Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan Part 32

352 A more notable occasion was Plough Monday, the first after Twelfth Day. Men's labour then began again after the holidays.{59} We have already seen that it is sometimes a.s.sociated with the mummers'

plays. Often, however, its ritual is not developed into actual drama, and the following account from Derbyshire gives a fairly typical description of its customs:--

"On Plough Monday the 'Plough bullocks' are occasionally seen; they consist of a number of young men from various farmhouses, who are dressed up in ribbons.... These young men yoke themselves to a plough, which they draw about, preceded by a band of music, from house to house, collecting money. They are accompanied by the Fool and Bessy; the fool being dressed in the skin of a calf, with the tail hanging down behind, and Bessy generally a young man in female attire. The fool carries an inflated bladder tied to the end of a long stick, by way of whip, which he does not fail to apply pretty soundly to the heads and shoulders of his team. When anything is given a cry of 'Largess!' is raised, and a dance performed round the plough. If a refusal to their application for money is made they not unfrequently plough up the pathway, door-stone, or any other portion of the premises they happen to be near."{60}

By Plough Monday we have pa.s.sed, it seems probable, from New Year festivals to one that originally celebrated the beginning of spring. Such a feast, apparently, was kept in mid-February when ploughing began at that season; later the advance of agriculture made it possible to shift it forward to early January.{61}

CANDLEMAS.

Nearer to the original date of the spring feast is Candlemas, February 2; though connected with Christmas by its ecclesiastical meaning, it is something of a vernal festival.{62}

The feast of the Purification of the Virgin or Presentation of Christ in the Temple was probably inst.i.tuted by Pope Liberius at Rome in the fourth century. The ceremonial to which it owes its popular name, Candlemas, is the blessing of candles in church and the procession of the faithful, carrying them lighted in their hands. During the blessing the "Nunc dimittis" is chanted, 353 with the antiphon "Lumen ad revelationem gentium et gloriam plebis tuae Israel," the ceremony being thus brought into connection with the "light to lighten the Gentiles" hymned by Symeon. Usener has however shown reason for thinking that the Candlemas procession was not of spontaneous Christian growth, but was inspired by a desire to Christianize a Roman rite, the _Amburbale_, which took place at the same season and consisted of a procession round the city with lighted candles.{63}

The Candlemas customs of the sixteenth century are thus described by Naogeorgus:

"Then numbers great of Tapers large, both men and women beare To Church, being halowed there with pomp, and dreadful words to heare.

This done, eche man his Candell lightes, where chiefest seemeth hee, Whose taper greatest may be seene, and fortunate to bee, Whose Candell burneth cleare and brighte; a wondrous force and might Doth in these Candells lie, which if at any time they light, They sure beleve that neyther storme or tempest dare abide, Nor thunder in the skies be heard, nor any devils spide, Nor fearefull sprites that walke by night, nor hurts of frost or haile."{64}

Still, in many Roman Catholic regions, the candles blessed in church at the Purification are believed to have marvellous powers. In Brittany, Franche-Comte, and elsewhere, they are preserved and lighted in time of storm or sickness.{65} In Tyrol they are lighted on important family occasions such as christenings and funerals, as well as on the approach of a storm{66}; in Sicily in time of earthquake or when somebody is dying.{67}

In England some use of candles on this festival continued long after the Reformation. In 1628 the Bishop of Durham gave serious offence by sticking up wax candles in his cathedral at the Purification; "the number of all the candles burnt that evening was two hundred and twenty, besides sixteen torches; sixty of 354 those burning tapers and torches standing upon and near the high Altar."{68} Ripon Cathedral, as late as the eighteenth century, was brilliantly illuminated with candles on the Sunday before the festival.{69} And, to come to domestic customs, at Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire the person who bought the wood-ashes of a family used to send a present of a large candle at Candlemas. It was lighted at night, and round it there was festive drinking until its going out gave the signal for retirement to rest.{70}

