Christmas in Ritual and Tradition

[Erika Zimney]

“Wassail the trees, that they may bear


You many a plum and many a pear;


For more or less fruits they will bring,


As you do give them wassailing.” 17-37


In Sussex the wassailing (or “worsling”) of fruit-trees took place on Christmas Eve, and was accompanied by a trumpeter blowing on a cow's horn. 17-38

The wassailing of the trees may be regarded as either originally an offering to their spirits or—and this seems more probable—as a sacramental act intended to bring fertilizing influences to bear upon them. Customs of a similar character are found in Continental countries during the Christmas season. In Tyrol, for instance, when the Christmas pies are a-making on St. Thomas's Eve, the maids are told to go out-of-doors and put their arms, sticky with paste, round the fruit-trees, in order that they p. 346 may bear well next year. 17-39 The uses of the ashes of the Christmas log have already been noticed.

[Erika Zimney]

Sometimes, as in the Thurgau, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, and Tyrol, the trees are beaten to make them bear. On New Year's Eve at Hildesheim people dance and sing around them, 17-40 while the Tyrolese peasant on Christmas Eve will go out to his trees, and, knocking with bent fingers upon them, will bid them wake up and bear. 17-41 There is a Slavonic custom, on the same night, of threatening apple-trees with a hatchet if they do not produce fruit during the year. 17-42

[Erika Zimney]

Another remarkable agricultural rite was practised on Epiphany Eve in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire. The farmer and his servants would meet in a field sown with wheat, and there light thirteen fires, with one larger than the rest. Round this a circle was formed by the company, and all would drink a glass of cider to the success of the harvest. 118 This done, they returned to the farm, to feast—in Gloucestershire—on cakes made with caraways, and soaked in cider. The Herefordshire accounts give particulars of a further ceremony. A large cake was provided, with a hole in the middle, and after supper everyone went to the wain-house. The master filled a cup with strong ale, and standing opposite the finest ox, pledged him in a curious toast; the company followed his example with the other oxen, addressing each by name. Afterwards the large cake was put on the horn of the first ox. 17-43

[Erika Zimney]

It is extremely remarkable, and can scarcely be a mere coincidence, that far away among the southern Slavs, as we saw in  XII, a Christmas cake with a hole in its centre is likewise put upon the horn of the chief ox. The wassailing of the animals is found there also. On Christmas Day, Sir Arthur p. 347 Evans relates, the house-mother “entered the stall set apart for the goats, and having first sprinkled them with corn, took the wine-cup in her hand and said, ‘Good morning, little mother! The Peace of God be on thee! Christ is born; of a truth He is born. May'st thou be healthy. I drink to thee in wine; I give thee a pomegranate; may'st thou meet with all good luck!’ She then lifted the cup to her lips, took a sup, tossed the pomegranate among the herd, and throwing her arms round the she-goat, whose health she had already drunk, gave it the ‘Peace of God’—kissed it, that is, over and over again.” The same ceremony was then performed for the benefit of the sheep and cows, and all the animals were beaten with a leafy olive-branch. 17-44

http://www.sacred-texts.com/time/crt/crt20.htm

[Erika Zimney]

As for the fires, an Irish custom to some extent supplies a parallel. On Epiphany Eve a sieve of oats was set up, “and in it a dozen of candles set round, and in the centre one larger, all lighted.” This was said to be in memory of the Saviour and His apostles, lights of the world. 17-45 Here is an account of a similar custom practised in Co. Leitrim:—

    “A piece of board is covered with cow-dung, and twelve rushlights are stuck therein. These are sprinkled with ash at the top, to make them light easily, and then set alight, each being named by some one present, and as each dies so will the life of its owner. A ball is then made of the dung, and it is placed over the door of the cowhouse for an increase of cattle. Sometimes mud is used, and the ball placed over the door of the dwelling-house.” 17-46

[Erika Zimney]

There remains to be considered under Epiphany usages an ancient and very remarkable game played annually on January 6 at Haxey in Lincolnshire. It is known traditionally as “Haxey Hood,” and its centre is a struggle between the men of two villages for the possession of a roll of sacking or leather called the “hood.” Over it preside the “boggans” or “bullocks” of Plough Monday (see p.  352), headed by a figure known as “My Lord,” who is attended by a fool. The proceedings are opened on the village green by a mysterious speech from the fool:—

“Now, good folks, this is Haxa’ Hood. We've killed two p. 348 bullocks and a half, but the other half we had to leave running about field: we can fetch it if it's wanted. Remember it's—
‘Hoose agin hoose, toon agin toon,
And if you meet a man knock him doon.’”

