William Tyler
Christian Traditions: Father Christmas and Santa Claus
William Tyler - Christian Traditions: Father Christmas and Santa Claus
- So I’d moved into the lounge and my wife said, “Well sit in front of the Christmas tree as you’re talking about Christmas.” So here’s my Christmas tree, and above me are some golden silver balloons for Christmas as well. So and I’ve even got my Christmas jumper on with a Christmas bear. So you’ve got everything today. Now I’m going to talk about the history and folklore of Christmas and I want to make two points to begin with. One, Christmas is really a merger of two quite separate traditions. Secondly, Christmas has never, as a festival remained constant. Christmas has always changed and linked to that, I have to say that my focus isn’t on English Christmas because I’m English. And that’s how I’ve learned about the history of Christmas. There are some American byways I will go down because obviously the… well actually the English didn’t take Christmas to them, to America because the Puritans didn’t approve of Christmas either in England or when they got to America. And the Christmas that the Americans inherited was really a Dutch or Germano Dutch Christmas. But we’re come to that. So let’s me take the first point that Christmas is a merger of two traditions quite obviously, and everybody knows that one of those is religious. When Christians celebrate the birth of Christ, hence the name of Christmas in English, Christ’s holy mass, Christ Mass.
Factually, of course we have no idea what date Jesus was born on, not even the year he was born in. And Thursday the 25th of December is in the Western church’s calendar, but Christmas in the Eastern churches is the 7th of January. So the 25th of December, as you know it in America, Canada and everywhere else that people are listening this evening, the 25th of December is a contrivance. It’s not real. Christ was not born on the 25th of December. So that raises the question, why did the church eventually, because Christmas date varied, it went over different months until it settled. And it settled on the 25th of December because in Europe from Italy, the Romans to Scandinavia, the Vikings, people celebrated the winter solstice mid-winter. They celebrated mid-winter and we know how they celebrated mid-winter, they celebrated it with games, with lots of food, lots of drink, it was a party time of year if you like. Then you say, well why did they have a party time at the winter solstice? And the answer is that certainly in Western and northern Europe, it was the time of year that you slaughtered your animals. In fact, the Saxons in England called November the blood month, the blood month because you slaughtered the animals and you then had to eat the meat. And so you did so at the winter festival of the winter solstice and why did you slaughter the animals? Because you were running out of grain in the winter to feed them.
And so you couldn’t make you couldn’t keep the whole of your flock of sheep or your herd of cows or your group of pigs together because you simply couldn’t feed them. So you kept a small number obviously because you need new animals in the spring. But the rest sorted and the meat got you through the winter months when it was so difficult. And the church found, the early Catholic church found, that it couldn’t break people away from these pagan celebrations. There’s other pagan celebrations around as well and some of them we talk in Britain about a nine o'clock watershed night, when TV companies are allowed to show slightly bluer programmes. Well, it’s long before nine o'clock, so I can’t tell you what else happened around on the winter festival, but I think you might guess. So the church couldn’t beat the pagan worship, so they incorporated it and we’re very lucky in England to have the Venerable Bede writer history. And in that history he tells us of a pope in 601 AD who obviously AD 601 who sent a message to the bishop of London, the first one Mellitus with a message to pass on to St. Augustine. AnD it went like this, “When by God’s help you reach our most reverent brother, Bishop Augustine, we wish you to inform him that we’ve been giving careful thought to the affairs of the English and have come to the conclusion that temples of the idols in that country, should on no account be destroyed.
He’s destroyed the idols, but the temples themselves are being dispersed with holy water, auto set up and relics enclosed in them for if these temples are well built, they are to be purified from devil worship and dedicated to the service of the true God. In this way, we hope that the people seeing that it’s temples are not destroyed may abandon idolatry and resort to these places as before and may come to know and adore the true God. For it’s certainly impossible to eradicate all errors from obstacle minds at one stroke and whoever wishes to climb to a mountain top gradually step by step and not in one leap.” So the church made a compromise and in making the compromise, they link the two traditions, the tradition of the religious tradition of worshipping the birth of Christ, but linking it to the pagan tradition of merriment food, drink and games. And those two things have combined and that’s really the basis of Christmas in the Western world. Now, the church attempted to ban Christians certainly in England from decorating churches with greenery. We decorate our houses with at Christmas time, traditionally holly and ivy. But the English also decorated with mistletoe and the church couldn’t stop us decorating with holly and ivy, but they could stop mistletoe and they were determined to stop mistletoe because mistletoe was associated with the Celtic Druids. And for that reason it was really unacceptable. The Druids used mistletoe as a medicine, it was called all-heal.
And if there are any doctors listening, I understand that a modern equivalent to mistletoe that is a manufactured drug is used today, but it was used right back in early times, but the church could not approve of mistletoe, and it was banned in England. What is interesting is that not everyone, the obstinate English accepted the ban. Those of you who have read DH Lawrence’s novels who have come across references to mistletoe being hung up in churches in 19th century, not in Many of you, whether you are British or not, may have visited your minster. Now your minster, they don’t take mistletoe in and sort of hide it on ledges at the side. They take a great bundle of it and place it on the high order itself. So we didn’t go along. I mean this is the problem with Catholic, mediaeval England. We simply didn’t like being told by Rome what to do, rather like many people didn’t like being told by Brussels and the EU what to do. We’re bloody minded on this either. And so mistletoe continued, mistletoe they believed had a connection with fertility, hence the modern customer kissing under the mistletoe. Earlier today we took our two grandsons, one age three and one age nine to a country house in Sussex called Petworth. And they had rooms decorated in the style of Christmas’ past and when you came out you could make a donation to the national trust and take a sprig mistletoe. And when I said to my nine year old, “Do you know why you have mistletoe?” He said, “No”.
