the form of these old French caroller [Early English Lyrics, p. 293.]

Certainly the spirit of the dance is unmistakably present in not a few. But some again, as for example lullabies and those of a lyric stamp, convey little suggestion of this kind; while others wind out their tale with all the naive simplicity of the typical ballad. In fact, like ballads, carols are of many kinds. As to what one will enjoy, and be willing to ascribe the name to in either case, is largely a matter of taste.

On the one hand, they range from the most winsome creations to the vagabond and salacious types; on the other they run all the way from the sublime to the ridiculous and even to the gross. Though one may not have the temerity to venture upon definition, some account can be given of the origin and nature of the sacred type. By way of anticipation it may be said that the spirit of the religious carol in its purest form is, perhaps, best suggested by the happy singing of birds in the springtime at break-morn in the forest, or in some wooded dell:

Hark! how the cheerefull birds do chaunt theyr laies,

And carroll of loves praise.

The merry Larke hir martins sings aloft;

The Thrush replyes; the Mavis descant playes;

The Ouzell shrills; the Ruddock warbles soft;

So goodly all agree with sweet consent

To this dayes merriment.'

[Edmund Spenser, Epithalamium, 11. 78-84]

But before the Christmas minstrels could arise to render melodious the spiritual joy of the Season, Bethlehem had to be rediscovered. How this came to pass is a matter that claims the attention of all interested in that species of song properly called the Christmas Carol.

Beyond all doubt the most important event in the religious life of Western Christendom in the Middle Ages was the birth of Francis of Assisi in 1182. Nor is this to forget the many great names which adorn the time in different lands. To the period belong St. Thomas Aquinas and Dante, before whom the mind must always make reverent pause.

Through them the moral and spiritual soul of the medieval Church found incomparable expression: the one offering the fruits of his genius in profound, analytical and argumentative prose, the other in subtle, soaring and glorious poetry.

But neither the creator of the Summa Theologica, nor the author of the Divina Commedia, exercised that direct, salutary and recreative influence on the common heart which is true of St. Francis. Prior to the rise of this remarkable man Christianity did not mean much to the plain folks anywhere in Europe, and Christmas in a spiritual sense little or nothing at all.

The sacred rites of the Church, couched in a language poorly understood, as had not been altogether the case in England before the coming of the Norman French, were followed with only the vaguest notion of their import and meaning. Efforts, indeed, had been made from time to time to enable the faithful to enter intelligently into the Latin services; but by many it was not considered in the least degree essential that they should know what was being said and done.

The prevalent conception of religion was scarcely of the kind to attract the average person. It was sombre, abstract and singularly lacking in popular appeal. In His historical aspects Christ was the thorn-crowned Saviour, whose "cruel wounds unstaunched and bleeding yet" engrossed the attention of all. Over the whole medieval world lay the broad shadow of the Cross. In His present capacities and powers Christ was the Author of Salvation, the Deliverer from the pains of eternal death and the awful Judge of mankind, whose tenderer offices had been transferred to the Mater Salutaris.

A finer type of faith could be found behind the monastery walls; for thither the more serious minded were apt to betake themselves. There, if real athletes of the spirit and unafflicted by soul weariness, or other sadder impediments, the celestial ladder leading to the marriage of the soul with Christ the Heavenly Bridegroom challenged ascent. Though such devotion could not be emulated by the many, either within or without the cloister, that did not destroy then, nor does it now, its witness to the supremacy of the spiritual and to the great cost involved in achieving pure holiness of life-"that perfect correspondence of the human soul with the Eternal."

Neither Christianity, nor Christmas, however, had yet been shaped to touch the lives of lay folk. They both passed over them like a winter sun behind clouds. But spring with its flowers and singing of birds was at hand. It came with the radiant Francis. By "that profound popular instinct which enabled him, more than any man since the primitive age, to fit religion for popular use," [Matthew Arnold] he succeeded in linking the common heart to the happy humanities of Jesus.

