Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan Part 21

The only folk-festivals of note between St. Nicholas's Day and Christmas are those of St. Lucia (December 13) and St. Thomas the Apostle (December 21).

In Sweden St. Lucia's Day was formerly marked by some interesting practices. It was, so to speak, the entrance to the Christmas festival, and was called "little Yule."{50} At the first c.o.c.k-crow, between 1 and 4 a.m., the prettiest girl in the house used to go among the sleeping folk, dressed in a white robe, a red sash, and a wire crown covered with whortleberry-twigs and having nine lighted candles fastened in it. She awakened the sleepers and regaled them with a sweet drink or with coffee,[94] sang a special song, and was named "Lussi" or "Lussibruden"

(Lucy bride). When everyone was dressed, breakfast was taken, the room being lighted by many candles. The domestic animals 222 were not forgotten on this day, but were given special portions. A peculiar feature of the Swedish custom is the presence of lights on Lussi's crown.

Lights indeed are the special mark of the festival; it was customary to shoot and fish on St. Lucy's Day by torchlight, the parlours, as has been said, were brilliantly illuminated in the early morning, in West Gothland Lussi went round the village preceded by torchbearers, and in one parish she was represented by a cow with a crown of lights on her head. In schools the day was celebrated with illuminations.{51}

What is the explanation of this feast of lights? There is nothing in the legend of the saint to account for it; her name, however, at once suggests _lux_--light. It is possible, as Dr. Feilberg supposes, that the name gave rise to the special use of lights among the Latin-learned monks who brought Christianity to Sweden, and that the custom spread from them to the common people. A peculiar fitness would be found in it because St.

Lucia's Day according to the Old Style was the shortest day of the year, the turning-point of the sun's light.{52}

In Sicily also St. Lucia's festival is a feast of lights. After sunset on the Eve a long procession of men, lads, and children, each flouris.h.i.+ng a thick bunch of long straws all afire, rushes wildly down the streets of the mountain village of Montedoro, as if fleeing from some danger, and shouting hoa.r.s.ely. "The darkness of the night," says an eye-witness, "was lighted up by this savage procession of dancing, flaming torches, whilst bonfires in all the side streets gave the illusion that the whole village was burning." At the end of the procession came the image of Santa Lucia, holding a dish which contained her eyes.[95] In the midst of the _piazza_ a great mountain of straw had been prepared; on this everyone threw his own burning torch, and the saint was placed in a spot from which she could survey the vast bonfire.{53}

In central Europe we see St. Lucia in other aspects. In the Bohmerwald she goes round the village in the form of a nanny-goat with horns, gives fruit to the good children, and threatens to rip open the belly of the naughty. Here she is evidently related 223 to the pagan monsters already described. In Tyrol she plays a more graceful part: she brings presents for girls, an office which St. Nicholas is there supposed to perform for boys only.{55}

In Lower Austria St. Lucia's Eve is a time when special danger from witchcraft is feared and must be averted by prayer and incense. A procession is made through each house to cense every room. On this evening, too, girls are afraid to spin lest in the morning they should find their distaffs twisted, the threads broken, and the yarn in confusion. (We shall meet with like superst.i.tions during the Twelve Nights.) At midnight the girls practise a strange ceremony: they go to a willow-bordered brook, cut the bark of a tree partly away, without detaching it, make with a knife a cross on the inner side of the cut bark, moisten it with water, and carefully close up the opening. On New Year's Day the cutting is opened, and the future is augured from the markings found. The lads, on the other hand, look out at midnight for a mysterious light, the _Luzieschein_, the forms of which indicate coming events.{56}

In Denmark, too, St. Lucia's Eve is a time for seeing the future. Here is a prayer of Danish maids: "Sweet St. Lucy let me know: whose cloth I shall lay, whose bed I shall make, whose child I shall bear, whose darling I shall be, whose arms I shall sleep in."{57}

ST. THOMAS'S DAY.

Many and various are the customs and beliefs a.s.sociated with the feast of St. Thomas (December 21). In Denmark it was formerly a great children's day, unique in the year, and rather resembling the mediaeval Boy Bishop festival. It was the breaking-up day for schools; the children used to bring their master an offering of candles and money, and in return he gave them a feast. In some places it had an even more delightful side: for this one day in the year the children were allowed the mastery in the school. Testimonials to their scholars.h.i.+p and industry were made out, and elaborate t.i.tles were added to their names, as exalted sometimes as "Pope," "Emperor," or "Empress." Poor children used to go about showing these 224 doc.u.ments and collecting money. Games and larks of all sorts went on in the schools without a word of reproof, and the children were wont to burn their master's rod.{58}

In the neighbourhood of Antwerp children go early to school on St.

