Christmases Past and Present

8/8/2019 Christmases Past and Present

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Christmases Past & PresentBy Ronnie Bray

Christmas when I was a boy was different, very different from what

it is for me today. Christmas in my childhood home was not at all a

religious occasion, and yet there was always a conspicuously

changed atmosphere that pervaded the season as if it crept in

unnoticed from a mysterious place that kept it prisoner all year

around, letting it run free for a short time to work its special magic

at Christmas.

As Christmastime draws near, I feel to contrast the Christmas

experiences of other people and times with my own Christmases and

times.

Most will readily agree that Christmas is a time to be with family

and loved ones. It is a hard time to be alone, and when it is not

possible to be in the midst of the ones we love and cherish, then thesoul thus deprived feels the pain of separation deeply. Charles

Dickens wrote of an enforced extended stay at an isolated inn, the

Holly Tree, on the Yorkshire moors during one Christmas, from

where he had hoped after a single nights stay to travel on and spend

Christmas in the rosy warmth of the good company of his friends.

When I travel, he wrote, I never arrive at a place butwhat I immediately want to go away from it. Before I had

finished my supper of broiled fowl and mulled port, I had

impressed upon the waiter in detail my arrangements for

departure in the morning.


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Breakfast and bill at eight. Fly [which is a horse drawn

carriage] at nine. Two horses, or, if needed, even four.

Tired though I was, the night appeared about a week

long.

In the morning I found that it was snowing still, that it

had snowed all night, and that I was snowed up. Nothing

could get out of that spot on the moor, or could come at

it. When they might cut their way to the Holly-Tree,

nobody could tell me.

It was now Christmas Eve. Still being snowed up was a

thing I had not bargained for. I felt very lonely.

The Christmases of my childhood were largely confined within the

isolating walls of my Fitzwilliam Street home, but there were

intimations that something momentous was taking place, and that

unnamed somethingfelt extremely virtuous. The atmosphere wastransformed so that even in the ever-present melancholy of wartime,

the air about us seemed changed, and people were more open,

unselfish, and good-natured than they usually were. A chattering

kindness infused social transactions that was not present at other

times of the year. And it was good very good!

When I was a boy, there were very few motor cars in my town, but

it was remarkable to see their drivers stop in Christmas weather togive lifts to total strangers to whom they had not been properly

introduced! A few days earlier those same drivers would not have

spoken to or had any regard for those they now so generously

assisted under the influence of the Spirit of Christmas.


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The rich became passing kind to the poor, and even those

entrenched at opposite ends of the political spectrum saluted each

other as if they had been long lost brothers.

Ill-natured people who were uncomfortable in the presence of

children, patted tiny pixie-hooded heads and smiled mendaciously

as their troubled consciences robbed their pockets of a few pennies

while they uttered Have a Merry Christmas, my dears, through

their gritted teeth. Christmas had caught them in its invisible but

effective trap!

Although I realised that they were not all they could have been, inone way or another my childhood Christmases were exciting, due to

my impatient expectation that extraordinary presents would appear,

delivered, I was told and so believed, by Father Christmas, who was

represented as a kindly personage whose dwelling was the frozen

wasteland around the North Pole. I knew too little of that area to

question such facts.

That was before Father Christmas had been fixed up with a MotherChristmas and a company of elves, which is not surprising because

nothing stays exactly as it used to be, and our beloved institutions

have to be brought up-to-date every couple of generations to keep

them relevant.

I was to learn later that it was supposed to be a boys father who

acted the part of Father Christmas, but since my step-father didnt

take to me, I presumed it was my mother who climbed the extra twoflights of stairs to hang the receptacles bearing my Christmas gifts.

However, on reflection, my presents were probably placed by my

Grandfather Bennett whose solitary attic bedroom I shared. Little

did he know how much his secret ministrations meant to me. Or

perhaps he guessed. Little acts of kindness make a child feel


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protected from the harshness of life. Charles Dodgson, the author of

Alice in Wonderland, wrote:.

Without, the frost, the blinding snow,

The storm-winds moody madness

Within, the firelights ruddy glow,

And childhoods nest of gladness.

The magic words shall hold thee fast:

Thou shalt not heed the raving blast.

Christmas then, as now, was rich with vestiges of pre-Christian

religions, when every tree might house a god, every animal be a

familiar, and the unknown forces of nature be venerated, feared, or

both.

The coming of Christianity to the British Isles had chased away

these imaginative religions, but their departure had not been

complete, for the garlands that once decked the groves of outlandishpagan gods are now pinned to our walls to herald the coming of

Christmas, and sprigs of mistletoe that once yielded to the golden

knives of pagan priests, hung from our ceiling, although I cannot

remember any kissing taking place in my home, but who knows

what transpired when young eyes were closed and catch-all ears

snuffed shut by sleep?

