The choice of December 25 as the day for the Roman feast cannot be supposed to rest upon any authentic tradition as to the historic date of the Nativity. It is one of several early patristic guesses on the subject. It is not at all improbable that it was determined by an attempt to adopt some of the principal Christian festivals to the solstices and equinoxes of the Roman calendar[840]. The enemies of Roman orthodoxy were not slow to assert that it merely continued under another name the pagan celebration of the birthday of Sol Invictus[841]. Nor was the suggestion entirely an empty one. The worshippers of Sol Invictus, and in particular the Mithraic sect, were not quite on the level of the ordinary pagans by tradition. Mithraism had claims to be a serious and reasonable rival to Christianity, and if its adherents could be induced by argument to merge their worship of the physical sun in that of the ‘Sun of Righteousness,’ they were well worth winning[842]. On the other hand there were obvious dangers in the Roman policy which were not wholly averted, and we find Leo the Great condemning certain superstitious customs amongst his flock which it is difficult to distinguish from the sun-worship practised alike by pagans and by Saint Augustine’s heretical opponents, the Manichaeans[843].
From Rome the Christmas feast gradually made its way over East and West. It does not seem to have reached Jerusalem until at least the sixth century, and, as we have seen, the outlying Church of Armenia never adopted it. But it was established at Antioch about 375 and at Alexandria about 430[844]. At Constantinople an edict of 400 included it in the list of holy days upon which ludi must not be held[845]. In 506 the council of Agatha recognized the Nativity as one of the great days of the Christian year[846], while fasting on that day was forbidden by the council of Braga in 561 as savouring of Priscillianist heresy[847]. The feast of the Epiphany, meanwhile, was relegated to a secondary place; but it was not forgotten, and served as a celebration, in addition to the baptism, of a number of events in the life of Christ, which included the marriage at Cana and the feeding of the five thousand, and of which the visit of the Magi gradually became the leading feature. The Dodecahemeron, or period of twelve days, linking together Christmas and Epiphany, was already known to Ephraim Syrus as a festal tide at the end of the fourth century[848], and was declared to be such by the council of Tours in 567[849].
To these islands Christmas came, if not with the Keltic Church, at least with St. Augustine in 592. On Christmas day, 598, more than ten thousand English converts were baptized[850], and by the time of Bede (†734) Christmas was established, with Epiphany and Easter, as one of the three leading festivals of the year[851]. The Laws of Ethelred (991-1016) and of Edward the Confessor ordain it a holy tide of peace and concord[852]. Continental Germany received it from the synod of Mainz in 813[853], while Norway owed it to King Hakon the Good in the middle of the tenth century[854].
Side by side with the establishment of Christmas proceeded the ecclesiastical denunciation of those pagan festivals whose place it was to take. Little is heard in Christian times of the Saturnalia, which do not seem to have shared the popularity of the Kalends outside the limits of Rome itself. But these latter, and especially the Kalends, are the subject of attack in every corner of the empire. Jerome of Rome, Ambrose of Milan, Maximus of Turin, Chrysologus of Ravenna, assail them in Italy; Augustine in Africa; Chrysostom and Asterius and the Trullan council in the East. In Spain, Bishop Pacian of Barcelona made a treatise upon one of the most objectionable features of the festival which, as he says with some humour, probably tended to increase its vogue. In Gaul, Caesarius of Arles initiated a vigorous campaign. To cite all the ecclesiastical pronouncements on the subject would be tedious. Homily followed homily, canon followed canon, capitulary followed capitulary, penitential followed penitential, for half a thousand years. But the Kalends died hard. When Boniface was tackling them amongst the Franks in the middle of the eighth century, he was sorely hampered by the bad example of their continued prevalence at the very gates of the Vatican; and when Burchardus was making his collection of heathen observances in the eleventh century, those of the Kalends were still to be included. In England there is not much heard of them, but a reference in the so-called Penitential of Egbert about 766 proves that they were not unknown. It need hardly be said that all formal religious celebration of the Kalends disappeared with the official victory of Christianity. But this element had never been of great importance in the feast; and the terms in which the ecclesiastical references from beginning to end are couched prove that they relate mainly to popular New Year customs common to the Germanic and the more completely Latinized populations[855].
It appears from a decree of the council of Tours in 567 that, ad calcandam Gentilium consuetudinem, the fourth-century Fathers established on the first three days of January a triduum ieiunii, with litanies, in spite of the fact that these days fell in the very midst of the festal period of the Dodecahemeron[856]. At the same time January 1 was kept as the octave of Christmas, and the early Roman ritual-books show two masses for that day, one in octavis Domini, the other ad prohibendum ab idolis. The Jewish custom by which circumcision took place eight days after birth made it almost inevitable that there should be some celebration of the circumcision of Christ upon the octave of his Nativity. This was the case from the sixth century, and ultimately, about the eighth, the attempt to keep up a fast on January 1 was surrendered, and the festival of the Circumcision took its place[857].
