crowd of people outside a gateGate of the "Old English Gentleman."—Page 109.
In a word, the blaze of royal and noble celebration was as a great beacon to the land, seen afar off by those who could not share in its warmth or sit under the influence of its immediate inspirations. But it was answered from every hill-top and repeated in every valley of England; and each man flung the Yule log on his own fire at the cheering signal. The hearth, according to Aubrey, at the first introduction of coals, was usually in the middle of the room; and he derives from thence the origin of the saying, "round about our coal fire." But whether the huge fagot crackled and flustered within those merry circles or flared and roared up the ample chimneys,—all social feelings, and all beautiful superstitions and old traditions and local observances awoke at the blaze; and from their thousand hiding-places crept out the customs and ceremonials which crowd this festal period of the year, and of which it is high time that we should proceed to give an account in these pages. The charmed log that (duly lighted with the last year's brand, which, as we learn from Herrick, was essential to its virtue) scared away all evil spirits, attracted all beneficent ones. The 'squire sat in the midst of his tenants as a patriarch might amid his family, and appears to have had no less reverence, though he compounded the wassail-bowl with his own hands and shared it with the meanest of hisdependants. The little book from which we have more than once quoted by the title of "Round about our Coal-fire," furnishes us with an example of this reverence too ludicrous to be omitted. Its writer tells us that if the 'squire had occasion to ask one of his neighbors what o'clock it was, he received for answer a profound bow and an assurance that it was what o'clock his worship pleased,—an answer, no doubt, indicative of profound respect, but not calculated to convey much useful information to the inquirer. In fine, however, while the glad spirit of the season covered the land, hospitality and harmony were everywhere a portion of that spirit. The light of a common festival shone for once upon the palace and the cottage, and the chain of a universal sympathy descended unbroken through all ranks, from the prince to the peasant and the beggar.
"The damsel donned her kirtle sheen;The hall was dress'd with holly green;Forth to the wood did merry men go,To gather in the misletoe.Then opened wide the baron's hall,To vassall, tenant, serf and all;Power laid his rod of rule aside,And ceremony doffed his pride.The heir, with roses in his shoes,Those nightsmight village partner chuse;The lord, underogating, shareThe vulgar game of 'post-and-pair.'. . . .The fire with well-dried logs supplied,Went roaring up the chimney wide;The huge hall-table's oaken face,Scrubbed till it shone, thetimeto grace,Bore then upon its massive boardNo mark to part the 'squire and lord.Then was brought in the lusty brawn,By old blue-coated serving-man;Then the grim boar's head frowned on high,Crested with bays and rosemary.Well can the green-garbed ranger tell,How, when, and where, the monster fell;What dogs, before his death, he tore,And all the batings of the boar.The wassail round, in good brown bowls,Garnished with ribbons, blithely trowls.There the huge sirloin reeked; hard byPlumb-porridge stood, and Christmas pye;Nor failed old Scotland to produce,At such high-tide, her savoury goose.Then came the merry masquers in,And carols roared with blithesome din;If unmelodious was the song,It was a hearty note, and strong.Who lists may, in their mumming, seeTraces of ancient mystery;White shirts supplied the masquerade,And smutted cheeks the visors made:But, Oh! what masquers, richly dight,Can boast of bosoms half so light?England was merry England, whenOld Christmas brought his sports again.'Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale,'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale,A Christmas gambol oft would cheerThe poor man's heart through half the year."
The ceremonies and superstitions and sports of the Christmas season are not only various in various places, but have varied from time to time in thesame. Those of them which have their root in the festival itself are for the most part common to all, and have dragged out a lingering existence even to our times. But there are many which, springing from other sources, have placed themselves under its protection or, naturally enough, sought to associate themselves with merry spirits like their own. Old Father Christmas has had a great many children in his time, some of whom he has survived; and not only so, but in addition to his own lawful offspring the generous old man has taken under his patronage and adopted into his family many who have no legitimate claim to that distinction by any of the wives to whom he has been united,—neither by the Roman lady, his lady of the Celtic family, nor her whom he took to his bosom and converted from the idolatry of Thor. His family appears to have been generally far too numerous to be entertained at one time in the same establishment, or indeed by the same community, and to have rarely travelled therefore in a body.