In Christian England the only house of worship where

mistletoe was permitted was in the Minster at York, the

county town of Yorkshire. Mistletoe was frowned on

because of its ancient associations with Druids fertility

rites. But at York each Christmastide bundles of


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mistletoe were laid on the great altar before a sort of

Urbi et Orbi manifesto of a public liberty, pardon, and

freedom to all sorts of inferior and wicked people at the

gates of the city to the four corners of the earth.

In other places children played active parts in the festival of

Christmas. In some parts Yorkshire they wended their way from

door to door to summon dwellers with their traditional call,

We wish you a Merry ChristmasAnd a Happy New Year.

Please may we be

The Lucky Birds here?

Then the doors would open and the Lucky Birdsbe handed a few

coppers. It is told that this custom still lives. There were other

customs that enchanted children in their Yorkshire Christmas. Itmust be understood that Christmas was a time when more traditions

of family, community, and faith are loosed than in all the rest of the

year, and children figure largely in these. Author George Collard, in

his delightful and informative bookA Yorkshire Christmas,tells us

that the season was called Yorkshires twelve days of madness, and

then he details some of the ancient folklore that in some form or

other yet survives.

Of these, the one that has always tugged at my heartstrings and

which brings tears to my eyes and a lump in my throat as it did in

my younger days is the legend that when Christmas Eve turned into

Christmas Day, the cattle in the byre would weep and kneel, and

that if any was present they would also be heard to speak! This


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deathless lore has been forged by Thomas Hardy into a poem whose

exquisite simplicity betrays the power of earnest faith that the world

has a hard time holding onto, but which is present in the hearts of

children not yet tainted by the doubts of a materialistic world. It is

called, The Oxen.

The Oxen

By Thomas Hardy (1915)

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

Now they are all on their knees,

An elder said as we sat in a flockBy the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen.

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few believe

In these years! Yet, I feel,If someone said on Christmas Eve

Come; see the oxen kneel

In the lonely barton by yonder comb

Our childhood used to know,I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

My classmates talked about Christmas and its anticipated prizes for

weeks before it came. They chatted excitedly about what they

hoped The Man in Red would bring to their bedsides though


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none of us dared risk calling him by any such impious name, lest he

be offended, and you know the cost of offending Father Christmas!

Children anticipated visits from favourite aunties, beneficent uncles,

and in, some cases, from spiteful cousins that would laugh at their

prezzies, and brag about their own. It seems that even Christmas

can not entirely transform contentious souls, although it opened

windows of opportunity for self-improvement, but their sour natures

shut such apertures as fast as they had opened, and life for the

cantankerous rolled on leaving them beyond the pale of the rapture

that brightened the spirits of harmonious folk. These differences in

human nature are well defined by Dickens in his excellent work, AChristmas Carol, at the moment when the miserly Ebeneezer

Scrooge is visited by his cheerful nephew, Fred.

The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he

might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little

cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge

had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so verymuch smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't

replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own

room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel,

the master predicted that it would be necessary for them

to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter,

and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort,

not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.

"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a

cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew,

who came upon him so quickly that this was the first

intimation he had of his approach.


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"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog

and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a

glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes

sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew.

"You don't mean that, I am sure."

"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have

you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry?You're poor enough."

"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right

have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be

morose? You're rich enough."

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the

moment, said "Bah!" again; and followed it up with"Humbug."

"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.

"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in

such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out

upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but

a time for paying bills without money; a time for findingyourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for

balancing your books and having every item in 'em

through a round dozen of months presented dead against

you? If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly,

"every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on


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his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and

buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He

should!"

Although I have no reason to doubt that my Auntie Nora and Uncle

Will Stead and their four children, our cousins, Brian, Shirley,

Audrey, and Keith, visited us around Christmastime, I have no

recollection that they ever shared our feast, but neither do I

remember any but pleasant words passing between us, which is how

it has always has been, and still.

The French Magasin Pittoresque of 1850 has an article

titled, "La Christmas," which includes an account of a

charitable act performed on Christmas Day, but whose

author stringently condemns the seasonably philanthropic

for deliberately and habitually avoiding the poor who sat

with them in Church on that festive day, concluding

dolefully that only in England are the old Yuletidetraditions honoured. He observes:

Now still, in England, Christmas is a time for bringing

people together. The gifts which among us are given on

New Year's Day are exchanged among our neighbours on

the day of the Saviours birth. It is the time of banquets

and of a free and open hospitality across the isle. On

every side chimneys smoke; the baker's ovens overflowwith meats brought by modest households; there the least

rich cook their Christmas treat; spits turn; streetlights,

torches, lamps, candles shine in the foggy night; from

midnight, servants, the suppliers of great houses go

singing to present the Christmas box where offerings fall.


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Ah, let all men come to understand that he whose misery

one eases may see in you a benefactor, but one only

becomes the brother of those whose joys we share!

