Christmas Eras Tour - Part II

Welcome back! We are going on a tour of the seven eras of the history of Christmas.

As a reminder -
I have been reading "Stations of the Sun" by Ronald Hutton. One thing I noticed while reading is that Christmas went through stages. I see at least 7 eras in the past 2,000 years. Each one is marked by its own characteristics which were either greatly changed or outright abandoned in the following era. I thought it might be worthwhile to take us on a tour of those eras. Since this post pulls mainly from Hutton, and Hutton focuses mainly on England where Christmas is concerned, this post will, too.

To help me write this post, I started reading "A Tudor Christmas" by Alison Weir and Siobhan Clarke. They also arrange their book in eras. Differently than mine, of course, but not too much. I am not the only one who noticed the eras.

In the previous post in this series, we reviewed eras 1 (Development) and 2 (Infancy). In those eras, the very base traditions of the holiday, including the Twelve Days and Advent, were solidified. Today, we will tour era 3 - the Catholic years.

Procure for thine self a mulled cider and sittest thou back to enjoy. Wassail!

CATHOLIC (567 to 1517 AD)

The Catholic era is the time starting when the base Christmas traditions were settled, to the time of the Protestant Reformation. This is the "golden age" of Christmas. I am naming this era "Catholic" because during this period most European Christians were Catholic, and to distinguish it from the Protestant Reformation. During this era, Christmas was spread by evangelists throughout Europe and to other corners of the globe, many new traditions began which we have since forgotten, and even though it was religious at heart it began to take on a much more festive feel - sometimes to excess.

This is a large era - almost 1,000 years - so, I am just going to skim the edges with broad strokes. So much happened in this era which I cannot get into because of space and attention span, like the founding of Oxford University, the Black Plague, the Holy Roman Empire of the Germanic Nation, Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror, the crusades, the split of the Unified Church into Catholic and Orthodox, the sale of indulgences, the Borgias, the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic invasions, and etc. How I wish we all had infinite time and resources to explore this era with!

Understand, in this era people were deeply concerned with heaven and hell, good deeds and sin, blessings and plagues, etc. In the previous era, it was the church that initiated Christmas customs. In this era, it is the people who initiate the customs, but the church who either prevents or allows them. And it all ticked along according to a series of feast days most people today have completely forgotten.

Ronald Hutton makes a brilliant observation about the customs of this (or any) era. To understand the customs, one needs to understand where social units were centered:

"It is apparent, also, that calendar customs were created around social units which altered significantly over time: in ancient Britain the household, clan, and kingdom, in the high Middle Ages the household and the manor, and in the late Middle Ages the household, the municipality, and the parish."
-Ronald Hutton, "Stations of the Sun", p.426

I think this goes a long way to explain why certain customs exist at certain times and in certain places, in the ways they did, and why they increase and decrease when they do. I think I will revisit the rest of this statement in the next posts.

But for Christmas specifically, you must dispel the modern idea that Christmas is all about Christmas Day. In this era, it is all about the Twelve Days, of which Christmas Day is merely the beginning.

It wasn't twelve days of un-paused revelry. There were four larger days:

1) Christmas Day was the first day. This was a rather austere day starting with midnight mass, then morning mass, a special meal, games, and other entertainment.
2) The day after Christmas was St. Stephen's Day (aka. "the Feast of Stephen"). On this day, gifts were given to servants and charity was given to the poor. Servants who worked Christmas day were often given this day off. After the Reformation, St. Stephen's Day would become Boxing Day.
3) New Year, the original gift-giving day. A good day to meet with friends. This day became especially popular in Scotland, where they call it Hogmanay.
4) And lastly, Twelfth Day. This was the biggest day for feasting and frivolity, to mark the end of the holiday before returning to work.
There were several lesser days. On 28 December was the Feast of the Holy Innocents, where children were given special license to be children in honor of the little ones Herod murdered. On the 31st came the Feast of the Holy Family. This was a more family-centered day.
If you have in mind some picture of people starting on Christmas Day and not stopping for twelve days, that isn't accurate. It was more punctuated than that. Many people carried on with life on these lesser days.

Immediately after the Twelve Days comes Epiphany (aka. Theophany). Technically, the Christmas season did not officially end until Candlemas on February 2.