In Ben Jonson's Masque of Christmas, to which we have already alluded, the old gentleman is introduced "attired in round hose, long stockings, a close doublet, a high-crowned hat with a broach, a long thin beard, a truncheon, little ruffs, white shoes, his scarfs and garters tied cross, and his drum beaten before him," and is accompanied by the following members of his fine family:Miss-rule,Caroll,Minced-pie,Gamboll,Post-and-Pair(since dead),New Year's Gift,Mumming,Wassail,Offering, andBaby-Cake,—orBaby-Cocke, as we find him elsewhere called, but who we fear is dead too, unless he may have changed his name, for we still find one of the family bearing some resemblance to the description of him given by Ben Jonson.
In the frontispiece to this volume the artist has represented the old man like another magician, summoning his spirits from the four winds for a general muster; and we hope that the greater part of them will obey his conjuration. The purpose, we believe, is to take a review of their condition and see if something cannot be done to amend their prospects,—in which it is our purpose to assist him. Already some of the children have appeared on the stage; and the rest, we have no doubt, are advancing in all directions. We are glad to see amongst the foremost, as he ought to be,Roast Beef,—that English "champion bold" who has driven the invader hunger from the land in many a well-fought fray, and for his doughty deeds was created a knight banneret on one of his own gallant fields so long ago as King Charles's time. We suppose he is the same worthy who, in the Romish calendar, appears canonized by the title of Saint George, where his great adversary Famine is represented under the figure of a dragon. Still followingRoast Beef, as he has done for many a long year, we perceive his faithful 'squire (bottle-holderif you will)Plum Pudding, with his rich round face and rosemary cockade. He is a blackamoor, and derives his extraction from the spice lands. His Oriental properties have however received an English education and taken an English form, and he has long ago been adopted into the family of Father Christmas. In his younger days his name was "Plumb-Porridge": but since he grew up to be the substantial man he is, it has been changed into the one he now bears, as indicative of greater consistency and strength. His master treats him like a brother; and he has, in return, done good service against the enemy in many a hard-fought field, cutting off all straggling detachments or flying parties from the main body, which the great champion had previously routed. Both these individuals, we think, are looking as vigorous as they can ever have done in their lives, and offer in their well-maintained and portly personages a strong presumption thattheyat least have at no time ceased to be favorite guests at the festivals of the land.
Near them stands, we rejoice to see, their favorite sister Wassail. She was of a slender figure in Ben Jonson's day, and is so still. If the garb in which she appears has a somewhat antiquated appearance, there is a play of the lip and a twinkle of the eye which prove that the glowing and joyous spirit which made our ancestors so merry "ages long ago," and helped them out with so many a pleasantfancy and quaint device, is not a day older than it was in the time of King Arthur. How should she grow old who bathes in such a bowl? It is her fount of perpetual youth! Why, even mortal hearts grow younger, and mortal spirits lighter, as they taste of its charmed waters. There it is, with its floating apples and hovering inspirations! We see too, that the "tricksy spirit," whose head bears it (and that is more than every head could do) has lost none of his gambols, and that he is still on the best of terms with the Turkey who has been his playfellow at these holiday-times for so many years. The latter, we suppose, has just come up from Norfolk, where Father Christmas puts him to school; and the meeting on both sides seems to be of the most satisfactory kind.
Mummingalso, we see, has obeyed the summons, although he looks as if he had come from a long distance and did not go about much now. We fancy he has become something of a student. Misrule too, we believe, has lost a good deal of his mercurial spirit, and finds his principal resource in old books. He has come to the muster, however, with a very long "feather in his cap," as if he considered the present summons portentous of good fortune. He looks as if he were not altogether without hopes of taking office again. We observe with great satisfaction, that the Lord of Twelfth Night has survived the revolutions which have been fatal to the King of the Cockneys and so many ofhis royal brethren; and that he is still "every inch a king." Yonder he comes under a state-canopy of cake, and wearing yet his ancient crown. The lady whom we see advancing in the distance we take to be Saint Distaff. She used to be a sad romp; but her merriest days we fear are over, for she is looking very like an old maid. Not far behind her we fancy we can hear the clear voice of Caroll singing as he comes along; and if our ears do not deceive us, the Waits are coming up in another direction. The children are dropping in on all sides.