Our Christmas came, as Christmas always does, and we children

were ready for it. On Christmas mornings, Ren, Arthur, and I

woke before Old Sol had blinked his een, or ere Chanticleer began

his dawn ditty, and scrambled to the bottom of our beds to unhook

the gift-laden pillowcases off the corner bedposts, and tip up the

knee socks that also hung with them that held without annualvariation an apple, an orange, and a shiny new penny. The

pillowcase held the present or presents. Our gifts might include a

book, and or a game, and we felt well done to.

Presents of a different kind were delivered courtesy of the

German Navy to Scarborough Castle at Christmas of

nineteen-fourteen. Although the Castle had not been usedas a military installation for more than two hundred and

fifty years, the German High Command decided to shell it

from their warships steaming through the North Sea.

Their principal targets were the ancient barrack buildings

that served no purpose, and after flattening these

insignificant structures they coldly bombed the town of

Scarborough, damaging buildings and inflicting fatalitieson those who were not engaged in the war effort in any

way except by keeping their morale high and their hopes

for victory strong, in the face of an action that served to

deliver to its perpetrators no advantages whatsoever.


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It seemed to us in our World War Two Christmases, that every

Christmas was a white Christmas and more than passing cold

besides. The short trousers I wore obligatory at that time for

English schoolboys allowed the snow, the sleet, and the

unrelenting frost wet then freeze and chap my legs to a painful raw

redness that hurt all the more when I got back into the warm and

feeling returned to bring tears often in its wake. Emily Brntes

woeful lyric catches the awfulness of a winter that had been too

harsh, stayed too long, and had admitted tragedy under colour of

innocence.

It Was Night

It was night, and on the mountains

Fathoms deep the snow-drifts lay;

Streams and waterfalls and fountains

Down in darkness stole away.

Long ago the hopeless peasant

Lost his sheep all buried there:

Sheep that through the summer pleasant

He had watched with fondest care.

Now no more a cheerful ranger

Following pathways known of yore,

Sad he stood, a wildered strangerOn his own unbounded moor.

Safe in the warmth of a blazing coal fire at home, our Christmas

decorations were grand green paper garlands with deep red flowers


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at intervals and slung at great peril to those who climbed rickety

stepladders to fix them to the walls with drawing pins, and a couple

of paper gala balls that opened to show their cunning constructions

and delightfully bright colours.

It was a sad sight when the austerity of wartime saw some of these

replaced with chains made of loops of paper lacking the depth of

colour, the shapes, and the antique texture of the traditional garlands

that did not look as if they had been constructed by unsophisticated

children. Looking back to a time eighty-seven years before I was

born, Catherine Waters wrote,

In 1848 the London Illustrated News carried a full-page

engraving of the Royal family encircling the Christmas

tree at Windsor castle; the engraving became widely

known from its reprinting, and was accompanied by a

description of the decorations used to adorn the tree and

an explanation of its function in the Royal household.

Clearly the custom of the tree met the needs of the newChristmas that was in the making. It could be set up

inside the home, the centre of the Victorian family

Christmas, it was a vehicle for the giving of presents

suitable to the age and sex of their recipients and its

decoration was a source of great appeal to the children

who were rapidly becoming the focus of the institution.

We always had the same Christmas Tree. It was about two feet

high, and its base was an imitation plant pot made from wood,

painted red, and lined around with a few fine bands of gold. Its

branches were cleverly made of twisted wire into which were

inserted goose feathers that had been dyed green and split along the


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length of their quills. Their barbs separated as the wire was wound

into a spiral, making favourable impressions the branches of fir

trees, each of which was tipped with a wooden holly berry.

It is told that eighth century Christian Saint Boniface

prevented a child from being put to death as a human

sacrifice by pagans when he knocked down the oak

sapling they were to use as the stake, and, miraculously, a

fir tree sprang up in its stead, whereupon Boniface

declared the tree holy and charged faithful Christians to

have one in their houses surrounded with love andfavours.

In eleventh century Europe fir trees were hung with

apples to symbolise the Tree of Life in the Garden of

Eden. Trees appeared in homes in 1521 when Princess

Hlne de Mecklembourg carried one to her home in

Paris after she married the Duc de Orleans. This custom

become so popular that Alsace almost ran out of pinetrees so their use was limited by statute to one tree to each

house.

Hanoverian Kings brought the Christmas Tree, or

Tannenbaum as they called it, to England, but the English

didnt like the German Royal family and few followed

the custom until the reign of Queen Victoria. Decorations

were home made, but later in Victorias reign when thetree became more popular, they were hung with

ornaments fashioned from silver wire, candles, tinsel, and

strings of glass beads. In eighteen eighty-two fancy

baubles made from garishly painted fine glass and electric

lights were introduced. Artificial trees were made in


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Germany in nineteen-thirty and were made from goose

feathers

Our well-worn glass baubles came out each Yuletide to deck the tree

along with tiny candles in crimped clip-on holders made of thin tin.

