“Gradually all of this blended into the most interesting mingling of the material and the spiritual that we have in all our manners and customs. The traditions of the shepherds and the star, the nativity, and the wise men of the East became the centre of the celebration. But the mediaeval popularity of Macrobius’s book on the Saturnalia perpetuated its carnival and games, its candles and garlands, and its giving of gifts, especially to children. The descending Teutons brought their wassail and their tree ceremonials. Germany added Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus, and the filling of stockings. France seems to have furnished the carols. England elaborated the season’s food and drink, and America contributed the turkey.
“With the growth of church and state the day became one of pomp and circumstance. Westminster Abbey was consecrated on Christmas in 1065, and William was crowned there the next Christmas. Other episcopal and royal functions followed, until more was spent on this season than in all the year beside. There were special buildings, elaborate pageants elaborately set, and feasts of five hundred dishes with sixty oxen for one course and eight-hundred-pound plum puddings. There were jousts at which three hundred spears were broken, and the presentation of as many as thirty plays. Earlier, the plays were religious; later, Shakespeare provided the court play for Christmas, 1601, and Ben Jonson for 1616. Milton’s ‘Comus’ was presented at Ludlow Castle during the Christmas season of 1634.
“The universities and the inns of court were likewise keen for plays and for ‘the boar’s head served with minstrelsy.’ The aristocracy and gentry kept open house, for sometimes as many as three hundred persons. Sir Roger de Coverley sent a string of puddings and a pack of cards to every poor family in the parish; and rich decedents left Christmas dinners and gifts to the poor. The peasantry entered heartily into seasonable mummery and games, dances and songs, so industriously thumbing the many early printed books of carols that almost none of them remain.
“Everywhere indoor leisure and the seasonable mood gave rise to all sorts and conditions of legendary lore—of spirits, of trees that flower and animals that speak on Christmas eve, and of weather wisdom, like:
If Christmasse day on fryday be,
The frost of wynter harde shal be.
“From the beginning, the spirit of the celebration had to wage war with the flesh. The fathers of the church never ceased to remonstrate that festivity endangered the solemnity of the season. There were constant failures to remember the peaceful character of the feast. The Danes fell on King Alfred while he was celebrating Christmas in 878, and William the Conqueror got into York on Christmas in 1069 by sending in spies with good-will gifts of food. The mediaeval Lords of Misrule, originally established to control festivity, became themselves uncontrolled, and had to be abolished.”
“Even though they made some very good laws,” I interrupted, “against eating two dinners in one day, and kissing without leave.”
“The Pilgrim fathers at Plymouth frowned on current excesses by working on Christmas day in 1620 and by later prohibiting its celebration. Cromwell’s Parliament sat every Christmas day from 1644 to 1656, and sermonized and legislated against the celebration as a carnal feast, ordering churches shut, shops open, and decorations down. But this was too extreme, and the people smashed the shop windows and put up more evergreens than the Lord Mayor’s men could burn; and Evelyn delighted in being arrested for going to church on Christmas in 1657. In five years all was so changed that Pepys could for once combine preaching and practice, by hearing a Christmas sermon on joyousness and having plum pudding and mince pie for dinner.
“From the beginning, too, the spirit of benevolence has had its difficulties. Watchmen left verses at doors, wanderers sang carols, and children chanted, ‘I’ve got a little pocket to put a penny in,’ until such suggestion to benevolence became a little too definite, and it was legislated against. In 1668 Pepys says tipping ‘cost me much money this Christmas already, and will do more.’ Half a century later Swift writes: ‘By the Lord Harry, I shall be done with Christmas boxes. The rogues at the coffee house have raised their tax, every one giving a crown, and I gave mine for shame; besides a great many half-crowns, to great men’s porters, etc.’