So I said, “Well, you take your girlfriend and you kiss her under it.” He threw the mistletoe down and we had to persuade him to pick it up as we paid a pound for this mistletoe. But kissing under the mistletoe is quite modern, and our first reference in England isn’t until the 17 hundreds. Now it was then a kissing bow where you make a sort of a three-dimensional wreath and today you make it with nettle coat hangers. You pull one coat hanger that way and another that way and you’ve got the basis and you twist mistletoe. That’s a mistletoe bow. But we don’t do that now. Most people just hang mistletoe. Now if you are, it’s still very, I’m afraid it’s still very sexist. It’s a man who grabs a woman and brings her under mistletoe. I suppose these days a man could be grabbed and taken under the mistletoe. But whether you are male or female, if you’re being grabbed and put under the mistletoe, be very careful because we’re told this. If you find yourself being kissed under mistletoe, remember that when done properly, a berry should be removed after each kiss and the kissing must stop only when the mistletoe is bear of berries. Wow, that could go on all night. Well, you’ve been warned. The use of greenery to decorate not only churches but houses at this time of year existed throughout the Middle Ages here in England and into Tudor England.
However, the Puritan, the Protestants Puritans didn’t really like decoration of houses. Under King Henry VII’s son, there was a really a move against decorating houses. And in the latter years of Queen Elizabeth rain in the 1590s, it was also a view that greenery was somehow pagan. This is an wonderful book of folk law called “The Stations Of The Sun” by one of my favourite folklore and historians professor Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol. And he writes, “As a custom of demonstrable pagan origin, irrelevant to any other requirements of a true Christian religion, decking with greenery would not recommend itself to Protestant reformers. They seem to have regarded, it is too trivial to worth annunciation in print, but it is noticeable that as a Protestant national church was constructed under Edward IV payments for the Christmas foliage vanish from the surviving church warden’s accounts. Equally significant is the fact that they reappear in the reign of Catholic Queen Mary and persists widely in the first decade after the more moderate reformation of Elizabeth. But from that decade, the custom attribute again as Protestantism spread at the local level until by 1590 it had almost vanished.” When the historian John Stow a Tudor historian of London, John Stow made his comments, Hutton says about the former observation of the tradition of decorating houses and churches at greenery. He said there was a distinct air of nostalgia and Hutton says, which may suggest that he waned in private homes as well as in churches.
It seems strange to us, doesn’t it? But greenery was thought to be devil worship and the Puritans were dead against it. Under the first two Stewart Kings, James the first and Charles first, there was a minor revival and even during Cromwell’s rule, there seems to have been tolerant at least of Christmas greenery in private homes, certainly not in churches but in private homes. But deep down the Puritans really regarded greenery in churches as pagan, exactly as the early Catholics had. And then in 1647, Cromwell banned Christmas. Of course he didn’t ban the religious side of Christmas, he banned the secular side of Christmas. But did it affect the English? No, we’re bloody minded and we went on celebrating Christmas in private. We couldn’t do it publicly, so we did it in private. When Charles II returned to the throne in 1660, Christmas came back. But not in its old form, Christmas had been dealt. The old mediaeval Catholic Christmas had been dealt a devastating blur by Tudor and Stewart Protestantism. And by the 18th century the English have really forgotten about Christmas. Now that is exactly the same story as in the United States. The puritans disapproved of greenery and the social side, if we put it like that of Christmas and by the 18th century, Christmas was as dead in the United States as it was in Great Britain. It had simply… people weren’t interested. Yes, people might have had a nice dinner at lunch, whatever you want to call it, a nice Christmas dinner on Christmas day and they might have felt this was an appropriate time of year to give charitable, do charitable works to give money and food to the poor and that they did as a Christian duty. But in terms of all the fun and games that was absolutely not, and it’s strange, it’s particularly strange in England because Puritanism had taken a backseat really, not quite so strange in well at these places like Massachusetts, but nevertheless quite strange.
And it was like one of those customs that die. Now I have to say, whichever country you are listening from, folk customs don’t ever go on forever. They die or they’re taken over by something else. In England at Christmas, we have a Christmas cake on Christmas day and usually by the time it comes out, people can’t eat a single slice because they’ve had this massive Christmas lunch, they’ve been eating mint pies, they’ve been nibbling away all day and suddenly this huge cake very rich comes out and we can’t. And the truth of the matter is that the Christmas cake was really 12 night cake at the end of the 12 nut days of Christmas. But we don’t celebrate 12 night anymore and we didn’t give up the cake, we simply moved it backwards to Christmas Day. And in America something similar sort of happened in terms of food, particularly turkeys moving from Christmas day to Thanksgiving day. Customs sort of move about a bit, change a bit, disappear, come back in a different form and they come back with a vengeance at Christmas time in both England and America. Now I hope that sort of short-ish introduction emphasises the two points I made at the beginning that Christmas is ever changing and its two traditions melded into one. Now I’m going to add some specificity into this talk if you like. The Pagan Vikings had an enormous impact on the way we celebrate Christmas. They call this time of the year Yule, Y-U-L-E. And that very old Viking word Yule incorporating into Saxon is used today in carols that we might sing have the word yule in them.
Christmas songs, popular songs have the word yule in them. And more specifically here in England along with the Christmas cake, we might have a yule log. It’s chocolate and it’s just like an ordinary sort of swiss roll sort of chocolate log. The French have one that actually looks like a log, le buche de noel they call it in France, but we have the Chocolate yule log, whereas in Viking times and in mediaeval the yule log meant exactly what it said. It was a lot of wood brought in, very large lot of wood, brought in from the woods near the village and placed in the great hall of the Lord and it would burn throughout the Christmas celebratory period of 12 days. And in the mediaeval times people came to celebrate not as we do now, closed away in founders, but it was a community festival in the Middle Ages so they would all have gathered in the great hall and the yule log burning. It was absolutely pulling the community together. The other interesting thing about this word yule, a very interesting and it’s only something I’ve learned quite recently. The word yule became the basis of the modern English word jolly, because yule was a time of fun and games and all the rest of it. It developed this other meaning to the Saxons of something that’s jolly and jolly is a word that we associate with Christmas, I love the word jolly, it is so English.
No more than French origins in the word jolly. It couldn’t be anything but English. So jolly is a word that comes from the viking yule, the Community Festival of the Middle Ages could be a grand thing, particularly if, well I have an invitation to join a King Richard in London at the court and let me tell you, he’s going to make a real go at this at the court in the middle ages and I’ve got a reference here to it. This is Richard II. Richard II was sent to have employed 300 cooks for his Christmas banquets in the 1390s. They prepared up to 28 oxen and 300 sheep on each day on each of the 12 days of the festivities among numerous other dishes just to keep the party going. Well, that’s my sort of party what 300 sheep and 28 oxen per day. They didn’t, you understand there’s nothing vegan about the English of the 1390s. They weren’t into fruit and vegetables, it’s meat they want, which is a very English, remember that the French called the English ladies rose beef and that was very typical of how we looked at food. And Christmas, as I’ve said just now, this mediaeval Christmas died the death because of Protestantism and therefore this mediaeval Christmas never really translated to the United States at all because in the United States the English Puritan was brought with them this disapproval as they saw it, of all these secular activities. They would’ve called it devil worship.