But before you deck a single hall, don your gay apparel, or bring out that figgy pudding, you had to fast for Advent. No Advent Calendars for you, with little chocolates (made mostly of wax) inside. Advent is usually forty days, or four Sundays. Depending on when and where you lived Advent could have been much longer, starting at Martinmas (November 11). Generally, there was a fast from meats and cheeses on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Then in other times and places, from the 1100s through the 1300s, Advent was practically abolished. Regardless, Advent was not then what it is now, a time of decorating and shopping and cookies. It was a time of preparation for the soul.
Oh, and there were no Advent Wreaths with colored candles, either. That comes much later.

At midnight mass, churches would be well lit with candles. People would carry candles in with them so the church could gleam with light in the darkness. Churches would be decked to the nines with greenery, usually holly and ivy. The lights would glisten and sparkle on the shiny holly leaves. It must have been absolutely wondrous to behold.

Before Christmas could develop in Britain, the Celts had to be converted to Christianity, and many were. But then the Anglo-Saxons invaded. They, too, were converted. But then the Vikings arrived. They were converted, too. Your Christmas traditions at this time were basically going to mass and praying to live through the coming year.

Certain familiar traditions arrived or were attached to Christmas in this era. You might recognize caroling, decking everything you could with greenery swags and wreaths (of holly and ivy and bay and rosemary), festive parlor games, telling ghost stories, gambling, feasting, fruitcake, costumes, plum or fig puddings, Christmas goose, and nativity scenes. You might be less familiar with such as:

• Christmas Pie (aka Great Pie) - a large pie with spices, meats, and fruits.
• Bean Cake - a dessert with a bean baked inside where the finder is declared Lord of Misrule.
• Souling - going door-to-door for money, food, ale, or soul cakes.
• Mumming - costumed entertainment, often hired.
• Hognelling - going around collecting money for the church.
• Wassail - a large communal bowl filled with a spiced drink.
• Frumenty - basically oatmeal with various add-ins.
• Feast of Fools - where a person of low authority was given temporary leadership.
• The Boar's Head - a roast or stuffed boar's head as the centerpiece of the feast. 

Elaborately dressing up food like it was a living thing, especially a peacock, was also popular. Most of these traditions would carry through to era 6 (Industrial Revolution) before dying out.

One extraordinarily important event in this era is Charlemagne's reign in Europe (768-814 AD). He was crowned "Emperor of the Romans" by Pope Leo III on Christmas day in 800, and his son crowned King of the Franks. This led to an increased respect for Christmas versus Easter and Pentecost. It later became somewhat of a fashion to be crowned on Christmas Day. Charlemagne was intent that Christianity would be the glue that bound his empire together. He became "the scourge of German paganism", attempting to wipe it out completely. He changed their entire method of reckoning time, renamed months, altered the beginning and ending points of months, and otherwise “Romanized” their reckoning of time. For all of the claims of Christmas being caused by pagan traditions, in reality, we keep seeing pagan traditions being altered to become more like Christmas.

After him, other kings, such as Haakon I of Norway (934-961), rearranged Scandinavian pagan holidays to make them more like Christian holidays in hopes of converting the pagans in time. For example, he moved Yule from January (midwinter night was at a moon phase in mid-January) into late December, to bring it in line with Christmas. He had to balance his desire to introduce Christianity to Norway with the political expediency necessary to unite the realm. He ultimately failed in this. You can read about Haakon in "The Saga of Haakon the Good", with additional details in Alexander Tille's "Yule and Christmas - Their Place In The Germanic Year" pp. 200-204, and "From Jól to Yule" on Scandinavian Archaeology.

For all the thousands of websites that say Christmas comes from Yule, that simply is not true. Neither come from the other. But from this point on, Christmas started to pick up the nickname of Yule.

Christian mystery plays begin in the 900s. Mystery plays grow grander and more popular until the end of this era. The historical roots of the Christmas Tree tradition can arguably be found here. For more, read Martha's post "Falsely Accused? Christmas Trees Were Christian Theater Props?". We will keep revisiting the Christmas Tree as we go along.

The name "Christmas" first appears around 1038, as "Christes Maesse". English speakers would usually take a word then add "mass" at the end (e.g., Hallowmas, Martinmas, Christmas, Candlemas, etc). Prior to this, it was usually referred to as the Nativity. I find it interesting that Christmas was called Yule by some people before it was called Christmas.

