We are heirs of all the ages, and in no way are we more so than in our Christmas celebration. Though we celebrate it as a Christian festival, the festivities that mark it are part of the universal history of the race. In pagan Rome and Greece, in the days of Teutonic barbarians, and in the distant times of ancient Egyptian civilization, in the infancy of the race East and West, North and South, the period of the winter solstice was a time of rejoicing and festivity. It is good to think that Christmas to-day expresses the kindest and best in all the celebrations which preceded it and from which it sprang. The spirit of kindliness and good cheer, with the lapse of the ages, has been freed of the coarseness that once attended it. The strictest Puritan of to-day welcomes the "quips and cranks and wreathed smiles" of the season, and joviality and merry-making are the order of the day at Christmas banquets—a joviality sanctified and made glorious by good will to all men.
The holly and mistletoe of Christmas are a survival of ancient Druidical worship, the Christmas carol is a new birth, purified and exalted, of the hymners of the Roman saturnalia, the Christmas banquet itself is a reminiscence of the feasts in honor of ancient gods and goddesses, when, as Cato said of corresponding feasts in imperial Rome, commemorating the birth of Cybele, the prospect that drew one thither was "not so much the pleasure of eating and of drinking as that of finding oneself among his friends, and of conversing with them." Nay; the very idea of the Child God, which gives its meaning to the Feast of Nativity, was prefigured and foretold not only in the words of sybil, seer, and prophet, but in the infant gods of the Greek, the Egyptian, the Hindoo, and the Buddhist, which in various ways showed the rude attempt of the earlier races to grasp the idea of a perfect human child who is also God.
Great as Christmas is, however, nobody knows anything definite about its origin; nobody knows who first celebrated it, nor when, nor where, nor how. And no one even knows whether December 25 is, indeed, the right anniversary of Christ's nativity. This anomaly is due to the habit of the early Christians of considering the celebration of birthdays as heathenish. The birthday of Jesus himself was not excepted. But after the triumph of Christianity the prejudice died out, and the date of the birth of Christ became a matter of ecclesiastical investigation. St. John Chrysostom, writing in 386 A.D., says that St. Cyril, at the request of Julius (Bishop or Pope of Rome from 337 to 352), made a careful inquiry as to the exact date. Cyril reported that the Western churches had for a long time held it to be December 25. It is true that other Christian communities preferred other dates. In many Eastern churches the 6th of January had been fixed on as the anniversary of Christ's spiritual birth; that is, his baptism with the Holy Spirit; and this date was later held to be the anniversary of the visit of the Magi. Even to this day the Armenian church celebrates January 6, as Christmas. The Mormons believe that Christ was born in April.
Pope Julius, however, was so far satisfied with the report of Cyril that somewhere about the middle of the fourth century he established the festival at Rome on December 25. Before the end of that century that date was accepted by practically all the nations of Christendom. This acceptance was made easier by the fact that it is the date of the winter solstice—the turning point of the year, when winter, having reached its apogee, must begin to decline again towards spring, when, for unknown ages before the Christian era, pagan Europe, through all its tribes and nations, had been accustomed to celebrate its chief festival.
It was always the aim of the early church to reconcile heathen converts to the new faith by the adoption of all the more harmless features of their festivities and ceremonials. With Christmas the Church had a difficult task. Though it aimed to retain only the pagan forms, it found it could not restrain the pagan spirit. In spite of clerical protests and papal anathemas; in spite of the condemnation of the sane and the wise, Christmas in the early days often reproduced all the worst orgies, the debaucheries, and the indecencies of the Bacchanalia and the Saturnalia. Even the clergy were whirled into the vortex. A special celebration, called the Feast of Fools, was started, as learned doctors explained, with the purpose that "the folly which is natural to and born with us may exhale at least once a year." The intention of the new feast was excellent. But in practice the liberty thus granted quickly degenerated into license. The Council of Auxerre inquired into the matter. A Flemish divine rose at the council, and declared that the festival was an excellent thing and quite as acceptable to God as that of the Immaculate Conception. His like-minded brethren loudly applauded him. Then Gerson, the leading theologian of the day, made a counter-sensation by answering that "if all' the devils in hell had put their heads together to devise a feast that should utterly scandalize Christianity, they could not "have improved upon this one." If even among the clergy heathen traditions persisted in such force, what better could be expected from the laity? The wild revels, indeed, of the Christmas time in olden days almost stagger belief. Obscenity, drunkenness, blasphemy—there was pause at nothing.