Caring for little else, though disputing nothing, than the human side of the Lord's life and ministry, he recovers for his age something of the original romance of the Gospel and with it the brightness of heaven and earth.

"Wherever he goes," writes Lonsdale Ragg, "he carries with him sunshine and fresh air and living water. Fresh from the pure fountain of the Gospel precepts, which he interprets with a childlike literalness, he passes along, he and Poverty his bride, beaming with love, and inspiring holy thoughts by his very look." [Dante and His Italy, p. 94]  

The Coming of Christmas – Part 3

I found a nice second hand book on Christmas Traditions from 1931 at the Guide Dogs for the Blind biggest book sale, and as Christmas approaches, thought it might be interesting to share it with my readers. Although it dates from 193, the author was well-informed and a good deal of his history, which is judicious on matters of ignorance, stands up well with modern scholarship.

The Coming of Christmas – Part 3
by William Muir Auld
Not much is known of the way in which December 25 was observed in the Empire. It probably had far more significance for the educated and official classes than for the masses. But it was sandwiched, as will be shown later, between two immensely popular folk festivals, the Saturnalia and the Kalends of January, which together converted the closing and the opening of the year into one continuous and uproarious carnival.

There was obviously a crying need for some important festival around which the faithful might rally, despite the views of those who thought, after the manner of Tertullian, that Christians were and should remain strangers to these Jewish and pagan necessities. It was desirable, not only for the mutual encouragement of the strong, but also as a means of curing in the weak and the unsteady any hankering after the flesh pots of Egypt which in their passage through the Red Sea of Baptism they were pledged to renounce.

The plain and indubitable facts are these: there was no unimpeachable tradition concerning the date of the Saviour’s Birth; and churchmen chose December 25. If the choice has any meaning at all, it was surely that thereby Christians might be afforded an anchorage in the swirling tide of frivolity, and the thoughtful votaries of Mithra, peradventure, be induced to forsake him and turn to Christ as the true Light of the World. "What more natural," writes Mr. Clement A. Miles, "than that the Church should choose this day to celebrate the rising of her Sun of Righteousness with healing in His wings, that she should thus strive to draw away to His worship some adorers of the god whose symbol and representative was the earthly sun!" '

But when all is said, in the absence of direct evidence, it is not possible to tell just why the Church chose December 25 as the day on which to feast the Birth of her Lord. All the matters alluded to had, doubtless, their due influence.

How St. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople (398-403), regarded the matter is, to say the least, interesting; and his views are shared by others. In one of his discourses he makes reference to the heathen festival of the sun-god and says:

On this day also the Birthday of Christ was lately fixed at Rome in order that while the heathen were busy with their profane ceremonies the Christians might perform their sacred rites undisturbed. They call this (Dec.25, or viii. Kal. Jan, as the Romans wrote it), the Birthday of the Invincible One (Mithras) ; but who so invincible as the Lord? They call it the Birthday of the Solar Disc; but Christ is the Sun of Righteousness.

Once firmly established in Rome Christmas soon found wide acceptance in both East and West; though it does not seem to have been made welcome in Jerusalem till after the sixth century. January 6 robbed of all associations with the actual Nativity was forthwith relegated to a secondary place. In the East, however, it retained its time honoured connection with the Lord's Baptism; and it still possesses this significance in the Orthodox Church.

The Armenians would have nothing to do with the new Roman arrangement for feasting the Birth of Christ; and they sustain this attitude to the present day. They celebrate the Nativity on January 6, as of old, and hold that any other time is heretical. Christmas was carried to the barbarians when in the succeeding centuries they were brought within the fold of the Church. It was taken to the British Isles probably by the Celtic Church, certainly by St. Augustine, 592. Germany received it in 813 from the Synod of Mainz; but it did not pass to Norway till the tenth century, when it was introduced by King Hakon the Good.

