Lamp-lighters and bell-ringers, toy-sellers and carol-singers----all are quaint reminders of the day when a coach-and-four, amid the blare of trumpets, pulled up in front of an English inn or a great house to celebrate Christmas. Tall hats and greatcoats, muffs and mufflers, footwarmers and gaiters were quickly disposed of as the guests hastened toward their mugs of Christmas cheer. Wassailing and feasting, playing games galore, and partaicipating in an assortment of pantomimes, puppet shows, and parties----all made the holiday season in both town and country one long, mad, merry revel from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Night.
Washinton Irving and Charles Dickens were the chief historians of the English Christmas. Their heartwarming stories, rich in detail and description, evoked a nostalgic ring still heard today. They captured the "old-fashioned Christmas" and portrayed it with enduring enchantment. As a result, citizens of the British Isles, of North America (and, for that matter, of a large part of the civilized world), have long cherished this romantic concept of Christmas as an ideal to be perpetuated and nurtured. For more than a century these age-old traditions, vividly depicted in a glowing and fanciful manner on greeting cards, have preserved this nostalgic image of Christmas. In Victorian days, holiday greetings blossomed like flowers and beskope their message in tender sentiment printed in brilliant color----a feeling so welcome at the cold time of the year that it has become part and parel of the holiday season. In like manner, bringing in the Yule log, serving up the boar's head, hanging the mistletoe, tolling the Devil's knell, and burning the ashen faggot are rites linked with ancient ceremonial aspects of the English Christmas now seldom practiced. Yet, they are still observed in remote villages of this ancient land, where even the smallest hamlet clings tenaciously to its hallowed traditions. Time has changed some of these customs and consecrated others. During the past three hundred years, the festive season in England which once lasted twelve days or more has been shortened considerably. Many of the old folkways have lost their significance because of changes in the mode and manner of living and are now practically forgotten. They live only in books or in conversations of those who enjoy reminiscence and the delights of the past. On the other hand, traditions have a way of being modified, adapted, and reinterpreted to serve the needs of a changing world as original meanings give way to new outlooks and attitudes. Thus, timeworn beliefs sometimes emerge in new guise.
Father Christmas is another name for Santa Claus or St. Nicholas in Britain. Children write letters to him listing their wants and desires and sometimes toss them into the back of the fireplace. If the message is carried up the chimney by the draft, the sender is assured of having his requests fulfilled; but, if it is consumed in the flames, another try is made to assure proper delivery of the magic message. This is apparently a more direct way of reaching Father Christmas than depending on the postman. Stockings are hung to receive the hoped-for gifts since it is related that, one Christmas Eve, St. Nicholas accidentally dropped some gold coins down one of the tricky chimneys through which he was making his way. Ordinarily, they would have dropped into the grate, but instead they fell into a stocking left by the fireside to dry. Ever since that time the generous giver of gifts is expected to fill every stocking which has been set out in anticipation of his arrival. Bringing in the Yule log----a tradition which has been highly romanticized----is an ancient folkway that has practically disappeared. In the days of the Vikings, who introduced the practice to England, the log was burned in honor of the god Thor, but over the centuries Britain and other countries adapted the practice to the observance of Christmas. It was customary to drag in a carefully selected log from the nearby forest and ceremoniously place it on the massive heart. A burst of song welcomed its arrival on Christmas Eve, which was spent, by masters and servants alike, feasting in front of the fire. The whole scene was one of color and anticipation of the great Christmas Day banquets. Any fragments left from one year's Yule log were carefully saved to be used for kindling next year. The boar's head ceremony, immortalized by Washinton Irving and Charles Dickens, is one of England's feudal customs still cherished at Queen's College, Oxford. Each year a boar's head, gaily festooned with pennants, bay, holly, and rosemary, becrowned and with an orange in its mouth, is borne into the brightly decorated hall, where it is the centerpiece of a rite which has been observed for centuries. In North of England, there is believed to be a survival of an Old Norse custom in which a boar was sacrificed at Yuletide feasts in honour of Freyr, the Scandinavian god of peace and plenty. Another old Christmas custom is observed every year in the Yorkshire borough of Dewsbury. Known as "Tolling the Devil's Knell", this rite has been carried on for seven hundred years, with only a short break in continuity during the war years, when bell-ringing was forbidden for security reasons. Each year, on Christmas Eve, a team of bell-ringers tolls the tenor bell of the parish church----once for every year since the birth of Christ. The final stroke is timed to ring exactly at the hour of midnight. Legend says that the practice began in the 13th century when a local baron, as penance for killing one of his servants, gave a bell to the church and ordered that it be rung each Christmas Eve to remind him of his crime. For many years the good people of Dewsbury believed that the tolling of the bell would keep the Devil away from their parish for the next twelve months. Throughout England, there are many ceremonies connected with the ringing of bells, steeped in tradition, that have fascinating associations with this season of joy. |
