Christmas: Its Origin and Associations Part 43

"To the men who have already lived many weary months among the icebergs, Christmas signifies, in addition to its other a.s.sociations, that the half of their long night--with its fearful storms, its enforced cessation of all energy, its discomfort and sadness--has pa.s.sed, and that the sun will soon again shed its life and warmth-giving beams on the long-deserted North. From this time the grim twilight, during which noon has been hardly distinguishable from the other hours, grows daily lighter, until at length all hearts are gladdened, and a cheerful activity is once again called forth by the first glimpse of the sun. Christmas, the midnight of the Arctic explorer, thus marks a period in his life which he has good cause to consider a joyful one.

"For days before the festival, an unusual activity was observable all over the ship; and as soon as the severe storm which raged from December 16th to the 21st had abated, parties were organised, under our botanist, Dr. Pansch, to certain points of Sabine Island, near to which we were anch.o.r.ed, where, in a strangely sheltered nook, several varieties of a native Greenland evergreen plant, _Andromeda tetragona_, were to be found. A great quant.i.ty of this plant was conveyed on board, to be converted into a Christmas-tree. Under the orders of Dr. Pansch, the Andromeda was wound round small pieces of wood, several of which were attached, like fir-twigs, to a large bough; and when these boughs were fastened to a pole, they formed a very respectable fir-tree.

"After dinner on Christmas Day, the cabin was cleared for the completion of the preparations; and on our recall at six o'clock, we found that all had a.s.sumed an unwontedly festive appearance. The walls were decorated with the signal-flags and our national eagle; and the large cabin table, somewhat enlarged to make room to seat seventeen men, was covered with a clean white cloth, which had been reserved for the occasion. On the table stood the 'fir' tree, shining in the splendour of many little wax-lights, and ornaments with all sorts of little treasures, some of which, such as the gilded walnuts, had already seen a Christmas in Germany; below the tree was a small present for each of us, provided long beforehand, in readiness for the day, by loving friends and relatives at home. There was a packet too for each of the crew, containing some little joking gift, prepared by the mirth-loving Dr. Pansch, and a useful present also; while the officers were each and all remembered.

"When the lights burned down, and the resinous Andromeda was beginning to take fire, the tree was put aside, and a feast began, at which full justice was done to the costly Sicilian wine with which a friend had generously supplied us before we left home. We had a dish of roast seal! Some cakes were made by the cook, and the steward produced his best stores. For the evening, the division between the fore and aft cabins was removed, and there was free intercourse between officers and men; many a toast was drunk to the memory of friends at home, and at midnight a polar ball was improvised by a dance on the ice. The boatswain, the best musician of the party, seated himself with his hand-organ between the antlers of a reindeer which lay near the ship, and the men danced two and two on their novel flooring of hard ice!

"Such was our experience of a Christmas in the north polar circle; but the uncertainties of Arctic voyaging are great, and the two ships of our expedition made trial of the widely different fates which await the travellers in those frozen regions: and while we on the _Germania_ were singularly fortunate in escaping accidents and in keeping our crew, in spite of some hardships, in sound health and good spirits, the _Hansa_ was crushed by the ice, and her crew, after facing unheard-of dangers, and pa.s.sing two hundred days on a block of ice, were barely rescued to return home."

Yet even to the crew of the ill-fated _Hansa_ Christmas brought some festivities. The tremendous gale which had raged for many days ceased just before the day, and the heavy fall of snow with which it terminated, and which had almost buried the black huts that the shipwrecked men had constructed for themselves upon the drifting icebergs from the _debris_ of the wreck, had produced a considerable rise in the temperature, and there was every indication that a season of calm might now be antic.i.p.ated.