These were never lit because they represented a fire hazard and we

had no wish to further the work of an enemy whose seasonal gifts

included incendiary bombs delivered by small parachutes. Our

decorations seemed as eternal as Christmas itself. The tree was

always in place on the back sideboard on Christmas Morning to

greet us as we traipsed downstairs lugging our bulging sacks. In theinnocence of childhood we could not imagine a world without

Christmas, and yet ...

In 1643, Parliament abolished Christmas celebrations,

and Lord High Protector Oliver Cromwell banned

Christmas carols between 1649 and 1660. Cromwell

considered that Christmas should be kept as an intenselysacred day so the only permitted celebration was a prayer

service and a suitable sermon.

We dared not venture downstairs too early to show each other our

gifts for fear of waking the Kaken, alias Nanny, who had strict rules

about children and what and when they could do what the house

regulations allowed. Going downstairs before a responsible andapproved grown-up had descended was not permitted, not even at

Christmas.

When the familiar tread of our aged attendants was heard as one

such left the bathroom to descend the wooden hill, then it was that


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we dared also to descend to show what we had and to enjoy each

others gifts. I do not recall envy playing any part of these

discoveries. I do not remember everything about those times, but

cannot remember that particular passion raising its ugly head.

The English Christmas has been called, the

Christmas by which all other Christmases are measured,

wherever Christmas is celebrated, and a scribbler writing

about Sir Roger de Coverley, a fictional character who

typified the values of an old English country gentleman,

was portrayed as 'rather beloved than esteemed' in thesatirical magazine The Spectator of Tuesday, January 8,

1712, wrote:

Mr. Spectator,

Sir Roger, after the laudable Custom of his Ancestors,

always keeps open House at Christmas. I learned fromhim that he had killed eight fat Hogs for the Season, that

he had dealt about his Chines very liberally amongst his

Neighbours, and that in particular he had sent a string of

Hogs-puddings with a pack of Cards to every poor

Family in the Parish.

I have often thought, says Sir Roger, it happens very

well that Christmas should fall out in the Middle of theWinter. It is the most dead uncomfortable Time of the

Year, when the poor People would suffer very much from

their Poverty and Cold, if they had not good Cheer, warm

Fires, and Christmas Gambols to support them.


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I love to rejoice their poor Hearts at this season, and to

see the whole Village merry in my great Hall. I allow a

double Quantity of Malt to my small Beer, and set it a

running for twelve Days to every one that calls for it. I

have always a Piece of cold Beef and a Mince-Pye upon

the Table, and am wonderfully pleased to see my Tenants

pass away a whole Evening in playing their innocent

Tricks, and smutting one another...

Christmas food was always better than everyday food. Partly

because it was better, richer, more exotic fare than usual, and partlybecause of the Good Spirit of the Season that hovered over the table,

making us cheerful and boosting our appetites, as Christmas found

its way into our home for a brief stay.

At the centre of our festive board was the goose, besides which was

a joint of roast beef, and sometimes for a change a clove-studded

pork joint that obliged with fulsomely delicious crackling that made

our teeth ache for chewing so much of it at the neglect of the fleshof the swine.

Lesser in the hierarchy of presentations but equally welcome and

palatable were boiled and roast potatoes that vied with Brussels

sprouts, buttered garden peas, and Yorkshire puddings to edge the

slices of meat over the edges of our plates and onto the floor where

a well practised black cat waited for manna from heaven. It did not

have to wait very long nor very often.

Somewhere in the course of the main course the crackers are seized,

pulled, the remains, scavenged, and prizes claimed, and the de

rigueurpaper hats plonked unceremoniously onto our festive heads.


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It was Christmas and we were having fun! An English Christmas

with a cracker for everyone just isnt right.

Invented by London confectioner Tom Smith, in 1847,

Christmas Crackers were fashioned after his bon-bon

sweets, which he sold in what was to become the standard

twisted paper sweet-wrapper. Smiths crackers were

cardboard tubes wrapped in brightly coloured crepe

paper. They are pulled by two people to the point where

they break into two with a loud report. The biggest piece

contains the novelties.

The contents are a coloured paper hat or crown, a toy or

other trinket, and a printed motto or joke. Smith added

the "crack" to his crackers after enjoying the crack of a

log in his fireplace. His son, Walter, to distinguish his

fathers original product from the scores of imitators that

sprang up, was the first to put trinkets, toys, and paper

hats in them, and to vary their design.

After the meat course, during which we had pulled our crackers,

plonked the crowns on our head and tried to make sense of the

groaner jokes, the Christmas pudding that had been wrapped in

sheets of muslin and boiled in the washboiler for many hours several

weeks ago was borne in with customary gravitas.

The pudding was as big as a leather football and topped with a rich

white sauce and a sprig of holly. It was set down in the middle of

the table where the big meat plate had been, carved with the meat

knife, and thick wedges of it plopped onto our plates with a look


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from Nanny that made us feel as if we didnt deserve it. But,

merited or not, we shovelled it into our mouths as if we enjoyed it.