Thomas's Day, and lock the master out, until he promises to treat them with ale or other drink. After this they buy a c.o.c.k and hen, which are allowed to escape and have to be caught by the boys or the girls respectively. The girl who catches the hen is called "queen," the boy who gets the c.o.c.k, "king." Elsewhere in Belgium children lock out their parents, and servants their masters, while schoolboys bind their teacher to his chair and carry him over to the inn. There he has to buy back his liberty by treating his scholars with punch and cakes. Instead of the chase for the fowls, it was up to 1850 the custom in the Ardennes for the teacher to give the children hens and let them chop the heads off.{59} Some pagan sacrifice no doubt lies at the root of this barbarous practice, which has many parallels in the folk-lore of western and southern Europe.{60}

As for schoolboys' larks with their teachers, the custom of "barring out the master" existed in England, and was practised before Christmas{61} as well as at other times of the year, notably Shrove Tuesday. At Bromfield in c.u.mberland on Shrove Tuesday there was a regular siege, the school doors were strongly barricaded within, and the boy-defenders were armed with pop-guns. If the master won, heavy tasks were imposed, but if, as more often happened, he was defeated in his efforts to regain his authority, he had to make terms with the boys as to the hours of work and play.{62}

St. Thomas's Eve is in certain regions one of the uncanniest nights in the year. In some Bohemian villages the saint is believed to drive about at midnight in a chariot of fire. In the churchyard there await him all the dead men whose name is Thomas; they help him to alight and accompany him to the churchyard cross, which glows red with supernatural radiance.

There St. Thomas kneels and prays, and then rises to bless his namesakes.

This done, he vanishes beneath the cross, and each Thomas returns to his grave. The saint here seems to have taken over 225 the character of some pagan G.o.d, who, like the Teutonic Odin or Woden, ruled the souls of the departed. In the houses the people listen with awe for the sound of his chariot, and when it is heard make anxious prayer to him for protection from all ill. Before retiring to rest the house-father goes to the cowhouse with holy water and consecrated salt, asperges it from without, and then entering, sprinkles every cow. Salt is also thrown on the head of each animal with the words, "St. Thomas preserve thee from all sickness." In the Bohmerwald the cattle are fed on this night with consecrated bayberries, bread, and salt, in order to avert disease.{63}

In Upper and Lower Austria St. Thomas's Eve is reckoned as one of the so-called _Rauchnachte_ (smoke-nights) when houses and farm-buildings must be sanctified with incense and holy water, the other nights being the Eves of Christmas, the New Year, and the Epiphany.{64}

In Germany St. Thomas's, like St. Andrew's Eve, is a time for forecasting the future, and the methods already described are sometimes employed by girls who wish to behold their future husbands. A widely diffused custom is that of throwing shoes backwards over the shoulders. If the points are found turned towards the door the thrower is destined to leave the house during the year; if they are turned away from it another year will be spent there. In Westphalia a belief prevails that you must eat and drink heartily on this night in order to avert scarcity.{65}

In Lower Austria it is supposed that sluggards can cure themselves of oversleeping by saying a special prayer before they go to bed on St.

Thomas's Eve, and in Westphalia in the mid-nineteenth century the same a.s.sociation of the day with slumber was shown by the schoolchildren's custom of calling the child who arrived last at school _Domesesel_ (Thomas a.s.s). In Holland, again, the person who lies longest in bed on St. Thomas's Day is greeted with shouts of "lazybones." Probably the fact that December 21 is the shortest day is enough to account for this.{66}

In England there was divination by means of "St. Thomas's onion." Girls used to peel an onion, wrap it in a handkerchief and put it under their heads at night, with a prayer to the satin 226 to show them their true love in a dream.{67} The most notable English custom on this day, however, was the peregrinations of poor people begging for money or provisions for Christmas. Going "a-gooding," or "a-Thoma.s.sin'," or "a-mumping," this was called. Sometimes in return for the charity bestowed a sprig of holly or mistletoe was given.{68} Possibly the sprig was originally a sacrament of the healthful spirit of growth: it may be compared with the olive- or cornel-branches carried about on New Year's Eve by Macedonian boys,{69} and also with the St. Martin's rod (see last chapter).

