Christmas in England

by Algernon Blackwood

Of late years, when there has scarcely been enough snow on the ground at Christmas-time to give the country even a seasonable appearance, it has seemed almost a mockery to continue to celebrate the same old customs and to perform the same ceremonies that are connected from time immemorial in the minds of the English people with a winter sky and landscape, which, in the days of our forefathers, were so rarely absent at this season of the year. However this may be, the customs always associated with an old-fashioned Christmas-tide are still practised to a great extent; the piled-up wood fires still crackle and burn as brightly as ever in the ample old grates, and the stout-legged oaken tables still support as tender roast beef and as tasty and indigestible a plum-pudding as they ever did in days of yore.

In England Christmas is a universal holiday. In the cities the banks are closed; offices are deserted. The stores in the towns and villages are all shut, and while the morning of Christmas-day is in every respect treated as a Sunday, the latter part of the day is given up to whatever outdoor amusements the state of the weather may render suitable; the evening sees the assembly of joyous parties and friendly gatherings, which last into the small hours of the morning, and are looked forward to by the younger portion of the community with an eagerness which the passing years tend rather to increase than to diminish.

But to see Christmas as it is really kept by the people we must leave the cities and dive deep into the heart of the country; we must mingle with the crowd that at the festive season enters the gates of the squire’s hospitable mansion, or in the long low rooms of the old farmhouses. The real beginning of the festivities is on Christmas-eve, when the large parties meet their friends from far and near round the festive board. Then the time passes right merrily.

The village inn represented in the sketch below, sending its ruddy glow through its lattice windows, across the snow, and with its well-known sign⁠—say the “Red Lion”⁠—hanging above the door, will reap a considerable harvest; and a jovial gathering of big-boned labourers and hardy rustics, with the host himself, portly and rubicund, in their midst, will make the blackened rafters ring again with song and joke as the night wears on. There we shall hear many an odd conceit or quaint superstition which the season of the yule-log and the holly-berry again brings round to their memories. As they sit and talk over their tankards they care very little for anything else but the fact that “Ye goode old Chrismasse-tide” has come again. It matters little to them that the actual Christmas-day was not even fixed on the 25th December until the fourth century. They are prepared to celebrate the day as it is, and be merry, come what may.

As hinted before, superstition of the most absurd kind is everywhere rife at this season, and few persons who have not spent Christmas among the people in the country villages can have any idea of the extent to which it prevails. In his English Country Life, Thos. Miller tells us how he incurred the displeasure of a relative by breaking through a rule which a certain superstition had made necessary. He says: “To give a person a light between Christmas and Twelfth Night is to bring upon yourself ill-fortune all that year. I recollect well losing the goodwill of my old grandmother by allowing a benighted wagoner to light his lantern while her back was turned, and it was many a week before the old lady forgave me.”

In the olden days our ancestors used to keep the merry season in much the same way, but during the Middle Ages a custom prevailed which has since lost its character, if it has not altogether died out. Thus, in the larger towns were performed certain mysteries⁠—dramatic representations⁠—in which the players wore grotesque dresses and masks. These were celebrated with great pomp and ceremony, and the country people flocked from far and near to witness them. The only custom which bears any resemblance to these, and which is only found now in certain parts of the midland counties, is called the “December Liberties,” or the feast of fools and asses, which is described as “grotesque saturnalia, in which everthing serious was ridiculed.” Whole villages would turn out to dance, carrying torches and evergreens, casting weird shadows on the glistening snow.

Within doors the houses at Christmas-time are very cheerful and bright. On the wide stone hearth a yule-log burns, briskly casting a ruddy glow on everything around, while the walls and pictures are decorated with holly, ivy, and several bunches of mistletoe hung up in obvious places for equally obvious reasons. These decorations are usually kept up until Twelfth Night or old Christmas-day. At this season, too, there is a plant called rosemary, which flowers about Christmas-time. It was held in high repute by our ancestors, though the purposes for which they used it have now ceased to be noticed. They held high holiday from Christmas-day until Candlemas (February 2nd ), and their first feast was the occasion of bringing in the head of the wild boar,

“Upon a silver platter with minstrelsye.”

Then, once the great tankards had been filled, it was the custom to stir the foaming potations with twigs of rosemary. It was also considered auspicious to use it on two other occasions of a very opposite nature, namely, a wedding and a burial. Boughs of the plant were carried before the bride or laid on the grave, as the occasion called for, and referring to this old custom in his Hesperides, Herrick says that the rosemary plant

“Grows for two ends; it matters not at all
Be it for my bridal or my burial.”

It is only right that churches, which were built to the honour of Him whose birth we celebrate at this season, should be as brightly decorated as they are; and in the little country church there is sure to be a full congregation, from the squire, who is not so regular in his attendance, perhaps, as he might be, during the year, to the oldest peasant, who unearths from its yearlong grave an ancient beaver hat, from which the silken gloss has long since fled, and which he dons in honour of the day.

Should it ever fall to the lot of a stranger to be walking through the country lanes near midnight on Christmas-eve, he will be startled to hear, on the last stroke of twelve, the iron clang of the church bells far and near ring out the best chimes of which they are capable, and from Land’s End to John o’ Groats not a church tower that possesses bells will be silent. When these cease the waits begin their rounds, and going from house to house, and village to village, they sing carols and Christmas hymns until the light begins to glimmer in the eastern sky and another Christmas-day has dawned.

The custom of singing carols at Christmas-time may be traced back through many a long century. In the classic city of Oxford, the stronghold of ancient customs and ancient opinions, Christmas has been celebrated for centuries with much of the pomp and pageantry of the Middle Ages. The procession song of the Boar’s Head, the “Gaudeamus Omnes,” the singing of the surpliced choir in the college chapel (as shown in our frontispiece), are still observed as in scarce any place else. And in the Bodleian Library may still be seen one of the oldest collections of carols known to exist. The volume, of which only a few pages remain, was printed in the year 1521, by Wynkin de Worde, and is entitled Chrismasse Carolles. For some reason Oxford is particularly favourable to the laurel, and as a decorative evergreen in the chapels of the different colleges, it is used to the entire displacement of holly or ivy.

There are many other customs in the large cities, and old-fashioned traditions in the country, still preserved in many parts of England, which limit of space forbids us to mention; and though some of these may have already died out and others are now gradually becoming extinct as the years roll on, we are sure of one thing, namely, that England will ever be the home of Christmas gatherings and rejoicings of some sort; and if the old-time pastimes and quaint old ceremonies are giving way to others of a different sort, let us hope that the English people will ever thankfully remember, in their mirth and Christmas celebrations, the occasion when He who made such happiness possible, and who has made us, as a nation, what we are, was born in a stable and cradled in a manger.

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Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands,
The chorus of voices, the clasping of hands,
Sing hymns that were sung by the stars of the morn,
Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was born!

—⁠Whittier.