That the newly inaugurated festival should not be lacking in splendour and appeal the days between December 25 and January 6 were caught up into one holy season, with the Birth of the divine Child at the beginning and the coming of the Magi at the end. In Rome this season from Christmas to Epiphany was known as the twelve day period; but among the peoples of the North, who reckoned by nights instead of by days, it became the famous twelve nights of the historic Christmastide.

The Coming of Christmas – Part 2

I found a nice second hand book on Christmas Traditions from 1931 at the Guide Dogs for the Blind biggest book sale, and as Christmas approaches, thought it might be interesting to share it with my readers. Although it dates from 193, the author was well-informed and a good deal of his history, which is judicious on matters of ignorance, stands up well with modern scholarship.

The Coming of Christmas – Part 2
by William Muir Auld
In so far as devotional interest ranged back over the earthly life of Jesus, during the first two hundred years, it tended to stop short at His Baptism, as if the prescriptive Gospel were St. Mark, which begins the story of the Son of God at this point. The occurrence by the Jordan, with its wonderful accompaniments, was considered of supreme importance in the career of the Messiah and around it a feast grew up called Epiphany, the manifestation of Christ's glory, on January 6.

The origins of this festival are exceedingly obscure. It is first heard of in connection with certain Basilidian heretics in the second century; but by the fourth century it has found a place in the larger Church, "in the East, in Gaul and probably also in northern Italy." Owing to the extreme vagueness of the term Epiphany it is impossible to tell what its first significance may have been, or even all that entered into it at any time.

Some writers call attention to a mystery-religion celebration of the birth of the on from the Virgin Kore, which took place on the eve of January 5-6, and suggest that Epiphany may have been created by certain Gnostics as a kind of rival festival. But this, while alluring to the historical imagination, means little more than chasing the subject into an underworld of uncertainty with nothing better than analogical speculation to guide the footsteps.

That Epiphany stood related in some way to the Baptism of Jesus admits of no doubt. But why, it is natural to ask, should this particular experience have been singled out for preeminent recognition?

There is a reasonable answer to this question. In the early Church the belief was not uncommon that Christ was not born divine, but attained to that dignity and power when He was thirty years old, by virtue of the descent upon Him of the Holy Spirit at Baptism. To those who held these views Epiphany would be the annual commemoration of the deification, or the apotheosis, of Christ, when the voice from heaven said, "Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," or as some old readings phrased it, "This day have I begotten Thee": in other words, the festival of His spiritual birthday.

But in the Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria and Antioch, both Arian and Orthodox, at the beginning of the fourth century, it was quite definitely a joint commemoration of the Baptism of the Saviour and of His Birth in the flesh. In the Jerusalem Church it appears to have had mainly a Bethlehem significance. As far, then, as the East is concerned the Holy Nativity, or Christmas as we would now say, was first widely observed on January 6 in the festival called Epiphany, and, of course, in a manner distinctly spiritual and religious.

It would be interesting to know how matters fared in these respects with the Christians in Rome; but the whole situation is extremely cloudy. Some think that there December 25 was always the recognized date of the Saviour’s Birth, while others again do not.

Kirsopp Lake, who surveys the whole field with impartial critical skill, will only say: "It is certain that in the East January 6 was the feast of the Nativity, as well as that of the Baptism, and it is probable, though not quite so certain, that the same is true of the West."' The evidence is of that elusive sort which hardly permits of historians being positive either one way or the other.

At all events, some- where in the middle of the fourth century, a day, which may or may not be entirely new, destined to be famous thereafter as Christmas, namely December 25, was formally set aside by the Church in Rome for the observance of the physical Birth of Christ.

The festival may have been in existence as early as 336; "but farther back than that it cannot be traced."

Since by no stretch of imagination can the choice of the day be ascribed to a reliable tradition, why the Church fastened upon it raises an interesting subject; and many points of view are possible. Some have professed to see a well conceived ecclesiastical plan to supplant sooner or later January 1 by the Birthday of Christ as the beginning of the civil year.

