Christmas

From the Readers Digest Book of Christmas, under History of Christmas
Those early rulers of the Church were astute enough to know, or perhaps had learned the hard way, that rather than fight beloved pagan customs, it was better to accept them and subthy transform them , especially festivals......
Rome had a Feast of Lights, Natalis Invicti, in Rome, the sun in its winter solstice was at its weakest on December 25 and had to be born anew with the help of bonfires, lights, processions and prayer.


It would seem fitting that the birthday of the sun should become the birthday of the "Sun of Resurrection" and one guesses that this was the pagan-Christian blending in the Fathers' minds when they accepted the twenty-fifth of December as the Christmas date; but there was another pair of Roman feasts, far more popular than Natalis Invicti; the Saturnalia, which lasted from the seventeenth to the twenty-third of December, and the Kalends of January, the first three days of the new year.
The Saturnalia had begun as a feast which broke for a few days through all barriers of class and behavior- a momory of a golden time when just and kindly Saturn ruled as king, and all men were their master, and women, if they were masked, could flirt with whom they chose. The Kalends was more portentous, full of omens, but homes were decorated with lights and evergreens, and everyone gave presents and invited guests.


Everywhere may be seen carousals and well-laden tables; luxurious abundance is found in the houses of the rich, but also in the houses of the poor better food than usual is put upon the table. The impulse to spend seizes everyone. A stream of presents pours itself out on all sides....The highroads and footpaths are covered with whole processions of laden men and beasts...It may justly be said that it is the fairest time of the year....The Kalends festival vanishes all that is connected with toil, and allows men to give themsleves up to undisturbed enjoyment.


These were frankly holidays - no one could describe them as holy days -......
.....The Saturnalia and the Kalends, run together, could be a fortnight of near riot, of drunkneness, noise and games, naked slaves singing, men dressing up as animals and behaving with less dignity, sex, often with perversion, and though the Fathers and bishops were patient, at last a severe sermon had to be preached, full of forbiddings. At Christmas, men and women were not, repeat not, to dress up or mime, there were not top be auguries, such as superstitions about fire, houses were not to be decorated, no presents given, no well-laden tables, and a strict watch was to be kept on drink. More than a thousand years later, Oliver Cromwell tried to forbid the same thing, this time by government order.


One Saturnalian custom wes to hang little masks of Bacchus, god of wine, on evergreen trees. Bacchus is usually shown as a bloated, fat old man, fut the classics describe him as handsome and young, unexpectedly mellow, like one of his own wines. It is true his symbolic bird is the magpie, because in libations people speak with boldness and liberty; but how could they help loving this hero who taught them the use of the vine, the cultivation of the earth and the manner of making honey?.........
At Christmas, if the weather is cold and raw, we may serve mulled wine - warmed, and beaten with sugar and spices - or hot punch, a nowadays imitation of the Christmas wassail bowl. The old wassail bowls, usually of silver or pewter, were immense - one, at Oxford held ten gallons - .....
People say the old pagan feasts were gay and innocent: Were they? In Scandinavia and North Germany, when the first snowfall came and the cattle could no longer go out to pasture, the heard were thinned with "a great slaughtering," so that it became a season of eating and drinking, weeks of it, until men and women became almost insensible. Though our markets at Christmas, often with carcasses dressed with evergreens and ribbon rosettes, are a reminder of that, we have nothing like the Roman banquets, when an emetic, probably of herbs, and oil, was taken between courses, then there was a hurry to the vomitorium, a throwing up, before the guests came back to gorge again. .....


With such well-laden tables, it would seem there could be no room on the board for more, but a new passopn has come back to Christmas from the Kalends - decoration, Surely decorating our houses is not pagan? Indeed it is, going right back to antiquity, a custom that has broght its double meaning most fittingly into Christmas: the wreaths of holly and streamers of red ribbon on the front doors of every village and little town are festive, yet holly, ivy and mistletoe are all sacred because they bear fruit in winter.
Mistle is the "golden bough" that was cut at the winter solstice by the archdruid with a long gold-handled knife. It was supposed to cure all sickness - and it was so powerful in amity that if enemies met in a wood they laid down their arms until next day, which is why it is hung now over doorways, or in corridors where people pass, so that they can kiss in love and friendship.


Presents have become an edict, like the Roman emperor Caligula;s when, one New Year's Day he announced he would stand out on his porch to receive presents of money; if the sum was not enough, the giver was publicly shamed. We, too, are not untouched by this - the richer, more important our friends or relatives, the less they need presents, the more thought and money we spend on the gifts. It is the Kalends again, :the impulse to spend" that "seizes everyone" but now it is not just an impulse.


We send cards, too. These were once handmade and, even when the first commercial ones appeared, were often colored by hand: flowers in a paper lace border, scenes sparkling with silvered snow, very often robins; because "the robin and the wren are God's cock and hen"......


.......Father Christmas, innocent descendant of a god and a saint, has become like one of his own blown up balloon figures, filling our horizon and blotting out the star, Many children think he is God.
He was once - the Norse god Odin, lashing his reindeer through the darkness of the northern midwinter, bringing the gifts of spring, new corn and fruit - it does not seem he brought anything else. Then he became Santa Clause, who was really Saint Nicholas, a fourth-century bishop, patron of boys - people believed he brought four of them back to life even though a wicked innkeeper has already pickled them in salt! Saint Nicholas is loved so much that in Russia they used to say "Even if God dies we still have Saint Nicholas." On the night of December 6, he borrowed Odin's reindeer and visited every house where there were children, who left their shoes in the hearth when they went to bed; in the morning, if they had been good, the shoes were full of sweets; bad children's shoes were empty.
The shoes became stockings, and now one is glad to think, for good and bad children alike; because nothing can match the excitement of creeping, even before first light, to find that elongated knobby object, left limp the night before, now hanging filled by the hearth.