HARK! the Herald Angels sing "Glory to God in the highest."

Melozzo da Forli (Italian Renaissance artist, 1438-1494) Angel 

Martin Luther (1438-1546) in Wittenberg, Germany, wrote often of Advent & Christmas. One of his students wrote of Luther saying: For this is indeed the greatest gift, which far exceeds all else that God has created. Yet we believe so sluggishly, even though the angels proclaim & preach & sing, & their lovely song sums up the whole Christian faith, for “Glory to God in the highest” is the very heart of worship.

The English Puritan assault on Christmas during the 1640s and 1650s

A 1660 English illustration from A Book of Roxburghe Ballads.  This particular ballad is The Merry Boys of Christmas or The Milk-Maids New-Years-Gift.

""Mark Stoyle investigates popular resistance to the Puritan assault on Christmas during the 1640s and 1650s...As the year 1645 limped towards its weary close, a war-torn England shivered beneath a thick blanket of snow. A few months earlier, parliament’s New Model Army, led by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell, had routed the forces of Charles I at the battle of Naseby. Although that defeat had struck the king’s cause a mortal blow, the royalists still refused to surrender, and the bloody Civil War which had divided the country ever since 1642 continued to rage.

"Under constant pressure from the armies of both sides to supply them with money, clothing and food, few Englishmen and women can have been anticipating a particularly merry Christmas. Yet, for those who lived in the extensive territories which were controlled by the king’s enemies, there was to be no Christmas this year at all – because the traditional festivities had been abolished by order of the two Houses of Parliament sitting at Westminster.

"From Charles’s beleaguered wartime capital in Oxford, the royalist satirist John Taylor – by now in his mid-60s, but nevertheless one of the king’s most indefatigable literary champions – issued a cry of anguish at this assault on England’s time-honoured customs. All of the “harmless sports” with which people had long celebrated Christ’s nativity “are now extinct and put out of use… as if they had never been,” Taylor lamented in his pamphlet The Complaint of Christmas, and “thus are the merry lords of misrule suppressed by the mad lords of bad rule at Westminster”.

"So why had the parliamentarians decided to wage war on Christmas – and how did those, like Taylor, who were determined to defend the traditional celebrations, fight back?

"The attack on the feast of Christmas had deep roots. Long before the Civil War began, many zealous Protestants, or ‘Puritans’, had been troubled both by the boisterous nature of the festivities which took place at Christmas and by the perceived association of those festivities with the old Catholic faith. During the early 1600s, most English Puritans had been prepared to tolerate Christmas. Following the rebellion of the Presbyterian Scots against Charles I in 1637, however, all this was to change.

"The Scottish Kirk, which was itself fiercely Protestant, had abolished Christmas as long ago as the 1560s and, although James I had managed tentatively to restore the feast in his northern kingdom in 1617, it was banned there once again after his son’s defeat by the Scots in 1640.

"From this time onwards, attitudes towards Christmas among English Puritans began to harden. And as political tensions between Charles I and his opponents in parliament rose during 1641 so a handful of Puritan extremists took it upon themselves to abandon the celebration of Christmas.

"Following the outbreak of full-scale Civil War between king and parliament in 1642, John Taylor became one of the first to allude in print to the radicals’ decision to dump Christmas. In a satirical pamphlet published in January 1643 – a pamphlet which was clearly intended to appeal to a wide popular audience – Taylor provided his readers with the text of A Tub Lecture, which, he claimed, had been preached by a godly joiner to a group of Puritans at Watford “on the 25 of December last, being Christmas day”.

"In this fictitious address, the ‘lecturer’ is shown assuring his audience that they should not “conceive of me to be so superstitious, as to make any conscience of… this day, because the Church hath ordained [it]” to be a holy feast. “No, God forbid I should be so profane,” the ‘lecturer’ goes on, “rather it is a detestation of their blindness that have brought me hither this day, to enlighten you… [and] I give you to understand that the very name of Christmas is idolatrous and profane, and so, verily, are the whole 12 days [of Christmas] wherein the wicked make daily… sacrifices to riot and sensuality”.

"Here, Taylor was hinting to his readers that the godly parliamentarians posed a potential threat to Christmas itself. Eight months later, that threat was to become all too real.

