Christmas Miscellany

by Jonathan Green

  In the Church’s attempts to Christianize what was essentially a pagan practice, the Christmas fir had Christian symbolism foisted upon it. Since to look at it, its shape was essentially triangular, the three points of the triangle were said to represent the Holy Trinity—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

  To add weight to the argument that putting up a tree in your house during the winter months was their idea, Christians in the Middle Ages also perpetuated the legend of Saint Boniface, which pre-dated Germanic diary references to Christmas trees by several hundred years. Boniface was a monk (and schoolmaster) from Devon, living in the seventh and eighth centuries, but the event that connects him with the origins of the Christmas tree occurred at Geismar, in Germany. He was there carrying out missionary work, preaching the gospel, at the behest of Pope Gregory II.

  The story goes that Boniface came upon a group of pagans worshipping a sacred oak tree. The druids were preparing to sacrifice a baby to their bloodthirsty pagan gods when Saint Boniface came to the infant’s rescue. Incensed, he grabbed the axe that was going to be used to end the baby’s life and instead laid into the tree, furiously chopping it down. With the babe safe in his arms, he saw that from the roots of the felled oak a fir tree was growing. To his holy eyes the fir was a symbol of Christ’s resurrection, with new life growing out of what had been a tree of death.

  Sometimes this story is linked to a different saint, the seventhcentury Wilfrid of York. In this version the saint set out to cut down an oak tree which was the focus of a druidic cult. As he chopped it down, the oak split and a fir tree grew from its heart. Wilfrid dedicated the fir to Christ, declaring that the evergreen represented the eternal life offered by the Savior.

  And then again sixteenth-century folklore states that it was Martin Luther, the German theologian, who was the first person to bring a decorated tree into the home. After walking through a starlit forest of evergreens, Martin felt inspired. Bringing a tree into his own home and illuminating it with candles, he reminded his family that Jesus Christ himself had descended from Heaven to die for our sins. However, there are some historians who claim that there is no evidence of a lighted tree until more than a century after Martin Luther’s death in 1546.

  Did you know . . .?

  According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, there are 1,000 Christmas tree-related emergency room visits every year.

  It is the commonly held belief that it was Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who first brought a tree—in this case ordered from Coburg in Germany—into the home—in this case Windsor Castle—at Christmastime. However, although it may be true that the tree he had set up for his family in 1841 set the trend for such trees—after the royal family were depicted gathered around the royal Christmas tree in the London Illustrated News of 1848—this wasn’t the first time Windsor Castle had had a tree.

  Queen Charlotte, the German consort of King George III and Victoria’s grandmother, had ordered a Christmas tree, or Weihnachtsbaum, for the Queen’s lodge at Windsor in 1800, and trees became a permanent fixture there for a number of years afterwards. The practice had been a common one in Germany, before the royal family popularized it in this country.

  Did you know . . .?

  Many countries are now self-sufficient in producing Christmas trees. There are ten different varieties grown in England, for example, with the most commonly sold being the Nordmann fir.

  Probably the most famous Christmas tree in England is the one given to the city of Westminster by the people of Oslo in Norway. It is a gift given in gratitude for the help Norway received from England during the Second World War when it was occupied by enemy forces. King Haakon of Norway was able to escape to England and set up the Free Norwegian Government. Every year since 1947, the Norwegian tree has been put on display in Trafalgar Square in London. At approximately seventy feet tall, it is the only un-milled tree over twelve feet that is allowed to be imported into the country.

  Did you know . . .?

  The American National Christmas tree is in King’s Canyon in California. It is a still-living giant sequoia, rather than a fir, and it has a name: It’s called the General Grant Tree and is almost three hundred feet tall.

  There grows within the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset an altogether different kind of Christmas tree. It is a bush of the variety Crataegus monogyna biflora, a cultivar of the common hawthorn that flowers twice a year, better known as the Glastonbury Thorn. According to legend, after the death of Christ, Joseph of Arimathea (who gave his tomb for Jesus’s body to be interred within) visited England with the intention of spreading the Gospel. While he was visiting the West of England he lay down to rest, but not before thrusting his staff into the ground. When he awoke again he discovered that his staff had miraculously taken root and come into flower.

  Did you know . . .?

  The first artificial Christmas trees recreated the look of the evergreen fir using goose feathers, dyed green.

  From that day, the Glastonbury Thorn has continued to flower on Wearyall Hill every Christmas, a sign of the hope that the birth of the infant Jesus brought to mankind. However, during the seventeenth century and the Puritans’ attempted purge of Christmas in all its forms, the original Glastonbury Thorn was uprooted and destroyed. Fortunately, people had been taking cuttings from the holy hawthorn for years and so the tree lived on. It was one of these cuttings that was planted, and subsequently thrived, within the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, attracting countless visitors over the years.