But there is another side to the picture. In the coarser days of our ancestors riot and revelry did, to be sure, go hand in hand, but the revelry was of a vigorous, lusty and hearty sort unknown to these quieter times that have eliminated the riot. As we read of the great feats performed by these heroes of the tankard and the trencher, by these adepts in all out-door sports, the Gargantuan good nature of the season makes more impression on us than the cruelty, gluttony and drunkenness which often sullied it. A race of jolly giants must needs give and take hard blows. Of the glory of Merrie Christmas in Merrie Old England we have all read. Christmas in the old days began in a preliminary way on December 16, and it did not end until January 6, or Twelfth-Night. All this period was given up to holiday making. It was a democratic festival of merrymaking. The English couatry gentlemen of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries held open-house. With daybreak on Christmas morning the tenants and neighbors thronged into the hall. The nut-brown ale was broached; Blackjacks and Cheshire cheese, with the concomitants of toast and sugar and nutmeg, were plentifully distributed. The Hachin, or great sausage, had to be boiled at daybreak and, if it failed to be ready, two young men, taking the cook by the arm, ran her about the market-place until she was ashamed of her laziness. After early church the gentlemen returned to breakfast on brawn and mustard and malmsey. The boar's head was brought in, and the whole company settled down for the pleasure of the day, which the Puritan Prynne later described as "drinking, roaring, healthing, dicing, carding, dancing, masques and stage plays . . . which Turks and Infidels would abhor to practice."
Puritanism threatened the very existence of Christmas, and brought over with it in the Mayflower the anti-Christmas feeling to New England. Even so early as 1621 Governor Bradford was called upon to rebuke "certain lusty yonge men," who had just come over in the ship Fortune. "On ye day called Christmas day," William Bradford writes, "ye Gov'r. caled them out to worke (as was used), but ye most of this new company excused themselves and said it went against their consciences to worke on ye day. So ye Gov'r. tould them that if they made it mater of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed. So he led away ye rest, and left them; but when they came home at noone from their worke, he found them in ye streete at play, openly; some pitching ye barr, and some at stoole-ball, and such like sports. So he went to them and tooke away their implements, and tould them that it was against his conscience that they should play and others worke. If they made ye keeping of it matter of devotion, let them kepe their houses, but ther should be no gameing or revelling in ye streets. Since which time nothing hath been atempted that way, at least openly."
In England the feeling against Christmas culminated in 1643, when the Roundhead Parliament abolished the observance of saints' days and "the three grand festivals" of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide," any law, statute, custom, constitution or canon to the contrary in any wise nothwithstanding." King Charles protested in vain. In London, however, there was an alarming disposition to observe Christmas. The mob attacked the tradesmen who, by opening their shops, flouted the holiday. In several counties disorder was threatened; but Parliament took strong measures, and in the twelve years during which the great festivals were discountenanced there was no further disturbance, and the observance of Christmas as a general holiday was discontinued.
The General Court of Massachusetts, following the example of Parliament in 1659, enacted that "anybody who is found observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting, or any other way, any such day as Christmas day, shall pay for every such offence five shillings." Christmas was restored to England with royalty; in Massachusetts the anti-Christmas statute was repealed in 1681.
Many stories are told to account for the use of the Christmas tree. One of the best is the legend of St. Boniface. About a swelling hillock, crowned with the great "Thunder Oak," sacred to the pagan god Thor, had gathered one wintry night long ago a host of white-clad heathen warriors. With their women and children they faced a pagan altar. In the light of a great fire near the altar stood a hoary High Priest, beside a kneeling child, who was doomed to die by the blow of the hammer, a sacrifice to Thor, the Hammerer. Just as the blow was falling the holy Boniface appeared, turned the hammer aside with his cross, rescued the boy, told the simple story of Jesus, who does not desire the sacrifice of human life, and felled the oak with mighty blows. Just behind the tree stood a young fir tree, pointing a green spire toward the stars. "Here," said the apostle, "is the living tree, with no stain of blood upon it, that shall be the sign of your new worship. See how it points to the sky. Let us call it the tree of the Christ-child. Take it up and carry it to the chieftain's hall, for this is the birth-night of the White Christ. You shall go no more into the shadows of the forest to keep your feasts with secret rites of shame. You shall keep them at home with laughter and song and rites of love."
As a regular institution the Christmas tree can be traced back only to the sixteenth century. During the Middle Ages it suddenly appeared at Strassburg. For two hundred years the fashion was maintained along the Rhine when, suddenly, at the beginning of the last century, it spread over all Germany, and fifty years later had conquered Christendom. It was Queen Victoria's marriage to a German prince that led to the introduction of the German custom into England. In America the German emigrant brought the tree with him and it was soon taken up by all classes.
The custom of giving gifts at Christmas came from the Roman Saturnalia. Christmas candles come from a variety of sources, among which the Hebrew Feast of Lights has been suggested. The Christmas card is a new element, originating in England some sixty years ago. Santa Claus is the good Dutch Saint Nicholas visiting children on Christmas day instead of on his own birthday.
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