The log-book of the _Hansa_ thus describes the celebration of the festival:--"The tree was erected in the afternoon, while the greater part of the crew took a walk; and the lonely hut shone with wonderful brightness amid the snow. Christmas upon a Greenland iceberg! The tree was artistically put together of firwood and mat-weed, and Dr. Laube had saved a twist of wax-taper for the illumination. Chains of coloured paper and newly-baked cakes were not wanting, and the men had made a knapsack and a revolver case as a present for the captain. We opened the leaden chests of presents from Professor Hochstetter and the Geological Society, and were much amused by their contents. Each man had a gla.s.s of port wine; and we then turned over the old newspapers which we found in the chests, and drew lots for the presents, which consisted of small musical instruments such as fifes, jew's-harps, trumpets, &c., with draughts and other games, puppets, crackers, &c. In the evening we feasted on chocolate and gingerbread."

"We observed the day very quietly," writes Dr. Laube in his diary. "If this Christmas be the last we are to see, it was at least a cheerful one; but should a happy return home be decreed for us, the next will, we trust, be far brighter. May G.o.d so grant!"

CHRISTMAS IN THE CRIMEA.

The Christmas of 1854 was a dismal one for the soldiers in the Crimea, witnessing and enduring what Lord John Russell spoke of as "the horrible and heartrending scenes of that Crimean winter."

"Thanks to General Muddle," says a journal of the period, "the Crimean Christmas of 1854 was anything but what it ought to and might have been; and the knowledge that plenty of good things had been provided by thoughtful hearts at home, but which were anywhere but where they were wanted, did not add to the merriment of our poor overworked, underfed army; and although some desperate efforts were made to be jolly on dreary outpost and in uncomfortable trenches, they only resulted in miserable failure. The following Christmas was doubly enjoyable by comparison. The stubborn fortress (Sebastopol) had fallen at last to its more stubborn a.s.sailants; habit had deprived frost and snow of their terrors, and every hut ran over with hams, preserves, vegetables, and mysterious tins, till it resembled a grocer's store.

The valleys of Miscomia, too, were rich in mistletoe, to be had for the trouble of gathering; but few cared to undergo that trouble for the sake of what only reminded them of unattainable sweets, and made them sigh for the girls they had left behind them."

In 1855, Messrs. Macmillan & Co. published a poem by H. R. F., ent.i.tled "Christmas Dawn, 1854," in which the writer pictures the festivities marred by war:--

"A happy Christmas!

Happy! to whom? Perchance to infancy, And innocent childhood, while the germ of sin, Yet undeveloped, leaves a virgin soil For joy, and Death and Sorrow are but names.

But who, that bears a mind matured to thought, A heart to feel, shall look abroad this day And speak of happiness? The church is deckt With festive garlands, and the sunbeams glance From glossy evergreens; the mistletoe Pearl-studded, and the holly's l.u.s.trous bough Gleaming with coral fruitage; but we muse Of laurel blent with cypress. Gaze we down Yon crowded aisle? the mourner's dusky weeds Sadden the eye; and they who wear them not Have mourning in their hearts, or lavish tears Of sympathy on griefs too deeply lodged For man's weak ministry.

A happy Christmas!

Ah me! how many hearths are desolate!

How many a vacant seat awaits in vain The loved one who returns not! Shall we drain The cheerful cup--a health to absent friends?

Whom do we pledge? the living or the dead?"

Thus did the poet, "sick at heart," explore "the realm of sorrow"; and then again he mused:

"In humbler mood to hail the auspicious day, Shine forth rejoicing in thy strength, O sun, Shine through the dubious mists and tearful show'rs That darken Hope's clear azure! Christ is born, The life of those who wake, and those who sleep-- The Day-spring from on high hath looked on us; And we, who linger militant on earth, Are one in Him, with those, the loved and lost, Whose early graves keep the red field they won Upon a stranger sh.o.r.e. Ah! not in vain Went up from many a wild Crimean ridge The soldier's pray'r, responsive to the vows Breathed far away in many an English home.

