The Everything Family Christmas Book (5 page)

Medieval Celebrations

While Christmas today is thought of as a time of joy and peace, Christmas in medieval England after 1066 instead achieved heights of extravagance and rowdiness. Celebrating the season for the full twelve days was no problem: People would attend church in masks and costumes as on Halloween, and churchgoers would sing off-color songs and even roll dice on the altar.

Christmas during this period was a time for some good-natured ribbing of the church’s solemnity. A touch of comedy was added to the sermons, which were so serious during the rest of the year. The festivities weren’t entirely irreverent, however: There was also devout caroling and Nativity plays, although in the latter Herod was often portrayed in a comic vein.

The king and court had a grand time trying to outdo each other with outrageous abundance. Henry III had 600 oxen killed and prepared for a single feast—and that was just the main course. Merchants and other higher ups paid their respects to the king by giving him gifts and cash, and there were guidelines for gift giving based on one’s social position. Henry once closed merchants until they paid their proper dues, although in 1248 he seemed to regain a bit of his Christmas spirit when he established a custom of giving food to the needy for the holiday.

Gambling was also a big part of the festivities around the court; stories of royalty using loaded dice to insure against losing seem to capture the spirit of the age. But royal excess at Christmas surely reached its height in 1377. In that year, Richard II had a Christmas feast for more than 10,000 people. Records don’t indicate whether the 2,000 employed at the feast enjoyed the holiday.

The fourteenth century also saw the beginning of widespread caroling. Carols had been used in Roman churches as early as the second century, but they came to England much later, by way of France. In the Middle Ages, they were used in conjunction with Nativity plays to convey the Christmas story to those who could not read. By the 1500s, the mummers, a traveling band of costumed carousers somewhat like street actors, were out and about.

Fortunately, for historians and carol lovers alike, a young man named Richard Hill kept a written record of, among other things, the popular English carols of the time. Spanning the years 1500–1536, Hill’s diary was extremely valuable in helping to keep alive such secular songs as “The Boar’s Head Carol.”

In 1533, Henry VIII made himself the Supreme Head of the Church of England, taking on the power of regulating religious holidays, including Christmas. He then proceeded to rival Henry III in yuletide extravagance.

Under his rule, Christmas became a very big deal indeed, both socially and ecclesiastically, and Christmas celebrations were filled with dancing, plays, general carousing, and, of course, food. This tradition was carried on by his daughter, Elizabeth I, and upon the accession of James I in 1603, by the Stuarts.

Outlawing Christmas

It’s not surprising that some members of the clergy objected to the way in which Christ’s birth was being commemorated: Aside from the gluttony and games, they worried about observing Jesus’ birth as if he were a person rather than the Incarnate

God. They argued that celebrations of the Nativity should be more spiritual, or perhaps abolished outright.

The more Christmas became established in the customs and hearts of the people, the more worried the clergy became. Old worries about the pagan elements of the celebration began to surface again, and some church officials questioned the prudence of having allowed them to continue in the first place.

With the Protestant Reformation in Europe, these objections gained the backing of an organized power. Beginning in 1517 with the posting of Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses, the Reformation attacked religious feasts and saint’s days, among other things, as corrupt practices. Christmas was outlawed in Scotland in 1583.

The Protestants and Puritans of England also condemned the gluttony, drinking, and partying associated with Christmas celebrations and argued for all pagan customs to be done away with. Most Protestants observed Christmas as a day of quiet reflection; the Puritans, however, did not observe it at all. Strict interpreters of the Scriptures, the Puritans pointed to the commandment to devote six days for work and one to rest. Unless Christmas happened to fall on the Sabbath, it was considered a workday.

By the middle of the seventeenth century, the holiday was under fire. The feelings of previously small pockets of objectors began to have a bigger impact as the political situation in England became increasingly unstable. From 1642 to 1649, the country was engaged in civil war as a result of the power struggle between the Stuart kings and Parliament. During this time, England entered its Commonwealth period and was ruled by Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans. The government issued official policies outlawing all religious festivals.

