Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan | Page 3

by D. Allan. From Hone's "Every-day Book"
(London, 1826)
ST. FRANCIS INSTITUTES THE PRESEPIO AT GRECCIO 114 By
Giotto. (Upper Church of St. Francis, Assisi)
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THE BAMBINO OF ARA COELI 115
THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS 121 From Broadside No.
305 in the Collection of the Society of Antiquaries at Burlington House
THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM 140 From "Le grant Kalendrier
& compost des Bergiers" (N. le Rouge, Troyes, 1529)
THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI 154 Masaccio. (Berlin: Kaiser
Friedrich Museum)
NEW YEAR MUMMERS IN MANCHURIA 161 An Asiatic example
of animal masks
CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONSHIRE--THE MUMMERS COMING
IN 229

THE GERMAN CHRISTMAS-TREE IN THE EIGHTEENTH
CENTURY 263 From an engraving by Joseph Kellner
CHRISTMAS MORNING IN LOWER AUSTRIA 281 By Ferdinand
Waldmüller (b. 1793)
YORKSHIRE SWORD-ACTORS: ST. GEORGE IN COMBAT
WITH ST. PETER 297 From an article by Mr. T. M. Fallow in The
Antiquary, May, 1895
THE EPIPHANY IN FLORENCE 337
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The Origin and Purpose of Festivals--Ideas suggested by
Christmas--Pagan and Christian Elements--The Names of the
Festival--Foundation of the Feast of the Nativity--Its Relation to the
Epiphany--December 25 and the Natalis Invicti--The Kalends of
January--Yule and Teutonic Festivals--The Church and Pagan
Survivals--Two Conflicting Types of Festival--Their Interaction--Plan
of the Book.
It has been an instinct in nearly all peoples, savage or civilized, to set
aside certain days for special ceremonial observances, attended by
outward rejoicing. This tendency to concentrate on special times
answers to man's need to lift himself above the commonplace and the
everyday, to escape from the leaden weight of monotony that oppresses
him. "We tend to tire of the most eternal splendours, and a mark on our
calendar, or a crash of bells at midnight maybe, reminds us that we
have only recently been created."[1]{1} That they wake people up is
the great justification of festivals, and both man's religious sense and
his joy in life have generally tended to rise "into peaks and towers and
turrets, into superhuman exceptions which really prove the rule."{2} It
is difficult to be religious, impossible to be merry, at every moment of

life, and festivals are as sunlit peaks, testifying, above dark valleys, to
the eternal radiance. This is one view of the purpose and value of
festivals, and their function of cheering people and giving them larger
perspectives has no doubt been an important reason for their
maintenance in the past. If we could trace the custom of
festival-keeping back to its origins in primitive society |18| we should
find the same principle of specialization involved, though it is probable
that the practice came into being not for the sake of its moral or
emotional effect, but from man's desire to lay up, so to speak, a stock of
sanctity, magical not ethical, for ordinary days.
The first holy-day-makers were probably more concerned with such
material goods as food than with spiritual ideals, when they marked
with sacred days the rhythm of the seasons.{3} As man's consciousness
developed, the subjective aspect of the matter would come increasingly
into prominence, until in the festivals of the Christian Church the main
object is to quicken the devotion of the believer by contemplation of
the mysteries of the faith. Yet attached, as we shall see, to many
Christian festivals, are old notions of magical sanctity, probably quite
as potent in the minds of the common people as the more spiritual ideas
suggested by the Church's feasts.
In modern England we have almost lost the festival habit, but if there is
one feast that survives among us as a universal tradition it is Christmas.
We have indeed our Bank Holidays, but they are mere days of rest and
amusement, and for the mass of the people Easter and Whitsuntide
have small religious significance--Christmas alone has the character of
sanctity which marks the true festival. The celebration of Christmas has
often little or nothing to do with orthodox dogma, yet somehow the
sense of obligation to keep the feast is very strong, and there are few
English people, however unconventional, who escape altogether the
spell of tradition in this matter.
Christmas--how many images the word calls up: we think of
carol-singers and holly-decked churches where people hymn in
time-honoured strains the Birth of the Divine Child; of frost and snow,
and, in contrast, of warm hearths and homes bright with light and

colour, very fortresses against the cold; of feasting and revelry, of
greetings and gifts exchanged; and lastly of vaguely superstitious
customs, relics of long ago, performed perhaps out of respect for use
and wont, or merely in jest, or with a deliberate attempt to throw
ourselves back into the past, to re-enter for a moment the mental
childhood of the race. These are a few of |19| the pictures that rise
pell-mell in the minds