Christmas: Its Origin and Associations / Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries

by W. F. Dawson

The Defeat of the Royalists,

the overthrow of the monarchy, and the changes resulting therefrom at Christmastide are alluded to in "The Complaint of Christmas, written after Twelftide, and printed before Candlemas, 1646," by old John Taylor, the Water Poet, who says: "All the liberty and harmless sports, the merry gambols, dances and friscols, with which the toiling ploughman and labourer once a year were wont to be recreated, and their spirits and hopes revived for a whole twelvemonth, are now extinct and put out of use, in such a fashion as if they never had been. Thus are the merry lords of bad rule at Westminster; nay, more, their madness hath extended itself to the very vegetables; senseless trees, herbs, and weeds, are in a profane estimation amongst them—holly, ivy, mistletoe, rosemary, bays, are accounted ungodly branches of superstition for your entertainment. And to roast a sirloin of beef, to touch a collar of brawn, to take a pie, to put a plum in the pottage pot, to burn a great candle, or to lay one block the more in the fire for your sake, Master Christmas, is enough to make a man to be suspected and taken for a Christian, for which he shall be apprehended for committing high Parliament Treason and mighty malignancy against the general Council of the Directorian private Presbyterian Conventicle."

With the success of the Parliamentarians, certain changes came in the ruling manners of the age; but

The Attempt to Abolish Christmas Day

was, of course, a signal failure. The event commemorated made it impossible for the commemoration to cease. Men may differ as to the mode of celebration, but the Christ must and will be celebrated.

"In 1642," says Sandys, "the first ordinances were issued to suppress the performance of plays, and hesitation was expressed as to the manner of keeping Christmas. Some shops in London were even opened on Christmas Day, 1643, part of the people being fearful of a Popish observance of the day. The Puritans gradually prevailed, and in 1647 some parish officers were committed for permitting ministers to preach upon Christmas Day, and for adorning the church. On the 3rd of June in the same year, it was ordained by the Lords and Commons in Parliament that the feast of the Nativity of Christ, with other holidays, should be no longer observed, and that all scholars, apprentices, and other servants, with the leave and approbation of their masters, should have such relaxation from labour on the second Tuesday in every month as they used to have from such festivals and holy days; and in Canterbury, on the 22nd of December following, the crier went round by direction of the Mayor, and proclaimed that Christmas Day and all other superstitious festivals should be put down, and a market kept upon that day."