The era of the Puritan government was filled with such laws, updated over the years to become even more strict. At first, such declarations caused a great deal of upheaval among the people, who were unprepared for such a step. In the initial days of these ordinances, the people tried to disobey and there was even some rioting. Gradually, however, the Puritans won out. Christmas was outlawed, and those who celebrated it in any way were outlaws. Carols were deemed illegal and churches were locked, even to the clergy.

“Whereas some doubts have been raised whether the next Fast shall be celebrated because it falleth on the day which, heretofore, was usually called the Feast of the Nativity of our Saviour, the lords and commons do order and ordain that published notice be given, that the Fast appointed to be kept on the last Wednesday in every month, ought to be observed until it be otherwise ordered by both houses; and that this day particularly is to be kept with the same solemn humiliation because it may call to remembrance our sins and the sins of our forefathers, who have turned this Feast, pretending the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights.”—1644 English proclamation outlawing public Christmas revelries

Technically, the Puritans objected to Christmas not as a Christian event, but as an excessive festival with pagan roots. Apparently, they believed the only way to deal with such impious doings was to abolish the day and everything associated with it. They meant to banish this wrong not only from the country, but also from the hearts of its subjects. They came very close to succeeding—but then came the Restoration.

Christmas Returns to England

Christmas was legitimized when the English monarchy, led by Charles II, returned to power in 1660. The holiday could be observed freely, and people were happy. The popular sentiment of the time was expressed in this verse:

Now thanks to God for Charles’ return,
Whose absence made old Christmas mourn;
For then we scarcely did it know,
Whether it Christmas were or no.

With the goodwill of the new leaders, and with the lifting of the formal bans instituted under the Puritans, Christmas seemed to be positioned for a comeback of titanic proportions in England. But it was not to be.

The holiday was, at the outset of the Restoration, a shadow of what it had been. The pagan excesses and riotous elements were not the only things lost to the Puritan purge; the Christmas spirit seemed to have left many hearts and minds.

Indeed, although the Puritans had been deposed, much of their philosophy still carried a lot of weight, and many carried on as if they were still in power. Christmas may have been legal, but it was still opposed by some powerful members of the clergy. This left a good many parishioners in a bind, and kept the holiday from making much of a public recovery. The middle of the eighteenth century brought still more obstacles.

In this time of the Industrial Revolution, all thoughts had seemingly turned toward work; everything took a back seat to the quest for money and progress. In this fast-paced atmosphere, it appeared, there was simply no room for holidays.

The numbing, inescapable want of most English workers and their families was one of the chief reasons that people had a hard time finding much to celebrate during this period.

Common people didn’t have much to celebrate with and they didn’t have much time, either. England had entered into an era of child labor, miserable working conditions, and endless workweeks.

In 1761, the Bank of England closed for forty-seven holidays over the course of a year; in 1834, it closed for only four. Employees of the mid-nineteenth century considered themselves lucky to get a half-day off for Christmas.

Throughout this period, there were small, quiet groups of people who kept the holiday alive in their hearts and homes. But mass enjoyment of the holiday would not take place again until the Victorian Era.

The Germans Keep the Flame Alive

While public celebration of Christmas faced both religious objections and adverse social conditions in England, the German people were enjoying a wonderful and expansive Christmas tradition that had been building up over the centuries. It is very likely that the American love affair with Christmas that began in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so influential in the way the whole world now views the holiday, would never have occurred if it had not been for the enthusiastic influence of Christmas-loving German immigrants.

The Germans had long espoused the idea of keeping the spirit of Christmas alive inside—in one’s heart, mind, and spirit—and turning that feeling outward in mass celebration. The German Christmas is one filled with trees, gingerbread houses, cookies, feasts, and carols; but most of all, it is the Christmas of childhood wonder and joy.