1600s woodcut of Christmas celebration

"Seizing the initiative

"One of the clauses of the ‘Solemn League and Covenant’ which parliament signed with the Scots in September 1643 stated that, in exchange for Scottish military assistance against the king, MPs would ensure that further “reformation” of the Church of England took place. As Ronald Hutton has observed, this clause encouraged religious radicals on the ground to seize the initiative and to attack those aspects of the traditional ecclesiastical calendar which they disliked.

"Three months later, a number of Puritan tradesmen in London opened up their shops for business on 25 December in order to show that they regarded this day as no different from any other, while several London ministers kept their church doors firmly shut. Meanwhile, many MPs turned up to sit in the parliament house, thus making their own disdain for the customary Christmas holiday very clear.

"During the following year, moreover – when Christmas Day happened to coincide with one of the monthly fast days upon which parliament’s supporters were enjoined to pray for the success of their cause – MPs ordered, not only that the fast day should be “observed” instead of the traditional feast, but also that the fast should be kept “with the more solemn humiliation, because it may call to remembrance our sins, and the sins of our forefathers, who have turned this feast, pretending [to] the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights”.

"In January 1645 the final nail was hammered into Christmas’s coffin, when parliament issued its new Directory for the Public Worship of God, a radical alternative to the established Book of Common Prayer, which made no reference to Christmas at all. Thus the way was paved for the ‘anti-Christmas’ of 1645 – a day upon which, in Taylor’s words, a man might pass right through the parliamentary quarters, and “perceive no sign or token of any holy day”.

"The parliamentarians had abolished the high point of the English ritual year, and the cancellation of Christmas aroused huge popular resentment – not just in the royalist camp, but in the districts controlled by parliament, too. As early as December 1643, the apprentice boys of London rose up in violent protest against the shop-keepers who had opened on Christmas Day, and, in the words of a delighted royalist, “forced these money-changers to shut up their shops again”.

"There were further dark mutterings the next year. On 24 December 1644, the editor of a pro-parliamentarian news-pamphlet expressed his support for the MPs’ decision to favour the monthly fast over the traditional feast, but admitted that “the parliament is cried out on” by the common people as a result, with incredulous shouts of “What, not keep Christmas? Here’s a Reformation indeed!”

"Many ordinary Londoners continued to show a dogged determination to keep Christmas special during the following year, and John Taylor’s decision to rush into print at this time with his Complaint of Christmas – a work which bore the same title as a pamphlet urging the enthusiastic observance of the mid-winter feast, which he had published as long ago as 1631 – was clearly motivated by a desire to stir up popular resentment against the parliamentarian leadership, as well as to turn a quick profit for its poverty-stricken author.

"How far Taylor succeeded in these aims it is impossible to say, but his satire quickly provoked a parliamentarian counter-satire entitled The Arraignment, Conviction and Imprisoning of Christmas. Published in January 1646, this publication took great pleasure in conflating Taylor himself with the symbolic character of ‘old Christmas Day’ whose persona the royalist writer had assumed in his own previous pamphlets. In one passage, Taylor/‘old Christmas Day’ – here described as “an old, old, very old grey-bearded gentleman” – is portrayed sitting dejectedly in the midst of the king’s shrinking territories, while desperately urging “all you that ever think to see Christmas again, stick to me now close!”

"Any lingering hopes on the part of the royalists that popular anger at the abolition of Christmas might somehow transform their military fortunes were soon to be dispelled. During early 1646, Charles I’s remaining field forces melted away almost as fast as the winter snow and by April the game was clearly up for the king. In the closing verse of a contemporary ballad, a gloomy royalist writer suggested that the collapse of the king’s cause had sealed the fate of Christmas itself, remarking: “To conclude, I’ll tell you news that’s right, Christmas was killed at Naseby fight.”

"Yet matters were not so simple, for, even though the king’s armies had been beaten out of the field and he himself had fallen into the hands of his enemies, most Englishmen and women continued to cling to their traditional Christmas customs. So strong was the popular attachment to the old festivities, indeed, that during the postwar period a number of pro-Christmas riots occurred. In December 1646, for example, a group of young men at Bury St Edmunds threatened local tradesmen who had dared to open their shops on Christmas Day, and were only dispersed by the town magistrates after a bloody scuffle. 

"Pro-Christmas riots

"Worse was to follow in 1647 – despite the fact that, on 10 June that year, parliament has passed an ordinance which declared the celebration of Christmas to be a punishable offence. On 25 December 1647, there was further trouble at Bury, while pro-Christmas riots also took place at Norwich and Ipswich. During the course of the Ipswich riot, a protestor named ‘Christmas’ was reported to have been slain – a fatality which could be regarded as richly symbolic, of course, of the way that parliament had ‘killed’ Christmas itself.

