Christmas Eras Tour - Part III

Welcome back again! 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.

In the previous post in this series, we reviewed era 3 (Catholic). In that era, we reviewed the years 567 to 1517, the golden years of Christmas. It was a time of fun and community. Today, we will tour eras 4 (Oppression) and 5 (Restoration).

As the names imply, today's content will be less festive. We are less interested in the traditions in this era (good thing there weren't many new) and more interested in the politics. I want to tell the story of how Christmas flatlined on the table, but was resuscitated.

Enjoy! But not too much or you'll be fined 5 shillings.

REFORMATION AND OPPRESSION (1517 to 1661 AD)

The Reformation and Oppression era is the time starting in 1517 when Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation by nailing his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Church, through the Commonwealth period in Great Britain, to the start of the Industrial Revolution. During this era, Christmas gets banned in the British Isles and America, traditions get altered, then Christmas makes a comeback. Sort of.

It isn't all of Protestantism that caused this era to be named "Oppression", just a few denominations. The three big players in today's post are the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and especially the Puritans.

How Christmas went for you in these years depended almost entirely on where you lived. During this period we see the Scottish banning it, followed by the American Pilgrims banning it, then the English under Oliver Cromwell banning it. However, at the same time, Christmas changed in Germania and Scandinavia, but not to the degree it did in England. They had no fundamentalist Puritan movement. And it changed almost not at all in Catholic areas such as France, Italy, and Spain. But these are broad strokes. No country was all Protestant or all Catholic. They were mixed.

As mentioned in the previous posts, there were two big gift-giving days: the feast of St. Nicholas, and New Year. After Martin Luther sparked the Reformation, he discouraged the veneration of saints. Henry VIII would do the same later on. This means, for Protestants anyway, Saint Nicholas could no longer bring gifts to children on December 6. Luther moved traditions from Saint Nicholas' Day to Christmas Eve (aka Heiligabend, holy evening). He also adapted an older German tradition into a new gift bringer to replace Saint Nicholas: the Christkindl (the Christ Child). This opened the way for gift giving on Christmas Eve where it had not been before, and new Christmas gift-bearing characters to emerge later.

To complicate matters further, just because a tradition was discouraged does not mean it went away. One example is ... Saint Nicholas. He was so beloved he was never really replaced. Neither were the traditions on December 6th. Traditions were never fully moved to Christmas Eve. It was more like they were copied and pasted. Saint Nicholas is in both places. And since St. Nick is in both, his companions are, too. Krampus et al get associated with Christmas Eve around this time.

Meanwhile, in the early 1500s in Germany, the Christmas Tree tradition is gaining popularity as the actors guilds keep setting them up in public. No, Martin Luther did not invent them. It is popularly claimed he invented putting candles on them, to add the light Jesus brings to the tradition. Many trees since have burned accidentally. The Germans would take the tree tradition wherever they went.
At the same time, the Paradise Plays which gave rise to the tree tradition, were dying out. Again quoting Martha from her post "Falsely Accused? Christmas Trees Were Christian Theater Props":

"Most plays died out in the 1500s, despite the fact that they were still very popular. In London, they blamed it on the rise of Shakespeare and similar theater. Elsewhere in Europe, it's more obvious that the Reformation was their death knell. Early on, scripts were revised to eliminate Catholic themes. As time went on, the Church called in scripts for editing and held until it was too late in the year to perform them (perhaps until hours of sunlight and air temperatures were prohibitive), Rhys writes (p. 24). Protestants weren't the only ones to discourage the plays – in France, the  Catholic-leaning Parlement de Paris outlawed the plays in 1548."

Oh, by the way - 'tannenbaum' is technically not how you say Christmas Tree in German. A tannenbaum is any fir tree. A Weihnachtsbaum is a Christmas Tree. The song "O Tannenbaum" is not technically a Christmas song, and never mentions Christmas, but it has since become a Christmas song. It was written in the 1800s, but is based off an older song from this era.

At this point, I am going to walk you through a series of political events in the British Isles that led from the golden age of happy Christmas to the total suppression of the day. I am not going to go into much detail, because this post is about Christmas. But there are things I feel are important to what I said in the first post in this series: "I am particularly interested in showing how our modern Christmas is mostly a product of the three eras before it (ie. 7 is caused by 4, 5, & 6)."

English Monarchy

King Henry VIII created the Church of England in 1534. This one event started a slow chain reaction that contributed greatly to the English Civil Wars and the outlawing of Christmas. Protestantism was now on the rise in many areas of northern Europe, and Christmas in particular would bear the brunt. Henry VIII wanting a divorce is just as much a cause of Christmas as we see it today as is anything else. Law of unintended consequences.
Henry VIII also discouraged veneration of saints. This is where the Twelve Days start to dry up and Christmas Day starts to become the singular big winter festival. We talked in the last era about how this would happen. But nothing drastic happened quite yet.

In 1553, Henry's daughter, "Bloody" Mary I, a Catholic, became queen. Mary violently wrenched England back to Catholicism. Every movement towards Protestantism done by her predecessors was undone. By force. Many Protestants fled England for the mainland where, as fate would have it, they encountered John Calvin.

Five years later, Mary was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth I, a Protestant. All that Mary did was now undone once again. By force. A pendulum does swing! This is the period of priest holes, Mass performed in attics, and songs to help people remember the Catechism while it was banned. Elizabeth escapes the name "Bloody" only because she won. As Catholics began fleeing England for Catholic nations on the mainland, the Protestants who fled earlier began to return ...with their new Calvinist ideas. Here began the Puritan movement - a name given to a group of fundamentalist Calvinist Presbyterians who wanted increasingly radical reforms in England and its Church.

Catholic symbols and traditions were removed, often violently. Here began the polemics - calling anything Catholic "Popery", all Catholics "Papists", and quite intentionally calling Christmas "Yule" in order to sully it as much as possible with a pagan association. The people who try to find the source of Christmas in Yule because some people call it Yule seem to forget that Christmas was once purposefully called Yule in order to sully it. The antagonistic comments grew over the years to a ridiculous height, as they often do. Everything was 'heathen' and belonged directly to the devil. According to Alison Weir in "A Tudor Christmas", plum pudding was called "the broth of abominable things" in reference to Isaiah 65: 4 (p. 161).

It is important that you understand the attacks against Christmas were not because they had proof of anything pagan, but because they saw Christmas as Catholic.
I suppose only a few stopped to remember how they all used to be Catholic, too.

The Protestant reforms in England moved into Scotland, mainly under the leadership of John Knox (unsurprisingly, a student of John Calvin), where they would be taken in the full Scottish spirit. In 1560, Elizabeth put Protestants into power in Scotland. They established the Church of Scotland (aka. "the Kirk") - which is not the same denomination as the Church of England and is not run by the Scottish monarch. It worked on a Presbyterian model, which means it is led by Elders chosen from the lay members, as opposed to the Anglican church's Episcopalian model, which means it is led by formal Bishops similar to the Catholic Church. This is the dream Puritans had for the Church of England. By 1566, barely more than five years later, Christmas was no longer among the feasts of the Church in Scotland. But it wasn't just Christmas. All of the major holidays were out.
Fun fact: It is this church that will eventually spawn one Alexander Hislop. Now you understand his motives a little better.