There are other British Candlemas customs connected with fire. In the western isles of Scotland, says an early eighteenth-century writer, "as Candlemas Day comes round, the mistress and servants of each family taking a sheaf of oats, dress it up in woman's apparel, and after putting it in a large basket, beside which a wooden club is placed, they cry three times, 'Briid is come! Briid is welcome!' This they do just before going to bed, and as soon as they rise in the morning, they look among the ashes, expecting to see the impression of Briid's club there, which if they do, they reckon it a true presage of a good crop and prosperous year, and the contrary they take as an ill-omen."{71} Sir Laurence Gomme regards this as an ill.u.s.tration of belief in a house-spirit whose residence is the hearth and whose element is the ever-burning sacred flame. He also considers the Lyme Regis custom mentioned above to be a modernized relic of the sacred hearth-fire.{72}

Again, the feast of the Purification was the time to kindle a "brand"

preserved from the Christmas log. Herrick's Candlemas lines may be recalled:--

"Kindle the Christmas brand, and then Till sunne-set let it burne; Which quencht, then lay it up agen, Till Christmas next returne.

Part must be kept wherewith to teend The Christmas Log next yeare; And where 'tis safely kept, the Fiend Can do no mischiefe there."{73}

355 Candlemas Eve was the moment for the last farewells to Christmas; Herrick sings:--

"End now the White Loafe and the Pye, And let all sports with Christmas dye,"

and

"Down with the Rosemary and Bayes, Down with the Misleto; Instead of Holly, now up-raise The greener Box for show.

The Holly hitherto did sway; Let Box now domineere Until the dancing Easter Day, Or Easter's Eve appeare."{74}

An old Shropshire servant, Miss Burne tells us, was wont, when she took down the holly and ivy on Candlemas Eve, to put snow-drops in their place.{75} We may see in this replacing of the winter evergreens by the delicate white flowers a hint that by Candlemas the worst of the winter is over and gone; Earth has begun to deck herself with blossoms, and spring, however feebly, has begun. With Candlemas we, like the older English countryfolk, may take our leave of Christmas.

356 357

CONCLUSION

The reader who has had patience to persevere will by now have gained some idea of the manner in which Christmas is, and has been, kept throughout Europe. We have traced the evolution of the festival, seen it take its rise soon after the victory of the Catholic doctrine of Christ's person at Nicea, and spread from Rome to every quarter of the Empire, not as a folk-festival but as an ecclesiastical holy-day. We have seen the Church condemn with horror the relics of pagan feasts which clung round the same season of the year; then, as time went on, we have found the two elements, pagan and Christian, mingling in some degree, the pagan losing most of its serious meaning, and continuing mainly as ritual performed for the sake of use and wont or as a jovial tradition, the Christian becoming humanized, the skeleton of dogma clothed with warm flesh and blood.

We have considered, as represented in poetry and liturgy, the strictly ecclesiastical festival, the commemoration of the Nativity as the beginning of man's redemption. We have seen how in the carols, the cult of the _presepio_, and the religious drama, the Birth of the King of Glory in the stable at midwinter has presented itself in concrete form to the popular mind, calling up a host of human emotions, a crowd of quaint and beautiful fancies. Lastly we have noted the survival, in the most varied degrees of transformation, of things which are alien to Christianity and in some cases seem to go back to very primitive stages of thought and feeling. An antique reverence for the plant-world may lie, as we have seen, beneath the familiar inst.i.tution of the Christmas-tree, some sort of animal-worship may be at the bottom of the 358 beast-masks common at winter festivals, survivals of sacrifice may linger in Christmas feasting, and in the family gatherings round the hearth may be preserved a dim memory of ancient domestic rites.

Christmas, indeed, regarded in all its aspects, is a microcosm of European religion. It reflects almost every phase of thought and feeling from crude magic and superst.i.tion to the speculative mysticism of Eckhart, from mere delight in physical indulgence to the exquisite spirituality and tenderness of St. Francis. Ascetic and _bon-vivant_, mystic and materialist, learned and simple, n.o.ble and peasant, all have found something in it of which to lay hold. It is a river into which have flowed tributaries from every side, from Oriental religion, from Greek and Roman civilization, from Celtic, Teutonic, Slav, and probably pre-Aryan, society, mingling their waters so that it is often hard to discover the far-away springs.