One more English custom on December 21 must be mentioned--it points to a sometime sacrifice--the bull-baiting practised until 1821 at Wokingham in Berks.h.i.+re. Its abolition in 1822 caused great resentment among the populace, although the flesh continued to be duly distributed.{70}

We are now four days from the feast of the Nativity, and many things commonly regarded as distinctive of Christmas have already come under notice. We have met, for instance, with several kinds of present-giving, with auguries for the New Year, with processions of carol-singers and well-wishers, with ceremonial feasting that antic.i.p.ates the Christmas eating and drinking, and with various figures, saintly or monstrous, mimed or merely imagined, which we shall find reappearing at the greatest of winter festivals. These things would seem to have been attracted from earlier dates to the feast of the Nativity, and the probability that Christmas has borrowed much from an old November festival gradually s.h.i.+fted into December, is our justification for having dwelt so long upon the feasts that precede the Twelve Days.

227 228 229

CHAPTER IX

CHRISTMAS EVE AND THE TWELVE DAYS

Christkind, Santa Klaus, and Knecht Ruprecht--Talking Animals and other Wonders of Christmas Eve--Scandinavian Beliefs about Trolls and the Return of the Dead--Traditional Christmas Songs in Eastern Europe--The Twelve Days, their Christian Origin and Pagan Superst.i.tions--The Raging Host--Hints of Supernatural Visitors in England--The German _Frauen_--The Greek _Kallikantzaroi_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CHRISTMAS EVE IN DEVONs.h.i.+RE--THE MUMMERS COMING IN]

CHRISTMAS EVE.

Christmas in the narrowest sense must be reckoned as beginning on the evening of December 24. Though Christmas Eve is not much observed in modern England, throughout the rest of Europe its importance so far as popular customs are concerned is far greater than that of the Day itself.

Then in Germany the Christmas-tree is manifested in its glory; then, as in the England of the past, the Yule log is solemnly lighted in many lands; then often the most distinctive Christmas meal takes place.

We shall consider these and other inst.i.tutions later; though they appear first on Christmas Eve, they belong more or less to the Twelve Days as a whole. Let us look first at the supernatural visitors, mimed by human beings, who delight the minds of children, especially in Germany, on the evening of December 24, and at the beliefs that hang around this most solemn night of the year.

First of all, the activities of St. Nicholas are not confined to his own festival; he often appears on Christmas Eve. We have already seen how he is attended by various companions, including 230 Christ Himself, and how he comes now vested as a bishop, now as a masked and s.h.a.ggy figure.

The names and attributes of the Christmas and Advent visitors are rather confused, but on the whole it may be said that in Protestant north Germany the episcopal St. Nicholas and his Eve have been replaced by Christmas Eve and the Christ Child, while the name Klas has become attached to various unsaintly forms appearing at or shortly before Christmas.

We can trace a deliberate subst.i.tution of the Christ Child for St.

Nicholas as the bringer of gifts. In the early seventeenth century a Protestant pastor is found complaining that parents put presents in their children's beds and tell them that St. Nicholas has brought them. "This,"

he says, "is a bad custom, because it points children to the saint, while yet we know that not St. Nicholas but the holy Christ Child gives us all good things for body and soul, and He alone it is whom we ought to call upon."{1}

The ways in which the figure, or at all events the name, of Christ Himself, is introduced into German Christmas customs, are often surprising. The Christ Child, "Christkind," so familiar to German children, has now become a sort of mythical figure, a product of sentiment and imagination working so freely as almost to forget the sacred character of the original. Christkind bears little resemblance to the Infant of Bethlehem; he is quite a tall child, and is often represented by a girl dressed in white, with long fair hair. He hovers, indeed, between the character of the Divine Infant and that of an angel, and is regarded more as a kind of good fairy than as anything else.

In Alsace the girl who represents Christkind has her face "made up" with flour, wears a crown of gold paper with lighted candles in it--a parallel to the headgear of the Swedish Lussi; in one hand she holds a silver bell, in the other, a basket of sweetmeats. She is followed by the terrible Hans Trapp, dressed in a bearskin, with blackened face, long beard, and threatening rod. He "goes for" the naughty children, who are only saved by the intercession of Christkind.{2}

In the Mittelmark the name of _de hele_ (holy) _Christ_ is strangely 231 given to a skin- or straw-clad man, elsewhere called Knecht Ruprecht, Klas, or Joseph.{3} In the Ruppin district a man dresses up in white with ribbons, carries a large pouch, and is called _Christmann_ or _Christpuppe_. He is accompanied by a _Schimmelreiter_ and by other fellows who are attired as women, have blackened faces, and are named _Feien_ (we may see in them a likeness to the Kalends maskers condemned by the early Church). The procession goes round from house to house. The _Schimmelreiter_ as he enters has to jump over a chair; this done, the _Christpuppe_ is admitted. The girls present begin to sing, and the _Schimmelreiter_ dances with one of them. Meanwhile the _Christpuppe_ makes the children repeat some verse of Scripture or a hymn; if they know it well, he rewards them with gingerbreads from his wallet; if not, he beats them with a bundle filled with ashes. Then both he and the _Schimmelreiter_ dance and pa.s.s on. Only when they are gone are the _Feien_ allowed to enter; they jump wildly about and frighten the children.{4}