Elizabeth I was succeeded in 1603, and the royal houses of England and Scotland were united, by James I (England and Ireland), also titled James VI (Scotland), famous for ordering the creation of the King James Version of the Bible. James disappointed both the Scottish and English reformers by not being as reform-minded as they wished. James I actually enjoyed Christmas!

Here, we get a huge development in tradition.

Some nobles had begun wintering in London rather than remaining at their mansions and keeping an open house for the poor, as they had been expected to. In 1616, King James tried to reverse the trend. According to Hutton, this act helped inspire one Ben Johnson to write a masque (p. 19). We talked about masques in the last era. They are a type of an elaborate play which grew out of the mumming tradition. Mr. Johson's masque was called "Christmas, His Masque". In it, Christmas was personified as a joyous, silly figure wearing a hat, and a beard. Some lines in the masque were anti-Puritan. This Christmas figure returned several more times with various appearances over the next few decades. We will keep checking in on this figure as he evolves.
There are some slight digs against the Puritans in this masque. You can find the same in Shakespeare's works.

In 1620, some Puritans, fed up the reformation of England wasn't moving quickly or far enough for their liking, leave England to start a Calvinist utopia in the New World. Their aversion for Christmas is legendary. Things were going their way, but not perfectly, so they left for a wilderness thousands of miles away. This should give you an idea about their general attitude.

King James could not directly order the Kirk to do anything. So, in 1621, he arranged for them to enact "The Five Articles of Perth". The fifth article bound the Kirk to observe Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. After 60 years, Christmas was restored in Scotland and looked to be safe once again!

...But the Kirk didn't appreciate this and worked to undo it. They are still a little salty about it to this day. The Five Rules were repealed 17 years later. This new ban would last until 1712. But merely lifting the ban did not return Christmas to that land. That would take longer still.

Yule Log

In the 1620-30s, a man named Robert Herrick first used the term "Christmas Log." You may know it better as the Yule Log. Remember, the names Christmas and Yule were interchangeable at this time, and did not actually refer to Yule. This is the earliest definite mention of the Yule Log tradition. Here. In this decade. Far later than most people would have us believe.
My question is - if this tradition is genuinely from 1184, which we talked about in the last era, why the 500-year gap without any other mention?
In this period, the Yule Log was gigantic! It took a team of young men and often a horse to draw out of the woods.

King James was succeeded in 1625 by Charles I. Charles, although he was a Protestant, was no friend of the Puritans. They were no fan of his, either. Charles married a Catholic woman, and appreciated older traditions. This bothered the Puritans. The Puritans wanted the King out of church leadership, and the Bishops, too. This bothered Charles. He saw a threat to the Divine Right of Kinds, so he worked against them. Thousands of Puritans left for the New World. After years of tensions, most of which centered around particulars of religion and who has authority in the church, wars broke out. From 1639 to 1653, multiple wars engulfed England, Scotland, and Ireland. The Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

The Commonwealth

In November 1644, The Church of England ruled that no other day but Sunday was biblical. The official liturgy in 1645 had no mention of Christmas, making its removal legal. Just like Scotland and the Puritan colony in America, Christmas was now out in England.
This doesn't mean Christmas was illegal, just that it wasn't being celebrated in churches. People kept it in their homes, and there was a secular, public observance in general.

As with most everything else in this era, there were unintended consequences. Christmas traditions were secularized. Anyone who studies Christmas soon runs into claims about midwinter festivals throughout history. The middle of winter, stripped of sacred Christmas symbolism, became just like any other excuse to drink and cause trouble. Where once we had holly and ivy symbolizing Jesus, we now have any plant that was green at the time - ivy, holly, box, yew, rosemary, laurel, broom, etc - and mistletoe - symbolizing nothing in particular. Hogneling and souling door-to-door to raise money for the church were replaced by groups of people collecting money for various efforts, sometimes by force. Christmas was alive, but the spirit of Christmas was not. I don't meant to minimize our modern complaints, but perhaps a little thankfulness our Christmas is not like that of the early-1600s is warranted.

Charles I was executed on orders of Parliament in January 1649. His son, Charles II, was crowned in Scotland, but that ended badly for him, so he fled to France. The Monarchy was ended, replaced by the fundamentalist Puritan government known as the Commonwealth of England. And with the monarchy technically went the Nobility. Here, the nobility exit center stage in the culture.

Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan, ruled England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland as Lord Protector from 1653 to 1658. The Puritans could not abide the continued existence of that Papist Christmas. Cromwell did not personally ban Christmas, but he oversaw the government that did. In 1647, an act of Parliament banned Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Out were their traditions - to the slightest act - and even festive attitudes were punishable offenses. In ten years, Christmas went from religious to secular and now to illegal. The 1650s under Cromwell was the decade without a Christmas. Sort of.

There was resistance to this heavy-handedness. Not everyone appreciated their traditions being banned. There were riots and protests large and small. Some hung mistletoe as an act of defiance. Parliament complained their authority was simply being ignored. They, of course, reacted with even more heavy-handedness.

Father Christmas

One particularly noteworthy result of this resistance is ... Father Christmas. A personification of Christmas, like "Christmas, His Masque" thirty-six years earlier, Father Christmas appears in several propaganda pieces in the 1650s. I will give you the two most well known.
The first is "The Vindication of Christmas", in 1653, by John Thomas. Thomas was known for writing Christmas-related works. In Vindication, Christmas is a symbol of good cheer. How can you be against good cheer? Even though this character is clearly a personification of Christmas, the name "Father Christmas" is not used.
The second is "The Examination and Trial of Old Father Christmas", in 1658. Here, the name Father Christmas appears for the first time. In the illustration, Father Christmas is quite saintly, and not at all fun or silly. Note the fur-lined robe and hat. Some people say Santa comes from Odin because of this. As you can clearly see for yourself, this is not the case. (People claiming everything comes from Odin gets tiresome.) This is the general look Father Christmas will keep in England until the 1900s. (Note: The book "There Really Is A Santa Claus" by William Federer, says Father Christmas was created by Henry VIII. Upon deeper inspection, I find no evidence for this.)

It is important to understand Father Christmas is technically not Santa Claus. There are some major differences:

• He is the personification of Christmas itself; representing the day, its characteristics, and traditions.
• He is the direct descendant of masques.
• He is a pro-Christmas propaganda piece created in England.
• He is not based on Saint Nicholas legends.
• He is not a gift-bringer.

English Monarchy ...Again

This whole time, Charles II was hiding in France. Oliver Cromwell died in 1658, succeeded by his son, who resigned nine months later. In 1660, after a brief period of in-fighting, Charles II was invited back to England to reign as King of England, Ireland, and Scotland. Parliament declared he had been King since his father's death. (Remember when I mentioned he was coronated in Scotland before he fled?) Thus ended the Commonwealth. A pendulum does swing!

In England, all laws were invalidated going back to 1642. In Scotland, all legislation since 1637 was revoked. This reactivated the Five Articles of Perth. The era of the Commonwealth was simply erased as if it had never been. And Christmas was back, baby!