But what is he that looks down from yonder pedestal in the back-ground upon the merry muster, with a double face? And why, while the holly and the mistletoe mingle with the white tresses that hang over the brow of the one, is the other hidden by a veil? The face on which we gaze is the face of an old man, and a not uncheerful old man,—a face marked by many a scar, by the channels of tears that have been dried up and the deep traces of sorrows past away. Yet does it look placidly down from beneath its crown of evergreens on the joyous crew who are assembled at the voice of Christmas. But what aspect hath that other face which no man can see? Why doth our flesh creep and the blood curdle in our veins as we gaze? What awful mystery doth that dark curtain hide? What may be written on that covered brow, that the old man dare not lift the veil and show it tothose laughing children? Much, much, much that might spoil the revels. Much that man might not know and yet bear to abide. That twin face is Janus, he who shuts the gates upon the old year and opens those of the new, he who looks into the past and into the future, and catches the reflections of both, and has the tales of each written on his respective brows. For the past, it is known and has been suffered; and even at a season like this we can pause to retrace the story of its joys and of its sorrows as they are graven on that open forehead,—and from that retrospect, glancing to the future for hope, can still turn to the present for enjoyment. But oh, that veil and its solemn enigmas! On that other brow may be written some secret which, putting out the light of hope, should add the darkness of the future to the darkness of the past, until, amid the gloom before and the gloom behind, the festal lamps of the season, looked on by eyes dim with our own tears, should show as sad as tapers lighted up in the chamber of the dead. God in mercy keep down that veil!
"Such foresight who on earth would crave,Where knowledge is not power to save?"
It will be our business to introduce to our readers each of the children of old Christmas as they come up in obedience to the summons of their father, reserving to ourselves the right of settling the order of their precedence; and we will endeavor to givesome account of the part which each played of old in the revelries of the season peculiarly their own, and of the sad changes which time has made in the natural constitutions, or animal spirits, of some of them. Preparatory, however, to this we must endeavor to give a rapid glance at the causes which contributed to the decay of a festival so ancient and universal and uproarious as that which we have described, and brought into the old man's family that disease to which some of them have already fallen victims, and which threatens others with an untimely extinction.
We have already shown that so early as the reign of Elizabeth the Puritans had begun to lift up their testimony against the pageantries of the Christmas-tide; and the Lord of Misrule, even in that day of his potential ascendancy, was described as little better than the great Enemy of Souls himself. Our friend Stubs (whose denunciations were directed againstallamusements which from long usage and established repetition had assumed anything like a form of ceremonial, and who is quite as angry with those who "goe some to the woodes and groves and some to the hilles and mountaines . . . where they spende all the night in pastymes, and in the mornyng they return bringing with them birch bowes and braunches of trees to deck their assemblies withall," in the sweet month of May, as he could possibly be with the Christmas revellers, although the very language in which he is obliged tostate the charge against the former was enough to tempt people out "a Maying," and might almost have converted himself) assures the reader of his "Anatomie" that all who contribute "to the maintenaunce of these execrable pastymes" do neither more nor less than "offer sacrifice to the devill and Sathanas." It is probable, however, that the people of those days, who were a right loyal people and freely acknowledged the claim of their sovereigns to an absolute disposition of all their temporalities (any of the common or statute laws of the land notwithstanding), considered it a part of their loyalty to be damned in company with their sovereigns, too, and resolved that so long as these iniquities obtained the royal patronage it was of their allegiance to place themselves in the same category of responsibility. Or perhaps their notion of regal prerogative, which extended so far as to admit its right to mould the national law at its good pleasure, might go the further length of ascribing to it a controlling power over the moral statutes of right and wrong, and of pleading its sanction against the menaces of Master Stubs. Or it may be that Master Stubs had failed to convince them that they were wrong, even without an appeal to the royal dispensation. Certain it is that, in spite of all that Master Stubs and his brethren could say, the sway of the Lord of Misrule, and the revels of his court continued to flourish with increasing splendor during this reign, and, as we have seen, lost no portion of their magnificenceduring the two next, although in that time had arisen the great champion of the Puritans, Prynne, and against them and their practices had been directed whole volumes of vituperation, and denounced large vials of wrath.