[Erika Zimney]

Then, in an open field, the hoods—there are six of them, one apparently for each of the chief hamlets round—are thrown up and struggled for. “The object is to carry them off the field away from the boggans. If any of these can get hold of them, or even touch them, they have to be given up, and carried back to My Lord. For every one carried off the field the boggans forfeit half-a-crown, which is spent in beer, doubtless by the men of the particular hamlet who have carried off the hood.” The great event of the day is the struggle for the last hood—made of leather—between the men of Haxey and the men of Westwoodside—“that is to say really between the customers of the public-houses there—each party trying to get it to his favourite ‘house.’ The publican at the successful house stands beer.” 17-47

Mr. Chambers regards the fool's strange speech as preserving the tradition that the hood is the half of a bullock—the head of a sacrificial victim, and he explains both the Haxey game and also the familiar games of hockey and football as originating in a struggle between the people of two villages to get such a head, with all its fertilizing properties, over their own boundary. 17-48 At Hornchurch in Essex, if we may trust a note given by Hone, an actual boar's head was wrestled for on Christmas Day, and afterwards feasted upon at one of the public-houses by the victor and his friends. 17-49

[Erika Zimney]

One more feature of the Haxey celebration must be mentioned (it points apparently to a human sacrifice): the fool, the morning after the game, used to be “smoked” over a straw fire. “He was suspended above the fire and swung backwards and forwards over it until almost suffocated; then allowed to drop into the smouldering straw, which was well wetted, and to scramble out as he could.” 17-50

Returning to the subject of football, I may here condense an p. 349 account of a Welsh Christmas custom quoted by Sir Laurence Gomme, in his book “The Village Community,” from the Oswestry Observer of March 2, 1887:—“In South Cardiganshire it seems that about eighty years ago the population, rich and poor, male and female, of opposing parishes, turned out on Christmas Day and indulged in the game of football with such vigour that it became little short of a serious fight.” Both in north and south Wales the custom was found. At one place, Llanwenog near Lampeter, there was a struggle between two parties with different traditions of race. The Bros, supposed to be descendants from Irish people, occupied the high ground of the parish; the Blaenaus, presumably pure-bred Brythons, occupied the lowlands. After morning service on Christmas Day, “the whole of the Bros and Blaenaus, rich and poor, male and female, assembled on the turnpike road which divided the highlands from the lowlands.” The ball was thrown high in the air, “and when it fell Bros and Blaenaus scrambled for its possession.... If the Bros, by hook or by crook, could succeed in taking the ball up the mountain to their hamlet of Rhyddlan they won the day, while the Blaenaus were successful if they got the ball to their end of the parish at New Court.” Many severe kicks were given, and the whole thing was taken so keenly “that a Bro or a Blaenau would as soon lose a cow from his cowhouse as the football from his portion of the parish.” There is plainly more than a mere pastime here; the thing appears to have been originally a struggle between two clans. 17-51

[Erika Zimney]

Anciently the Carnival, with its merrymaking before the austerities of Lent, was held to begin at the Epiphany. This was the case in Tyrol even in the nineteenth century. 17-52 As a rule, however, the Carnival in Roman Catholic countries is restricted to the last three days before Ash Wednesday. The pagan origin of its mummeries and licence is evident, but it is a spring rather than a winter festival, and hardly calls for treatment here.

The Epiphany is in many places the end of Christmas. In Calvados, Normandy, it is marked by bonfires; red flames mount p. 350 skywards, and the peasants join hands, dance, and leap through blinding smoke and cinders, shouting these rude lines:—
“Àdieu les Rois
Jusqu’à douze mois,
Douze mois passés
Les bougelées.” 17-53

[Erika Zimney]

Another French Epiphany chanson, translated by the Rev. R. L. Gales, is a charming farewell to Christmas:—
“Noël is leaving us,
Sad ‘tis to tell,
But he will come again,
Adieu, Noël.
His wife and his children
Weep as they go:
On a grey horse
They ride thro’ the snow.
*       *       *       *       *
The Kings ride away
In the snow and the rain,
After twelve months
We shall see them again.” 17-54

[Erika Zimney]

Post-Epiphany Festivals.

Though with Twelfth Day the high festival of Christmas generally ends, later dates have sometimes been assigned as the close of the season. At the old English court, for instance, the merrymaking was sometimes carried on until Candlemas, while in some English country places it was customary, even in the late nineteenth century, to leave Christmas decorations up, in houses and churches, till that day. 17-55 The whole time between Christmas and the Presentation in the Temple was thus treated as sacred to the Babyhood of Christ; the withered evergreens would keep alive memories of Christmas joys, even, sometimes, after Septuagesima had struck the note of penitence.

Before we pass on to a short notice of Candlemas, we may p. 351 glance at a few last sparks, so to speak, of the Christmas blaze, and then at the English festivals which marked the resumption of work after the holidays.