  Just like the Glastonbury Thorn, Christmas trees don’t have to be fir trees. In the past, trees such as cherry and common hawthorns have been used, while in India, Christians decorate banana trees at Christmastime. So now the Christmas tree is a part of almost everyone’s festive season, whether it be real or fake, with piles of presents beneath and adorned with all manner of decorations, some of them of the edible variety!

  Did you know . . .?

  The first decorative electric lights used to embellish a Christmas tree were those displayed in the home of one of the vice presidents of Thomas A. Edison’s electric company in the 1880s. By 1909 you could buy lightbulbs in the shape of Santa or a snowman, although the now so familiar flame-shaped bulbs did not appear until the 1920s. Most households, however, couldn’t actually afford to buy fairy lights until after the Second actually afford to buy fairy lights until after the Second World War.

  WHY ARE CARDS SENT AT CHRISTMAS?

  For many people, the festive season really gets under way with the sending and receiving of their first Christmas cards, usually some time in November! It’s an annual burden, writing endless cards to be sent to people who you last had contact with twelve months before, when you last received a card from them, but it’s one that we would not be without.

  Because the giving and receiving of cards is so inextricably linked to Christmas, it’s hard to imagine a time when we didn’t have Christmas cards. But of course something else we take for granted these days is the postal service. Without a postal service there would be no way of sending all those sack loads of cards, and a reliable (and, more importantly, affordable) postal service wasn’t created until the mid-1800s. As a result, the greeting card didn’t appear until the Victorian era either.

  That said, the exchanging of illustrated greetings cards on special occasions itself can be traced back to the Romans and even the Ancient Egyptians before them. Of course, these weren’t Christmas cards as we know them, but we came a step closer in the fifteenth century when engravers began printing special Christmas pictures to sell during the festive period. However, these pictures came complete with New Year’s greetings rather than Christmas ones. In the Victorian era, it was a popular practice for people to send hand-drawn “Christmas sheets” to their friends and family. These were pictures, on single sheets of paper, with space left for the sender to add his or her name. It also became popular at this time for the more well-to-do members of society to add a
printed Christmas message to the calling cards they presented on visiting the house of another well-to-do person.

  However, the first true commercial Christmas card—one that we would recognize as being just that—didn’t go on sale until 1843. It was printed at the behest of Sir Henry Cole, a businessman and philanthropist. It was Cole who also first came up with the idea of perforated edges for stamps.

  Cole commissioned artist John Callcott Horsley to produce the image for the front, which showed a family party, along with vignettes of people carrying out charitable acts for the poor. It also bore the festive message, “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You!” The black and white card then had to be hand colored. The cards sold for pennies each and Cole managed to shift nearly a thousand of them. The Christmas card had arrived, and it was an instant hit! The Victorians being Victorians, it wasn’t long before Christmas cards became more elaborate. Soon there were pop-up cards which opened out into incredible 3D scenes, and ones which implemented cunning techniques to make a character appear to climb out of the card.

  By the 1860s, Christmas cards were being mentioned in publications such as Punch magazine and the Times newspaper. Although they started off with flowery borders and pretty lace edging, soon what we would consider to be more traditional Christmas scenes had begun to appear on the cards. For example, the robin (a perennial favorite) first appeared on a card in 1862.

  Did you know . . .?

  It’s thanks to the Victorians that snowy scenes appear on Christmas cards today, even though in the twentieth century London saw only two white Christmases (one in 1938 and the other in 1970)! Other popular subject matter included Father Christmas in his sleigh, holly, mistletoe, Christmas trees, Nativity scenes, candles, and angels. However, the first American Christmas card showed Santa and a slave laying a table. God bless America!

  In 1880, the post office made its first-ever plea to “Post early for Christmas.” Nearly ten years prior to this, in 1871, one newspaper complained that the delivery of business mail was being delayed because of the sheer volume of Christmas cards piling up in post offices. By 1873 people had started publishing adverts in newspapers wishing their friends all the very best for the festive season and stating that they would not be sending Christmas cards that year.

  Did you know . . .?

  Every year, more than 1.8 billion Christmas cards are sent within the United Kingdom. To make all of these cards, over 200,000 trees have to be felled.

  WHO IS THE REAL FATHER CHRISTMAS?

  Every Christmas Eve, children the world over await the arrival of one individual more than any other (or at least one of his many lieutenants) with excited anticipation. The image of the jolly old man with his long white beard, red suit, and attendant reindeer couldn’t be more familiar, but where did this admittedly peculiar figure come from? Who is, or was, the real Father Christmas? Whether you call him Father Christmas, Santa Claus, Sinterklaus, or Kris Kringle, the semi-historical, semilegendary figure who inspired the Christmas gift-giver children know and love today was one Saint Nicholas. And he didn’t come from the North Pole or Lapland. Saint Nicholas came from Turkey (although, of course, turkeys come from Mexico)!

  Did you know . . .?

  Santa Claus’ official post office is to be found in Rovaniemi, the capital of the Province of Lapland in northern Finland. He receives somewhere in the region of 600,000 letters each year!

