Christmas Miscellany

by Jonathan Green

  450 g/1 lb. sugar

  1 tsp mixed spice

  280 ml/½ pt. of milk

  The juice of a lemon

  680 g/1½ lb. shredded suet

  450 g/1 lb. raisins

  450 g/1 lb. currants

  450 g/1 lb. flour

  450 g/1 lb. breadcrumbs

  1 tsp grated nutmeg

  ½ tsp of salt

  A large glass of brandy

  Having mixed up all of the ingredients, let the whole lot stand for 12 hours before boiling the mixture for 8 hours. Come Christmas Day you boil it again for 2 hours. This list of ingredients above will produce about 9 lbs of pudding.

  An alternative recipe for a rather more alcoholic plum pudding comes from the Edwardians, who are known for being just as wildly excessive as people are today.

  Plum Pudding (1909)

  1 kg/2¼ lbs raisins

  1 kg/2¼ lbs currants

  175 g/6 oz. finely chopped candied peel

  13 eggs

  850 ml/1½ pts of milk

  1½ cups of breadcrumbs

  680 g/1½ lbs flour

  680 g/1½ lbs finely chopped suet

  3 wineglasses of brandy

  2 wineglasses of rum

  Mix the ingredients together well and then spread between two buttered basins, to make two large puddings. Boil them for 14 hours. Halfway between frumenty and plum pudding is a concoction called plum porridge. Plum porridge was made with meat broth, thickened with breadcrumbs, and then flavored by adding the dried fruit which gave it its name: dried plums (in other words, prunes), raisins, currants, sugar, ginger, other spices, and even wine. It was also served at the beginning of the Christmas meal, rather than the end.

  During the eighteenth century this porridge became thicker and was boiled in a cloth. By the nineteenth century the meat component had gone completely and the dish was served as a dessert, doused in flaming brandy with a sprig of holly in the top.

  It was during the Victorians’ reinvention of Christmas that plum pudding found its place as a highlight of the Christmas meal. That renowned writer and re-inventor of Christmas, Charles Dickens, wrote about its importance and grandeur in A Christmas Carol:

  . . . like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half a quarter of ignited brandy, and bedecked with Christmas holly stuck into the top. Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their wedding.

  When Queen Victoria was on the throne, the British traveled to all corners of the globe, taking their traditions and customs with them. So the Christmas pudding traveled around the world too, becoming an intrinsic part of Christmas meals enjoyed by ex-pats living in Australia and British troops fighting in the Crimea. Even the poorhouses provided some manner of plum pudding for those incarcerated within on Christmas Day.

  The traditional time to prepare the pudding to be eaten on Christmas Day was the last Sunday before Advent, called Stir-up Sunday. Each member of the family was supposed to take a turn at stirring the mixture, and make a wish while doing so.

  But why was it called Stir-up Sunday? That might sound like a silly question now, but the name has nothing to do with people stirring Christmas pudding mixture. It actually comes from a passage in the Prayer Book related to Saint Andrew’s Day: “Stir up, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the will of thy faithful people.” Stir-up Sunday is usually also the one closest to Saint Andrew’s Day, November 30, and perhaps it is because of this instruction from the Prayer Book that people have for so many years made their Christmas puddings on that particular day.

  Of course brandy butter is as traditional as the Christmas pudding it usually accompanies, and if you fancy making it yourself this year, you can’t go wrong with this simple recipe.

  Brandy Butter

  100 g/4 oz. butter

  50 g/2 oz. icing sugar

  1 tbs brandy

  Cream the sugar and butter together, stir in the brandy, and then beat into the mix. Refrigerate until it’s needed. And that’s it!

  WHO WERE THE THREE KINGS?

  In the traditional Christmas story, acted out in Nativity plays year in year out around the country, the infant Jesus is visited by three kings who present him with expensive gifts full of symbolic meaning. But who actually were this trio of monarchs?

  Well, this is something of an academic question really, as, according to scholars of the Bible, they weren’t kings and there weren’t three of them. For starters, of the four gospels in the Bible—those written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—only two mention anything about Christ’s birth. And then, just to complicate matters, Matthew and Luke—who did write about the Nativity—provide us with different parts of what has become the traditional Christmas story. Luke tells us about the shepherds and hosts of angels, while Matthew relates the part where the wise men come to worship the Christ child, and the holy family’s resulting escape from the paranoid King Herod.

  It is also interesting to note that the story of Jesus’ birth was not as important to early Christians as his teachings and the events surrounding his death. Of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament, only two mention anything about the Nativity, and then only briefly. However, for many in our secular modern world, Christmas is the only Christian festival that is uniformly celebrated on any kind of scale.

  But back to the kings ... this is what Matthew has to say about the wise men’s visit:

  After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:1-2).

  At this point, the Bible seems clear that the baby Jesus’ visitors were wise men. However, in some sources, these visitors are described as Magi, astrologers-cumastronomers-cum-religious sages, so, in other words, priests. In fact, those who are knowledgeable about such matters agree that the Magi were Zoroastrian astrologer-priests, not kings. And there weren’t three of them either.