In Sweden Yule is considered to close with the Octave of the Epiphany, January 13, “St. Knut's Day,” the twentieth after Christmas.
“Twentieth day Knut
Driveth Yule out”

[Erika Zimney]

sing the old folks as the young people dance in a ring round the festive Yule board, which is afterwards robbed of the viands that remain on it, including the Yule boar. On this day a sort of mimic fight used to take place, the master and servants of the house pretending to drive away the guests with axe, broom, knife, spoon, and other implements. 17-56 The name, “St. Knut's Day,” is apparently due to the fact that in the laws of Canute the Great (1017-36) it is commanded that there is to be no fasting from Christmas to the Octave of the Epiphany. 17-57

In England the day after the Epiphany was called St. Distaff's or Rock Day (the word Rock is evidently the same as the German Rocken = distaff). It was the day when the women resumed their spinning after the rest and gaiety of Christmas. From a poem of Herrick's it appears that the men in jest tried to burn the women's flax, and the women in return poured water on the men:—
“Partly work, and partly play
You must on St. Distaff's day:
From the plough soon free your team,
Then come home and fother them;
If the maids a-spinning go,
Burn the flax and fire the tow.
*       *       *       *       *
Bring in pails of water then,
Let the maids bewash the men;
Give St. Distaff all the right,
Then bid Christmas sport good night;
And next morrow, every one
To his own vocation.” 17-58

[Erika Zimney]

p. 352 A more notable occasion was Plough Monday, the first after Twelfth Day. Men's labour then began again after the holidays. 17-59 We have already seen that it is sometimes associated with the mummers’ plays. Often, however, its ritual is not developed into actual drama, and the following account from Derbyshire gives a fairly typical description of its customs:—

    “On Plough Monday the ‘Plough bullocks’ are occasionally seen; they consist of a number of young men from various farmhouses, who are dressed up in ribbons.... These young men yoke themselves to a plough, which they draw about, preceded by a band of music, from house to house, collecting money. They are accompanied by the Fool and Bessy; the fool being dressed in the skin of a calf, with the tail hanging down behind, and Bessy generally a young man in female attire. The fool carries an inflated bladder tied to the end of a long stick, by way of whip, which he does not fail to apply pretty soundly to the heads and shoulders of his team. When anything is given a cry of ‘Largess!’ is raised, and a dance performed round the plough. If a refusal to their application for money is made they not unfrequently plough up the pathway, door-stone, or any other portion of the premises they happen to be near.” 17-60

By Plough Monday we have passed, it seems probable, from New Year festivals to one that originally celebrated the beginning of spring. Such a feast, apparently, was kept in mid-February when ploughing began at that season; later the advance of agriculture made it possible to shift it forward to early January. 17-61

[Erika Zimney]

Candlemas.

Nearer to the original date of the spring feast is Candlemas, February 2; though connected with Christmas by its ecclesiastical meaning, it is something of a vernal festival. 17-62

The feast of the Purification of the Virgin or Presentation of Christ in the Temple was probably instituted by Pope Liberius at Rome in the fourth century. The ceremonial to which it owes its popular name, Candlemas, is the blessing of candles in church and the procession of the faithful, carrying them lighted in their hands. During the blessing the “Nunc dimittis” is chanted, p. 353 with the antiphon “Lumen ad revelationem gentium et gloriam plebis tuae Israel,” the ceremony being thus brought into connection with the “light to lighten the Gentiles” hymned by Symeon. Usener has however shown reason for thinking that the Candlemas procession was not of spontaneous Christian growth, but was inspired by a desire to Christianize a Roman rite, the Amburbale, which took place at the same season and consisted of a procession round the city with lighted candles. 17-63

[Erika Zimney]

The Candlemas customs of the sixteenth century are thus described by Naogeorgus:
“Then numbers great of Tapers large, both men and women beare
To Church, being halowed there with pomp, and dreadful words to heare.
This done, eche man his Candell lightes, where chiefest seemeth hee,
Whose taper greatest may be seene, and fortunate to bee,
Whose Candell burneth cleare and brighte; a wondrous force and might
Doth in these Candells lie, which if at any time they light,
They sure beleve that neyther storme or tempest dare abide,
Nor thunder in the skies be heard, nor any devils spide,
Nor fearefull sprites that walke by night, nor hurts of frost or haile.” 17-64

Still, in many Roman Catholic regions, the candles blessed in church at the Purification are believed to have marvellous powers. In Brittany, Franche-Comté, and elsewhere, they are preserved and lighted in time of storm or sickness. 17-65 In Tyrol they are lighted on important family occasions such as christenings and funerals, as well as on the approach of a storm 17-66 ; in Sicily in time of earthquake or when somebody is dying. 17-67