Sort of.

I focused almost exclusively on England so far. It was necessary, since what happened in England affected everyone else but mostly America. I will not go into detail on what was happening outside of England, but in the Catholic nations, such as Italy, France, and Spain, things moved on about the same as they always had. In Germany and Scandinavian areas, the Reformation created new traditions but the extremes of John Calvin's students were contained, which allowed these areas to retain much more of their original Catholic flavor. This comes into play when migrants from these areas eventually make their way to America. I refer primarily to the Dutch and New Amsterdam.

There is one tradition outside of England that we can't ignore: leaving shoes out on the eve of Saint Nicholas' Day. This tradition is important because it will later evolve into hanging stockings by the fireplace.
It is possible this tradition started in this era. I am saying possible because the actual history of this tradition is very difficult to locate. Even though many people write about it almost no one gives historical sources, not even Hutton. So, it could be form the previous era. All I can say for certain about the age is it must long predate the poem "A Visit From Saint Nicholas" by Clement Clarke Moore in 1823. It does seem to be Scandinavian; Dutch in particular. Certainly, the claims about children leaving shoes out for Odin's horse were invented recently, just like the story of Frigg and mistletoe and Santa and Odin. There is no medieval historical evidence for this claim whatsoever, nor does the tradition make any sense within the mythology of Odin.

I am putting the end of this era in 1660, due to the restoration of the Monarchy in England and the undoing of the years of Commonwealth. Christmas was legally back after its long, dark night of the soul. A pendulum does swing!

It must be understood that many of the things modern people take for granted about modern Christmas and feel were always part of Christmas were actually a result of the changes that began in this period. Christmas before this period was not like Christmas afterward. Sure, it was on the same day and remembers the same event, and even has many of the same traditions, but Christmas had been gutted and would be reinvented. This will not be the end of it. Christmas has hurdles to face in the next eras.

The next step in history is the restoration of Christmas when the Protestants who once oppressed it suddenly found a nostalgic streak within themselves and became comfortable with the day.

RESTORATION (1661 to 1760 AD)

The Restoration era is the time when Protestants stopped banning Christmas and finally became comfortable it. Sort of. During this period, Christmas became more family-centered, old traditions began to be replaced by new regional traditions, and everything was mashed together as it migrated into the "great American melting pot".

Charles II did not end England's issues. He merely improved them. Efforts to ban Christmas would continue for some time, especially in Scotland. Certain Protestants were unhappy with the erasure of decades of what they saw as advances. Christmas would be removed as an official holiday again in Scotland by the end of the 1690s, not to fully return for almost 250 years. Wondering why you see so many German, English, and even Irish Christmas traditions but not many Scottish? That's why. In Scotland, the New Year would be their main focus at this time of year. "Ald Lang Sein" is Scottish. How ironic they were trying to remove what they saw as Catholic paganism, which was a false accusation, only to retain a legitimately ancient Roman custom.

I will return again to Ronald Hutton's brilliant observation, to continue his thoughts from the Catholic era:

"The church produced its own institutional rituals during this whole span of time, often overlapping or blending with the others. These were greatly diminished after the Reformation, and from the seventeenth century the festive role of the parish and great household was also much reduced. Instead the principal unit of celebration became the local community, much less formally defined and growing ever more complex with time."
-Ronald Hutton, "Stations of the Sun", p.426

What Hutton is saying is, during this period, the center of Christmas migrated away from communal worship at the church building and out into the towns and especially individual homes. The community and the home are the center of society, and thus the focus of traditions. More and more, children became the heart of the day, especially for the upper and middle classes who could afford it.

The decentralized and more individualist nature of Protestantism affected their general manner. Catholics tended to have the church at the center of everything, but Protestants much less so. Even Christmas Carols moved into the home. Hutton mentions several Christmas Carols were written specifically to be sung in homes at time time (p. 21).
This is precisely what Martha noticed in her study on the development of Christmas Trees in Germany. Protestants in Germany were taking their new love for the tree tradition home with them. (for more, read "Falsely Accused? Christmas Trees Were Christian Theater Props").

Again, we see Christmas reflecting the culture of the time.

Before the suppression, Christmastide was spread out across the Twelve Days onto various Saint's feast days. Now, with the abandonment of the veneration of saints, all of those traditions are contracting into one grand Christmas Day. I mentioned in the last post this would happen. It will happen much more in the next era.

Christmas Day in general started with a church service, then comes the celebrating. People would give to charity, enjoy a party, eat, visit family, take in a show, do some caroling ...the usual things many people do today. Those were all things done in eras 3 and 4, but in a changed way.

There were exceptions. The tradition of giving servants the day after Christmas off and providing them with some gifts remained. The feast of St. Stephen became reimagined into Boxing Day in the 1740s. The tradition of gift-giving remained at New Year.

A strong opposition to Christmas and anything Catholic emigrated to America. You no doubt heard how the Pilgrims in the New World banned Christmas. You could be fined for having a too festive a spirit on Christmas. But there were plenty of other immigrants in the New World besides the Pilgrims. Christmas in America was a very patchy, local thing. What you got depended on what community you were from. You must abandon the modern idea of one country - there were 13 quite distinct colonies at this time. Most importantly to Christmas were the Dutch in New York. The Dutch, although Protestant, were from that section of Europe near Germany that never rejected Christmas. They loved it! And they loved Saint Nicholas. How do you turn around the bleak days of the Oppression era? The Dutch, that's how. It was the Dutch who brought a wondrous old Christmas to the New World.

An important development in this era is mistletoe. Due to the suppression of Christmas during the previous era, the popular choices in greenery expanded. When the suppression ceased, we see the English mistletoe traditions expand through Europe. It was particularly attractive around Christmas time since that is when it berries out. This is the time period when we start seeing mistletoe used specifically as a Christmas decoration rather than only a medicinal herb. Blend that with a general repression of sexuality, and you will get the next development in the mistletoe tradition.

Another novelty from this era, and my personal favorite of all, is the nutcracker. Nutcrackers had been around for centuries, but by the mid-1700s they finally take the form we know today. The soldiers are meant to look like those of the Napoleonic era.

Now come the days of the great Johann Sebastian Bach. Some grand old songs were written in this period - "Joy To The World" (written in 1719 but later put to music from 1848), "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" (1739-54), and "Adeste Fidelis" (1751, my personal favorite).

I am putting the end of this era in 1760, due to the Industrial Revolution. I would have put this date even later, allowing for the spread of industrialization, but I decided at the start this post would be primarily based on Hutton, so 1760 it is.

The next step in history is the Industrial Revolution. A fantastic time for business owners who had little interest in traditions, but a time of identity crisis for Christmas. This next era is incredibly important to our modern Christmas. Perhaps the most important. The day survived a religious suppression and resuscitation only to face a secular suppression and reinvention. A pendulum does swing!

See you next time!

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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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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.

I need to note the popularity of Saint Nicholas. He was arguably the most popular of all Saints. Even the Vikings who landed in Greenland built a cathedral 1126 and dedicated it in honor of him.

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.

In the late 1400s, Christmas begins to be personified. The personification of Christmas is given names like "Sir Christmas" and appears in the carol "Nowell, Nowell, Nowell, Nowell, This is the salutation of the Angel Gabriel." This personification will develop more in the next era.

