True Christmas season comes after Dec. 25

Betty VanNewKirk, Columnist

January 03, 2008 12:24 pm

— With all the hoopla of Christmas shopping, the special concerts and ballets and programs that crowd the calendar between Thanksgiving and the last day of school before the holidays, we tend to forget that the true Christmas season comes after, not before, the 25th of December. The 12 days of the carol extend to Epiphany, the celebration of the coming of the Three Kings.
There is no biblical record of the date, or even the time of year, when the Babe was born in Bethlehem. Pope Julius I, in 350 A.D., declared that special services (literally, Christ's Mass) would be held on Dec. 25, the day when pagan peoples celebrated the revival of the sun that had been dying, bit by bit, since midsummer.
In the Middle Ages, Christians prepared for Christmas as they did for the other big festival of Easter. The hangings in the church chancels were purple for both Advent and Lent, signifying repentance and self-examination. The faithful abstained from meat, rich foods, and frivolity, and postponed weddings until the fast was over.
Then, with Christmas Eve, they broke forth into joy. For the rich it was a 12-day party: Music, dancing, drinking, gambling of all sorts, sometimes presided over by a Lord of Misrule who occasinally controlled but more often initiated outrageous behavior.
Servants below stairs and farmfolk had their own celebrations. Even here in the colonies, the week between Christmas and New Year's Day was recognized as a holiday for slaves, when the masters supplied food and liquor and asked no questions.
The revelry got out of hand. Even before Cromwell and his Puritans banned the celebration of Christmas in 1642, the settlers in New England declared it a pagan custom and fined anyone who did not work on Dec. 25.
Washington Irving, who gave us "Rip Van Winkle'' and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,'' also wrote about his travels in England and gave us an interesting description of an "Old Christmas'' observance in the early 19th century. Some of the details are familiar, but others seem strange to us.
The manor house was decorated with greens - still used by Americans as symbols of eternal life - but there was no Christmas tree. That was introduced to England by Victoria's Prince Consort in mid-century. For Americans, the custom may have been brought by Hessian soldiers at the time of the Revolution, or perhaps by that influx of German-born immigrants in the 1840s.
The focus in the great hall was on the yule clog, Scottish for a large piece of timber, either the trunk of a tree (a log) or a huge, slow-burning root. Traditionally, it had to be lighted by a brand saved from last-year's log. Good luck for the following year depended not only on its burning through the night, but on keeping anyone with a squint, or barefoot, from entering the hall while it blazed.
There might be no other light in the room, or, in some households, there were also two large, green-wreathed wax candles on the dining table. The feast served there featured a boar's head (a pig's, in later years) decorated with rosemary and with a lemon in its mouth. In some cases there was also a peacock pie, decorated with the head at one end and the feathered-fan tail at the other.
Mistletoe is another long tradition for Christmas decoration. A girl caught under the sprig was promptly kissed, but for each kiss a berry was picked off. When all the berries were gone the kissing stopped.
Exchanging presents was a part of the winter celebration in ancient times, but for Christians gift-giving was particularly associated with the coming of the Magi, at Epiphany.
Over the centuries St. Nicholas, a third-century saint noted for his generosity, came into the picture, and in England his counterpart was a benevolent Father Christmas.
Clement Moore, in his Visit From St. Nicholas, merged the two and gave us the prototype of Santa Claus. For most children - and for many adults as well - the presents under the tree are the most important part of Christmas.
It is the music, however, that brings us all together at Christmas time, bridging the differences of time and language and local custom. From the Latin hymns like "Adeste Fideles'' to a jazzy "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,'' we hum along as we shop, address greeting cards, or take cookies from the oven. There are professional performances of "The Messiah,'' and teenage carolers continuing the tradition of the medieval Waits.
The "Twelve Days of Christmas,'' with its partridge in the pear tree and all the other improbably presents, is a reminder that the celebration continues through the first week of January. December 25 is only the beginning - not the end - of this brightest of holidays.
Merry Christmas!
Betty VanNewkirk is the historian for the Frostburg Museum.