This is a traditional Christmas. One of the very last, and it’s described by, if I read this, you’ll see it’s described by a man called Nicholas Breton in England and it’s 1626. This is a sort of dying moment of that mediaeval Christmas. “It’s now Christmas,” he wrote, “And not a cup of drink must pass without a cow. The beast foul and fish come to a general execution and the corn is ground to dust for the bait house and the pastry. Cards and dice purge many a purse and the youth show their agility in chewing of the wild myrrh.” Which was game, “Now good cheer and welcome and God be with you and thank you and against the new year provide for the presence, the Lord and misrule is no mean man for his time and the guests at the high table must lack no wine. The lusty bloods must look about them like men. And piping and dancing puts away much melan. Stolen benison is sweet and a fat coney is worth money. Pitfalls are now set for small birds and a woodcock hangs himself in a gym. A good fire eats all the house and a forearms basket makes the beggars prayers the masks and mummers make the merry sport, but if they lose their money, their drum goes dead. Swearers and swaggers are sent away to the alehouse and unruly wench go in danger of judgement .
Musicians now make their instruments speak out and a good song is worth the hearing in some it is a holy time.” Really doesn’t sound very holy to me. “A duty and Christians for the remembrance of Christ and custom among friends from the maintenance of good fellowship. In brief, I thus conclude a bit. I holded a memory of heaven’s love and world’s peace, the mirth of the honest and the meeting of the friendly.” That is the dying embers of an English communal Christmas, which never made it across the Atlantic. Instead, in 1647, as I said, Cromwell bans Christmas, and John Evelyn in his diary wrote this, John Evelyn was a royalist, but he remains in London during Cromwell’s war. “25th of December 1657 I went with my Wife to celebrate Christmas Day, the chapel was surrounded with soldiers, and all the communicants and assembly surpriz’d and kept prisoners by them, some in the house, others carried away. It fell to my share to be confined to a room in the house, where yet I was permitted to dine with the master of it, the Countess of Dorset, Lady Hatton, and some others of quality who invited me.” In other words, they’ve gone to a Christian Christmas service and they’ve been arrested and they’ve been held in a room because the service was Anglican and was opposed by Cromwell’s room.
“In the afternoon came Colonel Whalley, Colonel Goffe, and others from White-hall, to examine us one by one. some they committed to the Marshall sea,” Which was a prison for the people who hadn’t paid their debt. “And some to prison itself, when I came before them they took my name and address, examined me, why? Contrary to an ordinance made that none should any longer observe the superstitious time of the nativity so esteemed by them. I durst offend, and particularly be at Common Prayers, anglican prayers which they told me was but the mass in English, and I particularly pray for Charles Stuart, for which we had no scripture, no bible reference. I told them we did not pray for Charles Stuart, but for all Christian Kings, Princes, and Governors. They replied in so doing we praise for the King of Spain, who was their enemy and a papist, with other frivolous and ensnaring questions and much threatening and finding no colour to detain me, they dismissed me with much pity of my ignorance. These were men of high flight and above ordinances, and spake spiteful things of our Lord’s nativity. As we went up to receive the sacrament during the service they held muskets against our heads.” In the 1650s to attend a Christian communion service on Christmas Day led to Cromwell’s troops having a gun to your head. Well, that’s pretty grim.
And if you are American, you may be saying, “Well, it never got as bad as that here. Well, in 1659, that’s two years after John Evelyn had a gun to his head. In 1659 the Massachusetts Bay colony enacted a law. It was called the Penalty for Keeping Christmas. And it said, "Festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries,” they mean England “Were a great dishonour of God and offence to others. Anyone found celebrating Christmas by failing to go to work or by feasting or any other way, shall pay for such an offence up to five trillions,” which was a considerable sum of money in the late 17th century in Boston. So you can see that the English and the American Christmas, is very similar in origin except the Americans never had the fun Christmas. But because the time the English came over, they had this dreadfully an anti Christmas view. And as I said, by the 18th century, it’s basically disappeared on both sides of the Atlantic. We’re not celebrating Christmas at all. It’s very, very low key. The Puritans had won even though the Puritans weren’t necessarily, it’s certainly not in England and in many parts of the United States, the Puritans view seem to dominate. Now, partly that’s because the Americans had Thanksgiving. That’s true. And in England, I’m not sure it’s very difficult in England to explain why Christmas became much, much less celebrated.
I said earlier that I took my grandsons to see the exhibits about Christmases in the past, and we started with the Georgian age and one of them, the nine year old said, “Why isn’t there anything here Papa?” There isn’t anything there because they didn’t celebrate it. Then we went through to the Victorian age and it’s everywhere. And that is the extraordinary thing. In 1739 this is the best quotation I know about 18th century not celebrating Christmas. And interestingly, it’s American and it’s by an American that everybody knows Benjamin Franklin and Franklin said in 1739, “Oh blessed season love by saint and sinners for long devotions and for longer dinners.” In other words, going to church or chapel and having a good meal, but nothing else. That’s what it had boiled down to, as I say, in both countries. Then I’ve got another reference here, which I’ll share with you and this one goes like this, “By the 18th century, great Britain held a vast influential empire, but Christmas cheer was no longer one of its exports. An indication of this can be gay from the fact that in the 20 of the years between 1790 and 1835, "The Times” the key British newspaper of the day failed to mention Christmas at all on the 25th of December. So meaningless had Christmas become to most of “The Times” readers.“ So the same on both sides. Benjamin Franklin saying for devotion and for a decent meal and the times doesn’t even refer to Christmas Day. And now you can’t open a paper in Britain at least without whole pages of stuff about Christmas, what to cook, what to eat, how to deal with your in-laws who come to stay the lot. But in the 18th century zit.