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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Christmas Eras Tour - Part I

I have another history of Christmas post for you today.

I have been reading "Stations of the Sun" by Ronald Hutton. Sometimes painful to follow, the book is densely packed with information. Definitely not an easy reader you'll find in your special little one's Scholastic Book Club fundraiser catalog. I cannot say I agree with 100% of it, but I definitely agree with enough of it to keep reading it and to use it as a source. Today, I want to lighten up his material a little for you. Hopefully make it more accessible with a highlights reel.

One thing I noticed while reading is that Christmas went through stages. I see at least 7 eras in the past 2,000 years. (Everyone from an Armstrongist background knows that a good list has 7 items.) 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.

Two things - these names and these dates are all my own observations, and they are rough descriptions.

1. Development - before there was a holiday, as the church was building towards it.
2. Infancy - the church decides what a Christmas is.
3. Catholic - twelve days of Christmas before the Reformation.
4. Oppression - Protestants try to banish Christmas but fail.
5. Restoration - Christmas barely survives as Protestants grow nostalgic.
6. Industrial Revolution - a near death experience and a resurgence.
7. Modern - Christmas becomes what we see today.

Some of my choices may seem rather arbitrary. I believe these are distinct eras. Each one is marked by its own characteristics which were either greatly changed or outright abandoned in the following era.
I am particularly interested in showing how our modern Christmas is mostly a product of the three eras before it (ie. 7 is caused by 4, 5, & 6), and how some people who make accusations against Christmas as we see it today are really projecting recent issues back into the distant past, anachronistically.

Sadly, I believe we can say Christmas is somewhat of a mirror on Christianity in general.

Ready?

DEVELOPMENT (0 to 313 AD)

The Development era is the time from the beginning of the first century, to the Edict of Milan, which allowed the church to rapidly mature. In this period, Christian scholars were investigating the details surrounding the nature of Christ, and Christmas, including its December 25 date, grew out of that. Consensus grew organically, but slowly, hampered by decentralization and persecution.

Much of the history of Christmas material on As Bereans Did is about this period due to there being so many misconceptions about this period.

The claim that Christmas is not among the earliest feasts of the Church is true. It wasn't. Then again, the only ones that were among the earliest feasts are Easter and Pentecost. Those two feasts had their own issues. There were at least two views on the memorial of the death and resurrection (see our articles on the Quartodecimans), and there was more than one way to calculate the timing of Easter Sunday. Since calculating Easter Sunday was not uniform, the timing for Pentecost was also not uniform. Jewish converts to Christ continued to observe all their own customs, but even they were not unified in opinion on most things. They started with the Pharisee, Sadducee, and Essene timings, which did not agree, and eventually the Rabbinical tradition grew out of the Pharisaical (see our article "FirstFruits and the Beauty of God's Timing").

The idea that the first century was somehow uniform and perfect but was later corrupted is simply not at all correct. Quite the opposite. It was chaotic and only later was standardized. They didn't even have a standard Bible. In the first century, a very few things were solidly agreed upon outside of certain core truths. Orthodoxy was in big concepts like faith, sin, righteousness, and the Gospel - what we might see as core-Christianity. This is the root reason why there was no Christmas early on. It was the "wild west" of Christianity. They only dealt with things as they arose. The theological debate Christmas was meant to solve - the very real human nature of Jesus - did not arise right away. So, Christmas didn't arise right away. The same could be said about most things, that they weren't there from the start. That isn't an "issue". It is simply a reality of a church in its infancy. I often hear people talking about getting back to the "first century church", but if they truly understood the first century church I think they would not like it.

Jesus did not answer most questions, but He answered the most important questions of salvation. He left the church to wrestle to understand Him better. One of the things wrestled with is the nature of our Lord and therefore the nature of God. What now of the Shema? How can a man also be God? Was He always God, or did He become one later? The church being so decentralized led to many opinions. Gnosticism began to spread.
Clement of Alexandria, in his work "Stromata", book 1, said the Basilideans, a Gnostic sect in Alexandria, initiated a feast of the baptism because they believed Jesus became enlightened by the highest God at His baptism. Their timing was early January, somewhere from the 9th to the 15th. Days honoring the nativity and early events of Christ's life appear to have started in response, as a way to emphasize the literal humanity and fully divine nature of Jesus. Multiple dates for the nativity were proposed, with May and mid-winter being the most popular.

From the middle of the second century, the mood in Egypt was on dates like April and May for the birth.
Remember this the next time you try to google the historical origins of almost any Christian tradition and see the ubiquitous, "may have started in pagan celebrations of solstice and light". Hard to get a celebration of solstice and light in May. Also remember Egypt has no winter, nor does their calendar system depend on the solstice.
In the late-second century, Christian scholars started moving toward the mid-winter period. In about 198, Clement of Alexandria (Egypt again) calculated Jesus' birth to late November. In 200-211 AD, Hippolytus (of Rome) calculated Jesus' death to March 25th and then added 9 months. March 25th + 9 months = December 25th.
At this time in pagan Rome, there was no known festival on December 25. There would not be a "birthday of the sun" for decades to come. Remember this the next time you read, "December 25 coincides with the birthday of the sun." Hard to coincide with a day that doesn't exist. The only holiday of significance to Christians in that range was Hannukah.
The March 25th date stuck and is still accepted to this day as the Feast of the Annunciation. The Christmas date also stuck, but it took a century more to really catch on.

The 200s were a time of feast or famine for Christians. In various places and times, they were tolerated, but in others persecuted. In February 303, Diocletian began the Great Persecution. Thousands of Christians died. It was their blood that watered the growth of the church. It was in this time that Saint Nicholas of Myra was born, in 270 AD. We will be revisiting him many times as we go.

In February 313 AD, Constantine the Great and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan, making Christianity legal in the Empire. Here, Christianity is merely legalized; it is not made the official religion of the empire until much later. That was enough to allow the church to begin to unify, standardize, and flourish.

I am putting the end of this era at 313 AD due to the Edict of Milan, because it was one of the most important events in Christian history and a watershed moment in the development of the church.

The next step in the history of Christmas is its development as an official church feast day, and the solidifying of its base traditions such as Advent.

INFANCY (313 to 567 AD)

The Infancy era is the time starting at the Edict of Milan, to the time when the feast had matured across Christendom and its base liturgical traditions were solidified - which I am putting at the Second Council of Tours in 567 AD. In this era comes the Chronography of 354. During this era we see the first Christmas sermons and music, a competition between Epiphany and Christmas, settling of the twelve days of Christmas, the start of Advent, and making Christmas a government holiday.

Great strides were made in this century. Christianity, which had been scattered and dissociated, was now able to be out in the open, collective, and unified. Many efforts to standardize doctrines and practices began in this century.

Speaking of standardization, there is a great deal of confusion surrounding Constantine the Great's role in Christian orthodoxy. He is attributed far more credit than he deserves for most things. He has become the whipping boy for any anti-Catholic fundamentalist. Most of those claims are falsified outright or the facts twisted beyond recognition. There simply is no information about Constantine and Christmas, so I will make this mention of him then continue.