In Scotland, however, where the reformation took a sterner tone than in the southern kingdom, and where, as we have said, the irregularities committed under cover of the Christmas and other ceremonials laid them more justly open to its censure, the effect of this outcry was earlier and far more sensibly felt; and even so early as the reign of Queen Mary an act passed the Scottish Parliament whereby the Abbot of Unreason and all his "merrie disports" were suppressed.
In England, it is true that, according to Sandys, an order of the common council had issued as early as the beginning ofourMary's reign prohibiting the Lord Mayor or Sheriffs from entertaining a Lord of Misrule in any of their houses; but this appears to have been merely on financial grounds, with a view of reducing the corporation expenditure, and to have extended no further.
It was not, however, until after the breaking out of the Civil War that the persecution of the Puritans (who had long and zealously labored not only to resolve the various ceremonials of the season into their pagan elements, but even to prove that the celebration of the Nativity at all was in itself idolatrous) succeeded to any extent in producing thatresult which the war itself and the consequent disorganization of society must in a great measure have effected even without the aid of a fanatical outcry. In the very first year of that armed struggle the earliest successful blow was struck against the festivities with which it had been usual to celebrate this period of the year, in certain ordinances which were issued for suppressing the performance of plays and other diversions; and in the following year some of the shops in London were for the first time opened on Christmas day, in obedience to the feelings which connected any observance of it with the spirit of popery. By the year 1647 the Puritans had so far prevailed that in various places the parish officers were subjected to penalties for encouraging the decking of churches and permitting divine service to be performed therein on Christmas morning; and in the same year the observance of the festival itself, with that of other holidays, was formally abolished by the two branches of the legislature.
It was found impossible, however, by all these united means, to eradicate the Christmas spirit from the land; and many of its customs and festivities continued to be observed, not only in obscure places, but even in towns, in spite of prohibition and in spite of the disarrangement of social ties. The contest between the Puritan spirit and the ancient spirit of celebration led to many contests; and we have an account—in a little book of whichwe have seen a copy in the British Museum, entitled "Canterbury Christmas, or a True Relation of the Insurrection in Canterbury"—of the disturbances which ensued in that city upon the Mayor's proclamation, issued in consequence of that Parliamentary prohibition at the Christmas which followed. This said proclamation, it appears, which was made by the city crier, was to the effect "that Christmas day and all other superstitious festivals should be put downe and that a market should be kept upon Christmas day." This order, it goes on to state, was "very ill taken by the country," the people of which neglected to bring their provisions into the town, and gave other tokens of their displeasure of a less negative kind. For, a few of the shopkeepers in the city, "to the number of twelve at the most," having ventured to open their shops in defiance of the general feeling, "they were commanded by the multitude to shut up again; but refusing to obey, their ware was thrown up and down and they at last forced to shut in."
