Christmas Miscellany

by Jonathan Green

  Thor, the Norse god of thunder, may well have had a hand in influencing the development of the Father Christmas myth, for he rode across the sky in an iron chariot pulled by two huge goats, called Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr (in English, Gnasher and Cracker), rather like Santa’s sleigh with its team of reindeer. There is also evidence that pagan peoples once worshipped an elemental spirit called Old Man Winter. He too went into the mix that was to eventually produce the figure of Father Christmas.

  Christmas itself has been personified for centuries within the British Isles. In a carol, the words of which were written around the year 1500, he is called “Sir Christèmas.”

  “Nowell, nowell, nowell, nowell.”

  “Who is there that singeth so, nowell, nowell, nowell?”

  “I am here, Sir Christèmas.”

  “Welcome, my lord Sir Christèmas!

  Welcome to all, both more and less,

  Come near, nowell.”

  “Dieu vous garde, beaux sieurs, tidings I you bring:

  A maid hath borne a child full young,

  Which causeth you to sing, nowell.”

  “Christ is now born of a pure maid, born of a pure maid;

  In an ox stall he is laid,

  Wherefore sing we at a brayed, nowell.”

  “Buvez bien, buvez bien par toute la compagnie.

  Make good cheer and be right merry,

  And sing with us now joyfully, nowell!”

  To the Medieval mind there had to be balance in all things. Just as there was Heaven and Hell, rich and poor, Father Christmas couldn’t just give to the good and let those who had been bad get off scot-free. And so the character of the Dark Helper reemerged. Sometimes called Black Peter, under the influence of the Church, the Dark Helper became a demon enslaved by the saint.

  As well as having horns, he was covered in shaggy black hair, and carried a birch rod with which he would punish naughty children and also badly behaved women! Black Peter is known by different names across Europe, but his purpose remains the same: to be the antithesis of Father Christmas. To some he is Krampus (from the Old German word krampen, meaning “claw”), Pelz Nickel, or Klaubauf. To others he is Knecht Reprechte, dressed in animal skins and straw, or even Old Nick, the Devil himself! People living in the seventeenth century had a different concept of a “Father Christmas,” but he was a figure that oversaw the community celebrations rather than someone who gave presents to children. The modern image we now have of Father Christmas didn’t really develop until well into the nineteenth century. Up until that time he had been everything from slim to fat, tall to tiny, elfin, troll-like, a pagan druid, a variation on the spirit of nature in the form of the Green Man (bedecked with garlands of holly, ivy and mistletoe), a drunk (riding in a sleigh pulled by turkeys), and the jolly and generous Lord Christmas.

  Did you know . . .?

  The Christkindl is a German creation, an angelic figure who, like Father Christmas, gives gifts to deserving children. As a result of its translation to America, the Christkindl became that other well-known Father Christmas impersonator, Kris Kringle.

  It was Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863), the American Episcopalian minister and author of the poem “An Account of a Visit from Saint Nicholas” (better known by its first line, “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”), who introduced the team of eight reindeer and had Santa gaining entry to the house down the chimney. In fact, American culture has had a huge impact on the development of the modern image of Santa Claus, which originally came to the United States from the Netherlands in the guise of Sinterklaus. The German American caricaturist Thomas Nast also had his part to play in creating what we would now call the traditional image of Santa Claus. His classic version of the jolly fellow appeared in Harper’s Weekly, in 1863. Before then, most depictions of Santa had shown him as a tall, thin man. However, Nast drew him as the bearded, plump individual known today. So, the Father Christmas—Santa Claus, Kris Kringle, call him what you like—that we know and love today is really an amalgamation of the gift-giving Santa Claus, the personification of the festive season Father Christmas, and a fourth-century Turkish saint.

  Did you know . . .?

  The Coca-Cola Company’s Christmas advertising campaigns have been so successful that some people now believe that Coke actually invented Santa Claus. At the start of the 1930s, Coca-Cola was looking for a way to increase its sales during winter, a slow time for the soft drinks market. The company’s answer was to link Santa Claus in the minds of potential customers with their product. Haddon Sundblom, a commercial illustrator, created a series of paintings showing Father Christmas to be a larger-than-life character, wearing a red-and-white suit. Many believe that Santa wears these colors because they are Coca-Cola’s corporate colors. However, the truth is that by the 1920s, the red-suited, white-whiskered, sack-carrying Santa was already the standard image of the seasonal saint. Up until the beginning of the twentieth century, however, Santa could be seen wearing everything from red, to green, to blue—even purple! Father Christmas is known around the world and, as a consequence, he has many different names. In France he is Père Noël, in the Netherlands he is Sinterklaus, and in China he is known as Sing Dan Lo Yan (which is literally “Christmas Old Man”).

  Although the idea of a beneficent bringer of gifts at Christmastime is almost universal in Christian countries the world over, it isn’t always Santa Claus who does the honors. In Spain and South America it is the Three Kings who bring presents, just as they gave gifts to the Christ child. In Italy a kindly old witch called La Befana gives children sweets if they’ve been good and a piece of coal if they haven’t. In Russia it is either the grandmotherly Babouschka or Grandfather Frost, while in Scandinavia (for many the home of Santa Claus) gift giving is the job of a tribe of gnomes, one of whom goes by the name of Julenissen.