The Chronography of 354 was written for the year 354, but was likely written in the year 336, by one Filocalus, a Christian. I go into detail on this in the article "The Plain Truth About December 25". The Chronography consisted of 16 parts, one of which was the Commemoration of the Martyrs. The most notable event in the Commemoration for December 25 is the phrase, "...birthday of Christ in Bethlehem Judea." You can't get more blatant than that. This is the first unmistakable and uncontested mention of Jesus being born on December 25. This tells us that by 336 AD, the December 25 date was widely accepted.

If we can speculate any pagan connection at all, it would not be a coopt, as if to say Christmas finds its origins in pagan days, but as a competitive replacement, as if to say Christmas opposed and outlasted pagan days. Christmas outshone the sun, so to speak. As for other issues, such as how Saturnalia, Natalis Invicti, or Julian the Apostate fit in, see the article in the link above.

The first Christmas hymn was likely written in the early 300s, according to St. Jerome, by St. Hilary of Poitier. It is called "Iesous Refulsit Omnium" (Jesus Outshined All).

This overall mood of Christmas in this era is simple and deeply religious, and focused on the Nativity. In fact its first name was "Natalis" or "Deis Natalis", which is nativity/birth in Latin (the word Christmas would not be invented until much later). That is why you get names like Natale in Italy, Navidad in Spain, and Noel in France.

It was also at this time, in the early 300s, when Epiphany (aka. Theophany) began to become popular. Finding the origin of Epiphany is difficult, but there are hints that it started in the late 200s or early 300s and grew to be quite popular in the east by the mid-300s. Some claim it is a descendant of that Basilidian baptism feast mentioned earlier, but evidence for that is practically non-existent.

Christmas survived an attempt by Emperor Julian "the Apostate" to restore the Roman Empire back to paganism. Julian wrote his infamous "Ode to King Helios", in 362 AD. It can be reasonably speculated that Julian attempted to coopt Christmas as a pagan day. Much of the debate about Christmas and Sol Invictus hinges on this poetic work from Julian. We talk more about that in the article "The Plain Truth About December 25".

Gregory "the Theologian" Nazianzus, one of the greatest names of the early church (and beyond), in his 38th Oration - from a series of 45 sermons given throughout the year of 379-380 AD - speaks passionately and stirringly about the Nativity. I do recommend you read it sometime. We can know this is about Christmas since he spoke several orations on the church feasts. The 39th Oration was on Epiphany. Therefore, Epiphany and Christmas were distinct in his mind, and this one may be understood as Christmas. But it seems he did not deliver it on Christmas Day.

The year 380 AD was without a doubt the most important year in this era. One of the most significant developments in history was the decision by Emperor Theodosius I to issue the Edict of Thessalonica, making Christianity the official religion of Rome. This was done on February 27, 380 AD -- 67 years to the month after the Edict of Milan. Christianity became the only legal religion in the empire, and efforts to suppress paganism in the Empire while standardizing existing Christian traditions went into high gear. The church was certainly maturing now.

A potentially significant but easily overlooked development also occurred in 380. A synod was held in Spain, which is generally called the "Council of Saragossa". The point of the Synod was to address a specific issue which it deemed a heresy. Several acts were decreed by the Council. In the 4th Act (the exact text of which is lost but many references exist which give us good insight into what it said) there is an order about a preparation period and mandatory church attendance before the Nativity, from December 17th to January 6th (Epiphany). We can see at least two things here.

1) There was a period of preparation before the Christmas. This preparation eventually became Advent. So, the beginning of Advent is in the 4th century. This also shows the beginnings of the Twelve Days of Christmas, between Christmas and Epiphany. (The Twelfth Day is the day before Epiphany. Epiphany itself is not one of the Twelve Days of Christmas.)
2) The December 17th date, you should recognize already, is the date of Saturnalia. It does not seem the church was trying to adopt Saturnalia, rather to suppress it. Addressing heresy was the point of the Council, after all, and it was the mood of the Empire. Starting this period of preparation on Saturnalia is significant in that it shows the church was actively combatting any remains of Roman excess. It would be unsuccessful, however. 

We talk more about what happened to Saturnalia in the article "The Plain Truth About December 25". Look in the section on Bruma / Brumalia.
Both points here are useful in showing significant steps in the maturity of the season were present at this time.

The first recorded sermon delivered on Christmas Day comes to us from John Chrysostom, given in Antioch in 386, which was his first year in the ministry. It is a lovely message. I highly recommend you take the time to read it when you can. Here is an even more complete version form The Tertullian Project, but I find the formatting uncomfortable to the eye. One thing in particular to note about this sermon, Chrysostom employs apologetics. He is the first person known to mention the Course of Abijah in relation to the timing of Christmas. He uses it to defend the date, of course.

In 389, Emperor Theodosius I issued a decree that courts must be closed on Sundays and all major Christian holidays, including Christmas (Codex Theodosianus 2.8.18).

The churches of the east preferred Epiphany over Christmas. Epiphany took longer to catch on in the west while Christmas took longer to catch on in the east. In the early 400s, Christmas was solidified in almost all areas. The Catholic Encyclopedia's article on Christmas lists Armenia as the lone holdout. Eventually it was settled that Christmas would be held in honor of the birth and Epiphany in honor of early events of Jesus' life such as His presentation at the temple, the visit of the Magi, and His baptism.

During this period, many pagans converted to Christianity, whether they were in heart or not. They brought many of their old traditions with them. The church worked to gradually eliminate such practices. One such tradition that is significant to Christmas which the church was never able to fully eliminate was (no, not Saturnalia) the New Year.
Arguably the most significant non-Christian tradition to survive was New Year on the kalends of January (ie. January 1st). It was so popular, it continued even when start of the new year was moved to March 25 in 527 AD (the start of the year was moved back to January 1 in the Gregorian Calendar in 1582), and it was unofficially treated as one of the Twelve Days of Christmas for centuries to come. There are two sources for the Christmas gift-giving tradition: St. Nicholas' Day and New Year. It was customary to send little gifts to family and friends on New Year in Rome. Gift giving on New Year would not move to Christmas until the 1800s.
If you suddenly have issues with gift giving, please read Martha's excellent post "Established and Imposed". Gift-giving is quite biblical. We reject "once pagan, always pagan" here at As Bereans Did.

During the 400s, Advent spread and became a period of fasting before Christmas just as Lent is before Easter. Fasting, which was originally reserved for the ordained, expanded to lay members. In later years, it was considered bad form to decorate during Advent.
Also, in 430, Pope Sixtus III is believed to have celebrated the first midnight mass in Rome at the Basilica of St. Mary Major.

By the 500s, various governments outside Rome began treating Christmas as a national holiday, taking after the Roman government. For example, in the Breviary of Alaric in 506 AD (that's Alaric II the Visigoth, grandson of the Alaric that sacked Rome). It likely took this from the the Codex Theodosianus in 438 AD.

