CHRISTMAS.* IT seems an assertion scarcely worth arguing about that
the Feast of Christmas collected among Northern nations many pagan celebrations, and from its seasonal occurrence naturally assumed a jovial character. In Southern Italy the lamp of life does not require such careful trimming and feeding, and the spiritual aspect of the festival may predominate. In Northern Europe the short days, the inclement weather, the difficulties of travel, drove men in upon their own resources more, in- dulgence in food and drink was stimulated by the appetite natural to the bodily necessities, and hospitality being in- separable from all anniversary festivals, religious or other- wise, such a festival, occurring at the dead of the year, suggested itself as a suitable occasion for visits, for the giving of gifts, for reconciliations, for the distribution of doles, for the transaction of business, and for such recreations as Northern climes forbade out of doors and allowed indoors.
The early Christians had every motive for celebrating Christmas. To them the splendour of its spiritual signifi- cance appealed as it has since appealed perhaps to none. Strong to suffer, imagination and hope foretold to them a new era for mankind. This is the Christmas we celebrate now. If the spirit of the festival has been dimmed, some of its obligations are still in force. "Peace and goodwill towards men" is perhaps its most characteristic modern feature. At an early period in the history of the Church it was found necessary to protest against the excessive dancing and feasting and crowning of doors; indeed, from the fourth century downwards the more thoughtful Bishops strove against the secularising tendency and the introduction of games and shows. The contest between the performers of sacred and allegorical plays
• Christmas and its Associations. By W. F. Dawson. Illustrated. London : Elliot Stock. aDs. 6d.]
and the mummers and disguisers, or performers of secular and indecent plays, began as early as the sixth and seventh centuries, and even earlier. We presume that the interdiction of atage-plays did not condemn religious allegories. The Council at Auxerre (578) forbade mumming,which became after- wards so characteristic a feature of the English Christmas.
Christmas not only became the principal festival of the year in England, but the season for the transaction of domestic government for the Saxon Kings and the early Norman Sovereigns. Mr. Dawson's chronologically arranged chapters bring this out very clearly. Without making much of the legend that Alfred's strict observance of the twelve days' Christmas festival in 878 led to his defeat by the Danes, we may remark that the Christmas festival of 1065-66 was signalised by the consecration of Westminster Abbey, the death of the Confessor, and the Coronation of Harold. On the next Christmas Day the Conqueror was crowned, thus inaugurating our great national era on what is still the great national festival. We really owe Mr. Dawson some gratitude for placing before us and reminding us of the fact that the English historical associations of Christmas are more numerous than we realise. We snake no apology for reminding readers that Becket was murdered during the octave of the festival (Decem- ber 29th, 1170), that John had to listen to a demand for a charter on the Epiphany following the Christmas of 1214, and that the first Parliament sat at the end of the Christmas festivities in 1265. The Angevin Sovereigns kept the festival, as a rule, with a profusion and prodigality, and a sumptuous extravagance and a luxurious bravery in plays and masques, that Continental Monarchs were unable to approach. Henry married Eleanor of Provence with all the pomp and cir- cumstance that a full purse allowed,—the very streets of London were cleansed; and when he married his daughter to Alexander of Scotland at York six hundred oxen were slain for the feasting. We may compare this joyous celebration with that of the Conqueror at York in 1067 after returning from that terrible devastation of Northern England.
Hospitality and widespread almsgiving were as notable features of a Royal Christmas as its masques and banqueting Henry II. gave presents to the poor, Henry III. feasted the poor in Westminster Hall for a week, and Edward IV. at Eltham fed two thousand daily. The luxury of the table at this period is almost incredible. We read of the monks of Winchester having thirteen dishes for supper, and resenting strongly a reduction to ten. The monks of Canterbury had seventeen ! The accounts of the installation feasts of Arch- bishop Neville in Plantagenet times, and Archbishop Warham in Tudor days, with their lengthy courses, point to protracted banquets, which we can easily believe lasted from 3 o'clock to midnight. These were not days when the food was ex- pensive ; beef, mutton, venison were plentiful and bread was not too dear in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and no country was more abundantly supplied with all sorts of game, as Continental visitors who spent the winter in England declared. A Venetian said that we would not put our hands in our pockets for a shilling, but spent pounds on a feast. The ex- pensive items at Christmas festivities were the masques, and the disguisings or mummings. These seem to have become part and parcel of winter junketings at the end of the Middle Ages. Mr. Dawson says the Crusaders brought the taste for these back to England. The figures of St. George, the Champions of Christendom, and the Emperor of Morocco are not unknown at Christmas mummings to-day. The actual materials for ordinary European costumes, as well as Oriental, were most costly, when one considers that the Edwards and the early Tudors tried to classify their subjects by limiting a yeoman's apparel of fur to lamb, coney, cat, or fox, restricting the use of velvet to knights, and the wearing of precious stones to the bead-dresses of ladies whose husbands were worth at least 200 marks a year. The counterfeiting of costly fabrics, though not unknown, was probably not equal to the demand, and we may be certain that the outlay on historical plays and pageants was ruinous. The gifts alone at Christmas-time would make the mouths of lovers of jewellery water. The jousts distributed money freely; the herald's cry of " Largess! " was not made in vain. For the town- dwellers this midwinter feasting meant undoubtedly a very good time. Some of the great nobles had their own company of skilled players, who went about from one big house to another, the commonalty went a-mumming, and the Lord of Misrule had nothing to do but to devise some new way of passing the time and spending the Money. Cards and dice were allowed for a, fortnight—speaking exactly, twelve days—at Christmas-time, even under the strictest prohibitions of the Tudors, and they all gambled royally. The most interesting chapters in Mr. Dawson's book are those reprinting the accounts of the elaborate masques and "devices" played at Gray's Inn, the Inner Temple, and St. John's College, Oxford, in the last years of Elizabeth and James I. The Inns of Court spent thousands on the sumptuous appointments of a mock Court and the production of a play. One year L'20,000 was said to have been spent. We may be sure that if Elizabeth patronised the performance of Gorboduc it was worth repeating at Court, probably as a spectacle alone. Mary herself spent on players' salaries between 22,000 and 0000 a year, though her Privy Council were very severe on some bakers who broke through the prohibition against mumming, and another man who shaved a dog and let it loose in the streets "in despite of priesthood" was not likely to repeat the experiment. Mr. Dawson might, without much additiona I trouble, have enlivened his work by hunting up such escapades as threw a sidelight on the habits of the age.