English Christmas pudding is a dense steamed pudding

made from a variety of dried fruit, nuts, brown sugars,

black treacle or molasses, and suet or butter. It is

effectively black from the sugars and treacle and the long

period of steaming or baking involved in its cooking.

The pudding dough can be soaked with citrus juice,

brandy, or other alcohol, unless you are a Latter-day Saint

or other teetotaller.

Christmas puddings are boiled in pudding cloths, that

makes them round, but since the beginning of the

twentieth century they have also been prepared in

pudding basins. They are traditionally cooked several

weeks before Christmas, and steamed for many hours,

and served after it has been reheated by steaming, and

either dressed with a spicy white sauce, or with warmedbrandy that is set alight to emit flames as the pudding is

borne in triumph to the dining table from the kitchen.

Nannys luscious Christmas cake followed the pudding. One of the

best parts of the season was licking out the huge bowls after the

cake and puddings had been mixed in them. To this day, cake

dough tastes better than cake to me. The Christmas Cake wasalmost as dense as the pudding but had a different texture and

flavour.

It was iced white, had a little festive nonsense on top, with a white,

red, and green paper frill around its outside. That frill acted out its


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part year on year until it was forced into early retirement after a

mere ten years due to losing an enthusiastic argument with the cake

knife.

After the cake came the mince pies. Those not already pogged to

busting became so after forcing two or three of the rich pies into

their mouths. The question of why we think we can cram four or

five times more than our normal intake down inside us when we are

sat at the Christmas table still awaits a sensible answer?

The mince pie began its life perhaps a thousand years agoin mediaeval kitchens where it was called the "chewette,"

that was either baked or fried. Originally, these were

minced meat and spice confections, but eventually, dried

fruit and sweet ingredients were added for variety. By

the sixteen hundreds, 'mince' or shred pie was a

Christmas speciality. By the mid-sixteen hundred, liver

and chopped meat were abandoned and were replaced by

a mixture of minced suet, dried fruits and peels, and nutsthat were called mincemeat, and still are despite the fact

that it contains no meat, or meat products apart from suet.

Mince pies are a favourite food of Father Christmas, and

Yorkshire children and their descendants always put a

plate with a couple of them on in the hearth or in some

other place where he cannot miss them, along with a glass

of milk and a carrot or two for the reindeer, as thank youpresents for well-filled stockings and pillowcases, and for

plenty on and around the tree.

Yorkshire tradition insists that the mincemeat mix is only

to be stirred sunwise or else you risk bad luck for the


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year ahead from affronting Sol Invictus, which is

evidence of the antiquity of the custom. It is also a

Yorkshire tradition that you make a wish when eating

your first mince pie of the season, and that these princely

pies are eaten in solemn silence. Eating a minimum of

one pie per day on each of the Twelve days of Christmas

is thought by some to bring good luck for the coming

year, and considered by cardiologists to be a heart attack

in the making!

The True Yorkshire Mince pie has a star on top

representing the Star that led the Wise Men to baby Jesusin Bethlehem. Other counties have adopted the Yorkshire

customs. When Mince Pyes are well made, they are

incomparably scrumptious.

Christmas is, as I have already said, a family time. But at

Fitzwilliam Street it was never strictly a family affair because

several of our lodgers had nowhere else to go, having no family orfriends but us. It did not seem strange because they had always

been there since we could remember. But it make me realise,

thinking about these men in later years, that it is a wretched and

unpredictable to be dependent on strangers for ones home and

kindred amenities. Christmas must be hard on lonely old men when

such friends as they had have died off, and they are left alone with

no one to make pleasant their staying or mourn their passing.

A pleasant and affable geniality settled on us as we sat there full in

the sitting-cum-dining room in the cellar of Nannys lodging house

that was out home. Some of it was alcohol related, although alcohol

was never consumed at the dining table, but some had been out for

an early start at the pub, and whatever its cause it was a welcome


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change from the sour paranoia that normally sullied the house and

its victims. That proves that Christmas works its peculiar magic

everywhere, and that few are totally immune to its effects.

The story is told of the 'Christmas Truce' of 1914, in

which the soldiers of the Western Front laid down their

arms on Christmas Day and met in No Man's Land,

exchanging food and cigarettes, as well as playing

football. The pause in the fighting was unofficial and

spontaneous, a gesture of goodwill from men arrayed to

kill each other. Not only is this a true story, but it wasmore widespread than most people realise.

The most famous truce was that between British and

German forces. However, French and Belgium troops

also took part. Some versions tell that British troops

heard their German opponents singing Christmas carols

and joined in.

Private Frank Richards of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, said

both sides erected signs wishing the enemy 'Merry

Christmas' and some men crossed the lines unarmed with

their hands in the air signifying that they were making a

peaceful approach. These were met by soldiers from the

opposing side. By the time their officers had latched onto

what was happening the first meeting had already taken

place. Most officers then either looked the other way orelse joined in.