Not vain the awakened charities, that gush Through countless channels--Christian brotherhoods Of mercy; and that glorious sister-band Who sow by Death's chill waters!--Not in vain, My country! ever loved, but dearest now In this thine hour of sorrow, hast thou learnt To bow to Him who chastens. We must weep-- We may rejoice in weeping"

CHRISTMAS IN ABYSSINIA.

Wherever Englishmen are on the 25th of December, there is Christmas.

Whether it be in the icy regions of the Arctic zone, or in the sweltering heat of tropical sunshine, the coming round of the great feast brings with it to every Englishman a hearty desire to celebrate it duly. And if this cannot be done in exactly home-fashion, the festival is kept as happily as circ.u.mstances will allow. In this spirit did our soldiers keep Christmas in Abyssinia, in 1867, with the thermometer at seventy-five in the shade, and even here the edibles included at least one traditional dish--a joint of roast beef. There was also an abundance of spur-fowls, guinea-fowls, venison, mutton, &c., and the place in which the festive board was spread was decorated with branches of fir and such other subst.i.tutes for holly and mistletoe as could be found.

CHRISTMAS-KEEPING IN INDIA

at different periods shows the same determination of our British soldiers to honour the Christmas festival.

In 1857, the saviours of our Indian Empire very nearly lost their Christmas. The army was encamped at Intha, within sight of Nepaul, waiting for the rain to clear off and the tents to dry, ere it moved on to drive the Sepoys into the Raptee. The skies cleared on Christmas morning, and Lord Clyde was for marching at once, but relented in time to save the men's puddings from being spoiled--not only relented, but himself gave a Christmas banquet, at which the favoured guests sat down to well-served tables laden with barons of beef, turkeys, mutton, game, fish, fowls, plum-puddings, mince-pies, &c. To allay the thirst such substantial fare created, appeared beakers of pale ale from Burton and Glasgow; porter from London and Dublin; champagne, moselle, sherry, and old port, 'rather bothered by travelling twenty miles a day on a camel back.' Following the chief's example, each regiment had a glorious spread, and throughout the wide expanse of tents sounds of rejoicing were heard, for the soldiers kept Christmas right merrily.

Similarly,

THE BRITISH SOLDIERS AND SAILORS IN SOUTH AFRICA

did their best to observe the Christmas festival in good old English style, even during the sieges of Ladysmith, Kimberley, and Mafeking, when provisions were to be had only at famine prices. The ingenious Tommy Atkins, in distant lands, has often found sylvan subst.i.tutes for mistletoe and holly, and native viands to take the place of plum-puddings and mince-pies, but it is not so easy to find subst.i.tutes for the social circles in old England, and when the time comes round for the Christmas dance Tommy's thoughts "Return again to the girl I've left behind me."

Moreover, it sometimes falls to the lot of soldiers and war correspondents to spend their Christmas in most outlandish places. Mr.

Archibald Forbes has left on record (in the _English Ill.u.s.trated Magazine_, 1885) an interesting account of his own Christmastide in the Khyber Pa.s.s.

In his graphic style the intrepid war correspondent describes the "ride long and hard" which Kinloch and he had through the Khyber to Jelalabad plain to fulfil "the tryst they had made to spend Christmas Day with the cheery comrades of Sir Sam Browne's headquarter staff."

They had an adventurous journey together from the Dakka camp to Jumrood, where Forbes left Kinloch with Maude's division.

Further on, Mr. Forbes says: "I am not prepared to be definite, after five years, as to the number of plum-puddings forming that little hillock on the top of my dak-gharry between Jhelum and Peshawur, on the apex of which sat the faithful John amidst a whirl of dust. At Peshawur the heap of Christmas gifts were loaded into the panniers of a camel, and the ship of the desert started on its measured solemn tramp up through the defiles of the Khyber." Then Mr. Forbes tells us how he joined Kinloch again at General Maude's headquarters at Jumrood. Kinloch "had not forgotten his tryst, but meanwhile there were military duties to be done." After the discharge of these "military duties," which included a night march to surprise a barbarous clan called Zukkur-Kehls, Forbes and Kinloch joined General Tytler's column on its return march to Dakka, because at Dakka they would be nearer to their friends of Sir Sam Browne's headquarters.