And bum, wow, it all changes. It’s fantastic. We come to the modern Christmas, I can blow a horn and do whatever I like. I’ve got here a cracker, cracker. Oh, I can’t make it. Ah, there it goes, what have I got in my cracker? A motto. It says, "Which of Santa’s reindeer have to mind their manners the most? Rudolph,” oh dear. And I’ve got some marbles. Wow, now that’s not the 18th century, that’s 19th century. In England from 1840 onwards we had crackers. They were invented by an Englishman and they’re not very known elsewhere. I’ve got a German friend who when her daughter was at college in England, she said, “Would you make sure my daughter buys a box of crackers to bring home to Germany because we can’t buy them in Germany.” It was a man called Tom Smith who was a sweet maker. And he went to France because in Paris was considered the best place for sweets. And he saw that they packaged their suites in something that looked like a modern cracker. And he pulled it out, no bang, no little motto, just no toy, just some sweets. And he thought, that’s a good idea. I could take that idea back to England, make money out of that idea and he did. And the story goes and they say it’s true. I don’t know, he was sat in front of a roaring fire, a log fire, and the log began to spit as they do. And he had this moment of realisation, if only I could put the spit inside that and make a bang as you pulled it. Well, the world is my oyster as they say.
And that’s how we got the snap in the crackers, 1840. And I think it’s true, I have a very early advert from Tom Smith’s crackers. It’s too small to show you, you wouldn’t be able to see it. But in it, he has Santa Claus, our father Christmas. Bringing a sleigh full of crackers is an advertising thing. What’s interesting is the sleigh is being pulled by horses, not by reindeer, because this is before reindeer entered the story. So he is got horses pulling it. Now the interesting thing is, although I started with an English example, it’s both English and American and two writers, one American first and then English popularised Christmas, they brought Christmas back. The American is Washington Irving and the Englishman is Charles Dickens. And then in addition to those two writers department stores were being established by the late 19th century and department stores and retail shopping in general for a growing middle class on both sides of the Atlantic. There’s a market at Christmas time and Christmas takes off, I mean roughly 1850s, slightly earlier in the United States and in England. But mid 19th century Washington Irving was American. He was a short story writer. He was a historian and a diplomat. But most importantly the end of the war with Napoleon, in 1815, he came to England to look after his family’s business affairs in England. And while here he… well, it’s a bit confusing. He says he saw a celebration of Christmas like he’d never seen in America. More likely we think is he read an old 17th century book about the old Christmas, like the extract I read a moment or so ago, and he read this old book and when he bent back, he makes money out of short story writing as well. He goes back to America and he revises a book that he’d first written in 1812 called “A History Of New York.”
And you think, well, how on earth does it get into a history of New York? He added a dream sequence which featured St. Nicholas who was soaring over the treetops in a flying waggon then it wasn’t actually a sleigh, a flying waggon. And St. Nicholas was dressed as Americans would say, as Santa Claus. And from America, Santa Claus returned to England. But in England, Charles Dickens had written Christmas Carol, in 1843 and followed up with subsequent publications at Christmas. All of course made oodles of money. Washington Irving and Dickens made a lot of money from the promulgation of Christmas. Now in Ronald, professor Ronald Hutton’s book, he says this about Dickens, and I think it’s worth sharing. “Dickens succeeded in turning Christmas celebrations into a moral reply to avarice, selfishness and greed. He linked worship and feasting within a context of social reconciliation.” What does that mean? It means that he brought the secular Christmas of fun and games back and linked it with the religious. And he does so because he says you have to think at Christmas time about those less well off than you. And that’s a Christian thing to do. But he also thinks about children. And on both sides of the Atlantic, children become increasingly important in the 19th century. They’re eulogised over, they’re… It’s rather sort of to us a bit creepy how the 19th century parents looked at children, but nevertheless, children enter this story.
The story says Ronald owed much of its power. This is Christmas Carol. “So the way in which interwove nostalgia for a past and anxiety about the present and presented Christmas as a palliative of both. From the centre of the festival, Dickens displaced the wider community and guests and substituted family and children. And the same thing happened in the states. This is not the old English mediaeval community Christmas, nor is it the dead alive 18th century Christmas. This is a new Christmas, a new Christmas with emphasis on fun. But what shall I say, polite fun. When I was a child, if I put even on Christmas day, I’d said something I shouldn’t have said or I did something I shouldn’t have, they will just simply look at me and say, "Ah, William, don’t do that.” So it was a moral Christmas. “Don’t pinch the best slice of cake before you offer it to auntie.” All those sorts of things. So this is a polite Christmas, but it’s a family gathering.“ It’s a family Christmas. And this was an extraordinary change. We’ve never had a family Christmas, we’ve had community Christmases and virtually no Christmas. Well because the dinners in the 18th century children wouldn’t have been allowed to stay up for, now we have it in the middle of the day. Children are there, prominently there. And the middle classes everywhere have discovered shopping. Shopping for presents, for those less of for your relatives, even distant relatives, but particularly shopping for children.
And then enters this extraordinary figure in our story, which is partly an English story and partly an American story. We call the man dressed in red who brings presents coming down the chimney. We can say in England, St. Nicholas, Santa Claus or the old English name, which many of us still use, Father Christmas. I have to say that Father Christmas is slightly losing ground, I feel to the phrase Santa Claus. Now the say Santa Claus is America. So let’s sort of try and disentangle all of this. The earliest mediaeval reference we have to Father Christmas is not a man dressed in red, but a symbol of the Christmas season, a personification of Christmas. And we first come across him in a carol of the 15th century where there is a figure simply called Sir Christmas. And in the Carol, Sir Christmas shares news of Christ and tells his audience, "Make good cheer and be right merry.” Ben Johnson in a court mask in 1616 for James I court, wrote a mask called Christmas. And in that mask or play, if you like, Christmas appears in old fashioned clothes with a long beard and calls himself old Christmas. And in this play, he trieds the royal guard for refusing to let him into the party and says, He is as good a Protestant as any in my parish. In other words, Johnson is trying to go back to the mediaeval Christmas where Father Christmas wasn’t anything at all. But for the play he makes Father Christmas into this man who says, “You are not Catholic, I’m as good a Protestant as any of you,” with a very political message if you like. Now, as Christmas turned towards children, it needed a figure that children could relate to. And this is where we turned to America and Santa Claus or St. Nicholas.