  Scholars still debate whether there were in fact only two wise men. (As they are mentioned in the plural we know there have to be at least two.) Others argue it was more like twenty, while Eastern tradition claims there were twelve. The familiar figure of three wasn’t settled on by the Church until the sixth century.

  It would appear that the confusion over the number of wise men came about because what the Bible does mention is that these far-ranging holy men brought the infant Christ three gifts. Early interpreters of the Bible, perhaps understandably, took this to mean that each gift had been given by one individual; hence three wise men.

  This confusion may have been strengthened by the fact that in Psalm 72, kings from three different places—Tarshish, Sheba, and Seba—brought tribute to King Solomon and knelt before him (probably swearing fealty, as Solomon was effectively the superpower of his time in that part of the world).

  And there is a third Biblical source which has helped create the traditional image of the three kings: that of the Book of Isaiah. It is Isaiah who prophesies Jesus’ birth. Isaiah Chapter 60 also mentions gold and frankincense, two of the three gifts which Matthew says the wise men brought to Jesus, the last being myrrh.

  And the prophet also mentions both kings and camels, although Matthew does not. So you can see how these references became jumbled together to create the image of the three kings that is a mainstay of Nativity plays to this day.

  Thanks to the popular Christmas carol “We Three Kings” (actually properly titled “Kings of Orient”), most people are familiar with the fact that the three kings’ names were Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar. But if there weren’t actually three kings, how did these names become associated with them?

  Did you know . . .?

  The merchant-explorer Marco Polo supposedly saw the graves of the three wise men during his incredible journey to China. The ornate tombs lay in the town of Saveh (now Tehran, in Iran).
These shrines supposedly contained the preserved bodies of Melchior, Caspar, and Balthazar.

  According to Polo’s account, the kings each visited the infant Jesus separately. To each of them, Jesus appeared to be their age and size and it was only when they went back together that the Magi saw him as he really was, a baby.

  The first literary source that mentions the names of the three kings is a chronicle dating from the sixth century called the Excerpta Latina Barbari. In it, the chronicler mentions the birth of Jesus and later goes on to say that “the Magi brought him gifts and venerated him. The Magi are called Bithisarea, Melchior, and Gaspar.”

  The more common spelling of Bithisarea was Balthazar, and Balthazar was a corruption of Belteshazzar—which was the name by which the prophet Daniel (as in the lions’ den) was known at the Babylonian court. It is likely that the name Melchior is formed from the Hebrew words melek (meaning “king”) and or (meaning “light”), making him the King of Light. As such he was the king who brought the baby Jesus a gift of gold, after the precious metal’s dazzling brightness. Caspar, or Gaspar, may be a corruption of Godaphar. A character who appears in an apocryphal text known as the Act of Thomas, Godaphar was a famous Indian king.

  It was a later written reference, which is found in the Collectanea (a book probably from Ireland and probably dating from the eighth century), which finally crystallized the now familiar image of three dignitaries from foreign lands. It has Melchior, the bringer of gold, as an old man with a white beard. Caspar, the bringer of frankincense, in contrast is seen as young and beardless, while Balthasar, the bringer of myrrh, is African and has a black beard.

  In 2004, the General Synod of the Church of England consented to a revision of the Book of Common Prayer. A committee agreed that the term “Magi,” as used in the Bible, was the name used for officials at the Persian court. This means that not only were Jesus’ visiting Magi not kings, they did not number three, were possibly not even wise, and they might have been female as well!

  WHERE DOES THE CHRISTMAS WREATH COME FROM?

  To the pagan peoples of Europe, evergreens possessed magical powers; how else was it that the holly, fir, and ivy stayed green and kept their leaves in the depths of winter when other plants vanished and trees were left as leafless skeletons compared to the green glory of summer?

  Some of these seemingly magical plants even produced fruit and flowers throughout the winter months. What other possible explanation could there be? So, understandably, in the freezing depths of winter when all other life seemed to have disappeared from the world, these same pagan peoples brought evergreens into their homes, partly to pay homage to their gods—who kept life going throughout these dark days—and partly in the hope that some of their magical protection might rub off on them.

  Our Roman ancestors also considered evergreens lucky, and during the feast of Saturnalia (which took place around what is now Christmastime) they too decorated their homes with boughs of holly and the like. They were also fans of the laurel, which was supposed to have the power to protect and purify. Of course it also stood as a symbol of victory and honor and was used to decorate those who had achieved some form of distinction in Ancient Rome. (It is from this that we get the expression “resting on your laurels.”)

  Thanks to their connections with the concept of eternal life, it is easy to see how evergreens came to be such a central part of the Christian feast of Christmas. After all, the Church teaches that Jesus rose from the dead to eternal life himself, and offers the same to his faithful servants.