I am putting the end of this era in 567 AD, due to the Council of Tours. The time between Christmas and Epiphany has come to be known as the Twelve Days of Christmas. The Twelve Days of Christmas were officially recognized in the Second Council of Tours in 567. (This was repeated in the Council of Oxford in 1222 and at the Council of Lyon in 1244.) Cannons XI and XVII, proclaimed the importance of the fasts of Advent and the days between Christmas and Epiphany. You can read more in Roger Pearse's article "When to take down the Christmas decorations? A canon of the 2nd Council of Tours (567)". At this point, the season as we know it is completely in place and mature enough to move forward.

The next step in history is the widening and deepening of Christmas during in the many years up to the Reformation.

See you next time for Part II.

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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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Misinformed On Mistletoe

[Note: this article was terribly long when I first published it, so I've condensed it.]

If you just google mistletoe without digging through old history books, you would seriously get the impression the entire history of mistletoe can be summed up as nothing else but, "The only reason we know about mistletoe is because Druids loved it and cut it at the winter solstice, and that's how it came to Christmas."

That is not even remotely the story about mistletoe.

Gonna be frank with you. I don't care much at all for the mistletoe tradition. My family did not pass the tradition to me. I am not particularly in need of an excuse to kiss fair maidens. I don't find cheap, plastic mistletoe to be all that attractive. I much prefer nutcrackers.

Then why write about it? Two reasons. First, I had meant to write something else but was side-quested by all the information on mistletoe. It was quite the adventure. There is more to it than I imagined. Second, because I was told something and now I want to know if it was true. Let me give you but two examples of the claims I grew up hearing.

"The traditional Christmas tree, the Yule log, the holly wreaths, and kissing under the mistletoe - all were borrowed from heathenism and used in a pagan religious orgy dedicated to the sun-god."
-Rod Meredith, "The Ten Commandments", 1972, p. 41

"Now where did we get this mistletoe custom? Among the ancient pagans the mistletoe was used at this festival of the winter solstice because it was considered sacred to the sun, because of its supposed miraculous healing power. The pagan custom of kissing under the mistletoe was an early step in the night of revelry and drunken debauchery - celebrating the death of the "old sun" and the birth of the new at the winter solstice."
-Herbert Armstrong, "The Plain Truth About Christmas", 1970, p. 15

Not very flattering! But are they correct? Let's find the answer to that.

Today, we are going to see the distant history of mistletoe, where it came from, and its surprising uses. Also, I will give some speculation on how it came to us. I present this post to you, dear reader, because mistletoe turns out to be a fantastic way to show how the things everybody knows to be true aren't always true.

Discussions about mistletoe tend to come around to Druids. So, might as well start there.

DRUIDS GALORE

You've heard about how the Druids held mistletoe in a particularly high regard. That's what the Romans said, anyway. That's what most everyone says. You can't have a good discussion about Druids without Pliny the Elder. He says quite a bit about mistletoe and Druids in his work "Natural History". For example:

"Upon this occasion we must not omit to mention the admiration that is lavished upon this plant by the Gauls. The druids - for that is the name they give to their magicians - held nothing more sacred than the mistletoe and the tree that bears it, supposing always that tree to be the oak."
-Pliny, "Natural History", book 16, chapter 95.

The Druids wrote nothing down, so we have to rely on the good word of others for details about them. So far as we know, Pliny wrote accurately. Pliny keeps proving himself in other quotes. I vote we trust him.

But Pliny did not say it was only the Druids who used mistletoe.

He spends four chapters on mistletoe and its particular details, but only one paragraph concerns the Celts. The way he makes it sound, most cultures in the west were incredibly well familiar with it and its uses.

It gets stranger. Pliny did not say all Druids used mistletoe.

Pliny only mentions the Druids in France (Gaul) loved it. It says nothing about Celts in general, who lived from Britain to Turkey. We have to be careful when we say things like "the Celts" or "the Druids" because those are more concepts than definite groups. Celts were divided up into tribes who fought each other all the time. It is merely an assumption that all Druids everywhere had the same practices. Why would we assume that? The Galatians, to whom Paul wrote his famous epistle, were every bit as Celt as the French. Were their cultures identical? No. As a matter of blatant fact, historians have known for some time that Celtic cultures and practices most definitely were not the same. And they differed over relatively small geographic areas.

Let's explore claims of pagan origin even further by looking at the solstice.

THE SOLSTICE

I get tired of careless claims on the internet like, "Why do Christians use mistletoe at Christmas? That's simple. Because Druids collected it at the solstice." No. That isn't true. This shows people have not thought this through.

But not all claims are careless internet commentors. Alison Wier, author of "A Tudor Christmas" (a book I own and appreciate quite a bit) says the same:

"The ancient Romans observed that the Druids of the British Isles used mistletoe in winter solstice ceremonies and in healing."
-Alison Wier, "A Tudor Christmas", 2018, p. 20

She continues on to talk about Pliny. Let's go back to quote directly from Pliny about Druids:

"The mistletoe, however, is but rarely found upon the oak; and when found, is gathered with rites replete with religious awe. This is done more particularly on the fifth day of the moon, the day which is the beginning of their months and years, as also of their time cycles, which, with them, are only thirty years. This day they select because the moon, though not yet in the middle of her course, has already considerable power and influence..."
-Pliny, "Natural History", book 16, chapter 95.

So, it was not the Druids in Britain but the druids in Gaul (France), and it was not the winter solstice but their new year. Was their new year at the winter solstice? Best data says no.

In our recent post "Samhain Was Not On October 31", we looked at the only known Druidic calendar. If you want more details, you may read that article.

At Halloween, people claim everything comes from the Druids, and Samhain was the Druidic new year. At Christmas, people claim everything comes from the Druids, and the winter solstice was the Druidic new year. Well, it can't be both. (And Ronald Hutton advocates for the mid-winter.)

There is no evidence at all the Druids had solstice or equinox celebrations. This is a misunderstanding arising from two thousand years of various traditions getting jumbled and confused together. They were a lunar society. Their calendar shows it and Pliny attests to it. 

"But Stonehenge measured the sun!" Not Druidic. All of the henge artifacts and burial mounds predate the Druids, in some cases by over a thousand years. (Yes. They're that old!) The same goes for other henges in other areas, such as Goseck in Germany. They far predate the civilizations we recognize and the times we are interested in here.

I want to point out that all of these things I have said about the Druids and the solstice also pertain to the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse. All had lunar calendars. None have known, verified solstice celebrations. Even Yule was not a solstice celebration until it was reinvented in the 20th century. We can be fairly sure they had mid-winter festivals, but not solstice festivals specifically.

Then there are the ubiquitous claims like, "Such and such originated in pagan celebrations of light at the solstice." Most everything is explained in this way. These very generic claims about "mistletoe comes from widespread solstice traditions" are not fact-based, make definite claims of speculation like "they could have taken from the Celts", confuses midwinter festivals with solstice festivals, draw conclusions based on broad generalizations like "greenery was used in many cultures", and are generally built on conditions as we see them today being anachronistically projected backwards in time.

See how this works? One person connects two dots that don't connect, and someone else repeats it, and it gets repeated over and over until you simply cannot get a straight answer anymore.

