Christmas - Christ's mass

             In pre-Reformation times, Advent leading to Christmas in church was a solemn occasion with three weeks of formal services.[1] The reading of Isaiah and the prophecy of Christ’s birth was a given. Fasting was recommended with fish preferred to meat. Marriages were not allowed because sexual activity was inappropriate (also applied to Lent). A vigil and fasting occurred on Christmas Eve as a precursor to the feast on Christmas Day. Three masses were celebrated, namely on Christmas Eve, at dawn on Christmas Day and then later in the morning. The following three days were festivals, St Stephen (Boxing Day, so called in 1871 and no one knows why), St John the Evangelist (27 December) and finally Holy Innocents Day (28 December) with the custom of having a boy-bishop – see the post on ‘Choristers’. There were further festivals on 1 and 6 January. The centre pieces of the Christmas liturgy were the shepherds at Christmas, the three Magi at Epiphany and Simeon at Candlemas. The three events are similar in that they are welcoming and presenting Jesus as the Messiah.

Visit of the three Magi on the reredos in the Lady Chapel.

     Richard II spent Christmas 1397 at Lichfield staying in the palace in the Close. His stay until January 6 with a large protecting bodyguard, according to the allegations of a monk of Evesham, meant the consumption of twenty cattle, three hundred sheep, and a daily large quantity of poultry.

            The church could be decorated with holly and ivy, and more candles than usual. There is no record of a nativity scene with a crib being displayed.[2] In homes there was generally much celebration with food, games and gift-giving on New Year’s Day. Carols were sung outside of church and usually accompanied with dancing. The twelve days of Christmas could be a holiday for the prosperous, but for many there was a need to keep working. The season of Christmas lasted to Candlemas on 2 February. Candlemas was the time of ‘light’ and almost everyone attended church and brought in a candle. In some places the people processed to the church carrying torches. New candles for the coming year in the church were blessed.

The Nativity, from a 14th-century Sherbrooke Missal. The Missal on parchment originates from East Anglia and is held in The National Library of Wales.

             The origins of the allegorical Father Christmas are obscure, but might have developed from folklore figures in Anglo-Saxon times. The earliest evidence for a character called Christmas can be found in a 15th-century carol, in which a 'Sir Christëmas' shares the news of Christ's birth. One portrayal of Father Christmas was a large man who wore a green robe lined with fur and a crown of holly, ivy, or mistletoe. To link this with a pagan ritual sounds plausible, but is conjecture.

Father Christmas crowned with a holly wreath and holding a staff, wassail bowl and Yule log. From Illustrated London News,1848. A red suited Father Christmas carrying a sack of toys first appeared as an illustration to a poem in 1881.

     In post-Reformation times, not much changed with Christmas traditions except the saints were not venerated and this included St Nicholas the saint for children held on 6 December when a boy-bishop was picked from amongst the choristers. It has been postulated that since St Nicholas was associated with gift-giving his cult gradually morphed into that of Father Christmas; however, this is tenuous. Church liturgy changed, see the post ‘Reformation.’ These changes to the church service did not stop festivities. Henry VIII celebrated twelve days of Christmas with prolonged feasting and the menu would include traditional boar’s head, peacock, swan, lark, partridge, quail, roast beef and prawn pasties. The hall, usually at Greenwich Palace, was decorated with greenery, dried fruit, berries, and candles. Carols were sung as well as danced. There was much pageantry, disguising and convivial merrymaking, all led by the mischievous ‘The Lord of Misrule.’ Mummers would perform a play. The king allowed archery on Christmas Day, but no other sport.

             In parts of Europe, Reformation became a catalyst to curtail Christmas. John Calvin in Switzerland, 1550, thought people gave more importance to the festivities and ignored its Christian significance. Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich, Switzerland sought to abolish all feast and saint’s holy days, including Christmas. John Knox, who founded the Presbyterian movement in Scotland, followed the same thinking. Martin Luther, in contrast, liked Christmas (there is an untrue story he attached candles to a tree). In Britain, the 1559 Elizabethan Settlement steered a middle line between removing choral music, candles and dance and the desire to have a celebration. In contrast in Scotland,1583, the Presbyterians secured a ban on Christmas celebrations, though others ignored the ban. William Prynne, 1632, a puritan writer, stated all pious Christians should eternally abominate observance of the holiday. For puritans the word Christmas was synonymous with the Popish mass. This division of opinion simmered until the Civil War.

On 19 December 1643, an ordinance was passed by the Parliamentarians encouraging subjects to treat the mid-winter period with solemn humiliation. This was in contrast with the gaiety advocated by the Royalists. A year later another ordinance confirmed the abolition of the feasts of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun, but at this time it only applied to the Parliamentarians. It continued, however, until 1659. From 1656, Cromwell’s parliament legislated that every Sunday was to be stringently observed as a holy day. If Christmas was not on a Sunday, then shops and markets could stay open, but special food for a Christmas event was prohibited. Christmas was not to be celebrated with frivolous and immoral behaviour but spent in respectful contemplation. The fear was poor behaviour would spill over into church services and it was too closely associated with Catholicism. The reality is Cromwell did not order the banning of Christmas, but instead legislated to severely curtail such celebrations. The Puritans' prohibition of Christmas proved very unpopular and pro-Christmas riots broke out across the country with many disregarding the ordinance. Royalist propaganda indicated the ban was severe, the reality was it was much ignored.[3]

Early 20th-century architectural drawing of Oliver Cromwell’s statue outside Parliament. There are differences with the statue.

It took until the early 19th-century for the division between puritanical Protestantism and those who wanted to celebrate the mid-winter festival to subside. Popular evangelists, like George Whitfield, John Wesley and others, promoted Christmas as a genuine Christian celebration with carols such as ‘O Holy Night’ and ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain.’ The Victorians added traditions to the festival, c. 1840s, and increased its commercialisation. Its observance has changed in many ways.[4]  

      The flaw in this history is that it is clear how the church saw Christmas and changed its liturgy with time and much is known how leaders of the country tried to impose their idea of the festival, but very little is known how ordinary people approached the winter solstice and New Year. Indeed, the gaiety of Christmas with carols, dancing, gifts and feasting, originated at home and within the local community. 

    The Christ-child was born in a manger, [5] in an ordinary dwelling, Luke 2, 7. From this, artists have painted and sculpted stables, barns, shacks and other out-buildings. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem has a cave. 

Fresco in the Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome, late second century. Three magi each in a different colour with outstretched hands approach Mary and child.

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 [1] Orne. N. Going to church in Medieval England. (New Haven and London: 2022), 257–260. 

[2] Francis of Assisi is credited with staging the first nativity scene in 1223, but it then took many years before it was copied in European countries. The earliest cribs appeared in a few churches in Europe in the mid-16th century. Strangely, it did not get taken up in England. Paintings of the nativity were known in England, but never a diorama. In contrast, the tomb and stone at Easter was modelled in an Easter sepulchre.

 [3] J. A. R. Pimlott, ‘Christmas under the Puritans’, History Today, (1960), 10, issue 12.

[4] There is a theory that agricultural workers moving into the towns expanding with new industries in the early Victorian era brought their rural customs and added them to the Christmas celebration. It was a response to upheaval and many strange practices relieving the poverty and dark gloom occurred.

[5] Trough, crib or rack.