  There were also other, more immediate benefits to bringing evergreens inside. Pine branches gave the home a fresh, clean smell, and pine-scented air fresheners and sprays are still a popular choice today—particularly for the bathroom. Rosemary, the herb of remembrance (as mentioned by Ophelia in a scene from Shakespeare’s Hamlet), added its own fragrant aroma. It was particularly appropriate as Christmas is also that time of year when people remember friends and family, as well as the birth of Jesus.

  The presence of evergreen plants in the home during the festive season has lived on in several forms: through the Christmas tree, in carols such as “The Holly and the Ivy” and “Deck the Halls,” and of course with the Christmas wreath.

  Other evergreen rings were also transformed into symbols of the Christian Church. Branches of evergreens were twisted around a hoop which was then hung up. Candles were attached to the outer edge of the ring. When lit, and with the ring having been spun, the candle flames created a whirling circle of light. Pagan peoples believed that this magical symbol would banish the winter darkness, helping to hasten the lengthening days and new life that came with the spring. This evergreen ring subsequently became the Advent ring that appears in churches four Sundays before Christmas. One candle is lit each Sunday, with a fifth candle at the center of the ring being lit on Christmas Day.

  How to make a Christmas wreath

  First of all, make yourself a circular metal frame. This could be something as simple as a coat hanger bent out of shape.

  Using wire or garden twine (or just plain old string) to hold it in place, cover the ring with sphagnum moss, (which you can acquire from a florist’s).

  Add green foliage to the ring, using plants like holly, ivy, and swathes of an evergreen, like fir.

  Push stems of berries through the moss to add some color.

  If you want, you can even add some seasonal flowers, such as Christmas roses.

  Tie a loop of string to the back of the wreath or attach another piece of wire, so that you can hang it from your front door.

  And there you have it: one Christmas wreath.

  Did you know . . .?

  The vibrantly colored Poinsettia, with its bright red leaves, that has become such a Christmas institution is named after the first American ambassador to Mexico, Dr. Joel Roberts Poinsett. In Mexico the plant goes by the name of the Flower of the Holy Night, but when Poinsett brought it back to America it was renamed in his honor.

  In Mexico, the plant has legendary origins that are associated with Christmas. It was once the tradition in that country to place gifts for Jesus on church altars on Christmas Eve. One poor boy had nothing to give and, in his distress, knelt outside the church window and prayed. And there, where he had been kneeling, a beautiful plant with red leaves sprang up.

  The town of Encinitas in California is known as the Poinsettia capital of the world because of the profusion of plants found there.

  WHY ARE REINDEER SO ASSOCIATED WITH CHRISTMAS?

  It may surprise you to learn that reindeer did not enter the Father Christmas story until the nineteenth century, and it was all the fault of the American Episcopalian minister Clement Clarke Moore. It was Moore who composed the famous poem “An Account of a Visit from Saint Nicholas” (a.k.a. “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”), as a Christmas treat for his own children. In his poem, Moore had a diminutive elflike Santa pulled in a miniature sleigh by equally tiny reindeer.

  At one point Santa reels off their now so familiar names, but which were new to those reading the poem when it first appeared in print back in 1823.

  More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, and he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

  “Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!

  On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!”

  Moore was embarrassed by his poem, which is wholly secular and mentions nothing of the religious festival that inspired it, beyond the name of Saint Nicholas. At first he didn’t take credit for it. However, by the 1830s it had really taken off. With children all over America expectantly awaiting a visit from Santa Claus on Christmas Eve as a result of his poem, Moore eventually decided it was time to come clean. In 1837 he claimed authorship when it was published in a book of poems, and it appeared in an anthology of his own work in 1844.

  Did you know . . .?

  “An Account of a Visit from Saint Nicholas” may arguably be the best-known poem in the English lang
uage, but some dispute that Clement Clarke Moore was its author. There are those who hold to the conviction that it was actually written by one Henry Livingston Jr. (1748-1828), a veteran of the American Revolution. Livingston’s family said that he wrote it within the first ten years of the 1800s, claiming that the Moores’ governess heard it recited and asked for a copy. Supporters of this notion claim that “An Account of a Visit from Saint Nicholas” matches the style of Livingston’s other poetry better than that of Moore’s.

  What is immediately apparent from a reading of “An Account of a Visit from Saint Nicholas” is the complete lack of an appearance by the red-nosed reindeer himself, Rudolph. That’s because he wasn’t an invention of Moore but appeared more than 100 years later.

  “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” first graced the page in 1939. It was a rather whimsical narrative poem, written with the express intention of drawing more customers into Montgomery Ward stores, and was the creation of Robert L. May, an American copywriter working for the department store chain. The eponymous reindeer subsequently appeared in an advertisement for the Chicago store.

  Many people know of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in the form of a song, but it wasn’t set to music until 1949. The composer was called Johnny Marks and his musical version was recorded by “the singing cowboy” Gene Autry—a big deal at the time. The song has been recorded by hundreds of other artists since then and has sold more than 80 million records worldwide!