In many sectors, the fraternisation lasted all of Christmas

day. Exchanges of Food and supplies were made and, it

is told, in some places tools and equipment were


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borrowed from the enemy to make their trenches more

habitable.

Games of football were played using whatever came to

hand for a ball, while fallen comrades, abandoned on the

battlefield between the entrenchments of the warring

armies that earned the name of No Man's Land, were

retrieved and buried as decently as possible.

In many zones of battle, the Christmas Truce lasted much

longer. Richard's account told how both sides held their

fire over Boxing Day, when British troops were relievedand left the front line. In other places, Christmas

goodwill lasted several weeks. But the demands of war

urged peace on earth, goodwill to all men to finally

wear off, and the murderous struggle was continued.

Our own Christmas didnt last long either. As it died into the old

year the good spirit seemed to go with it. Before we were ready,Christmas was over, and the unaccustomed geniality had gone as

quickly as it had come, and the torment of daily routines rolled back

over us as the chill of a sea fret creeps ashore. It froze us to the

bone, and buried all that we had experienced in our short-lived

Christmas.

Festoons were glumly taken down, and with their falling went our

spirits as the magic was refolded and stored for another long year.The little tree was stripped of its trinkets, its baubles were boxed,

and its lush limbs folded before it was reboxed, losing some of its

berries in the process to rattle around when the box was settled to its

resting place on the shelf below the long silent row of bells, there to

slumber until summoned back into service the following year.


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And then, too soon Christmas was extinguished. Yet, it had taken

place, and because it had something had changed. Exactly what the

difference was is difficult to quantify, but something had happened.

Even though the world changed back to what it had been before

Christmas had come and motorists no longer picked up stranded

revellers whose last buses had departed into the darkness and foul

weather of a winters night, something lingered in my heart.

Something was at work deep inside me. Christmas was working its

merry magic. Although I did not know it, nephew Fred knew what

it was, and, perhaps, expressed Dickens own feelings for Christmas

in words he had Fred say to his unconverted Uncle Scrooge.

"...I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time,

when it has come round apart from the veneration due

to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it

can be apart from that as a good time: a kind, forgiving,

charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the

long calendar of the year, when men and women seem byone consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to

think of people below them as if they really were fellow-

passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures

bound on other journeys. And therefore, though it has

never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe

that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say,

God bless it!"

Even after my toys were broken, and my games had mysteriously

lost essential pieces, and the whole seeming pretence of good times

was over, something remained to work within me as yeast works

deep in dough, swelling, aerating, converting ordinary into


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wonderful, commonplace into extraordinary, and what is banal into

the miraculous, so I enjoyed faint stirrings that led me to seek to

understand what seemed inconceivable, and ask myself, What is it

that makes the difference at Christmas? What, exactly, is

Christmas? The cold hard facts of history didnt shed much light

on how a holiday could be so many things to so many people. I will

tell you some and you can see for yourself.

Christmas in England began in AD 597, when St

Augustine landed on her shores with monks who wanted

to bring Christianity to the Anglo Saxons, who becamethe English from their name, Angles. the earliest

mention of a special feast for the Nativity, which is the

Feast of the Birth of Jesus, being held on the 25th

December is in the Philocalian Calendar in the year 354,

and refers to earlier such feats dating from 336. In 388,

Saint John Chrysostom that means Golden Mouth,

wrote that the observing of the festival of the Nativity on

December 25th was not yet ten years old. Recordsshow that Augustine came to Britain with his missionary

monks from Rome, and on Christmas Day of 597 he

baptised more than ten thousand of the English into

Christianity.

In the year 816, the Council of Chelsea enforced the

observance of Christmas on December 25th throughout

Britain. In the time of the Saxon Ethelred 991-1016 itwas decreed that the Nativity period should be one of

peace and goodwill, when all contention and arguing

must end.

Until 1170, the Christmas was called by the Latin names


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of 'In Festis Nativitatis' or 'Natalis,' meaning, The Feast of

the Nativity, or Birth of Jesus Christ. The anglicised

form, 'Christes-Masse' did not come into usage until after

the Norman invasion in 1066.

In 1644 the Puritan Parliament first sat on Christmas Day

to set a trend of 'no Christmas,' and in 1645 they declared

Christmas an ordinary working day, and Christmas was

forbidden! Anyone found making Christmas Mince Pyes

could be arrested and jailed.

After the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in1660, things got better, but after over a hundred years of

puritanical control, many of the old customs were not

restored as they had once been, although there was more

than a hint of the Christmases of Olde Merrie England

that bled into Georgian England, for the majority the old

customs were lost, forgotten, and unimportant. The

revival of Christmas as an English religious festival

centred on the family is due to Victorian scholarsinterviewing ancients in the tiny villages of Northern

England where time slipped by more slowly than in the

metropolitan conurbations, and traditions were hung on to

as revered contacts with their sacred past.