  Did you know . . .?

  According to the Italian legend of La Befana, the three wise men stopped at her home on their way to pay homage to the Christ child, and invited her to go with them. But La Befana had lost her own child to plague and found the prospect of seeing another baby too upsetting. But after the wise men had left she changed her mind. She set off in pursuit on her broomstick (as you do when you’re a witch) but never found the Magi again. Instead, every time she came across a good child’s stocking she filled it with toys and sweets in an effort to make up for her foolishness.

  WHY ARE CAROLS SUNG AT CHRISTMASTIME?

  Carol-singing as we would recognize it dates back to at least the thirteenth century in England, although we might not recognize many of the actual carols from that time. The idea of caroling is now inextricably tied to Christmas, but it should be remembered that carols have been written for many other festivals that occur throughout the year. A song does not even have to have any religious relevance for it to be called a carol. The word carol comes from the Greek choros, meaning “a dance,” via the Latin choraula and the French carole, which was specifically a ring-dance. The English spelling of “carol” is first seen in the Cursor Mundi dating from around 1300. In this context, a carol was described as “a ring-dance in which the dancers themselves sing the governing music.”

  It is hard to pin down exactly what a carol is—beyond the connection to dancing, although this itself does not really apply to many carols anymore—as the word has been used to refer to such widely varying pieces of music, from ones connected to the Nativity to jovial drinking songs. Although most would now agree that a carol is a Christmas song with connections either to the religious side or the pagan aspects of the midwinter festival, at one time such forms of music were condemned by the Church.

  The earliest known hymn in honor of the Nativity is “Jesus refulsit omnium” (meaning “Jesus, Light of all the Nations”). It was written by Saint Hilary of Poitiers who died in AD 368. Nativity hymns such as this were solemn affairs and strictly religious. Something more like the carols we know today developed in Italy among the followers of Saint Francis of Assisi. Having spent
much of his youth as a troubadour, Francis decided that the best way to teach people about Jesus Christ was through song. Francis, and the community of friars he founded, set about writing what many consider to be the first true Christmas carols.

  Some of them were performed around a Nativity scene that Saint Francis set up one Christmas Eve. In 1224, Franciscans brought the carols to England and began to compose new ones in English. The earliest surviving such carol we have written at that time is “A Child is Boren Amonges Man.” In thirteenth-century England, carols were sung in respectful imitation of the angels who, according to the Gospel writers, sang “Gloria in excelsis Deo” at Christ’s birth. At that time, these religious songs were sung only by the priests and choristers in church. However, the lyrical content of some carols often incorporated older pagan customs. One such example is the “Boar’s Head Carol.” Others are those about the holly and the ivy, with all their pagan symbolism intact.

  The carol also developed hand-in-hand with the mystery play. The “Coventry Carol” was itself written for one such play, special to the city of Coventry. Some carols were effectively sung narrative poems, such as the “Cherry Tree Carol,” while others interspersed the ballad structure with lines of Latin that all regular church-goers would recognize, even if they didn’t actually understand what they meant, as in In dulce jubilo. (This style is commonplace in many early sixteenth century carols.)

  Did you know . . .?

  The “Cherry Tree Carol” is an example of a carol that tells a story relating to the as-yet-unborn Christ child. It recounts an apocryphal story of the Virgin Mary. While travelling to Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph stop at a cherry orchard. Mary asks her husband to pick cherries for her, blaming her unborn son for this sudden craving. Joseph rather cruelly tells her to let the child’s father pick her cherries. At that moment, Jesus speaks from the womb and commands the cherry tree to lower a branch down to his mother, which it subsequently does. Joseph, in a state of shock, is immediately repentant.

  The earliest printed collection of carols was produced by William Caxton’s apprentice, and eventual successor, Wynkyn de Worde, in 1521. Richard Kele’s Christmas Carols Newly Imprinted appeared in 1550, but this particular collection already suffered from the moralizing influence of the growing Puritan movement. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Puritans made it their mission to take much of the fun out of the festive repertoire. They saw the Christian festival of Christmas as having been corrupted by the more immoral, secular celebrations associated with the season. And they were successful, for a while, too.

  As a result, the Puritans did much to put paid to the singing of carols for a good few years. This temporary suppression of the carol was partly as a result of its association with dancing. Where worship out of doors had been perfectly acceptable in the past, the Puritans restrained their worship to the meeting house. Likewise there was no movement allowed within church services; even processions conducted as part of the Sunday service had been removed.

  The Puritans also had it in for the mystery plays, for which many of the earlier carols had been written. They did not consider it appropriate to re-enact such holy scenes as Christ’s birth, and so in 1642 an “Order for Stage Plays to Cease” was passed. Songs that suffered as a consequence included the fifteenth-century “Salutation Carol” and the even earlier “Angelus ad Virginem,” which dated from the middle of the thirteenth century.