We have seen how the Reformation broke up the great mediaeval synthesis of paganism and Christianity, how the extremer forms of Protestantism aimed at completely destroying Christmas, and how the general tendency of modern civilization, with its scientific spirit, its popular education, its railways, its concentration of the people in great cities, has been to root out traditional beliefs and customs both Christian and pagan, so that if we would seek for relics of the old things we must go to the regions of Europe that are least industrially and intellectually "advanced." Yet amongst the most sceptical and "enlightened" of moderns there is generally a large residuum of tradition. "Emotionally," it has been said, "we are hundreds of thousands of years old; rationally we are embryos"{1}; and many people who deem themselves "emanc.i.p.ated" are willing for once in the year to plunge into the stream of tradition, merge themselves in inherited social custom, and give way to sentiments and impressions which in their more reflective moments they spurn. Most men are ready at Christmas to put themselves into an instinctive rather than a rational att.i.tude, to drink of the springs of wonder, and return in some degree to earlier, less intellectual stages of human development--to become in fact children again.

359 Many elements enter into the modern Christmas. There is the delight of its warmth and brightness and comfort against the bleak midwinter. A peculiar charm of the northern Christmas lies in the thought of the cold barred out, the home made a warm, gay place in contrast with the cheerless world outside. There is the physical pleasure of "good cheer," of plentiful eating and drinking, joined to, and partly resulting in, a sense of goodwill and expansive kindliness towards the world at large, a temporary feeling of the brotherhood of man, a desire that the poor may for once in the year "have a good time." Here perhaps we may trace the influence of the _Saturnalia_, with its dreams of the age of gold, its exaltation of them of low degree. Mixed with a little sentimental Christianity this is the Christmas of d.i.c.kens--the Christmas which he largely helped to perpetuate in England.

Each nation, naturally, has fashioned its own Christmas. The English have made it a season of solid material comfort, of good-fellowship and "charity," with a slight flavour of soothing religion. The modern French, sceptical and pagan, make little of Christmas, and concentrate upon the secular celebration of the _jour de l'an_. For the Scandinavians Christmas is above all a time of sport, recreation, good living, and social gaiety in the midst of a season when little outdoor work can be done and night almost swallows up day. The Germans, sentimental and childlike, have produced a Christmas that is a very Paradise for children and at which the old delight to play at being young again around the Tree. For the Italians Christmas is centred upon the cult of the _Bambino_, so fitted to their dramatic instincts, their love of display, their strong parental affection. (How much of the sentiment that surrounds the _presepio_ is, though religiously heightened, akin to the delight of a child in its doll!) If the Germans may be called the good, industrious, sentimental children of Europe, making the most of simple things, the Italians are the lively, pa.s.sionate, impulsive children, loving gay clothes and finery; and the contrast shows in their keeping of Christmas.

The modern Christmas is above all things a children's feast, and the elders who join in it put themselves upon their children's 360 level.

We have noted how ritual acts, once performed with serious purpose, tend to become games for youngsters, and have seen many an example of this process in the sports and mummeries kept up by the elder folk for the benefit of the children. We have seen too how the radiant figure of the Christ Child has become a gift-bringer for the little ones. At no time in the world's history has so much been made of children as to-day, and because Christmas is their feast its l.u.s.tre continues unabated in an age upon which dogmatic Christianity has largely lost its hold, which laughs at the pagan superst.i.tions of its forefathers. Christmas is the feast of beginnings, of instinctive, happy childhood; the Christian idea of the Immortal Babe renewing weary, stained humanity, blends with the thought of the New Year, with its hope and promise, laid in the cradle of Time.

361 362 363

FOOTNOTES

[1] For an explanation of the small numerals in the text see Preface.