Nor were the revilings of the Puritans against the lovers of Christmas observances suffered to remain unanswered. Many a squib was directed against the Roundheads; and the popular regret for the suppression of their high festival was skilfully appealed to by Royalist politicians and favorers of the ancient religion. The connection between the new condition of things in Church and State and the extinction of all the merriment of the land was carefullysuggested in publications that stole out in spite of penalties and were read in defiance of prohibitions. As an example, that curious little tract from which we have more than once quoted under the title of "An Hue and Cry after Christmas," bears the date of 1645; and we shall best give our readers an idea of its character by setting out that title at length, as the same exhibits a tolerable abstract of its contents. It runs thus: "The arraignment, conviction, and imprisoning of Christmas on St. Thomas day last, and how he broke out of prison in the holidayes and got away, onely left his hoary hair and gray beard sticking between two iron bars of a window. With an Hue and Cry after Christmas, and a letter from Mr. Woodcock, a fellow in Oxford, to a malignant lady in London. And divers passages between the lady and the cryer about Old Christmas; and what shift he was fain to make to save his life, and great stir to fetch him back again. Printed by Simon Minc'd Pye for Cissely Plum-Porridge, and are to be sold by Ralph Fidler Chandler at the signe of the Pack of Cards in Mustard Alley in Brawn Street." Besides the allusions contained in the latter part of this title to some of the good things that follow in the old man's train, great pains are taken by the "cryer" in describing him, and by the lady in mourning for him, to allude to many of the cheerful attributes that made him dear to the people. His great antiquity and portly appearance are likewise insisted upon. "For agethis hoarie-headed man was of great yeares, and as white as snow. He entered the Romish Kallendar, time out of mind, as old or very neer as Father Mathusalem was,—one that looked fresh in the Bishops' time, though their fall made him pine away ever since. He was full and fat as any divine doctor on them all; he looked under the consecrated lawne sleeves as big as Bul-beefe,—just like Bacchus upon a tunne of wine, when the grapes hang shaking about his eares; but since the Catholike liquor is taken from him he is much wasted, so that he hath looked very thin and ill of late." "The poor," says the "cryer" to the lady, "are sory for" his departure; "for they go to every door a-begging, as they were wont to do (good Mrs., Somewhat against this good time); but Time was transformed,Away, be gone; here is not for you." The lady, however, declares that she for one will not be deterred from welcoming old Christmas. "No, no!" says she; "bid him come by night over the Thames, and we will have a back-door open to let him in;" and ends by anticipating better prospects for him another year.
And by many a back-door was the old man let in to many a fireside during the heaviest times of all that persecution and disgrace. On the establishment of the Commonwealth, when the more settled state of things removed some of the causes which had opposed themselves to his due reception, the contests of opposition between the revived spirit offestival and the increased sectarian austerity became more conspicuous. There is an order of the Parliament in 1652 again prohibiting the observance of Christmas day, which proves that the practice had revived; and there are examples of the military having been employed to disperse congregations assembled for that purpose. In the "Vindication of Christmas," published about this time, the old gentleman, after complaining bitterly of the manner in which he was "used in the city, and wandering into the country up and down from house to house, found small comfort in any," asserts his determination not to be so repulsed: "Welcome or not welcome," says he, "I am come." In a periodical publication of that day entitled "Mercurius Democritus, or a True and Perfect Nocturnall, communicating many strange wonders out of the World in the Moon, etc.," the public are encouraged to keep Christmas, and promised better days. No. 37 contains some verses to that effect, of which the following are the first two:—
"Old Christmass now is come to town,Though few do him regard;He laughs to see them going down,That have put down his Lord."Cheer up, sad heart, crown Christmass bowls,Banish dull grief and sorrow;Though you want cloaths, you have rich souls,Thesunmay shine to-morrow."
And again in No. 38:—
"A gallant crew, stir up the fire,The other winter tale,Welcome, Christmass, 'tis our desireTo give thee more spic'd ale."
