Who invented Christmas? The usual answer you will hear is “The Victorians”, or if not that, then “Coca Cola”. Charles Dickens, Prince Albert and their fellows certainly gave us Ebenezer Scrooge, modern traditions including the Christmas tree and much-loved carols, among them Once in Royal David’s City and In the Bleak Midwinter. Meanwhile, although it is an urban myth that Coke invented Santa Claus, the old man’s association with the fizzy drinks brand is a useful shorthand to describe the way that big corporations have come to own what is ostensibly a festival to celebrate Christ’s birth.
Yet Britons have been celebrating Christmas for at least a thousand years. The western Church adopted December 25 as the official date for Christ’s birth in the fourth century and the term “Cristes Messe” crops up in Old English two decades before 1066.
By the high Middle Ages it is very clear that Christmas was a thriving popular holiday, which had sucked up plenty of pagan, pre-Christian traditions, bound them together with the story of the Nativity and come up with a festival of hymns and games, worship and gluttony, which still endures today, when virtually every other Christian feast day except Easter has slipped into obscurity.
If we want to get back to our roots, therefore, and be rid of modern abomination, then we should look to the Middle Ages, where much of the ritual seems remarkably familiar.
If you feel that Christmas has already been going on for months, rest assured that at least your complaint is not new. The idea of Christmas as a seemingly interminable festival stretches back more than a thousand years. In 829 AD, at the court of Louis the Pious, Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Franks, festive celebrations began at Martinmas (November 11) and were still going on at Epiphany (January 6).
Louis himself was famous for his generally severe demeanour – it was said that he never laughed and cracked his only smile on his deathbed – so it is possible that his racy young second wife Empress Judith was responsible for all the merriment. What is clear, either way, is that it is historically accurate to continue celebrations well into the new year.
One visit to church will not do. Christmas was traditionally one of the few days on which it was permitted to celebrate the mass three times. You should aim to attend one service at midnight, another at dawn, and then the main event, held in the hours of daylight. Each service should have its own Collect, readings, anthems and hymns. Your children, who will no doubt be bored senseless, may entertain themselves inspecting the Crib, a decoration with its origins in Christmases of the fourth and fifth centuries.
Here your medieval Christmas comes alive. The carol was once among the most popular forms of song. Plenty of carols, especially from the 15th century onwards, still survive, such as Adam Lay Ybounden. But a proper medieval carol is not just any old song. It must have a burden: a short refrain, usually in Latin or English, which is sung at the beginning of the carol and again after each stanza. The First Nowell follows the right form, but was written in the 18th century. This alternative from the late 15th century, fits (at a pinch) the same tune:
BURDEN: Synge we now both all and sum:
Christe redemptor omnium
In Bethlehem, that fayre cite
Born was thys chylde so fayer and fre,
That Lorde and Kyng shal ever be,
A solis ortus cardine
Ryght as the son shynyth on the glasse
So Cryste Jesu in Owr Lady was
Hym to sarue [serve] God sende us grace,
O lux beata Trinitas
Cheldren were slayne grete plente
Jesu Crist, all for the loue of the;
Lorde, helpe us if thy wyl it be.
Hostis Herodes impie
Now ys boren of Owr Lady
The Son of the Fader that sytthyt an hye;
For owr synnys cry we all mercy
Jesu salvator saeculi
If you have a choir at your command, you can sing in authentic medieval procession. The choir should walk forward while singing the burden, then stop while singing each of the stanzas. No choir? You can still just hum it while you hang up your…
Follow the lead of the Paston family, East Anglian gentry during the 15th century. A letter written by Margaret Paston around 1459 tells us a family might spend Christmas with “disguisings, harping, luting, singing” and “loud pastimes”. For those in mourning there is “playing at the tables [ie backgammon] and chess and cards”.
Grander entertainment can be had from plays, masques and “mummering” – visiting neighbours’ houses in fancy dress. Stow records a mummery to entertain King Richard II in 1377: 130 citizens of London “disguised and well horsed in a mummerie with the sounds of trumpets, shackbuts, cornets, salmes and other minstrels and innumerable torch lights of wax” rode through the streets of London to bring gifts of loaded dice and gold trinkets to the sovereign. The young king rewarded them with booze and dancing before sending them on their way.
Although some very fine nativities were written and performed in the Middle Ages – including the Second Shepherd’s Play in the Wakefield Cycle – these were hardly ever performed at Christmas. Rather, they took place at Corpus Christi, in the spring, when it was warm enough to stage productions outdoors.
The geometrically patterned Christmas jumper is a modern creation, but a medieval approximation may still be found.
In 1322 Thomas Earl of Lancaster – the cousin and nemesis of King Edward II – ordered two new scarlet suits for himself and a “cloth of Russet” for the Bishop of Anjou. Lancaster’s household trimmed their Christmas best with miniver or ermin, and wore purple hoods. All of this sounds not dissimilar to the modern “Santa Suit”.
But do not overstep the mark. A proclamation made in London at Christmas in 1418-19 expressly forbade the wearing of false beards during the festive season. Tread carefully.
Christmas in the Middle Ages adopted many folk traditions and pagan rituals that had been rife before Christianity. These include the ancient Yuletide custom of hanging up holly, ivy and – if you are too idle to do anything but raid the kitchen storecupboard – bay sprigs.
Surprisingly, your medieval Christmas can also accommodate a tree, albeit perhaps not in the house. The Tudor antiquarian John Stow reports that in 1444 a tree was set up at Leadenhall in London, “in the midst of the pavement fast in the ground, nailed full of holly and ivy, for disport of Christmas to the people”. It was still there at Candlemas in early February, when a storm tore it from its moorings and scattered the stones of the pavement into nearby houses.
Christmas has always been about feasting, so stuff your face as you please. Just don’t mention the T-word. There were no turkeys in England until they were brought back from Mexico after the 1520s. Before then, the classic Christmas dish was boar’s head – served, as one carol went, “bedeck’d with bays and rosemary”.
For those who lacked a boar to decapitate, the alternative was to make a large pie: a 14th-century recipe made by the Salters livery company called for one each of a pheasant, hare, chicken, capon and two sheep’s kidneys, all seasoned with pepper, salt, pickled mushrooms and stock. The pastry should be in the shape of a bird and decorated with one of the bird’s heads and several of his tail-feathers.
Don’t fancy that? You may wish to follow the ancient Yorkshire tradition of eating “frumenty” on Christmas morning – a sort of porridge made from boiled, cracked wheat, bound with egg yolks and flavoured with milk, almonds, honey, or saffron.
Your children are not going to like this, but there is no place for Santa Claus in a medieval Christmas. In the Middle Ages, gifts were exchanged not at Christmas but at new year – the “yeresgive”, as it was called. For a flavour of what to buy them, we can examine the accounts of Henry VI, who as a small child generally received gold and precious jewels. But if that seems extravagant, then allow me to suggest a copy of The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England by Dan Jones (Harper Press, £25). It makes an excellent medieval gift – whatever the season. (Sorry.)
Additional research by Kate Wiles