Some tendency was shown by the Church not merely to set up Christmas as a rival to the pagan winter feasts, but also to substitute it for the Kalends of January as the beginning of the year. But the innovation never affected the civil year, and was not maintained even by ecclesiastical writers with any consistency, for even they prefer in many cases a year dating from the Annunciation, or more rarely from Easter. The so-called Annunciation style found favour even for many civil purposes in Great Britain, and was not finally abandoned until 1753[858]. But although Christmas cannot be said to have ever become a popular New Year’s day, yet its festal importance and its propinquity to January 1 naturally led to a result undesired and possibly undreamt of by its founders, namely, the further transference to it of many of the long-suffering Germano-Keltic folk-customs, which had already travelled under Roman influence from the middle of November to the beginning of January[859]. Already in the sixth century it had become necessary to forbid the abuses which had gathered around the celebration of Christmas eve[860]; and the Christmas customs of to-day, even where their name does not testify to their original connexion with the Kalends[861], are in a large number of cases, so far of course as they are not simply ecclesiastical, merely doublets of those of the New Year.
What is true of Christmas is true also of Epiphany or Twelfth night; and the history of the other modern festivals of the winter cycle is closely parallel. The old Germanic New Year’s day on November 11 became the day of St. Martin, a fourth-century bishop of Tours, and the pervigiliae of St. Martin, like those of the Nativity itself, already caused a scandal in the sixth century[862]. The observances of the deferred days of slaughter clustered round the feasts of St. Andrew on November 30, and more especially St. Nicholas on December 6. The Todtenfest, which had strayed to the beginning of November, was continued in the feasts of All Saints or Hallowmas, the French Toussaint, on November 1, and its charitable supplement of All Souls, on November 2. That which had strayed still further to the time of harvest became the Gemeinwoche or week-wake, and ultimately St. Michael and All Angels. Nor is this all. Very similar customs attached themselves to the minor feasts of the Dodecahemeron, St. Stephen’s, St. John the Evangelist’s, Innocents’ days, to the numerous dedication wakes that fell on days, such as St. Luke’s[863], in autumn or early winter, or to the miscellaneous feasts closely approaching the Christmas season, St. Clement’s, St. Catherine’s, St. Thomas’s, with which indeed in many localities that season is popularly supposed to begin[864]. Nor was this process sensibly affected by the establishment in the sixth century of the ieiunium known as Advent, which stretched for a Quadragesima, or period of forty days, from Martinmas onwards. And finally, just as in May village dipping customs attached themselves in the seventeenth century to Royal Oak day, so in the same century we find the winter festival fires turned to new account in the celebration of the escape of King and Parliament from the nefarious machinations of Guy Fawkes.
CHAPTER XII
NEW YEAR CUSTOMS
[Bibliographical Note.—The two works of Dr. Tille remain of importance. The compilations specially devoted to the usages of the Christmas season are chiefly of a popular character; W. Sandys, Christmas Tide (n. d.), J. Ashton, A Righte Merrie Christmasse!!! (n. d.), and, for French data, E. Müller, Le Jour de l’An (n. d.), may be mentioned; H. Usener, Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen, vol. ii (1889), prints various documents, including the Largum Sero of a Bohemian priest named Alsso, on early fifteenth-century Christmas eve customs. Most of the books named in the bibliographical note to chap. v also cover the subject. A Bibliography of Christmas runs through Notes and Queries, 6th series, vi. 506, viii. 491, x. 492, xii. 489; 7th series, ii. 502, iii. 152, iv. 502, vi. 483, x. 502, xii. 483; 8th series, ii. 505, iv. 502, vi. 483, viii. 483, x. 512, xii. 502; 9th series, ii. 505, iv. 515, vi. 485.]
It is the outcome of the last chapter that all the folk-customs of the winter half of the year, from Michaelmas to Plough Monday, must be regarded as the flotsam and jetsam of a single original feast. This was a New Year’s feast, held by the Germano-Keltic tribes at the beginning of the central European winter when the first snows fell about the middle of November, and subsequently dislocated and dispersed by the successive clash of Germano-Keltic civilization with the rival schemes of Rome and of Christianity. A brief summary of the customs in question will show clearly their common character. For purposes of classification they may be divided into several groups. There are such customs belonging to the agricultural side of the old winter feast as have not been transferred with the growing importance of tillage to the feast of harvest. There are the customs of its domestic side, as a feast of the family hearth and of the dead ancestors. There are the distinctively New Year customs of omen and prognostication for the approaching twelve months. There are the customs of play, common more or less to all the village festivals. And, finally, there are a small number of customs, or perhaps it would be truer to say legends, which appear to owe their origin not merely to heathenism transformed by Christianity, but to Christianity itself. Each of these groups may well claim a more thoroughgoing consideration than can here be given to any one of them.