In describing "The First Christmas under the Puritan Directory," the Saturday Review (December 27, 1884) says:—"It must have been taken as a piece of good luck by the Parliamentary and Puritanical masters of England, or, as they would have said, as 'a providence,' that the Christmas Day of 1645 fell upon a week-day. It was the first Christmas Day after the legislative abolition of the Anglican Prayer-book and the establishment of 'the Directory' in its stead; and, if it had fallen upon a Sunday, the Churches must have been opened. A 'Sabbath' could not be ignored, even though it chanced to be the 25th of December. There can be small doubt that, if the Presbyterian and Independent preachers who held all the English parishes subject to the Parliament had been obliged to go into the pulpits on the 25th of December 1645, they would again have irritated the masses of the people by ferociously 'improving the occasion.' The Parliament had not the courage to repeat the brutal experiment of the previous year. It was easy to abolish the feast by an ordinance; but it was risky to insist by an ordinance that the English people and English families should keep the dearest and most sacred of their festivals as a fast. The rulers knew that such an ordinance would not be obeyed. They resolved simply to ignore the day, or treat it as any ordinary Thursday. Doubtless many of the members kept up some sort of celebration of the old family festival in their own private houses. But the legislators marched solemnly to the Lower House, and the 'divines' marched as solemnly to the Assembly in the Jerusalem Chamber, affecting to take no notice of the unusual aspect of the shops and streets, which everywhere bore witness to the fact that there was a deep and fundamental estrangement between 'the State' and 'the people,' and that the people were actually keeping the festival which the 'Synod' had declared to be profane and superstitious, and which the Parliament to please the Scots, the Nonconformists, and the Sectaries, had abolished by law. 'Notwithstanding the Ordinance,' wrote a Member of the House of Commons, the Erastian Whitelock, in his 'Memorials,' 'yet generally this day, in London, the shops were shut and the day observed.' The Christmas number of the Mercurius Academicus (December 25 to 31, 1645), states that General Browne, who was a Presbyterian zealot, 'proclaimed' the abolition of Christmas Day at Abingdon, and 'sent out his warrants for men to work on that day especially.' ... The Parliamentary newspaper, The Weekly Account, (LIII. week, 1645), has the bald record: 'Thursday, Decemb. 25. The Commons sate in a Grand Committee concerning the privileges of members of their House.' The news in the Tuesday paper, The Kingdome's Weekly Intelligencer (No. 152), is equally thin: 'Thursday, Decemb. 25, vulgarly known by the name of Christmas Day, both Houses sate. The House of Commons more especially debated some things in reference to the privileges of that House, and made some orders therein.' ... The Presbyterian and Independent divines spent Christmas Day in the 'Synod' of Westminster. December the 25th, 1645, was entered in their minutes as 'Session 561.' ... The City newspaper of that period, Mercurius Civicus, or London's Intelligencer, in what we may call its Christmas number (No. 135, December 18 to December 24, 1645), printed an article explaining to the citizens of London the absurdity, if not the impiety, of keeping Christmas Day. Every good citizen was expected to open his shop as usual on the coming Thursday, and compel his apprentices to keep behind the counter. The City newspaper stated, that it was more probable that the Saviour was born in September than in December, and quotes 'a late reverend minister's opinion, that God did conceale the time when Christ was borne, upon the same reason that He tooke away the body of Moses, that they might not put an holinesse upon that day.' If the apprentices want a holiday, 'let them keep the fift of November, and other dayes of that nature, or the late great mercy of God in the taking of Hereford, which deserves an especiall day of thanksgiving.' The mass of the English folk meanwhile protested by all such ways as were open to them against the outlandish new religion which was being invented for them. The Mercuricus Civicus complained that, 'Many people in these times are too much addicted to the superstitious observance of this day, December 25th, and other saints days, as they are called.' It was asked in a 'Hue and Cry after Christmas,' published anonymously at the end of the year 1645, 'Where may Christmas be found?' The answer is, 'In the corner of a translator's shop, where the cobbler was wont so merrily to chant his carols.' The Moderate Intelligencer, which devoted itself to 'impartially communicating martiall affaires,' in its forty-third number (December 25, 1645, to January 1, 1646), expressed itself as scandalized at the zeal with which the English people, in spite of Parliament and the Assembly, had kept their Christmas. Social phenomena lay beyond the usual ken of the military chroniclers; but 'we shall only observe,' they wrote, 'the loathnesse of the People to part with it, which certainly argues a greater adoration than should have been. Hardly forty shops were open within the lines upon that day. The State hath done well to null it out of this respect, as Moses did the Brazen Serpent.' The Scriptural knowledge of the Puritan military newsmen was curiously at fault; they evidently confounded Moses with Hezekiah, unless they substituted the lawgiver for the king, because they thought it unwise to represent the King as the foe of idolatry. The traditional scorn of the Pharisee for the common people which know not the law comes out in the ironical passage with which the 'martiall' organ concludes its reference to the distressing social symptom; 'Sure if there were an ordinance for recreation and labour upon the Lord's Day, or Sabbath (like the prelatical Book of Sports), these would want no observers. Unwillingness to obey, in a multitude, argues generally the goodnesse of a law, readinesse the contrary, especially in those laws which have anything of religion in them.' Hence the puritanical tyrants thought the observation of Christmas Day should be visited in future years with more severe penalties. A few days after Christmas a pamphlet was issued under the title of 'The Arraignment, Conviction, and Imprisonment of Christmas.' A letter from a 'Malignant scholar' in Oxford, where Christmas had been observed as usual, to 'a Malignant lady in London,' had contained the promise or threat, according to the pamphleteer, that the King would shortly appear in London, and restore to his poor people their old social and religious liberties. 'We shall soon be in London, and have all things as they were wont.' There was small chance, six months after Naseby, of the fulfilment of the prediction. The puritanical pamphleteer, however, owns that it would be welcome to 'every 'prentice boy,' because the return of the King would have meant the return of a free Christmas, which he sorely missed. 'All popish, prelatical, Jesuitical, ignorant, Judaical, and superstitious persons,' said he, 'ask after the old, old, old, very old grey-bearded gentleman called Christmas, who was wont to be a very familiar ghest (sic). Whoever finds him again shall be rewarded with a benediction from the Pope, a hundred oaths from the Cavaliers, forty kisses from the wanton wenches, and be made pursuivant to the next Archbishop.' 'The poor,' he added, 'are sorry for it. They go to every door a-begging, as they were wont to do, 'Good Mistress, somewhat against this good time.' Instead of going to the alehouse to be drunke, they are fain to work all the holy dayes.' Again, 'The schollars come into the hall, where their hungry stomacks had thought to have found good brawne and Christmas pie, roast-beef and plum-porridge. But no such matter. Away, ye profane! These are superstitious meats; your stomacks must be fed with sound doctrine.'"

In the National Magazine (1857), Dr. Doran, on "The Ups and Downs of Christmas," remarks upon the stout resistance given by the citizens of London to the order of the Puritan Parliament, that shops should be opened and churches closed on Christmas Day. "We may have a sermon on any other day," said the London apprentices, who did not always go to hear it, "why should we be deprived on this day?" "It is no longer lawful for the day to be kept," was the reply. "Nay," exclaimed the sharp-witted fellows, "you keep it yourselves by thus distinguishing it by desecration." "They declared," says Dr. Doran, "they would go to church; numerous preachers promised to be ready for them with prayer and lecture; and the porters of Cornhill swore they would dress up their conduit with holly, if it were only to prove that in that orthodox and heavily-enduring body there was some respect yet left for Christianity and hard drinking—for the raising of the holly was ever accompanied by the lifting of tankards.

"Nor was the gallant Christmas spirit less lively in the country than in the capital. At Oxford there was a world of skull-breaking; and at Ipswich the festival was celebrated by some loss of life. Canterbury especially distinguished itself by its violent opposition to the municipal order to be mirthless. There was a combat there, which was most rudely maintained, and in which the mayor got pummelled until he was as senseless as a pocket of hops. The mob mauled him terribly, broke all his windows, as well as his bones, and, as we are told, 'burnt the stoupes at the coming in of his door.' So serious was the riot, so complete the popular victory, and so jubilant the exultation, that thousands of the never-conquered men of Kent and Kentish men met in Canterbury, and passed a solemn resolution that if they could not have their Christmas Day, they were determined to have the King on his throne again."

Of the Canterbury riot an account is given in a rare tract, published in 1647 (preserved in the British Museum), and entitled—