"Tytler determined to make his exit from the Zukkur-Kahl Valley by a previously unexplored pa.s.s, toward which the force moved for its night's bivouac. About the entrance to the glen there was a fine forest of ilex and holly, large, st.u.r.dy, spreading trees, whence dangled long sprays of mistletoe; the mistletoe bough was here indeed, and Christmas was close, but where the fair ones whom, under other circ.u.mstances, the amorous youth of our column would have so enthusiastically led under that spray which accords so sweet a license? The young ones prattled of those impossible joys; but the seniors, less frivolous, were concerned by the increasing narrowness of the gorge, and by the dropping fire that hung on our skirts as we entered it. However, there was but one casualty--a poor fellow of the 17th Regiment had his thigh smashed by a bullet--and we spent the night under the ilex trees without further molestation.... It was Christmas Eve when we sat chatting with young Beatson in his lonely post by the Chardai streamlet; but a few hours of morning riding would carry us to Jellalabad whither Sir Sam Browne's camp had been advanced, and we were easy on the score of being true to tryst. As in the cold grey dawn we resumed our journey, leaving the young officer who had been our host to concern himself with the watchfulness of his picquets and the vigilance of his patrols, there was a sound of unintentional mockery in the conventional wish of a 'Merry Christmas'

to the gallant lad, and there was a wistfulness in his answering smile.... The road to the encampment, the white canvas of whose tents showed through the intervening hills, was traversed at a hand gallop; and presently Kinloch and myself found ourselves in the street of the headquarter camp, shaking hands with friends and comrades, and trying to reply to a medley of disjointed questions. The bugles were sounding for the Christmas Day Church Parade as we finished a hurried breakfast. Out there on the plain the British troops of the division were standing in hollow square, the officers grouped in the centre....

The headquarter street we found swept and garnished, the flagstaff bedecked with holly, and a regimental band playing 'Home, Sweet Home.'

Dear old Sir Sam Browne did not believe in luxury when on campaign, but now for the first time I saw him at least comfortable.... The mess anteroom was the camp street outside the dining tent; and at the fashionable late hour of eight we 'went in' to dinner, to the strains of the _Roast Beef of Old England_. It was a right jovial feast, and the most cordial good-fellowship prevailed. He would have been a cynical epicurean who would have criticised the appointments; the banquet itself was above all cavil. Rummaging among some old papers the other day, I found the _menu_, which deserves to be quoted: 'Soup--Julienne. Fish--Whitebait (from the Cabul River).

Entrees--Cotelettes aux Champignons, Poulets a la Mayonaise.

Joints--Ham and fowls, roast beef, roast saddle of mutton, boiled brisket of beef, boiled leg of mutton and caper sauce. Curry--chicken.

Sweets--Lemon jelly, blancmange, apricot tart, plum-pudding. Grilled sardines, cheese fritters, cheese, dessert.' Truth compels the avowal that there was no table-linen, nor was the board resplendent with plate or gay with flowers. Table crockery was deficient, or to be more accurate, there was none. All the dishes were of metal, and the soup was eaten, or rather drunk, out of mugs and iron teacups. But it tasted none the worse on this account, and let it be recorded that there _were_ champagne gla.s.ses, while between every two guests a portly magnum reared its golden head. Except 'The Queen,' of course, there were but two toasts after the feast--one was 'Absent Friends,'

drunk in a wistful silence, and the other, the caterer's health, greeted with vociferous enthusiasm. A few fields off the wood had been collecting all day for the Christmas camp-fire of the 10th Hussars, and by ten o'clock the blaze of it was mounting high into the murky gloom. A right merry and social gathering it was round the bright glow of this Yule log in a far-off land. The flames danced on the wide circle of bearded faces, on the tangled fleeces of the postheens, on the gold braid of the forage caps, on the sombre hoods of beshliks....