The Yule Log allegedly gets its first mention in Germany in 1184. (Hutton, p. 39). We will see this again in the 1620s.
---Boring Yet Important Details behind this mention of Yule Log in 1184---
This mention is not certain by any means. Hutton gets this claim from Alexander Tille's book "The History of the Christmas Festival" from 1889. I was able to find the English version, "Yule and Christmas - Their Place In The Germanic Year". The mention is on pp. 92-93. Tille says it is only an allusion, not a direct mention. So, the reference is in doubt. On p. 80, Tille comments on the many claims of pagan solstice origin of Christmas traditions. Tille says they are, "...nothing but unhistorical speculations, and would have been better omitted". On p. 93, Tille says the claims of pagan origins from one popular author are, "...generalizations, according to which a pre-Christian winter-solstice fire would have to be supposed as a general custom, are void of any historical foundation, and merely represent fantastic speculations." That's the exact same thing I keep seeing!

Whether the log truly came from Yule or was just called after Yule cannot be known, as Christmas was being called Yule by some for over 100 years by this point. With the terms Christmas and Yule being practically interchangeable, and things being altered by Charlemagne et al, it is difficult to know what was from the ancient Germanic winter holiday and what was a novelty from Christmas. There are arguments to be made for either side. The problem is, we have absolutely no direct evidence either way, so any modern claims of ancient paganism do seem to be but "fantastic speculation". We also have to take into account what is missing - such as, there is no mention at all in England until the 1620s. Why would this be, if the tradition was so old? Saxons were German and came to England well before the 1620s, and so did the Norse. So, we should see something. We do not. This debate cannot be settled.

---End of Boring Yet Important Details---

Around the mid-1300s is when decent records of folk customs start to appear in Britain, according to Hutton (p. 412). Before this, it seems few common folk wrote things down. To say "the oldest written record happens in..." is a difficult thing, because that does not tell anything about how a custom started, only that it was happening at a certain time. Without records of how they began, customs seem to just appear out of thin air. Consequently, we have many historians drawing various and conflicting conclusions about how a custom started.

Carols appear around 1300. Hutton says the oldest carol in Britain is the Cursor Mundi. If you try to read it, you will be puzzled why that is a carol. We imagine people singing on a street corner or house-to-house, but Hutton says carols were, "a distinctive type of lyric, made to accompany a ring dance of women and men holding hands," (p. 13). So, it was a style of rhyme. And Hutton believes they originated with the Franciscans. Originally, carols weren't specifically about Christmas. Christmas-specific carols appear in the 1400s in England.
If we expand beyond carols and look at Christmas songs and hymns, we can go much farther back, even to the early 300s. Read more in the article "Oldest Christmas Songs in the World" on oldest.org.

Mumming

In the article "Samhain Was Not On October 31", I highlighted souling and mumming, mentioning they were also practiced at Christmas time. Forsooth! 'Tis true! We see records from the 1100s or 1200s, but they get popular in general around the 1300s, when the church realized they could be used to generate charity.

You can see how many of the things people recognize as Halloween traditions today, like wearing costumes and going door-to-door, were done at Halloween sure enough, but were also done at other times throughout the year. Christmas was also a great time to tell ghost stories! Hence, Dickens' three ghosts of Christmas. Only very recently, within the past 100 years, did these things coalesce around Halloween only. This is precisely as we shall see how many practices later coalesced around Christmas Day.
In the 1500s, the masque tradition (a sort of an elaborate play) grew out of the mumming tradition, according to Hutton (p. 11). We will certainly mention the masque in the next era!

Lords, Kings, and anyone of means were expected to be charitable. Part of this charity was opening their homes to guests and holding Christmas feasts in their homes for their subjects and tenants. Depending on the situation, the meal might be provided, or else the guests might be expected to contribute something to the meal. These meals made it possible for the poor to enjoy a Christmas feast they could not hope to provide on their own.

