DECEMBER.
And after him came next the chill December;
Yet he, through merry feasting which he made
And great bonfires, did not the cold remember;
His Saviour’s birth so much his mind did glad.
Upon a shaggy bearded goat he rode,
The same wherewith Dan Jove in tender years,
They say was nourisht by the Idæan mayd;
And in his hand a broad deepe bowle he beares,
Of which he freely drinks an health to all his peers.
Spenser.
This is the twelfth and last month of the year. By our ancestors “December hath his due appellation given him in the name of winter-monat, to wit, winter-cometh; but after the Saxons received Christianity, they then, of devotion to the birth-time of Christ, termed it by the name of heligh-monat, that is to say, holy-cometh.”[401] They also called it midwinter-monath and guil erra, which means the former or first giul. The feast of Thor, which was celebrated at the winter solstice, was called giul from iol, or ol, which signified ale, and is now corrupted into yule. This festival appears to have been continued through part of January.[402]
Our pleasant guide to “The Months,” Mr. Leigh Hunt, says of December thus:—
It is now complete winter. The vapourish and cloudy atmosphere wraps us about with dimness and chilliness; the reptiles and other creatures that sleep or hide during the cold weather, have all retired to their winter quarters; the farmer does little or nothing out of doors; the fields are too damp and miry to pass, except in sudden frosts, which begin to occur at the end of the month; and the trees look but like skeletons of what they were—
Bare ruined choirs in which the sweet birds sang.
Shakspeare.