  Nicholas was the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Myra in fourth-century Byzantine Anatolia. His parents both died when he was still a young man, leaving him a considerable fortune. Shunning his wealth and privileged background to join the Church, Nicholas then made it his mission to give his riches away to those more deserving, and in greater need, than he. The best-known example of his charity is the one which led to children hanging up their stockings on Christmas Eve for Santa to fill with gifts (see page 62).

  Did you know . . .?

  If Santa’s sleigh carried just one Barbie doll and one action figure for every girl and boy on the planet, it would weigh 400,000 tons and need almost 1 billion reindeer to pull it. To deliver all his presents in one global night time, Santa would have to visit 1,500 homes a second and, allowing for chimney descents and mince pie breaks, he and his reindeer would have to travel at roughly 5,000 times the speed of sound. The sleigh (and its attendant billion reindeer) would behave like a meteorite and burst into flames at a fraction of that speed and would burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

  Nicholas is credited with performing various miracles during his lifetime, which have led to him becoming the patron saint of many different groups of people. A number of legends tell of how he saved ships and their crews when threatened by storms at sea. As a result he is the patron saint of sailors.

  He is also the patron of children. This may be thanks to another story told about him: the miracle of the boys in a barrel. In some versions of the story there are two boys, in others three, but the rest of the details are roughly the same. The story goes that two boys were travelling to Athens, where they were to be educated, but had been told by their father to stop off at Myra on the way to receive the bishop’s blessing. When they arrived at the town, night had already fallen and so they took a room at a local inn, intending to visit Nicholas the next morning.

  Unfortunately for the boys, the innkeeper decided to rob them, thinking that their possessions would make easy pickings. That night the felon crept into the room where they slept and murdered them where they lay. To hide his heinous crime, and profit still further from the villainous deed, he chopped up their bodies, pickling them in barrels of brine, planning to sell their flesh to his customers as salted pork.

  However, Bishop Nicholas learnt that the boys were due to visit him and so set out in search of them. His enquiries eventually brought him to the inn and, when questioned about the boys, the innkeeper panicked, telling Nicholas that the boys had been there but had left the following morning. Nicholas was having none of it and set about searching the premises. It did not take him long to find the barrels which held the boys’ dismembered corpses.

  With a dramatic change of heart, no doubt brought on by extreme guilt, the innkeeper broke down and confessed his sins, begging the bishop for forgiveness. The saint was utterly convinced by the innkeeper’s desire to repent and prayed for both him, and the dead boys. As he concluded his prayer, the body parts reunited and the boys emerged from the brine barrels, alive and wholly intact. And so they continued on their way to Athens.

  This highly venerated bishop died on December 6 in either AD 326, 345, or 352 (historians aren’t certain). As a result, December 6 is his feast day and in some countries it is after sunset on that day that Father Christmas visits children to bestow his gifts.

  Did you know . . .?

  It is highly likely that the story of the boys in the barrel came about by mistake. Having given three poor girls the money they needed for their dowries, Nicholas was often represented holding three bags of gold. In some Medieval images these money bags looked more like three balls. The step from balls to heads was not a huge one, but the presence of three heads in iconography of the saint had to be explained somehow, and so the miracle of the boys in the barrel was concocted. Nicholas is also the protector of the poor, unmarried girls, prostitutes, pawnbrokers, bakers, scholars, Russia, Greece, archers, bankers, Sicily, Naples, jurors, perfumers, brides, robbers, coopers, brewers, and travelers.

  One of the first places to benefit from gifts brought by the saint was the town of Bari in Italy. Pilgrims were big business in the Middle Ages and to attract them a place needed relics, ideally something associated with Christ but, failing that, the earthly remains of a popular saint.

  In 1097, Norman pirates raided Myra and stole Saint Nicholas’ remains from his tomb. The raiders claimed that they were saving the saint from the advancing Muslims but it is more than likely that they were actually motivated by a desire to ensure Bari’s future prosperity.

  Did you know . . .?

&nb
sp; During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it was the custom within the great cathedrals to appoint a boy bishop from among the choristers on the feast of Saint Nicholas. Wearing full Episcopal garb—miter and crosier included—his term of office lasted from December 6 until Holy Innocents’ Day, December 28. During this time the boy bishop carried out all the functions of a priest, from taking church services to appointing canons (from among his fellow choristers). This practice began to die out in Tudor times, when both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I tried to ban the potentially blasphemous tradition.

  But the image we now have of Father Christmas has its origins in more than just the legendary life of one particular saint. In truth, Father Christmas’ origins go back much further than fourth-century Turkey. For the Norsemen of Scandinavia, the season of Yule was as much a dark time ruled over by demons and malevolent spirits. It was best to stay indoors, to escape the baleful gaze of the nocturnal flyer Odin. Odin also brought winter to the world. In this guise he was accompanied by his Dark Helper, a demonic horned creature who punished wrongdoers. This figure would resurface later as Father Christmas’ assistant.