On the return of the royal family to England, the court celebrations of Christmas were revived both there and at the Inns of Court; and the Lord of Misrule came again into office. We have allusions to the one and the other in the writings of Pepys and of Evelyn. The nobles and wealthy gentry, too, once more at their country-seats, took under their protection such of the ancient observances as had survived the persecution, and from time to time stole out of their hiding-places under the encouragement of the new order of things. But in none of its ancient haunts did the festival ever again recover its splendor of old. The condition of Charles's exchequer, and the many charges upon it,—arising as well out of the services of his adherents as from his own dissolute life,—left him little chance of imitating the lavish appointments of the court pageantries in the days of Elizabeth and James; and the troubles out of which the nation had emerged had made changes as well in the face of the country as in the condition and character of society, alike opposed to anything like a general and complete revival of the merry doings of yore. In the country, estates had passed into new hands, and the immemorial ties between the ancient families and the tenants of the soil had been rudelysevered. Many of the old establishments in which these celebrations had been most zealously observed, were finally broken up; and friends who had met together from childhood around the Christmas fire, and pledged each other year by year in the wassail-bowl, were scattered by the chances of war. But out of this disturbance of the old localities and disruption of the ancient ties of the land, a result still more fatal to these old observances had arisen, promoted besides by the dissipation of manners which the restored monarch had introduced into the country. Men rooted out from their ancestral possessions and looking to a licentious king for compensation, became hangers-on about the court; and others who had no such excuse, seduced by their example and enamoured of the gayeties of the metropolis and the profligacies of Whitehall, abandoned the shelter of the old trees beneath whose shade their fathers had fostered the sanctities of life, and from "country gentlemen" became "men about town." The evils of this practice, at which we have before hinted as one of those to which the decay of rural customs is mainly owing, began to be early felt, and form the topic of frequent complaint and the subject of many of the popular ballads of that day. The song of the "Old and Young Courtier" was written for the purpose of contrasting the good old manners with those of Charles's time; and the effects of the change upon the Christmas hospitalities has due and particularnotice therein. We extract it from the Percy collection for our readers, as appropriate to our subject and a sample of the ballads of the time:—
THE OLD AND YOUNG COURTIER.
An old song made by an aged old pate,Of an old worshipful gentleman who had a greate estate,That kept a brave old house at a bountifull rate,And an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate;Like an old courtier of the Queen's,And the Queen's old courtier.With an old lady, whose anger one word assuages;They every quarter paid their old servants their wages,And never knew what belong'd to coachmen, footmen, nor pages,But kept twenty old fellows with blue coats and badges;Like an old courtier, etc.With an old study fill'd full of learned old books,With an old reverend chaplain,—you might know him by his looks,—With an old buttery hatch worn quite off the hooks,And an old kitchen, that maintained half-a-dozen old cooks;Like an old courtier, etc.With an old hall, hung about with pikes, guns, and bows,With old swords, and bucklers that had borne many shrewde blows,And an old frize coat, to cover his worship's trunk hose,And a cup of old sherry to comfort his copper nose;Like an old courtier, etc.With a good old fashion, when Christmasse was come,To call in all his old neighbours with bagpipe and drum,With good chear enough to furnish every old room,And old liquor able to make a cat speak, and man dumb;Like an old courtier, etc.With an old falconer, huntsman, and a kennel of hounds,That never hawked, nor hunted, but in his own grounds,Who, like a wise man, kept himself within his own bounds,And when he dyed gave every child a thousand good pounds;Like an old courtier, etc.But to his eldest son his house and land he assign'd,Charging him in his will to keep the old bountifull mind,To be good to his old tenants, and to his neighbours be kind;But in the ensuing ditty you shall hear how he was inclined;Like a young courtier, etc.Like a flourishing young gallant, newly come to his land,Who keeps a brace of painted madams at his command,And takes up a thousand pound upon his father's land,And gets drunk in a tavern, till he can neither go nor stand;Like a young courtier, etc.With a new-fangled lady, that is dandy, nice, and spare,Who never knew what belong'd to good housekeeping or care,Who buys gaudy-color'd fans to play with wanton air,And seven or eight different dressings of other women's hair;Like a young courtier, etc.With a new-fashion'd hall, built where the old one stood,Hung round with new pictures, that do the poor no good,With a fine marble chimney, wherein burns neither coal nor wood,And a new smooth shovelboard, whereon no victuals ne'er stood;Like a young courtier, etc.With a new study, stuff'd full of pamphlets and plays,And a new chaplain, that swears faster than he prays,With a new buttery-hatch that opens once in four or five days,And a new French cook, to devise fine kickshaws and toys;Like a young courtier, etc.With a new fashion, when Christmasse is drawing on,On a new journey to London straight we all must begone,And leave none to keep house, but our new porter John,Who relieves the poor with a thump on the back with a stone;Like a young courtier, etc.With a new gentleman usher, whose carriage is compleat,With a new coachman, footmen, and pages to carry up the meat,With a waiting-gentlewoman, whose dressing is very neat,Who when her lady has din'd, lets the servants not eat;Like a young courtier, etc.With new titles of honour bought with his father's old gold,For which sundry of his ancestors' old manors are sold;And this is the course most of our new gallants hold,Which makes that good housekeeping is now grown so cold,Among the young courtiers of the King,Or the King's young courtiers.