Here's a straight answer -
Mistletoe goes with the Druid new year, but their new year does not go with the solstice. Do you understand what that means? We have two options: Druids used mistletoe in October/November, or in mid-January, and neither one lends itself well to our records or traditions.
In short, people are just as wrong about Druids and Christmas as they are about Druids and Halloween.

NORSE

Upon this occasion we must not omit to mention the Norse.

If you do a simple google search, you will find careless claims, like, "Why do Christians use mistletoe at Christmas? That's simple. Because of Yule." And just like with the Druids, that is not exactly based on reality.

Understand the Norse (and the Germans) were not the Celts/Druids. Completely different culture.
In one of the Prose Eddas, Gylfaginning, is the death of Baldur, a son of Odin. In most but not all versions of the story of the death of Baldur, he was killed by an arrow made of mistletoe. This is why mistletoe had a foreboding, deathly reputation among the medieval Norse.

Does that sound like Christmas to you? It sure doesn't to me.

The timing of Baldur's death is also important.
Baldur is associated with mid-summer to late fall. His death would initiate Ragnarök, which is associated with winter. Therefore, the Scandinavian pagan traditions of death by mistletoe had nothing to do with Christmastime (nor Yule).

You will not get this from a mere google search. I can't tell you how many times I've read about Frigg, the goddess of love, wanting people to kiss under the mistletoe. Did you notice none of those claims come with sources cited, besides, "legends say...". That is because they are all baseless. You will get many tales of Norse using mistletoe at Yule, and mentions of love and happiness. But that is not how things were in the past. All of those pretty paintings of Vikings sitting outside in the snow having a mead under some mistletoe are beautiful, but rather inaccurate.

If you look around Scandinavian cultures today, the meaning of mistletoe is not deathly at all. Quite the opposite. It represents love and happiness.
How?
Not wanting to take weeks to research the evolution of Scandinavian cultures over the past 1,000 years, I just asked ChatGPT. I asked, "If mistletoe was used as a kenning for death in the Prose Edda, how did it become a symbol of happiness in modern Scandinavian culture?" It explained how their culture developed, then it said:

"From England, mistletoe's role as a Christmas decoration spread to other parts of Europe, including Germany and Scandinavia, during the 18th and 19th centuries, as part of the cultural exchanges spurred by Victorian England’s global influence."

Isn't that odd, now? It wasn't the Norse who brought mistletoe to the Christians, because to them it was deadly and ominous, but the Christians who changed mistletoe from death to life for the Norse. And it wasn't ancient but quite recent. From this change come the legends of Frigg wanting people to kiss under the mistletoe. They are not ancient legends.

Once again, just as with other studies we have done here at ABD, we see people taking things the way they are today and projecting that backwards in time, anachronistically, and reinventing the past.

Pagan ritual is only one part of the story. Mistletoe's pragmatic uses were far more popular and widespread.

MEDICINE AND BOTANY

Where we have a centuries-long gap in information about pagan uses, we have multiple sources for mistletoe's practical uses. Mistletoe is mentioned in older works for its medicinal value or else for sheer botanical interest.

Going back to Pliny, he says:

"The hyphear [mistletoe that grows on a larch] is the best for fattening cattle with; it begins, however, by purging off all defects, after which it fattens all such animals as have been able to withstand the purging. It is generally said, however, that those animals which have any radical malady in the intestines cannot withstand its drastic effects. This method of treatment is generally adopted in the summer for a period of forty days."
-Pliny, "Natural History", book 16, chapter 93.

The way Pliny talks about mistletoe, it is clear there was an incredible amount of knowledge already existing, which he was just gathering up. He finished writing "Natural History" in 77 AD. More than 2,000 years ago, they had it figured out to the point where they knew which mistletoe was better when it grew on which trees. Farmers used it on their cattle. Healers used it on people. This amazes me!
Other ancient authors wrote about mistletoe. Some of the more notable include Virgil in his "The Georgics" book 1, Galen in his "On The Power of Simple Drugs", and Ovid.

That knowledge remained. Several more recent authors have written about it, too.

In 1485, Jacob Meydenbach of Mainz, Germany wrote the "Gart der Gesundheit" (Garden of Good Health), which was greatly expanded and translated to Latin in 1491 under the title "Hortus Sanitatis" (Garden of Health). In it, he provides a drawn illustration of mistletoe, and describes its medicinal uses, including epilepsies, digestive issues, hemorrhaging, and as a general tonic. This is the oldest reference I could find on the practical uses of mistletoe, outside of Pliny. Clearly, it draws from widely-known uses and perhaps even earlier written works.
It is particularly remarkable for being the first known work where art was used to depict the natural world outside of a religious context. The first illustrated encyclopedia. It was widely popular and translated into several different languages in the following years, including English.

One other notable author is William Coles. In 1657, William Coles wrote "The Art of Sampling". He mentions various health benefits of mistletoe for man and beast, and quotes Sir Francis Bacon. Plus, he mentions the berries. I tried to find when mistletoe berries out. Apparently, it depends on the tree it grows on, but mistletoe produces berries from October to January, and those berries can linger until May. Yeah. That puts it in the range of Christmas.
Coles also wrote this: 

"I think the thing itself is better known, than the manner of its growing, because it is carried many miles to set up in homes about Christmas time, when it is adorned with a glistening berry."
(p. 41.)

And there you have the first mention of mistletoe at Christmas time that I was able to locate. He is not the first to mention mistletoe, but he is the first to mention its use at Christmas time. Centuries later than one would expect from a pagan coopt.

It is important to note that Coles did not say it was used for Christmas, only that it was collected at Christmas time. It berries out at that time, so naturally it would be collected at that time. But being collected at that time is different than being collected for that time. It is reasonable to conclude it was being hung to dry and sold at market.

And did you know mistletoe and its derivatives is used in modern medicine? It's true! It is used in both cancer and immuno-therapies, and is being considered for other uses.

Since the majority of the info we have is about medicine, why do so many people claim mistletoe was almost exclusively used by Druids for rituals? Bad info. Most people giggle because you kiss under mistletoe, and they really don't care about the stuff otherwise. It's the ones who obsess over "once pagan, always pagan" who seem to be confused about it. They see paganism in everything, and only want what affirms them. There is so much more to it than this.

FERTILITY

Kissing under the mistletoe is its most popular use. How many times have you heard mistletoe was an aphrodisiac? More than once, I'd wager. Recall how Rod Meredith and Herbert Armstrong blamed mistletoe on pagan rituals. If you read this blog at all, you will not be one bit surprised when I tell you everything they said there is false.

We do have a reference from Pliny that puts together Druids, mistletoe, and fertility. How dirty-minded were they? Let's take a peek.

"It is the belief with them that the mistletoe, taken in drink, will impart fecundity to all animals that are barren, and that it is an antidote for all poisons."
-Pliny, "Natural History", book 16, chapter 95.

They did believe it was a fertility drug ...for cattle.
But only if the animals could survive the process. Doesn't sound so debauched to me.

Other than that, the only other mention Pliny makes of kissing in that entire book is that Nero would kiss his favorite tree. That does sound a little debauched. Not at all in regards to anything we're talking about here, though.

Regarding kissing, there is no known record of kissing under mistletoe until the later-1700s. That means it developed in the late-1600s or early-1700s at the earliest. The first place mistletoe is found in a romantic context is in a song from a musical comedy called "Two to One", which was published in 1784.