As I grew towards my teen years I learned at the

Methodist Sunday School I faithfully attended thatChristmas was not really about Father Christmas, but that

Father Christmas himself was connected with a more

profound and important festival that was hidden in the

name Christmas, and that it was the remembrance and

celebration of the birth of a baby who was called Jesus,


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who was miraculously born to God Almighty and a

Jewish maid called Mary, and that Jesus was the long

awaited Messiah who gave his life as a sacrifice to save

all mankind. Yet there was much more to this Christmas

thing than a history lesson. It was an affair of the heart or

else it was nothing. Archbishop Temple of York, later of

Canterbury, wrote of Christmas, explaining,

All kinds of people, whatever their religious beliefs ordisbeliefs, have adopted Christmas as the festival of

family and friendship. It is a great thing to have such

festival generally recognised, whether its religious basis

is accepted or not. It helps to keep together friendships

which may be drifting into forgetfulness, and it

strengthens the bonds of affection alike between friends

and kinfolk. Christmas itself is a very real influence for

the maintenance of goodwill amongst men.

Of those points I was convinced early in my life, but there was

something other lurking behind the seasonal facades of glitter,

good humour, and feasting that I had not quite touched or beentouched by. Temple continued:

What Christians commemorate on Christmas Day is

not merely the Birth of a Child who grew up to be a


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remarkable man; it is the turning point of human history

and the appearance within it of the Eternal God revealing

Himself in human life. The Word was made flesh and

we beheld his glory. So let us feast and be merry,

not because tomorrow we die but because today Jesus

Christ is born; and if that is the reason for our merriment,

it will be such as to bring no sorrow in its train. And

when today is over let us carry that divine merriment into

our sombre and busy lives, and let all our mirth be such

as Love Divine inspires.

So it will be with us if we can join the Shepherds and theKings in their worship at the manger cradle. For to

worship is to humble ones self before Him to whom

worship is given and open ones heart to receive Him. If

we can humble ourselves before the innocence of helpless

childhood and open our hearts to receive its simplicity, its

trustfulness, its happiness, its love, then for us too

Christmas will have been the birthday of Love Divine in

the hearts to which we invite and welcome Him. Oncemore then, as when the day began, so now as it draws to a

close Come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.

Then it made sense to me. It was not a profound theological truth

that supplied the answer, nor was it historical facts that meshed all

the formerly grinding gears that milled around my questions of

Christmas and the changes that swept over people especially my people, normally so stolid and set in their daily rounds, and

apparently unmoveable it was nothing less than a Divinely

appointed miracle.


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Poet Richard Crawshaw expressed our wonder at the Incarnation of

the Son of God in his contemplative work, Sospetto DHerode in

which a guilty King Herod contemplates what and who Jesus might

be and struggles to make sense of the contrasts between the Jesus he

has experienced, and what in his dark moments of cold fear he is

afraid he might be.

That the great Angell-blincking light should shrinke

His gaze, to shine in a poore shepherds eye;

That the unmeasurd God so low should sinke

As prisner in a few poore rags to lie;That from His Mothers Brest, he milke should drinke

Who feeds with nectar Heavns faire family;

That a vile manger His low Bed should prove,

Who in a Throne of stars Thunders above.

That He Whom the Sun serves, should faintly peepe,

Through clouds of infant flesh: that the old

Eternal Word should be a child, and weepe:That he who made the fire should feare the cold:

That Heavns high Majesty his court should keepe

In a clay cottage, by each blast controld:

That Glories self should serve our griefs and feares:

And free Eternitie submit to yeares.

That the unmeasurd Godwas the Father of His Divine Son wasthe great secret of Christmas from which I had been so removed

even as I had stood close to its signs as to touch but not comprehend

them, and with the sunrise of this understanding I knew the

customary apparatus of Christmas would never be the same to me

again.


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Yet what of my friend, Father Christmas? What could I make of

him in the light of these new truths? I had thought of Father

Christmas as warm and well rounded, a dispenser of cheer and good

gifts, a transmogrifying power in a troubled and selfish world in

which millions were engaged in annihilating each other.

In 1822, American Clement Clarke Moore described his own image

of Father Christmas in his well known and oft-quoted poem, 'A Visit

from St Nicholas.'

He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot,And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a pedlar just opening his sack.

His eyes how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.

He had a broad face, and a little round belly

That shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump,--a right jolly old elf--

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself.

But until I actually discovered what motivated the original Father

Christmas, Saint Nicholas of Myra, a Christian bishop who

habitually gave generous gifts to the poor and needy the mystery


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remained unsolved. I found that Bishop Nicholas, sometimes

referred to familiarly as Saint Nick,was actually imitating Jesus,

whom he revered as the Christ the Only Begotten Son of God, and

the Saviour and Redeemer of mankind.