The remark, often made, that a country Christmas is more enjoyable than the town festival should remind us that this great feast meant to the countryman far more than it could to the townsman. Mr. Dawson does not insist with anything like enough emphasis on the fact that Christmas in the country softened the hardships, soothed the bitternesses, and strengthened the ties that bound people of all lands together, to a degree we can hardly comprehend nowadays. Its recol- lection lasted for months. The festival lasted more or less, be it remembered, from All-hallowe'en to Candlemas, three months, though the legal festival meant only Christmas Eve to the Epiphany. The various statutes against unlawful games of Edwards III. and IV. and the Tudor Kings were relaxed for the twelve days of Christmastide, especially with regard to cards and dice, when high and low, master and servant, gambled together. Then there were the vast doles of the monasteries. Taken as a whole, we may fairly assert that the estates of the Church were well managed and their tenants considered. The doles were probably not more indiscriminate than they are now. Then came the dissolution of the monasteries, and we may well ask what that meant to the crowds of daily recipients of monastic bounty and the numbers who thronged the gates at Christmas- tide. Cromwell and his Visitors are not yet forgotten. In the general grab that followed, the courtiers ignored any obligations to their tenants. The Lord Privy Seal him- self knew better. As time went on things resettled them- selves. Echoes of Elizabethan Christmases have come down to us ; Lord Berkeley and the Sidneys fulfilled the traditions of English hospitality in princely fashion. Elizabeth, Mr. Dawson reminds us, commanded the gentle- men of Norfolk and Suffolk to repair to their counties and keep hospitality among their neighbours. As a rule, the country squire and the landlord filled the gap caused by the destruction of the monasteries. The old men, having extended their boundaries, had every reason for extending their Christmas bounty, and the new men would not be long in following suit. The Court festivities, of course, had a fatal fascination, and a man could ruin himself with greater ease then than now.
In the Stuart period the country Christmas was faithfully kept, notwithstanding the heavy drain of a latterly dissolute Court. ThePuritan crusade against festivities perhaps did more to bring about the Restoration than any other feature of their depressing influence on the gayer side of life. Mr. Dawson quotes from an article written some few years ago to the effect that the Parliament must have regarded it as a "Providence" that the Christmas of 1645 fell on a week-day, it being the first anniversary of the feast under the new Directory. The strictest and soberest man now can only regard the Puritan view of Christmas as rank folly. In the country it did not interfere with hospitality, but on the towns the repressive ordinances fell very heavily,—at Canterbury they broke the Mayor's head, and openly expressed their preference for King and Christmas The extraordinary reaction at the Restoration, the universal
jubilation of the entire Engliehipeople, are evidence enough of the immense relief afforded by the return of the old customs. The short extracts from the papers of the period alluding to the " sqperstitious practice," 1m., of Christmas are most instructive, and suggestive of the enduring stupidity of the bigot.
The old-fashioned Christmas is not yet extinct, we pray and trust, though it is the habit of many people, especially those barely out of their teens, to be somewhat contemptuous of it. The "waits," a good old custom, ought to be en- couraged, though the singing of carols ought to be confined to men; we do not want boys singing "Noel" and nursery rhymes one after the other. Sport draws many to their country houses who would perhaps refuse to acknowledge obligations to their neighbours. Country Christmas hospitality is improving. The all-embracing hospitality of the Reresbys and the }Ionises would be difficult to recall. In 1684 Sir John Reresby of Thrybergh tells us that seldom less than fourscore sat down to dinner, sometimes many more ; on New Year's Day three hundred were feasted. He had four violins, besides bagpipes, drums, and trumpets. Why is music so seldom heard now P The harp is an ideal instrument for the actual feasting, soft and sweet. Sir William Hollis during the three months, All-hallowe'en to Candlemas, allowed any man to stop three days without asking who he was or whence he came. The habit of receiving the quarter's rent more or less in kind made this less expensive and more convenient than at first sight appears. But where are the Reresbys now ? We have seen an inn called the Reresby Arms,' probably their only secular and public memorial. It is a pity Mr. Dawson could not have amused us with more private details of the last two centuries, and have leavened his distinctly useful and painstaking compilation with the available letters known to exist. The chronological order alone makes his Christmas interesting, especially the series of masques; but he might have given freer rein to his imagination with advantage.
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