This may be so; certainly the Church long fostered this ambition; though its efforts were never crowned with complete and permanent success. Doctrinal matters undoubtedly played their part. As theological thought attained greater clarity and definiteness the notion that Jesus became divine at His Baptism was regarded as heretical.

Other vagrant fancies required to be combated. By certain sects it was maintained that Jesus, as He appeared among men, was a mere phantasm and had never been born at all. The new festival served to counteract these irregularities of belief, first by emphasizing the Saviour’s actual Birth in the flesh; and second by asserting that His divinity, as well as His humanity, potentially at least, were as real in the manger as at any later period of His life and ministry. 

It is pleasant to think that the children were not without a share in the creation of Christmas. The practice of infant baptism had now become almost universal. This somewhat belated recognition of their place in the life and privileges of the Church found its appropriate counterpart in the festal celebration of their Lord.

But there were other reasons, doubtless, which led churchmen to set covetous eyes upon the day. The selection may be seen as a phase of the stern struggle of the Church with the enveloping paganism. According to the Roman calendar, inaugurated by Julius Caesar in 707 A.U.C., or 45 B.C., December 25 marked the winter solstice when the mighty parent of fertility, having reached its lowest point in the heavens, began again to rise over the world with renewed power and splendour. Among Romans this was known as the Brumalia, but what festive significance attached to it at first is not clear. 

Under the Empire, however, heathendom everywhere tended more and more to focus its devotion on the source of all light and life. Nor were the Emperors, particularly in the third century, slow to capitalize this tendency of thought in the interests of their ideas of absolutism in the state. "The great temple of the Sun," writes Samuel Dill, "which Aurelian, the son of a priestess of the deity, founded on the Campus Martius, with its high pontiffs and stately ritual, did honour not only to the great lord of the heavenly spheres, but to the monarch who was the august image of his power upon earth and who was endued with his special grace."

Under this Emperor (270-275), December 25, when the world annually hovering on the brink of darkness and desolation was saved by the resurgent sun, acquired a new significance. It was called Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. Aurelian had faithful successors in Diocletian, in Constantine the Great before his conversion to the religion of the Cross, and also in Julian, that ill-starred champion of solar paganism.

In themselves, however, the cult of the Sun and the worship of the Emperor were not supremely well suited to the needs of the common religious instinct. But what they lacked was amply supplied by Mithraism in its mystical doctrines, its meaningful rites, its ties of brotherhood and its promise of immortality. This strange Eastern faith, whose god Mithra was identified with the Unconquered Sun, long proved the most formidable rival of Christianity. Considering its rapid spread throughout the length and breadth of the Empire, and its strong appeal to the minds of intelligent men, the opinion has been hazarded that, "if the Christian Church had been stricken with some mortal weakness, Mithraism might have become the religion of the western world."

But Christ was destined to conquer Mithra; and the victory was to be complete, even to the appropriation of his birthday. Vicisti Galilee-thou hast conquered, O Galilean!

The Coming of Christmas – Part 1

Dionysius Exiguus

I found a nice second hand book on Christmas Traditions from 1931 at the Guide Dogs for the Blind biggest book sale, and as Christmas approaches, thought it might be interesting to share it with my readers. Although it dates from 193, the author was well-informed and a good deal of his history, which is judicious on matters of ignorance, stands up well with modern scholarship.

The Coming of Christmas – Part 1

by William Muir Auld

Christmas as almost everyone knows is the annual festival of the Birth of Jesus Christ the Founder of Christianity; but not so many are aware that the traditional date of this important event, 1 A.D., stands greatly in need of correction.

The mode of reckoning time "by the year of our Lord," now well-nigh universal in the modern world, was originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus, who lived in Rome during the first half of the sixth century. Before his day, and until the new system of chronology won general acceptance, happenings were recorded in various ways. Some Church historians took the birth of Abraham as a convenient starting point; others, more commonly those in the West, computed from the founding of the City of Rome (ab urbe condita or anno urbis condite), usually designated by the initial letters A.U.C.

