Christmas stories of the past
Every year I like to do a Christmas story. It is a time of the year that is important to me, and it has been so all my life. It isn't a particularly religious festival to me, I'm afraid, but a family celebration.
I have been puzzled about the relevance of many of the traditions. We can enjoy traditions for their own sake, of course, but it is hard to see what a White Christmas could mean to a farmer carting hay in 40-degree heat, or a chef baking a roast for lunch.
The first "Christ's Mass" was celebrated by Roman Christians in about 200 AD. It was being celebrated in England by 800 AD. There was some concern about the taking of pagan symbols and converting them to Christian use (holly berries became the drops of Christ's blood, for instance) and in 1643 the Puritans banned Christmas altogether.
It came back into public favour when Charles II came to the throne in 1660 but it had changed from being a church celebration to being something observed at home. It seems that Charles Dickens' story "A Christmas Carol", published in 1843, locked into place the Victorian idea of Christmas. The book was a great success and gave all our homesick Brits a picture that has dominated our thinking since
The first Christmas celebrated on our shores was at Sydney Cove in 1788. Supplies were a little short and the convicts did not get much. There was a sermon, but Christmas was not celebrated with symbols like the manger or the tree because England was still feeling the restrictive effects of the Puritan era, when decorations and such were frowned upon.
I suspect that to many people the importance of Christmas at that time was that it and Good Friday were the only two public holidays.
In 1791 the best Arthur Phillip could do was issue an extra ration of flour. The colony was close to starvation. The emphasis was still on food and religious observance. This created some problems because the English Christmas was suited only to the officer class. They could get slightly better food (though in 1789 the officers at Arthur Phillip's table ate a turtle rather than slaughter any of the few livestock left) so they could 'feast'. More importantly, they could celebrate their own rituals.
The Scottish convicts didn't celebrate at Christmas. To them it was a religious occasion, and the real festivities were at Hogmanay, or New Year. The Catholic Irish had even less chance. There was no way the 'Papists' would be allowed to hold the Christmas Mass that was so important to so many of them. There wasn't even a priest in the colony until one was convicted after a rebellion and transported out here in 1803.
Australia got its first official Catholic priest in 1820, and since then the midnight mass has been a part of the Australian Christmas.
The name 'Yuletide' came here from England, but it was originally a Viking midwinter celebration, with bonfires (hence the Yule Log) to symbolise the warmth of the missing sun and with trees brought inside to celebrate the life that would soon return to the land.
Using a tree as part of the festival seems to have come from the Paradise Tree of pre-Christian Germany, but it is a widespread custom and might have been a symbol of changing seasons. The tradition of using a pine-tree, albeit sometimes a plastic one, continues in Australia. The only real variation in this country was the use of gum boughs to decorate verandahs.
The long verandah is an Australian design, and it was logical to decorate it with gum branches for Christmas, partly to hide the Spartan look of many homesteads and partly to provide increased shade.
They changed the tradition across the Tasman, too. In New Zealand the Christmas Tree was not used until early in this century and the tree first used was the Pohutukawa, which flowered brightly at Christmas. Here we now call it the Christmas Bush.
Surprisingly, the first open-air 'public' tree was in America and we got that particular tradition here some time after it was first used in the United States in 1912.
The top of the tree usually has an angel, or a star. The star has been part of the ritual as long as there has been Christmas. Remember that we are celebrating the birth of Christ and the star is for the one that led the three wise men to Bethlehem.
Santa Claus is the main symbol of the season for many of our children (and almost all of our retailers) and why not? He was once Saint Nicholas, whom the Dutch transported to America. Even before that he'd been a bishop and had a whole range of guises throughout Europe. In 1822 American Clement C. Moore wrote a poem called 'Old Nick' in which he described our modern Santa Claus, even to the names of his reindeer.
Like Charles Dickens' book "A Christmas Carol", this poem caught the popular fancy and Santa Claus was here to stay. The English took him up and we thus got him, too.
Until then the English had used their Middle Ages 'Old Christmas', a grim and surly hunchback with a liking for the grog. He carried a club and about the only festive thing about him was the crown of holly he wore. The English of the early nineteenth century felt good about themselves and welcomed the more cheerful American version of the Dutch Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas.
It seems to have been during the Victorian era in England, a time when the churches were very important to the people,that we moved further from the religious element. It might be time to move back that way a little, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't still see the season as a family celebration, a time to bring our families a little closer together.
More next week.