Knecht Ruprecht, to whom allusion has already been made, is a prominent figure in the German Christmas. On Christmas Eve in the north he goes about clad in skins or straw and examines children; if they can say their prayers perfectly he rewards them with apples, nuts and gingerbreads; if not, he punishes them. In the Mittelmark, as we have seen, a personage corresponding to him is sometimes called "the holy Christ"; in Mecklenburg he is "ru Klas" (rough Nicholas--note his identification with the saint); in Brunswick, Hanover, and Holstein "Klas," "Klawes," "Klas Bur" and "Bullerklas"; and in Silesia "Joseph." Sometimes he wears bells and carries a long staff with a bag of ashes at the end--hence the name "Aschenklas" occasionally given to him.{5} An ingenious theory connects this aspect of him with the _polaznik_ of the Slavs, who on Christmas Day in Crivoscian farms goes to the hearth, takes up the ashes of the Yule log and dashes them against the cauldron-hook above so that sparks fly (see Chapter X.).{6} As for the name "Ruprecht" the older mythologists interpreted it as meaning "s.h.i.+ning with glory," _hruodperaht_, and identified its owner with the G.o.d Woden.{7} Dr. Tille, however, regards him 232 as dating only from the seventeenth century.{8} It can hardly be said that any satisfactory account has as yet been given of the origins of this personage, or of his relation to St. Nicholas, Pelzmarte, and monstrous creatures like the _Klapperbock_.

In the south-western part of Lower Austria, both St. Nicholas--a proper bishop with mitre, staff, and ring--and Ruprecht appear on Christmas Eve, and there is quite an elaborate ceremonial. The children welcome the saint with a hymn; then he goes to a table and makes each child repeat a prayer and show his lesson-books. Meanwhile Ruprecht in a hide, with glowing eyes and a long red tongue, stands at the door to overawe the young people. Each child next kneels before the saint and kisses his ring, whereupon Nicholas bids him put his shoes out-of-doors and look in them when the clock strikes ten. After this the saint lays on the table a rod dipped in lime, solemnly blesses the children, sprinkling them with holy water, and noiselessly departs. The children steal out into the garden, clear a s.p.a.ce in the snow, and set out their shoes; when the last stroke of ten has sounded they find them filled with nuts and apples and all kinds of sweet things.{9}

In the Troppau district of Austrian Silesia, three figures go round on Christmas Eve--Christkindel, the archangel Gabriel, and St. Peter--and perform a little play before the presents they bring are given.

Christkindel announces that he has gifts for the good children, but the bad shall feel the rod. St. Peter complains of the naughtiness of the youngsters: they play about in the streets instead of going straight to school; they tear up their lesson-books and do many other wicked things.

However, the children's mother pleads for them, and St. Peter relents and gives out the presents.{10}

In the Erzgebirge appear St. Peter and Ruprecht, who is clad in skin and straw, has a mask over his face, a rod, a chain round his body, and a sack with apples, nuts, and other gifts; and a somewhat similar performance is gone through.{11}

If we go as far east as Russia we find a parallel to the girl Christkind in Kolyada, a white-robed maiden driven about in a sledge from house to house on Christmas Eve. The young people who attended her sang carols, and presents were given 233 them in return. _Kolyada_ is the name for Christmas and appears to be derived from _Kalendae_, which probably entered the Slavonic languages by way of Byzantium. The maiden is one of those beings who, like the Italian Befana, have taken their names from the festival at which they appear.{12}

No time in all the Twelve Nights and Days is so charged with the supernatural as Christmas Eve. Doubtless this is due to the fact that the Church has hallowed the night of December 24-5 above all others in the year. It was to the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks _by night_ that, according to the Third Evangelist, came the angelic message of the Birth, and in harmony with this is the unique Midnight Ma.s.s of the Roman Church, lending a peculiar sanct.i.ty to the hour of its celebration. And yet many of the beliefs a.s.sociated with this night show a large admixture of paganism.

First, there is the idea that at midnight on Christmas Eve animals have the power of speech. This superst.i.tion exists in various parts of Europe, and no one can hear the beasts talk with impunity. The idea has given rise to some curious and rather grim tales. Here is one from Brittany:--