In a word, the old English feeling seemed nearly extinct for a time; and the ancient customs which had connected themselves therewith, one by one fell more or less into disuse. The chain ofuniversalsympathy andgeneralobservance, which had long kept the festival together in all its parts, was broken; and the parts fell asunder, and were by degreeslost or overlooked. Let no man say that this is scarcely worth lamenting! Let none imagine that, in the decay of customs useless or insignificant in themselves, there is little to regret! "The affections," says Sterne, "when they are busy that way, will build their structures, were it but on the paring of a nail;" and there is no practice of long observance and ancient veneration—whether among nations or individuals—round which the affections have not in some degree twined themselves, and which are not therefore useful as supports and remembrancers to those affections. There are few of the consequences springing from civil war more lamentable than the disturbance which it gives to the social arrangements, were it but to the meanest of them. It is impossible that customs long identified with the feelings should perish without those feelings (though from their own eternal principle they will ultimately revive and find new modes of action) suffering some temporary injury. It was a beautiful assertion of Dr. Johnson that his feelings would be outraged by seeing an old post rooted up from before his door which he had been used to look at all his life,—even though it might be an incumbrance there. How much more would he have grieved over the removal of a village Maypole, with all its merry memories and all its ancient reverence!
The Christmas festival has languished from those days to this, but never has been, and never will beextinct. The stately forms of its celebration in high places have long since (and, in all probability, forever) passed away. The sole and homely representative of the gorgeous Christmas prince is the mock-monarch of the Epiphany,—the laureate of our times, with his nominal duties, in the last faint shadow of the court bards and masque-makers of yore; and the few lingering remains of the important duties once confided to the master of the royal revels are silently and unostentatiously performed in the office of the Lord Chamberlain of to-day. But the spirit of the season yet survives, and, for reasons which we shall proceed to point out,mustsurvive. True, the uproarious merriment, the loud voice which it sent of old throughout the land, have ceased; and while the ancient sports and ceremonies are widely scattered, many of them have retreated into obscure places, and some perhaps are lost. Still, however, this period of commemoration is everywhere a merry time; and we believe, as we have already said, that most of the children of Father Christmas are yet wandering up and down in one place or another of the land. We call upon all those of our readers who know anything of the "old, old, very old, gray-bearded gentleman" or his family to aid us in our search after them; and with their good help we will endeavor to restore them to some portion of their ancient honors in England.
FOOTNOTES:[2]The evergreen holly is meant, a bearing peculiarly appropriate to the lord of Christmas sports.[3]His motto or impress.
[2]The evergreen holly is meant, a bearing peculiarly appropriate to the lord of Christmas sports.
[2]The evergreen holly is meant, a bearing peculiarly appropriate to the lord of Christmas sports.
[3]His motto or impress.
[3]His motto or impress.
Young lady kissing the cheek of an older womanFamily Congratulation.—Page 134.
Ofall the festivals which crowd the Christian calendar there is none that exercises an influence so strong and universal as that of Christmas; and those varied superstitions, and quaint customs, and joyous observances, which once abounded throughout the rural districts of England, are at no period of the year so thickly congregated or so strongly marked as at this season of unrestrained festivity and extended celebration. The reasons for this are various and very obvious. In the case of a single celebration, which has to support itself by its own solitary influence long, perchance, after the feeling in which it originated has ceased to operate, whose significance is perhaps dimly and more dimly perceived (through the obscurity of a distance, year after year receding further into shadow) by its own unaided and unreflected light, the chances are many that the annually increasing neglect into which its observance is likely to fall, shall finally consign it to an entire obliteration. But a cluster of festivals, standing in a proximate order of succession, at once throwing light upon each other and illustrated by a varied and numerous host of customs, traditions, and ceremonies,—of which, as in a similar cluster of stars, the occasional obscuration of any one or more would not prevent their memory being suggested and their place distinctly indicated by the others,—present greatly multiplied probabilities against their existence being ever entirely forgotten or their observation wholly discontinued. The arrangement by which a series of celebrations—beautiful in themselves, and connected with the paramount event in which are laid the foundations of our religion—are made to fall at a period otherwise of very solemn import (from its being assumed as the close of the larger of those revolutions of time into which man measures out the span of his transitory existence), and the chance which has brought down to the same point and thrown together the traces of customs and superstitions both of a sacred and secular character, uniting with the crowd of Catholic observances, off-shoots from the ancient Saturnalia, remains of old Druidical rites, and glimpses into the mythology of the Northern nations, have written a series of hieroglyphics upon that place of the calendar, which, if they cannot be deciphered in every part, are still, from their number and juxtaposition, never likely to be overlooked.