When at Christmas in the hall
The men and maids are hopping
Cry, "What good luck has sent ye?"
And kiss beneath the mistletoe.

From that point on, it is found more and more often in a romantic context. And we see it spreading to other European cultures. What might have caused it? Look at the timing. It was immediately after the Puritan era.

It wasn't just a kiss under the mistletoe, per se, it was a young man got one free kiss from the maiden of his choice per berry on the mistletoe sprig. When the berries ran out, he got no more freebies.

No, not in heathen orgies. Not in drunken debauchery. Not an unbroken continuation of ancient fertility rites. That is entirely fabricated nonsense. "God's own truth," they called that. But false. Somewhat of a letdown there. We were promised things much more juicy than cow medicine and 18th century prudishness.

In short, the Druids are not the source of the kissing tradition. Nor was it some other unnamed group of ancient heathens caught up in unbridled passion. It was just the relatively modern Europeans.

The explanation for the kissing having been located, we have yet to see why mistletoe was a Christmas decoration in the first place.

MISTLETOE FOR CHRISTMAS

So, why do we have mistletoe at Christmas? Unfortunately, no one living knows for certain. The earliest records I have been able to find seem to say it was more of a medicinal thing, and never a part of corporate church celebration, except by accident, until the late 1600s. This tends to lead away from a pagan coopt. But the strongest evidence we have points to our Christmas traditions rising out of the English Puritan suppression of Catholic symbolism.

Going back to "Stations of the Sun", I will summarize what Hutton says in chapters 2 and 3.
The Scottish and then the English heavily suppressed Christmas from the mid-1500s to the mid-1600s. The popular choice in greenery changed as Protestants rejected many symbols from Catholicism, including holly and ivy. Much to their chagrin, suppressing the religious inflated the secular use of greenery. Rather than removing greenery altogether, it was only removed from churches, not the public square. Without the religious symbolism behind it, the greenery options expanded. Anything green at that time was used. Hence mistletoe at Christmas. This is the time period when we start seeing mistletoe used specifically as a Christmas decoration. Mistletoe was hung in defiance of Parliament's banning of Christmas in Great Britain during the 1650s. Mistletoe's role as a Christmas decoration spread into other parts of Europe, including Germany and Scandinavia, during the 18th and 19th centuries, as part of the cultural exchanges spurred by Victorian England’s global influence.

That sounds quite reasonable, but it could all be undone if there were some earlier reference. I searched long and wide for earlier references than Coles, but came up empty. Finally, I asked ChatGPT if it could find an earlier reference to mistletoe used at Christmastime, but it was unable.

The most reasonable conclusion is - there is nothing older to find, because it wasn't being used as a Christmas tradition.

This gap of mistletoe as a Christmas decoration is across the board. We have no mention of it in any culture - as a Christmas time tradition, specifically - until it appears in England in the late-1600s.
Add to this the fact that we see it first in England and then spreading out into other areas in the 18th and 19th centuries. Mistletoe as we know it today appears in all areas in the same time period.

What else can we say? Mistletoe either was not being used at Christmas at all until the late 1600s, or it was so rural and so unimportant that no one mentioned it. All of the evidence we have, or the lack thereof, lends support to Ronald Hutton's explanation. Nothing so far lends credence to the claim it came directly to Christmas from ancient paganism, especially the Druids. Pagan coopt is the weakest of all explanations by far. 

Perhaps that 1500-year gap is as it should be. Perhaps we have not lost information after all. Perhaps it is illusory, built from an insistence on some ancient pagan origin. It is quite reasonable to conclude we are searching for evidence of a pagan origin that never really happened. If mistletoe as a Christmas tradition really did start after the Reformation, then a 1,500-year gap should be there.

What the world needs is the discovery of some new literary source that fills in the missing pieces ...if there are missing pieces to begin with. In the meantime, all one can do is speculate based on the solid information we have in hand rather than insisting on theories we have no evidence for.

CONCLUSION

"The only reason we know about mistletoe is because Druids loved it and cut it at the winter solstice, and that's how it came to Christmas." False.
"Well, then it was because of the Norse and Yule." No.
"Well, then it was because of some unnamed culture's winter solstice rituals." Incorrect.

Do you recall those two quotes from the start of this post, the ones from Rod Meredith and Herbert Armstrong? Read them again quickly and see how they are just nonsensical. Once again, we see people passing off false history as "God's truth". That should come as absolutely no surprise to the readers here. The thing is, there is a lot of bad info out there. That's why we needed this post.
Mistletoe did turn out to be a fantastic way to show how the things everybody knows to be true aren't always true.

The history of mistletoe is a long, complex, and winding road. We may never get all the answers we seek. But we did get a few.
Today, we learned:

• Mistletoe was used medicinally and ritually throughout most of the western world since forever ago. It was also used to trap birds. Everyone seemed to use it.
• Pliny said mistletoe was used as an animal medicine especially in summer. Mistletoe is not just a winter thing.
• The first mention of mistletoe being collected at Christmas time was from 1657.
• Mistletoe was not popular in churches at all. English churches preferred holly and ivy.
• If mistletoe was not used in churches, that speaks against it being coopted from pagans by the church.
• We do not know exactly when mistletoe became associated with Christmas, but it appears to be during the Reformation, in the late-1600s.
• Mistletoe does not start appearing as a Christmas tradition in other nations outside the British Isles until the 18th and 19th centuries.
• Kissing under mistletoe did not start until the 1700s. The first mention was from 1784.
• Mistletoe was not an aphrodisiac ...except for animals.
• If the mistletoe tradition involved a continuation of a pagan practice, the Druids aren't the best candidate.
• Druids in France loved mistletoe, only when it grew on oak trees. We don't know much about Druids in other areas.
• French Druids most important use of mistletoe was at their new year, which was likely in fall, not at the winter solstice. And they were moon-based, not solar-based. Some say Druids had no solstice celebrations at all. Claims of Druids and solstice are likely to be false. Mistletoe was not particularly a winter tradition for them.
• Norse mistletoe was foreboding and deathly, and associated with Autumn. It changed after they imported the Christmas mistletoe tradition from the English.
• The Anglo-Saxons had no known mistletoe traditions.
• And there is quite a bit of misinformation floating around, started after the Reformation.

There sure is a lot more to mistletoe than I thought there was! Life is a funny thing. I sat down to write a very small and simple post about Christmas greenery, so light and easy to read with pictures from Pompeii, when all of this information about mistletoe starts pouring out of the internet at me. Oh, not easily, mind you. I had to dig, dig, dig for it. Next thing you know, I'm reading many esoteric histories, chasing down recursive series of sources cited one after the other, and even talking to software. At one point, I had five books open at the same time. I have nine tabs open in my other browser right now. But there is some good information out there if you have the determination to get it.

In the end, I think the simplest explanation for mistletoe is the best. People decorate all year around. Flowers in the spring and summer, produce in the fall, greenery in the winter. What truly seems to matter about mistletoe is that it is not only a useful plant, but is green and has pretty berries when it needs to. Everything boils down to that.

 

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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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