This feasting was sometimes done in wonderous excess. Ronald Hutton, in his book "Stations of the Sun", tells us King Richard II held a banquet for, "10,000 guests and consumed 200 oxen and 200 tubs of wine." (p. 10) And some items listed from King Henry V included boar, dates with mottled cream, carp, prawns, turbot [a large flat fish], tench [a large freshwater game fish], perch, sturgeon, whelks [sea snails], roast porpoise [not dolphin], crayfish, roasted eels and lampreys, and marzipan. (pp. 10-11) There are other grand examples besides just these. You won't find the like of those feasts today - not even at Golden Corral.

One noteworthy issue in this era arose in the 1300s which is represented in the person of a Catholic priest named John Wycliffe. An undercurrent of dissatisfaction began to boil up in response to the perceived abuses of power in the church. My post focuses on Christmas, so I won't go into Wycliffe or the Reformation so much, but this needed to be mentioned because it will affect Christmas later.

During the 1400s in Germany, the first iteration of that tradition of all Christmas traditions appears when the actors guilds set up Paradise Trees outdoors. You've probably been wondering when this would appear. Here it is! This from Martha's post "Falsely Accused? Christmas Trees Were Christian Theater Props":

"The first record we have dates to 1419, when the Fraternity of Baker's Apprentices set up a tree decorated with apples, wafers, gingerbread and tinsel in the local hospital at Freiburg (Brunner, p. 4). Another document claims the first Christmas tree came two decades later – in 1441, when the Black Heads (foreign traders guild) set up a tree in front of the town hall for a dance in Talinn, Estonia. The Black Heads also erected a tree in front of the Riga, Latvia town hall in 1510, where children decorated it with woolen thread, straw and apples."

Any claims of ancient Christmas Trees being mentioned in Jeremiah 10, or being sacred to Oden, or some adoption of generic pagan tree worship are completely false. Many of these claims are invented whole cloth, while the rest rely on surface similarities such as, "greenery was used in pagan rituals for centuries." For as much as I distrust the German History of Religions School and its authors, even Alexander Tille admits this is a false conclusion, in his book "Yule and Christmas - Their Place In The Germanic Year" 1889 p. 80. Christmas trees are a Christian invention, derived from Christian traditions, and wouldn't become truly popular until the 1800s.

It was some undetermined point in this era, before the 1500s, when the legend of St. Nicholas began to gain new details. He was said to have cast out demons. Later, he was said to have contained a demon in a cage. This blended with the German folk tradition of wild things in the mountains and eventually led to the dark companions of St. Nicholas, such as Krampus, Knecht Ruprecht, Zwart Piet, and Belsnickel. The first written mention of a Krampus was in the 1500s. This was not a Christmas Krampus, however, but a Feast of St. Nicholas Krampus. This is why "Krampus Night" is December 5, the eve of the feast of St. Nicholas. The Christmas-specific Krampus would not come until the 1700s, after the Reformation.

Hopefully you see a theme of things happening according to the Catholic calendar of feast days in this era, but later those things are moved to other days, such as Christmas Day or Halloween.
Hopefully you also see a theme of things happening later than you were told. For example, people speculate dressing up in costume comes from the Krampus legend. But the first records of Krampus come much later than the first records of mumming. So....
Mind your sources.

One other incredibly noteworthy event that happened towards the end of this era is, a Spanish King funded an Italian man's sea voyage to India. Yes, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue to the New World in this era. The world would never be the same. Hard to believe this happened when Martin Luther was a little boy and before King Henry VIII was even born.

I am putting the end of this era in 1517 AD, due to it being the year Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Church. I had thought about placing this later, but figured I might as well include the whole Reformation.

As you can see, what we recognize as Christmas today is not like Christmas during this era. Hopefully, you also see the Catholic era is different from the Infancy era before it. Sure, some things are the same now, like having a good meal or going to midnight Mass, but for the most part Christmas as it was in the Catholic era is gone. Despite all its fun and frivolity, it was a deeply religious time. There was an innocence to it that has been lost in the next few eras. I wonder if it might even be good to recapture some of that lost spirit of Christmas.

The next step in history is the attempt to stamp out Christmas, along with anything else that reminded Protestants of the Catholic Church.

See you then!

 

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It is important that you understand; Everything on this blog is based on the current understanding of each author. Never take anyone's word for it, always prove it for yourself, it is your responsibility. You cannot ride someone else's coattail into the Kingdom. ; )

Acts 17:11

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