Now in Europe, Santa Claus was a figure that you could find, particularly in the Netherlands and in Germany. And because you could find it in the Netherlands in Germany, that’s how the figures of St. Nicholas, who was celebrated on the 6th of December, was brought to America. And St. Nicholas had always been associated in stories with saving children. He resurrected back to life, three boys who’d been pickled alive by an innkeeper. He gave three daughters who were about to be sold off by their father because he couldn’t afford to keep them. He dropped gold in their stockings, which were hanging up at night. And he was very well known across Europe, not known, not known in England because we’d ceased to be Catholic. But he went to America almost certainly to New Amsterdam later New York. That’s where we believe he entered the sport. And Washington Irving, in a very early reference in a history of New York, says that Dutch families in New York told stories of Santa Claus, St. Nicholas on St. Nicholas’s Day the 6th of December. And in 1821 there was a poem written anonymously in the states called “Old innkeeper” We’re getting nearer to Santa Claus, “Old innkeeper with Much Delight”. And that poem had Santa dressed in a red coat with a sleigh pulled by reindeer. Two years later, much more famous. In 1823, a retired professor of Hebrew, Clement Clark Moore wrote the very famous poem, “The night before Christmas” and it’s really taken off basically with Clement Clark Moore’s poem.
This is when the American Christmas zooms up. Christmas is back in all its old glory. And Saint Nick, St. Nicholas of the German Dutch tradition becomes Santa Claus of the American tradition. He’s described, remember by Clement Moore as a right jolly old elf with clothes all tarnished with ashes and soot, twinkling eyes, many dimples and beard as white as snow. All we needed to see was a picture of him. And that is what the American cartoonist Thomas Nast, N-A-S-T provided for us from the 1860s onwards. By 1881 Nast had perfected his vision of Santa, merry old Santa in the red coat with the reindeer driving the sleigh through the sky on Christmas Eve with presents for children of the world. And he lived in the North Pole, everything’s there. PS, Coca-Cola did not invent Santa or Santa’s red coat. They only used Santa in advertisements in the 1930s. They like to claim that they invented Santa Claus, untrue. When Santa Claus first came to England, the idea lots of English people didn’t understand. You know how parents often don’t understand what children were talking about. Well, in England, by in the 1870s, we still didn’t quite get who Santa Claus was. But very soon Santa Claus and Father Christmas merged and here as in the States, Father Christmas comes down timbers to put toys and sweets in stockings.
In the Netherlands, it used to be clogs, it became stockings in the states and therefore stockings here and England, he was just the family friendly hero that American parents and British parents wanted for this new child oriented Christmas. I can’t tell you how excited my three-year-old grandson was today by the idea of Father Christmas coming down his chimney with presents. “How long until Father Christmas comes,” he asked, it’s lovely to see the magic for another generation and there is something magical. And in the England of the 19th century it took off. I’ve already pulled a cracker and told you the story of that. Prince Albert and Queen Victoria Good Germans boat popularised the Christmas tree. Well it wasn’t called the Christmas tree originally in England it was called the German tree ‘cause it was the royal family. It was actually Queen Charlotte, George Third’s wife, who was the first to bring Christmas trees, German trees into England. But Albert ever won for good PR, had a picture, of London Illustrated news of him and the queen in front of the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve because they kept the German tradition of presents on Christmas Eve, not the English Victorian tradition of Christmas or presents on Christmas day. And the royal family still exchange presents on Christmas Eve. You can take the royal family out of Germany, but you can’t take Germany out of the royal family. And they have Christmas Eve in a German tradition. So we get Christmas trees and what else do we have? We get Christmas cards on both sides of the Atlantic, Christmas cards from the 1840s onwards. Why? Because we now have stamps and post offices.
So hang on a moment, we can make money out of this because if everyone sends Christmas card, how much money can we make selling stamps at Christmas time? And other people thought how much more money can we make making Christmas cards and birthday cards or some Valentine’s cards and Christmas cards took off. Now interestingly, I said, things change and today Christmas cards are becoming less popular as people are concerned about the environment. And we get Christmas cards which come via the internet that play you tunes, I hate them. Or we get all sorts of things, true. So maybe Christmas cards are dying. None in my family will send a Christmas card with glitter on because apparently according to my daughter, glitter is an absolute no no in our environmentally aware age. I’m not quite sure why, but apparently it is. Then of course there’s the thing which is particularly English. And my son said, “Surely you’re not going to talk about that tomorrow if you’ve got people who aren’t English listening.” I said, “Well, I think I have to.” And that’s pantomime. Now how the heck do I explain pantomime if you haven’t seen it? Pantomime is a theatrical production only done at Christmas and by professionals but amateurs do pantos as well. But I’m talking about professional theatre. It developed in the Victorian age from earlier traditions.
And in the Victorian age, it took on the sort of feel of the Victorian musical. It tells a traditional folk tale like Cinderella or Jack and the Bean stalk. And around that the actors perform, they perform the story, but they perform it with song and dance and they perform it with audience interaction. And the jokes go back as far as the 19th century, and it’s the old jokes that go down best. It also is quite political. So there will be lots of jokes in England this year about Boris Johnson. There’ll be lots of jokes about Covid. The principal boy is played by a very attractive girl with long legs. I’m not allowed to say that now, I think so, that’s factual. And the dame is played by a male comedian in drag with rather, how do I put it gently? With overemphasised parts of the body. And if you haven’t seen it and you are in England at Christmas time, please, please, whatever else you do, go and see a pantomime. Don’t be sniffy about it, don’t be snobby about it. Just enjoy it because it’s one of the most marvellous things.
They throw sweets from the stage at the children and everything. Now I’m sorry, I’m a child at heart. I love panto, I just adore pantomime. Unfortunately this year because of Covid, I’m not going, but I should be back. I should be back with a vengeance next year. I’ve missed two years, panto, I’ve never been two years in my life without panto. But it is a very English thing, actually of course if you want to be terribly intellectual, you can go and watch pantomime and it’ll tell you a great deal about the English. This is the English you don’t see, this is the English letting their hair down. This is the English, putting two fingers up to authority. They make a joke about the Prime Minister, it’ll bring the roof down. But then in the 20th century, I said, Christmas is always changing. We get another import from America, we get Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer. And Rudolph first appeared in a… well, this is very interesting. In 1939 in a booklet in the American Department store of Montgomery Ward, it was a marketing device. They had this book written, “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” whose red nose pointed the way for the other reindeer to follow. It was just a marketing drive by the department store.