[Transcriber's Note: In this edition the numerals are enclosed in {curly brackets}, so they will not be confused with footnotes.]

[2] "Christianity," as here used, will stand for the system of orthodoxy which had been fixed in its main outlines when the festival of Christmas took its rise. The relation of the orthodox creed to historical fact need not concern us here, nor need we for the purposes of this study attempt to distinguish between the Christianity of Jesus and ecclesiastical accretions around his teaching.

[3] Whether the Nativity had previously been celebrated at Rome on January 6 is a matter of controversy; the affirmative view was maintained by Usener in his monograph on Christmas,{6} the negative by Monsignor d.u.c.h.esne.{7} A very minute, cautious, and balanced study of both arguments is to be found in Professor Kirsopp Lake's article on Christmas in Hastings's "Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,"{8} and a short article was contributed by the same writer to _The Guardian_, December 29, 1911. Professor Lake, on the whole, inclines to Usener's view. The early history of the festival is also treated by Father Cyril Martindale in "The Catholic Encyclopaedia" (article "Christmas").

[4] Usener says 354, d.u.c.h.esne 336.

[5] The eastern father, Epiphanius (fourth century), gives a strange account of a heathen, or perhaps in reality a Gnostic, rite held at Alexandria on the night of January 5-6. In the temple of Kore--the Maiden--he tells us, worshippers spent the night in singing and flute-playing, and at c.o.c.k-crow brought up from a subterranean sanctuary a wooden image seated naked on a litter. It had the sign of the cross upon it in gold in five places--the forehead, the hands, and the knees. This image was carried seven times round the central hall of the temple with flute-playing, drumming, and hymns, and then taken back to the underground chamber. In explanation of these strange actions it was said: "To-day, at this hour, hath Kore (the Maiden) borne the aeon."{15} Can there be a connection between this festival and the Eleusinian mysteries? In the latter there was a nocturnal celebration with many lights burning, and the cry went forth, "Holy Brimo (the Maiden) hath borne a sacred child, Brimos."{16} The details given by Miss Harrison in her "Prolegomena" of the worship of the child Dionysus{17} are of extraordinary interest, and a minute comparison of this cult with that of the Christ Child might lead to remarkable results.

[6] Mithraism resembled Christianity in its monotheistic tendencies, its sacraments, its comparatively high morality, its doctrine of an Intercessor and Redeemer, and its vivid belief in a future life and judgment to come. Moreover Sunday was its holy-day dedicated to the Sun.

[7] This is the explanation adopted by most scholars (cf. Chambers, "M.

S.," i., 241-2). d.u.c.h.esne suggests as an explanation of the choice of December 25 the fact that a tradition fixed the Pa.s.sion of Christ on March 25. The same date, he thinks, would have been a.s.signed to His Conception in order to make the years of His life complete, and the Birth would come naturally nine months after the Conception. He, however, "would not venture to say, in regard to the 25th of December, that the coincidence of the _Sol novus_ exercised no direct or indirect influence on the ecclesiastical decision arrived at in regard to the matter."{25} Professor Lake also, in his article in Hastings's "Encyclopaedia," seeks to account for the selection of December 25 without any deliberate compet.i.tion with the _Natalis Invicti_. He points out that the Birth of Christ was fixed at the vernal equinox by certain early chronologists, on the strength of an elaborate and fantastic calculation based on Scriptural data, and connecting the Incarnation with the Creation, and that when the Incarnation came to be viewed as beginning at the Conception instead of the Birth, the latter would naturally be placed nine months later.

[8] Cf. chap. xviii. of Dr. Yrjo Hirn's "The Sacred Shrine" (London, 1912). Dr. Hirn finds a solitary antic.i.p.ation of the Franciscan treatment of the Nativity in the Christmas hymns of the fourth-century eastern poet, Ephraem Syrus.

[9] No. 55 in "Hymns Ancient and Modern" (Ordinary Edition).

[10] No. 56 in "Hymns Ancient and Modern" (Ordinary Edition).

[11]