I learned that Jesus ministered to the poor, the needy, the outcast,

and that he taught that God was love, and therefore we should love

each other. So powerful is his message that even when watered

down to little more than a transparency, it retains its power to

transform lives, communities, and nations, even my childhood

home. Christmas was and always will be a miracle of immense

proportions. I had come to understand that the founder of the feastwas not Father Christmas, but his exemplar Jesus Christ.

Yet my Christmas celebrations do not omit Father Christmas.

Rather it honours his example as he honoured the example of the

One he served. I like Christmas because it is a special time for

children. I like children and used to be one myself. Now that I

know the secret of Christmas it is always a special time and will

remain so no matter how old I become.

Since I laid bare the essential of the Christmas Gift, Christmas is

much more than baubles, trees, candles, gifts, feasting, baking,

Father Christmas, friends, and warm fuzzy love. I have been

privileged to unwrap the mystery of the Gift that long puzzled me,

and to find at its heart the Babe of Bethlehem whose universal love

breaks through the troubles and trials of this disappointing world,

and touches our hearts, even though we do not know what ishappening to us, or why. Christs Love is the heart of the gift of

Christmas whose power I have felt and witnessed in all the

Christmases in all the long years of my life.


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With that precious Gift locked in my heart it is certain that if our

festive board were bare, our tree a shabby thing devoid of gifts, and

if the usual raft of cards from old friends did not come, or no visitor

crossed our threshold, Christmas would still be the consummate

experience because of Him whom we honour by its keeping.

Tiny Tim was understandably mistaken when he saluted Ebeneezer

Scrooge as the founder of the feast! Cratchitts employer, the

miserly and ill-humoured crank who scoffed at Christmas and would

not open his heart or his purse to help a soul in need, was changed

by the pure Love of Christ which is the Divine gift of Charity

described by the Apostle Paul as the greatest of all spiritual gifts.

Scrooge, the old skinflint, was frightened into being Christlike. But

whatever his motivation the important thing is that he made the

transition, and that saved him from misery in mortality and an

eternity of being weighed down with chains forged from his sins and

from despising his fellowmen.

I know that the changes to which I was led have saved me from alife starved of faith, hope, and charity, and have increased my

capacity to love and be loved. And so, with overflowing, heart I

raise my voice and say,

Thank you Jesus, and a Holy and Merry Christmas to you for the

greatest of all Christmas gifts and for an enchantment that stays on

and on long after December twenty-fifth has been swallowed up by

the Old Year.

How different are my Christmases now that I have been led to

unwrap the greatest Gift of all! And how grateful to God I am for

the gift of his Son Jesus Christ. May we all remember as we unwrap


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our wondrous gifts this Christmas that one gift that is at the centre of

all we do and all we feel.

And so I am led to exclaim:

God bless our Christmas as remembering

Gods holy Son, a tiny babe was he;

Whose coming long had been foretold

But whom the eyes of faith

Alone could see.

Helpless then he who would our helper be,And needing succouring

Who succours you and me

With his eternal love and gifts

That raise us from the earth

To heaven, and higher than we know

To sit with him in glory

He gave the gift none other could

A spotless Lamb to cleanse with bloodAnd seal our souls to be with him,

The Saviour, and to share

In all his Father has prepared

To seal on him, and he on us,

Bound each to each, and all to God.

It is the babe who, lying there

In manger straw, the veil divides.

He shows us, walking this dark earth,What he had won for us to share

With Him when he returned

To sit on Gods pure throne

And, beckoning, summon us to home.


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Yet some who look on his sweet face,

See but a baby; others see the Christ.

Some think him trifling, human.

Others know him Lord, the Son of God.

Yet so today, some see though God-filled eyes

The Saviour of mankind,

Whilst others to his state are careless, blind,And slow to see the infant in the straw

As the fulfiller of the ancient Law.

The promised Christ,

The answer to our need,

To save and raise we who are Adams seed.

He lifts the stumbling, rests the weary soul,

Comforts the dying, makes the sinner whole.And from the pain with which our days are rife,

He heals and grants eternal life.

And me, what do I see when I behold his face?

In his dear eyes I see the fount of love,

The vessel of Gods grace.

The promises that at a coming dayWill raise me to his side, and keep me safe always.

And though at Christmastime I smile to see

Him shown a swaddled child,

I will remember his divinity, his making free

My stricken soul, on whom he looked and smiled.

Then shall this time be filled with thoughts of love

For him who for us left his home aboveTo serve, to teach, to suffer and to die,

That each of us shall not abandoned lie,

But rise on shafts of glorious light

To see our Father God in heavens light

When at the end our shining souls take flight


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To God the Father.

To God the Father I give thanks to know

He sent his Son to look on us below,

To make us His as once before we were,And take us home again in peace and joy.

I wish you a very, merry, and a holy Christmas.

Copyright Christmas 2007

Ronnie Bray

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Documents

Christmases Past and Present