"In London, a crowd of apprentices assembled at Cornhill on Christmas Day, and there “in despite of authority, they set up Holly and Ivy” on the pinnacles of the public water conduit. When the lord mayor despatched some officers “to pull down these gawds,” the apprentices resisted them, forcing the mayor to rush to the scene with a party of soldiers and to break up the demonstration by force.

"The worst disturbances of all took place at Canterbury, where a crowd of protestors first smashed up the shops which had been opened on Christmas Day and then went on to seize control of the entire city. This riot helped to pave the way for a major insurrection in Kent in 1648 that itself formed part of the ‘Second Civil War’ – a scattered series of risings against the parliament and in favour of the king, which Fairfax and Cromwell only managed to suppress with great difficulty.

"Following parliament’s victory in the Second Civil War and the execution of Charles I in 1649, demonstrations in favour of Christmas became less common. There can be no doubt that many people continued to celebrate Christmas in private, and in his pamphlet The Vindication of Christmas (1652), the tireless John Taylor provided a lively portrait of how, he claimed, the old Christmas festivities were still being kept up by the farmers of Devon.

The Vindication of Christmas 1652

"Nevertheless, recent scholarship has shown that, as time went by, Christmas effectively ceased to be celebrated in the great majority of churches. It was ironic, to say the least, that while the godly had failed to suppress the secular Yuletide festivities which had vexed them for so long, they had succeeded in ending the religious observance of Christmas!

Following Cromwell’s installation as lord protector in 1653, the celebration of Christmas continued to be proscribed. While he had not been personally responsible for ‘cancelling Christmas’ in the first place, it is evident that both Cromwell and the other senior members of his regime were behind the ban, frequently transacting government business on 25 December as if it were a day just like any other.

"Only with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 was ‘old Christmas Day’ finally brought back in from the cold, to widespread popular joy. John Taylor had died some years before, but if he could have foreseen that, two centuries later, Charles Dickens would be reprising the role which Taylor had made his own – that of the mouthpiece of the ‘true Christmas spirit’ – and that a century and a half later still, the celebration of Christmas would remain as ubiquitous in England and Wales as ever, he would doubtless have felt that his labours had been worthwhile.

"The defenders of Christmas had weathered the storm."

Text From the BBC History Magazine  Sunday 22nd December 2013

Submitted by Emma McFaron

Germany, the Pagan God Oden & the Christmas Tree

The end of December was a perfect time for celebration in most areas of Europe, including Germany. At that time of year, most cattle were slaughtered so they would not have to be fed during the winter. For many, it was the only time of year when they had a supply of fresh meat. In addition, most wine & beer made during the year was finally fermented & ready for drinking.

In Germany, people honored the pagan god Oden during the mid-winter holiday. Germans were terrified of Oden, as they believed he made nocturnal flights through the sky to observe his people, & then decide who would prosper or perish. Because of his presence, many people chose to stay inside Odin was the Aesir chief god who presided over the Asgard land of gods. The fact was that hardly could anyone rival Oden’s power & reputation. He was among the gods whom the humans worshipped & respected the most. Oden was the god of war, death, poem, & wisdom. His most famous palace in Asgard was where he hosted fallen human warriors. Oden was commonly seen as an old man under a dark cloak with his long & white beard. He took the life of a wanderer who traveled the world to acquire knowledge.

It is generally believed that the first Christmas tree was of German origin dating from the time of St. Boniface, English missionary to Germany in the 8th century. He replaced the sacrifices to the Norse god Odin’s sacred oak—some say it was Thor’s Thunder Oak—with a fir tree adorned in tribute to the Christ child. The legend is told that Boniface found a group of “pagans” preparing to sacrifice a boy near an oak tree near Lower Hesse, Germany. He cut down the oak tree with a single stroke of his ax & stopped the sacrifice. A small fir tree sprang up in place of the oak. He told the pagans that this was the “tree of life” & stood for Christ.

A legend began to circulate in the early Middle Ages that when Jesus was born in the dead of winter, all the trees throughout the world shook off their ice & snow & produced new shoots of green. The medieval Church would decorate outdoor fir trees—known as “paradise trees”—with apples on Christmas Eve, which they called “Adam & Eve Day” & celebrated with a play.