Department stores had entered into Christmas in a big way. You could go to Grottos usually at the end of the toy department. So mum had to walk the whole length from the toy department to see Santa Claus in his grotto to pay an inflationary amount of money. It was 15 pounds ahead somewhere here in Worthing to see Santa and get a miserable little present. But as you went down, the home department saw toy floor, the child was at, “I’d like one of those for Christmas, mommy and one of those, and one of those.” And he was, again, a marketing ploy, a highly successful one, which again was imported from America to Britain. So Rudolph was imported. But in the modern age, we have Christmas films, special Christmas editions of TV programmes and Christmas songs in the top 10 or whatever. And I suppose really that took off when I was still a child, really in about 1954 when Bing Crosby’s White Christmas was produced, both film and song. And every year now there’s Christmas films, especially done for Christmas. There’s old favourites that come back. There’s Christmas TV programmes, there’s Christmas songs, and they come back again and again. I don’t want to hear Cliff Richard one more time.
I should go mad. Now, that really is the story of Christmas, beginning as paper and then beginning quite separately as Christian and the two merging and becoming a wonderful time of community spirit and community union in the Middle Ages. And then being found upon by the Puritans and taking really something like a century and a half or more than that two centuries to come back first in the States and then in Britain, borrowing from each other and not borrowing from each other, developing their own trends. And it’s always changing, always changing. But some things never change. And that is the church and it’s attitude. And this is a report from the 11th of December this year. So just a few days ago, as it were. “A Roman Catholic diocese in Sicily has publicly apologised to outraged parents after the bishop told a group of children that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.” He does. My nine-year-old said to me today, “Papa, I know Santa Claus exists.” You can prove it by science because of the drones that follow him across the sky. And I’m sure every country has that. You can follow, goodness me, on the internet, the Father Christmas, going all the way round. And you can say, oh he’s wherever he is at that particular moment. So my nine year-old thinks, it’s scientifically proved, “Isn’t it, he said.” So we don’t know whether he thinks it’s true or he thinks it isn’t true or he’s testing.
So I went along with it and said, “Yes.” “Bishop Antonio Stagliano didn’t mean the comments and was trying to underline the true meaning of Christmas, and the story of St. Nicholas,” the church explained a spokesman for the church, said, “We certainly must not demolish the imagination of children, but draw good examples from it that are positive for life. So Santa Clause is an effective image to convey the importance of giving generosity, sharing. What, what was Bishop Mellitus told in 601? "But you can’t jettison what the people believe.” and the Catholic church in Sicily went on. But when this image loses its meaning, you see Santa Claus also known as consumerism. The desire to own But then you have to revalue it by giving it a new meaning. Nothing changes and I didn’t know how to end this and I know most of the people, the vast majority of people listening tonight are not Christian. And I thought, well, I will go back to early England to Saxon England, which was Christian.
But there’s a Saxon poem about mid-winter. So whatever faith you believe in, or even if you believe in no faith at all, the message of this time of year deepest winter is that ever even in the darkest days, there’s hope of a better things to come. This is humanity’s enduring optimism. However bad things are, they will get better as winter turns the spring and spring turns the summer and there’s an anonymous Saxon poem which reads like this, “Frost must freeze, fire burn up wood, water where a covering wondrously locking up chutes in the earth. One alone shall unbide the frost patterns, God most mighty, winter must turn good weather come again, summer bright and hot.” So wherever you are listening to me from whatever faith you have or none, I wish you each and everyone a very happy Christmas and a prosperous new year. Thanks very much. I’ve got questions I think. Should I start on the questions? Before they get out of hand.
- [Host] Yes.
Q&A and Comments:
Jackie, from England, we attended a carol concert at the Royal Albert Hall and the conductor open proceedings by relating an anecdote when a little boy desperately wanted to play Joseph in the school nativity play, he didn’t get the part and was really nipped. So to placate him, the teachers gave him the role of the innkeeper. However, he was very mischievous. And when Mary and Joseph knocked on his door and asked, “Have you any rooms,” he answered, “Yes, we have loads of room, come on in.” I love children though, fantastic. Ali, I learned in a comparative religion class from university at December the 25th was chosen a birthday Mithras, an ancient God who also walked on water, likely the historic Jesus was born in the spring, when his parents were headed to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. All of that is correct, but Mithras is the Roman link. And it wasn’t only the Roman link, it was also all the paganism of Western Europe. But it is true, Mithras was worshipped on Christmas day, but it’s part of the Roman celebrations of mid-winter.
Angela, early Judaism did the same method of pagan sacrifice, but forbids human sacrifice, also circumcision existed, but was given a Jewish religious meaning. Yeah, I mean sacrificing animals was… And I say often because I’m not sure I can say always, but pretty well always was based in reality that you killed the animals because you couldn’t feed them. And then you sorted them down and then by Easter in the Christian calendar, by spring you’d run out of meat. But then came all the goodness of the spring, and that’s a common thing in any culture.
Q: Is there a connection with greenery and the green man?
A: No, there isn’t. Don’t get me started on the green man. It’s something I’m really interested in. But there isn’t, no, no, no, no. I won’t go there. No, there isn’t a connection.
Q: What did 12 Night signal. Was it connection with Shakespeare’s 12th night?
A: Yes, Shakespeare used the concept 12 Night. 12th Night marked the end of Christmas where you were meant to take down all your Christmas decorations. But there were often customs associated with 12 Night as well in England, in different villages which celebrate 12 Night .
Q: And the Magi?
A: Yes, three kings arrive with gifts. Yes gifts.
Q: Where did Boxing Day originate?
A: I remember when we were growing up in South Africa, celebrate on the 26, absolutely right. Boxing Day traditionally in England is the day after Christmas, boxing Day in the Christian calendar St. Steven’s day. St. Steven has nothing to do with it. Boxing Day was the day you opened boxes in the church, for example, or at home, collecting boxes. You took the money out and you gave it to the poor. You gave Boxing Day gifts to in the… When I was a charge, you gave it to the baker, to the milkman, to the postman. You gave out and to the dustman, collecting oil rubbish. You gave out Boxing Day gifts. And usually now we give them before Boxing Day. That’s what Boxing Day meant.
Q: What happened to the 12 days of Christmas?