Dionysius made his New Era to begin on the first day of January in the seven hundred fifty-third year from the building of Rome; because in that year he supposed Christ to have been born. Whenever in his writings he desired to indicate the number of years which had elapsed since the Advent of the Saviour he employed the phrase Anno Domini; and through him it became current.

His calculations were adopted with little or no inquiry until the sixteenth century. Since then they have been shown to be wrong by several years. It has proved, however, much easier to detect the error of the learned monk than to correct it; for there is no certain way of arriving at the truth. The Gospels afford practically no decisive assistance.

The most useful hint occurs in St. Matthew where it is stated that "Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the King." According to the best authorities this monarch died a short time before the Jewish Passover 750 A.U.C.

It will be evident at once that Dionysius in assigning the Birth of Christ to 753 A.U.C. placed it at least three years too late. Following the slender suggestion of the sacred Evangelist it ought to antedate the death of Herod; but to what point anterior to that occurrence it should be carried no one can say. Some are disposed to place the Nativity of Christ within the years 748 and 747 A.U.C., that is 5 and 6 B.C.; though others are led by their investigations as far back as 8 B.C.

A similar uncertainty exists in regard to the season of the year to which the epoch-making Birth belongs. In the early Church this provided a fascinating subject for the ingenious mind. Unfettered by any authentic tradition speculation assumed the most fantastic forms. Working with an abstract plan of the ages writers strove to show when they thought the Saviour of the world ought to have been born, striking often a peculiar preference for the twenty-fifth day, though not always agreeing in their choice of a month.

But, as has often been pointed out, there is no month in the calendar to which even "respectable authorities" at one time and another have not been disposed to refer the sacred Birth. The world will never know when that Babe first opened His eyes, whether in the radiant morn of spring, the meridian splendour of summer, the evening glory of autumn, or the bleak midnight of winter. It may be true that Rome would not order a census to be taken, as the Gospels suggest, at the worst possible period for travel, and perhaps truer still that the incident of the shepherds watching over their flocks by night on the plains of Bethlehem calls for a milder time than the inclement month of December; yet immemorial tradition has now irrevocably rooted the Holy Nativity, and with singular propriety, in the heart of the cold, dark season of the year.

As John Milton wrote, so the world is content to think:

It was the winter wild,

While the heaven-born child

All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies.

It is interesting to observe that the process of festival creation in the Christian Church, which dates almost from its inception, began at the end of Christ's life and ministry and slowly worked back to the beginning; so that an observance of His Nativity was comparatively late in making its appearance.

As for the first believers they had not the slightest interest in anything of the kind. They looked forward and upward, seldom, if ever, backward. For them the past contained no treasure that the present did not hold in far richer degree; and the future was bright with all-engrossing promise. Hope in the Lord's imminent return from heaven in great power and glory was the flame that fired their devotion, especially when wrapt away from the world in hours of secret fellowship.

At such times, when concordant hearts yearned for the grand denouement, all retrospect was precluded, and even a song of Bethlehem, had it been thought of, would have struck a jarring note.

The thrill of anticipation found more natural expression in impatient invitatories flung by eager voices toward the dark and silent sky: Let Grace come and let the world pass away!

Hosanna to the God of David, Marana that Come Lord Jesus, come quickly!

Even in much later times when Christians learned to look back as well as forward, and began to estimate aright the historic treasures of the Son of Man, they had small concern in a Nativity Festival.

While profoundly interested in the Man Christ Jesus, their thought and affection did not as yet include the Child Jesus. Though speculation might run high concerning the Natal Day of the Saviour, that did not mean any deep human appreciation of the Birth in the stable at Bethlehem, nor any great desire to feast it. In fact the very idea of such a celebration appeared to many highly repugnant. It looked too much like regarding their divine Redeemer after the manner of an earthly potentate.