  Many carols contained the relics of a more superstitious age, such as “The Holly and the Ivy,” which the Puritans could not tolerate. Only material from the scriptures was considered suitable to be used in songs of worship, so out went such legendary carols as “The Carnal and the Crane” and “King Herod and the Cock.” However, under Puritan rule the carol did not vanish altogether. As long as the songs were holy and somber affairs, sung with all due reverence, they were acceptable. 1642 saw a collection called Good and True, Fresh and New Christmas Carols published, while after the Restoration other collections such as New Carols for this Merry Time of Christmas (1661) and New Christmas Carols (1662) followed. By writing their own carols—although they were not what the Medieval merry-makers would have called a carol—the Puritans hoped to convert people to their way of thinking. Nonetheless, many of the carols written at this time are no longer in use today, and with good reason. The majority of them were intended to correct people and improve their lives. Such penitential pieces did not prove very popular. One that has endured, however, is the lullaby “Wither’s Rocking Hymn,” written by staunch Puritan George Wither (1588-1667).

  Although Christmas carols did not enjoy a massive revival after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, at the turn of the eighteenth century new carols were being written. “While Shepherds Watched” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” are both from this time. It could be argued that these were not really Christmas carols but Christmas hymns, as were what came after, since the music was no longer suggestive of dancing, whereas “I Saw Three Ships” (which dates from the Middle Ages) has a galloping rhythm that would have suited a ring-dance very well. It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century, though, that the carol, along with the rest of Christmas, enjoyed a more substantial revival, and yet even then, at the beginning, it was mainly thanks to two men in particular.

  The Reverend John Mason Neale was the Warden of Sackville College, East Grinstead, in Sussex, and a known translator of Greek and Latin hymns. The Reverend Thomas Helmore was Vice-Principal of St Mark’s College, Chelsea, and an accomplished musician. These two clergymen worked together on translating and interpreting the sixteenth-century tunes found inside what was possibly the only surviving copy of an ancient book called the Piae Cantiones, compiled by one Theodoricus Petrus of Nyland, Finland, in 1582. In 1853, Neale and Helmore published the fruits of their labors in a collection of twelve carols under the title Carols for Christmas-tide. The carol “Unto Us a Boy Is Born” has been passed on to us from this collection (although it can also be found in a fifteenth-century manuscript), as has “Good King Wenceslas.”

  Seeing the success of Neale and Helmore’s work, and the passion with which it was received, others soon followed in their footsteps, bringing out their own carol collections. Many of those sung today were written at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. “See Amid the Winter’s Snow,” “Once in Royal David’s City,” “In the Bleak Midwinter,” and even “Away in a Manger” were all written at this time.

  Did you know . . .?

  “Silent Night” (or “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht” in the original German) was written in 1818 by Josef Mohr, parish priest of Oberndorf in the Austrian Tyrol. It was written to be played on the guitar as the church organ had broken. Some of our most famous carols actually have their roots in America. During the mid-nineteenth century, American composers wrote such carols as “Away in a Manger” and “Kings of Orient,” which, in turn, influenced the ancient tradition of carol-singing on this side of the pond.

  Carol-singing itself enjoyed a revival during the Victorian era. The long-lasting impact of the Puritans on Christmas meant that carols were not really sung in church again until the 1880s. It was then that the familiar service of nine lessons and carols was drawn up by the Bishop of Truro, E.W. Benson, who later went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury.

  New carols are still being written today, of course (along with endless festive pop ditties), but it is the carols of the late nineteenth century and those that have made it to us from the sixteenth century that are sung every Christmas with the greatest fondness and fervor.

  Did you know ...?

  The name Bethlehem, as in the carol “O, Little Town of Bethlehem” and Jesus’ birthplace, is an Arabic word meaning “house of bread.”

  WHY DO PEOPLE OPEN ADVENT CALENDARS IN THE RUN-UP TO CHRISTMAS?

  The period of four weeks leading up to Christmas is called Advent, from the Latin adveneo meaning “to come.” In this context it refers to the coming of Jes
us, and so in the Christian Church it has always been a time of preparation, in expectation of the Feast of the Nativity.

  In many households the days left until Christmas are counted down with the aid of an Advent calendar. From December 1 onwards, one numbered door or window is opened to reveal the image—and now, more often than not, the chocolate—hidden behind it. It used to be the case that the last window was for December 24, which had an image of the Nativity behind it, but now calendars can last as far as the New Year! It is easy to see how the season of Advent came about in the early Church, but what of the calendars used to count down the days to Christmas? The first Advent calendars, as we would recognize them, were made in the middle of the nineteenth century.

  Even before that, however, German Lutherans were already marking off the days of Advent by some physical means, as they had done since at least the beginning of the century. In some households this meant lighting a new candle each day or hanging up a religious image, but it could be something as simple (and cost-free) as marking a line in chalk on the door of the house. If candles were used, they were mounted on a device called an Advent clock. The first recognizable Advent calendar, however, didn’t appear until 1851, and even then it was a handmade creation. There is some debate as to when the first printed calendar appeared. Some say that it was produced in 1902 or 1903, in Hamburg, Germany; others claim that it did not appear until 1908, and that it was the creation of one Gerhard Lang, a printer from Munich.