The songs ranged from gay to grave; the former mood in the ascendency.

But occasionally there was sung a ditty, the a.s.sociations with which brought it about that there came something strangely like a tear into the voice of the singer, and that a yearning wistfulness fell upon the faces of the listeners. The bronzed troopers in the background shaded with their hands the fire-flash from their eyes; and as the familiar homely strain ceased that recalled home and love and trailed at the heart strings till the breast felt to heave and the tears to rise, there would be a little pause of eloquent silence which told how thoughts had gone astraying half across the globe to the loved ones in dear old England, and were loath to come back again to the rum and the camp fire in Jellalabad plain. Ah, how many stood or sat around that camp fire that were never to see old England more? The snow had not melted on the Sufed Koh when half a squadron of the troopers were drowned in the treacherous Cabul river. No brighter soul or sweeter singer round that fire than Monty Slade; but the life went out of Monty Slade with his face to the foe and his wet sword grasped in a soldier-grip; and he lies under the palm trees by the wells of El Teb."

CHRISTMAS IN CANADA.

In Canada the severe and long-continued frosts convert a good deal of land and water into fields of ice, and skating is a very popular amus.e.m.e.nt of Christmastide. Sleighing is also very fashionable, and the large tracts of country covered with snow afford ample scope for the pastime. The jingle of the sleigh bells is heard in all the princ.i.p.al thoroughfares which at the season of the great winter festival present quite an animated appearance. The ears of the sleigh drivers are usually covered either by the cap or with a comforter, which in very cold weather is also wrapped over the mouth and nose.

"Christmas Day," says an English Colonist, "is spent quietly in our own houses. New Year's Day is the day of general rejoicing, when every one either visits or receives their friends: and so, thinking of the merry times we have had in Old England, and comparing them with the quietness of to-day, we feel more like strangers in a strange land than ever before.

"As a special treat, we are to have a real English Christmas dinner to-day, and our housekeeper has made a wonderful plum-pudding. The turkey is already steaming upon the table, and we soon fall to work upon him. He is well cooked, but there seems to be something wrong with his legs, which are so tough and sinewy that we come to the conclusion that he must have been training for a walking match. The rest of the dinner pa.s.ses off very well, with the exception of the plum-pudding, which has to be brought to the table in a basin, as it firmly refuses to bind.

"After dinner we retire to the sitting-room, and sit round the stove talking, while those of us addicted to the fragrant weed have a quiet smoke. Thus pa.s.ses Christmas afternoon.

"Tea-time soon comes round, and after we have refreshed ourselves, we resolve to end the day by paying a visit to a neighbour who possesses an American organ, and Christmas evening closes in to the music of those sweet old carols which that evening are heard over the whole world wherever an English colony is to be found."

CHRISTMAS IN AUSTRALIA.

Christmas festivities in Australia are carried on in what we should call "summer weather." There is no lack of good cheer and good living, but cold and snow are at this season unknown, and skating and s...o...b..lling, as a consequence, are sports unheard of at Christmastide by the youth in the Antipodes. Large parties and excursions are often arranged for spending a short time in the parks and fields, and Christmas picnics partake much of the character of English "gipsy-parties." The inhabitants being chiefly English, many of the ceremonies customary in English homes are observed, and the changes that are made are enforced for the most part by the difference in climate, and by the altered circ.u.mstances under which the various festivities are arranged.

In "A Summer Christmas," Douglas B. W. Sladen thus describes the Australian festivities:--

"The Christmas dinner was at two, And all that wealth or pains could do Was done to make it a success; And marks of female tastefulness, And traces of a lady's care, Were noticeable everywhere.

The port was old, the champagne dry, And every kind of luxury Which Melbourne could supply was there.