A: Modern working conditions is the answer to that, except in England, because more people have holidays now. Either firms close for a longer period of time or many people take part of their annual holiday to extend Christmas. And we are getting a longer Christmas. As I understand it, that’s quite the reverse of American culture where Christmas is quite tight, ours has become elongated again.
Hang on, I’ve lost it now, where am I, I’ve lost the question. Somebody asked about Richard II, I’ll find it.
Q: Did the extraordinary extravagant with Richard II reign or something to the exuberance felt after his survivor of the black death?
A: No, I don’t think so. There’s evidence of those foods before and long afterwards. When they say so many courses, don’t think of how we eat today. This was more of a sort of Scandinavian smog sprog. It was laid out and you had small quantities of a vast number of things. No, there are no records of anyone being executed, hanged or anything else in England for celebrating Christmas. And they said similar to converses in Liberia. No, no, no, I don’t know of any example of that. I don’t know any from Massachusetts either. But somebody will say, “My great great great great grandfather was knifed in Boston for celebrating Christmas.” I don’t think that’s true anywhere in either America or in Britain. They were fined, but that would’ve been it.
Q: Why did Halloween survive in Scotland but disappeared until recently in England?
A: Oh two answers. One because England had Guy Fawkes day, anti-Catholic and Guy Fawkes day was celebrated when I was a child all the way through from the 17th century hugely. And now Guy Fawkes Day is dying in England because children are moving to Halloween. The Scotts had Halloween because the English Halloween died out. Although taken to America, the English Halloween died out and we got Gun powder plot day, Guy Fawkes day. Guy Fawkes has recently died out because of the dangers of fireworks. It was a family celebration when I was a child and families in a street gather there together and we all brought our fireworks and our fathers let them all off and so on. That’s now frowned upon because of danger, and the great big celebrations in things like football stadiums are expensive and they lack fun. Halloween has fun. Children can dress up and go and knock on doors. This is much more fun. And Halloween has come right back.
There’s an interesting thing for, I was going to say Canadians, I’m not sure it’s American or Canadian. I met a man who’d been a manager of a Toys R Us shop in England. And in the 1970s, I think he was sent boxes from either Canada or America. And it said for Halloween, after Halloween it was over. He was owned up from the other side of the Atlantic. And they said, “Well how how’d your sales stop?” And he said, “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, all those Halloween boxes we sent you.” And he said, “Oh, when we put them in the store cupboard, we didn’t know what they meant,” and they didn’t. And Halloween sweets, I think that’s American, Halloween sweets first came, you could buy packets of them. And these came from Canada in Woolworths. And I remember seeing them and thinking, how odd that people are putting Halloween sweets. And then you looked at it and said, “Made in Canada” and thought, what on earth are we doing importing sweets from Canada for Woolworths? But it was Halloween, Halloween has taken off, Guy Fawkes Day has disappeared. In Scotland, they never had Guy Fawkes Day, Halloweens continued in the States. It’s before Guy Fawkes Day had taken off in a big way. And we took Halloween across to the states.
I bet it… hang on, I’ve lost the thread here. Where am I? Oh, hang on.
Here’s Oscar, not a question. Oh yeah, that’s great, Oscar, thanks very much. Give me a break. Not a question, but something of interest in South Africa, in a small town, Maclear’s where we lived, we Christians and Jews and everybody wanted to celebrate the day, went to the Central hotel for lunch. And what was the highlight? The fruitcake. Why? Because inside the cake was a large number of tickets and a small number of five filling pieces. And if the slice you receipt at the five filling piece, you will celebrate, you are sure celebrated. That was then around 1940s and I was 10. You mentioned of the cape. Remind me of those wonderful times. Now you are absolutely right. We used to have a P and a B in England in the 12th night cake. And if a man got the B he became the king for 12th night. If a woman got the P, she became the queen for 12th night. If they got the wrong vegetable, the woman could choose a man to be king. A man could choose a woman to be queen. Now that disappeared, when the 12th night disappeared and the cake moved to Christmas. We didn’t do that. Well, what we did instead was put silver pieces or silver sixpences into the Christmas pudding. And so we now have that in the Christmas pudding. The French put it in their chocolate log, the Buche de Noel. It’s all very interesting and wonderful.
Yeah, there’s someone, my grandmother used to hide a silver sixpence in hers. Absolutely. I remember the tickets in the Christmas pudding. No, Christmas is not a big celebration in Scotland. Answer because they’re Calvinists and because they were even stronger. The anti Christmas and New Year’s Day was the big day in Scotland in a way that it wasn’t in England, but it’s all sort of merged. Scotland never had pantomime and it still doesn’t have many, but it has some.
Oh, thanks very much. Thanks. Oh, I haven’t thought this through and I’m an American Jew, but perhaps the way Christmases me celebrated in the US in the 20th, early 21st, it’s a manifestation of American tendency to access not just Christmas, but look at Halloween, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day.
Oh, that’s a very deep question for an anthropologist. And I don’t know that that applies only. The answer must go mustn’t it. Sorry, I lost your name, Long. The answer must Long, lie somewhere in terms of trying to put the break on life in the 21st century when it can be work, work, work. And maybe that’s what it is. One of the problems, not for me to say, but I’m going to say it now that Americans may have for Christmas, unlike Britain, is that Christmas is on such a short timescale. Here, the parties start well before Christmas and the parties go on well after Christmas. It’s a while since you could pack a box of crackers. Oh, Margaret. Oh, how depressing. Yes, you are right. Security checks don’t allow 'cause it’s got a bang in it. Oh dear, dear.
Q: How were Catholics able to celebrate in the 17th century?
A: If you’re asking about England very, very privately, if you’re asking about America, question doesn’t really exist. Well, not much. That’s right, Santa Claus original Dutch Sinterklass. Dickens is Christmas is carol. Dickens is Christmas carol is really based on a moral question of Scrooge seeing the light. Ah, no Joe, I dunno where you are from.
Joe asked my understanding it’s Father Christmas/Santa Claus emanates from the Russian Ded Moroz, which Lucy translates grandfather Frost. He looks like Father Christmas but dressed in ice blue and sparkled. No, no, no, no, no. It does not derive from that. That is a separate tradition, but exactly the same tradition. Exactly the same as a gift bringer at Christmas time and Father Frost is simply Grandfather Frost or Father Frost is simply the Russian version. It is not linked. They are two separate but similar parallel ideas. It was Coco who started dressing him in red and white to match. Well actually, that isn’t quite true. I know they just used it as a marketing tool. Oh, that sounds good. I have a favourite.