During Renaissance times there are records that trees were being used as symbols for Christians first in the Latvian capital of Riga in 1510. The story goes that it was attended by men wearing black hats in front of the House of Blackheads in the Town Hall Square, who following a ceremony burnt the tree.

Accounts persist that Martin Luther introduced the tree lighted with candles in the mid-16th century in Wittenberg, Germany. Returning to his home after a walk one winter night, the story goes, Luther tried unsuccessfully to describe to his family the beauty of the starry night glittering through the trees. Instead, he went out & cut down a small fir tree & put lighted candles upon it.

In a manuscript dated 1605, a merchant in Strasbourg, Germany wrote that at Christmas they set up fir trees in the parlors & “hang thereon roses cut out of paper of many colors, apples, wafers, spangle-gold & sugar …” Though the selling of Christmas trees is mentioned back to the mid-1500s in Strasbourg, the custom of decorating the trees may have developed from the medieval Paradise Play. This play was a favorite during the Advent season because it ended with the promise of a Savior. The action in the play centered around a fir tree hung with apples.

Reportedly, German immigrants brought the custom to the United States & tree decorating is recorded back to 1747 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  One story tells of Hessian soldiers who fought for George III in the Revolutionary War. As they were keeping Christmas in Trenton, New Jersey around a decorated tree, they left their posts unguarded. George Washington & his troops were hungry & freezing at Valley Forge, but they planned their attack with the knowledge that the Hessians would be celebrating & thus would not be as able to defend themselves.

HARK! the Herald Angels sing "Glory to God in the highest."

Melozzo da Forli (Italian Renaissance artist, 1438-1494) Angel from the Vault of the Sacristy of Saint Mark 

Martin Luther (1438-1546) in Wittenberg, Germany, wrote often of Advent & Christmas. One of his students wrote of Luther saying: For this is indeed the greatest gift, which far exceeds all else that God has created. Yet we believe so sluggishly, even though the angels proclaim & preach & sing, & their lovely song sums up the whole Christian faith, for “Glory to God in the highest” is the very heart of worship.

Christmas Greenery

Here in Maryland, families begin searching for their Christmas greenery after Thanksgiving.  Long before the advent of Christianity, plants & trees that remained green all year had a special meaning for people in the winter. In many countries folks believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits, & illness.

Collecting Holly Sprigs in December pub by Robert Sayer in London in 1767

In the Northern hemisphere, many ancient people believed that the sun was a god & that winter came every year because the sun god had grown weak. They celebrated the solstice, because it meant that at last the sun god would begin to get well. Evergreen boughs reminded them of all the green plants that would grow again when the sun god was strong & summer would return.

Springs of holly or ivy at the windows & mistletoe above.  1770s Christmas gambolls, mid-18th century, etching published by P. Griffin

The ancient Egyptians worshipped a god called Ra, who had the head of a hawk & wore the sun as a blazing disk in his crown. At the solstice, when Ra began to recover from his weakness, the Egyptians filled their homes with green palm rushes symbolizing the triumph of life over death.

Greens decorate the room with mistletoe hanging from above.  The Young Sweep giving Betty her Christmas Box, 1770-1780

Early Romans marked the solstice with a feast called the Saturnalia in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture. To mark the occasion, they decorated their homes & temples with evergreen boughs.

Holly on the mantel Published by  Carrington Bowles in 1780.

In Northern Europe the Druids, the priests of the ancient Celts, also decorated their temples with evergreen boughs as a symbol of everlasting life. The fierce Vikings in Scandinavia thought that evergreens were the special plant of the sun god, Balder.

Sprigs of ivy in the windows & mistletoe above.  Settling the Affairs of the Nation, pub by London's Bowles & Carver c 1775.

Decorating one’s house with natural boughs has been a Christmas tradition since Celtic times in England. Boughs of holly with their bright red berries were especially coveted.

Sprigs of holly over the mantle. Christmas Gambols The Wit’s Magazine, London, December 1784

"Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.”
- William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Mistletoe hanging from ceiling.  1790s Christmas Gambols or a Kiss Under the mistletoe Published 22d. Octr. 1794 by Laurie & Whittle, N°.53, Fleet Street, London.

Mistletoe hangs above & sprigs of holly or ivy decorate the lower window panes.  1791 Christmas in the Country, from drawing by Samuel Collings and pub Bentley & Co. in London, January 1, 1791.