But though these causes are offered as accounting for the preservation of many customs which, without them, would long since have passed intooblivion, which exist by virtue of the position they occupy on the calendar, yet the more conspicuous celebrations of this season need no such aid and no such arguments. Nothing can be added to their intrinsic interest, and they are too closely connected with the solemn warnings of man's temporal destiny, and linked with the story of his eternal hopes, ever to lose any portion of that influence, a share of which (without thereby losing, as light is communicated without diminution) they throw over all the other celebrations that take shelter under their wing.
In every way, and by many a tributary stream, are the holy and beneficent sentiments which belong to the period increased and refreshed. Beautiful feelings, too apt to fade within the heart of man amid the chilling influences of worldly pursuit, steal out beneath the sweet religious warmth of the season, and the pure and holy amongst the hopes of earth assemble, to place themselves under the protection of that eternal hope whose promise is now, as it were, yearly renewed. Amid the echoes of that song which proclaimed peace on earth and good-will towards men, making no exclusions, and dividing them into no classes, rises up a dormant sense of universal brotherhood in the heart; and something like a distribution of the good things of the earth is suggested in favor of those, destitute here, who are proclaimed as joint participators in the treasure thus announced from heaven. At noother period of the year are the feeling of a universal benevolence and the sense of a common Adam so widely awakened; at no season is the predominant spirit of selfishness so effectually rebuked; never are the circles of love so largely widened.
The very presence of a lengthened festivity—for festivity can never besolitary—would, apart from its sacred causes, promote these wholesome effects. The extended space of time over which this festival is spread, the protracted holiday which it creates, points it out for the gathering together of distant friends whom the passing nature of an occasional and single celebration would fail to collect from their scattered places of the world. By this wise and beautiful arrangement the spell of home is still made to cast its sweet and holy influence along the sterile regions as along the bright places of after-life, and from the dark valleys and the sunny hilltops of the world to call back alike the spoiled of fortune and the tired and travel-stained to refresh themselves again and again at the fountain of their calmer hopes and purer feelings. A wise and beautiful arrangement this would be, in whatever season of the year it might be placed! Wise and beautiful is any institution which sets up a rallying-place for the early affections and re-awakens the sacred sympathies of youth,—which, from that well-head of purity and peace, sends forth, as it were, a little river of living waters, to flow with revivifyingfreshness and soothing murmur along the wastes and wildernesses of after years; which makes of that spring-time of the heart a reservoir of balm, to which in hours of sorrow it can return for joy, and in years of guilt for regeneration; and which, like the widow's cruse of oil, wasteth not in all the ages of the mind's dearth. But how greatly are the wisdom and the beauty of this arrangement increased by the sacred season at which it has been placed! Under the sanctions of religion the covenants of the heart are renewed. Upon the altars of our faith the lamps of the spirit are rekindled. The loves of earth seem to have met together at the sound of the "glad tidings" of the season, to refresh themselves for the heaven which those tidings proclaim. From "Abana and Pharpar" and all the "rivers of Damascus" the affections are returned to bathe in "the waters of Israel." In many a peaceful spot and lowly home,
"Wi' joy unfeigned, brothers and sisters meet,An' each for other's welfare kindly spiers;"
and as the long-separated look once more into the "sweet, familiar faces," and listen in that restored companionship to strains such as "once did sweet in Zion glide" (even as they listened long ago, and, it may be, with some who are gone from them for ever),—