Oh, this is a Dennis. This is a wonderful, this is New York here, isn’t it? I have a favourite New Yorker cartoon under the heading, “Putting the Christ back into Christmas.” There’s a shop window of the toy store swaps containing just one small plush teddy bear with an outrageous $850 price tag. A man is looking at this and the caption is just, “Christ.” Ah, very clever. Dickens Christmas for children children down the mines and up the chimney.
Q: Did the poor actually celebrate?
A: Yes, the poor did celebrate, even if they depended upon the middle classes to come and distribute things. And of course, in Victorian America and Victorian Britain, the divisions in society were horrendous. There’s no getting away from that. But it is not true to say that they would not have celebrated.
Yes, there’s all sorts of things you are not meant to say at Christmas now.
Mary, I can’t keep up with what you are meant to say and what you’re not meant to say. In our multicultural models like happy holidays or seasoned greetings. Of course, void possible offence.
Q: When did the idea of Northridge in one of those early American writings, they simply said he comes from the North Pole.
A: Yes, they come down the chimney 'cause that’s where Elves, Sprites and witches were thought to be able to enter houses. Absolutely right. In England, in Warwickshire, I used to live in Warwickshire. There’s a pub with a fireplace, a very old pub with a fireplace with a big old chimney and on the floor of the inn at by the fireplace is a great big white circle. And that was painted to stop witches coming down. Absolutely right. Cross-dressing is part of England. No, no sorry, I misread that. Cross-dressing is part of English yet and goes back centuries. Yes it is. Only memlat is not acceptable for women, but it’s more than that. At Christmas time you change roles. I don’t know whether this applies to Canadians, Australians, Israelis, or Americans. But in Britain on Christmas day, the officers serve the men in the armed forces as a tradition. And we have this role reversal. We also have a mediaeval custom, which has been revived in the Church of England to have boy bishops and for a day a boy chosen from the choir is the bishop. And he can do anything except some of the deeply religious things that a bishop can do. Oh, that’s nice of you.
Thank you, who’s that? Thank you Cal. Yes, now I didn’t say that because I was hoping that someone would first. We have had pantomime theatre at Christmas in Toronto, for years we used to take our kids 40 years ago. And that’s true. And there is panto in Australia and there’s some panto, I think on the west coast of the US.
Gold is greed, still… Gold is greed hippodrome and pantomime. Yeah. Do pantomimes echo the misrule of mediaeval time. No, not really. Pantomimes come from an Italian source. That’s a long involved story, which came to England in the 17th century. I could do hours on panto. I tried to keep it simple that somebody else talking about the Toronto panto. Oh, my daughter is correct.
Martin, I’m sorry it’s Martin. She always is Martin. Glitter contains microplastics which find their way into rivers and oceans taking many years to degrade. Well, there you have it. They had pantos in mortar. Well, that’s British influence.
Yeah, poor Rudolph looked different, so he is bullied and not allowed to join in. Yeah, that’s a lovely story. Yeah, absolutely not. I like Rudolph. Yes, as Lorna says, I’m with you about pantomime, They’re wonderful. Often one’s first introduction to theatre. And that’s true most children in Britain, the first time they ever go to a theatre and see live theatre, is to a pantomime. I was taught at American University, a Christmas tree was start in Bavaria from a pagan ritual, burning evergreen trees and was adopted when Christianity was spreading I think that isn’t true. The first proper reference for a Christmas tree comes from Strasberg, which has been in its time both German and French. And the date is in the 1560s. I can’t remember the exact date, but that’s the first one. So it is Germanic, the thing about burning it.
No, that’s another custom. You are absolutely right Betty. That is a custom in Bavaria, but it isn’t the Christmas tree one that is from Strasberg. Christmas Carols were popular in the Middle Ages, but interestingly they involved dancing rather than singing. The Carols sung today are 19th century and 20th century. It’s Victorian America. Victorian Britain, the middle class all had a piano. So Uncle Fred goes on the piano, “Play us Rudolph,” in the 20th century, “Play us Rudolph the Red nose reindeer.” My three-year-old, we took out earlier this week somewhere else. And he spent the whole journey in the car, he was on his own with us. He spent the whole journey missinging carols that he’d misheard that nursery school. It was excruciating. The yew tree. The yew tree is not really connecting with Christmas, yew trees were grown for the making of bows in the Middle Ages for bows and narrows, yew tree symbolise death rather than life. That’s another piece of folklore. Boxing Day, I think I’ve explained Christmas parade. We do have a Christmas parade in London. Christmas parade is much more an American phenomenon, than a British one. We don’t really go in for parades very much. Usually on Thanksgiving ending with Santa Claus, which underlines what I’m saying about how things shift around. Oh, Christmas puddings. Christmas puddings originated as plumb pudding. Originally, they had meat in them and in the 19th century, gradually the meat left and they had only fruit and it became traditional to make them months before, and making the Christmas pudding was something big in household. I remember having to stir as a small child, my grandmother’s Christmas pudding and all wrapped up in muslin for Christmas day. The fruit bit comes in the 19th century.
Q: Where’s your paper hat, William?
A: Peter, behave yourself. I haven’t got one in my cracker, so I couldn’t wear one. The 12 days of Christmas end on 12th night. Thank you, all those people saying thanks for Christmas and all of you have a good break with this dreadful covid, we all suffering from. Then I think we’ve done well to survive. I think I should come to an end there because people are just sending messages very much appreciated. Just saying thank you very much to me. And that’s a bit embarrassing, so I think perhaps I should stop there.
[Host] Thank you so much William, and thank you to all of our participants and we will see you in the new year.
You will indeed. Oh, and just before I go, I’m putting on some quizzes over the Christmas period on my blog. There’s going to be some history quizzes and there may be a quiz about English coins won’t be of interest, but the answers will be there as well. And you might like to look at the answers. I’m going to do a history quiz on England, a history quiz on America, and possibly a history quiz on Europe. Don’t ask me when I’m going to do it. It’ll probably now be after Christmas because I think my wife has got me doing all sorts of things between now and Christmas Day. So I see you all in the new year. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.