1796 The Misteltoe, or, Christmas Gables, London  Pub 1 May 1796 by G.T. Stubbs

Mistletoe hangs above1800 Unknown British artist, The mistletoe - A Christmas Tale 1800. Published by Laurie and Whittle, London

Greenery hangs over the table.  1800 Farmer Giles's establishment.  Christmas day 1800 Published London

Rope of Greens in the Pastry Shop Window - George Cruikshanks Comic Almanac Excitement outside the pastry cook & confectioners shop window as people view the 12th night cakes

1825 High life below stairs Robert Cruikshank London Pub by G. Tregear 136 Drury Lane

Swags of Greenery decorate the windows of the Pastry Shop for 12th night.  The Every-day Book, 1827, Naughty Boys

1837 Bringing home Christmas from The book of Christmas Illustrated by Robert Seymour

Greenery decorates the old family portraits and hangs from the chandelier.  1847 Christmas at home with family & cats  Illustrated London News

Greens decorate the archway, the cake, and the boar's head!  The Illustrated Times 1857 - The Boar’s Head and Christmas Pie for the  Royal Banquet at Windsor Castle

Selling greenery

 Preparing for Christmas

Gathering Mistletoe in Normandy

Kissing under the Mistletoe

Gathering Mistletoe

Images of European Christmas Traditions

Viggo Johansen (Danish artist, 1851–1935) Silent Night

Jan Havicksz. Steen (Dutch artist, c 1626-1679). Feast of St Nicholas 1665

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (Austrian artist, 1793-1865) A traveling family of beggars is rewarded by poor peasants on Christmas Eve 1834

Carlton Alfred Smith (English artist, 1853-1946), Christmas Eve

Franz Ignaz Pollinger (Austrian artist) First Christmas Tree in Ried 1848
Felix Ehrlich (German artist, 1866–1931) Christmas

Joseph Clarke (English-born artist, 1844-1890) Christmas Morning
David Jacob Jacobson (German painter, 1818–1891) Selling Christmas Trees

George Bernard O’Neil (Irish artist, 1828-1917) Hanging the Mistletoe 1892
Hans Stubenrauch (German artist, 1875– 1941) Christmas Time
Genrich Manizer (Russian artist, 1847–1925) Christmas Tree Market
Franz Skarbina (German artist, 1849 –1910) Under the Christmas Tree
Franz Skarbina (German artist, 1849–1910) Boy from the Berlin Christmas Market

William Ewart Lockhart (Scottish artist, 1846-1900) Old Father Christmas
Heinrich Max (Czech artist, 1847-1900) A Christmas Read 1877

Albert Chevallier Tayler (British painter, 1862-1925) The Christmas Tree 1911

Gustave Brion (French Realist Painter, 1824-1877) Christmas Singers detail 1856

Franz Krüger (German painter, 1797-1857), Father & Son Picking Christmas Tree

Franz Skarbina (German artist, 1849-1910) The Christmas Market in Berlin 1892

Zinaida Yevgenyevna Serebriakova (Russian artist, 1884-1967) Katya in Blue Dress by Christmas Tree 1922

Frederick Daniel Hardy (English artist, 1827-1911) The Christmas Hamper 1874

Fetching Home the Christmas Dinner. From The London Illustrated News, Christmas Supplement. 1848.

Heinrich Ferdinand Werner (German artist, 1867-1928) The Christmas Tree 1909

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (Austrian artist, 1793-1865), Christmas Morning 1844

Hildebrandt Ferdinant Theodor (German painter, 1804–1874) Children Anticipating the Christmas Feast 1840

Joseph Clark (British artist, 1834-1926) A Christmas Dole 1800s

Callcott Horsley (English artist,1817-1903), Under the Mistletoe 1865

Lovis Corinth (German painter, 1858-1925) Distributing Christmas Presents 1913

Augusto Giacometti (Swiss artist, 1877-1947) Christmas 1939

Unknown French artist, Women and Children around the Christmas Tree c 1890 

Anders Zorn, (Swedish artist, 1860–1920) Christmas Morning Service 1908

Franz Cižek (Austrian artist, 1865-1946) Santa with Toys 1910-20

Alois Hänisch (Austrian artist, 1866-1937) Christmas Spirit 1921

Jozsef Rippl-Ronai (Hungarian, 1861-1927) Christmas 1903-4

Jozsef Rippl-Ronai (Hungarian artist, 1861-1927) Christmas 1910

Eugen Kirchner (German artist, 1865-1938) Christmas Eve 1927