Did you know . . .?
The red-nosed reindeer was named Rudolph after Robert L. May’s four-year-old daughter, Barbara, said that she favored that particular moniker over Rollo or Reginald.
The child-like character of Rudolph, who ensured that all the good little boys and girls received their presents from Santa one foggy Christmas Eve, struck a chord and survived, so ensuring that Rudolph became as much a part of Christmas as roast turkey and Christmas pudding.
Did you know . . .?
When “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was first published in 1939 it sold more than 2 million copies. When it was printed again after the end of the Second World War, in 1946, it sold another 3.5 million!
Ten things you probably didn’t know about Rudolph and his friends
The reindeer is the only deer that can be domesticated, and was the first hoofed animal to be so. It provides the nomadic tribes who live within the Arctic Circle (such as the Lapps) with milk, cheese, meat, fat, clothing, footwear, tools (made from the antlers and bones), highly durable bindings (made from the animal’s sinews), and a means of transport.
The Finns once measured distance in terms of how far a reindeer could run without having to stop to urinate. The poronkusema is a measurement somewhere between 4 and 7 miles. The word poronkusema itself means “reindeer peeing.”
A reindeer calf can outrun a man at only one day old.
Lady reindeer are the only females of any species of deer that have horns.
In Iceland, reindeer meat (or hreindýr) is becoming an increasingly popular Christmas dinner choice.
The Lapp people of Scandinavia believe that taking powdered reindeer antlers increases virility.
Reindeer are able to walk over snow without sinking into it because their weight is distributed over a large area thanks to their wide-splayed hooves.
One reindeer can pull twice its body weight up to 40 miles.
Reindeer are vegetarians by choice but when the supply of greenery runs out they will eat anything and everything, from eggs and shed antlers to placenta and even rodents!
And lastly, male reindeer lose their antlers in the winter; only the females and castrated males keep them. So either way, it’s not looking good for Rudolph! Having a red nose was actually the least of his problems.
WHAT ARE THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS?
It is one of the most popular Christmas carols, telling of a zealous suitor’s extravagant Christmas gifts to his sweetheart. But when do the actual twelve days of Christmas fall, and what is the true meaning of the carol’s bizarre shopping list?
Let’s start with the twelve days of Christmas themselves. Many people have come to believe that the twelve days of Christmas are those leading up to the main event on December 25. However, they are actually the days that come after it, with the last day being Epiphany (the date on which the Christian Church celebrates the visit of the Magi to the Christ child), which falls on January 6. This is why that date is also known as Twelfth Night.
This period of time has come to be known as both Twelve-tide and Christmastide. In Medieval England, it was a time of continuous feasting and merrymaking. There was always plenty of food to go around; at least there was plenty of meat to go around, as most animals were slaughtered come the winter to save the farmers the cost of having to feed them during the long winter months.
But what of the carol? There is a widely perpetuated myth that “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was one of the so-called catechism songs. The theory goes that during the period 1558-1829—when it was illegal to worship as a Catholic, with laws in place preventing people from either publicly or privately practicing the faith of the Roman Church—certain songs were written with the express intention of teaching young Catholics the basic tenets of their faith, and some people believe that “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is one of these.
These believers insist that each of the otherwise frankly ludicrous gifts is a coded message representing a significant element of the Catholic catechism. In this case, the partridge in the pear tree is Jesus on the cross, the two turtle doves are the Old and New Testaments, while the three French hens represent the gifts of the Spirit mentioned in the first book of Corinthians—faith, hope, and love. The four calling birds are in fact the evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—the writers of the Gospels, and the five gold rings become the Jewish Torah, the first five books of the Bible which contained the laws that Jewish people should live by.
It goes on: the six geese a-laying are the six days of creation, while the seven swans a-swimming are the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit—wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord God. The eight maids a-milking stand in for the eight beatitudes mentioned by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. The nine ladies dancing are the nine fruits of the Spirit listed in the Book of Galatians—love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—and the ten lords a-leaping are in fact the Ten Commandments. The eleven pipers piping are the eleven faithful apostles (so don’t include the traitorous Judas), and the twelve drummers drumming are the twelve points of belief expressed in the Apostles’ Creed.
Only they don’t mean that, not any of them, at least according to others. The truth is that there isn’t any substantive evidence to either support the Catholic-teaching claim or to disprove it. What we do know is that the carol was a part of Christmas traditions in Europe and Scandinavia from as early as the sixteenth century. The familiar words of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” were also published in London, around the year 1780, in a collection of children’s rhymes called Mirth without Mischief. It was included in this context as a memory game with accompanying forfeits for the forgetful.
It’s not just the origin and purpose of the carol that are a cause of confusion; the words themselves are even up for debate. In certain versions of the carol, the gifts of the last four days appear in a different order. Instead of nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, and twelve drummers drumming, you could have nine drummers drumming, ten pipers piping, eleven ladies, or even dames, a-dancing, and the twelve lords a-leaping. There is even one variation in which ten fiddlers fiddle, so doing the pipers out of a job. The four calling birds can also be a problem. In some versions they are mockingbirds, while in others they are blackbirds. There is even some debate over the stalwart partridge, or at least its pear tree. The French for partridge is perdrix (pronounced per-dree) which could actually have made the original opening line, “A partridge, une perdrix.”
Whatever the origins of the carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is the source of much amusement in that it provides the basis for a suitably festive mathematical brainteaser, that of “How many gifts does the young lady, who narrates the carol, receive?” The gifts sent by the eager suitor referred to as “my true love” are cumulative.
The lucky lady receiving them doesn’t just receive a partridge in a pear tree on day one and then two turtle doves the next. Looking at the lyrics closely, it soon becomes apparent that on day two his sweetheart receives two turtle doves and another partridge.
On the third day of Christmas she gets the French hens, another pair of turtle doves and yet another partridge, pear tree, the works. And so it goes on . . . Rather than receiving a total of 78 gifts over the twelve days, the narrator of the carol actually receives 364 individual items, one for each day of a traditional year, minus Christmas Day.
Did you know . . .?
There is a mathematical formula you can use to work out the total number of gifts given by the extravagant “my true love” celebrated in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” on any one day of the twelve days. Where N is a particular day out of the twelve, the total number of gifts given on that day = N(N+1)(N+2)/6.
People have had some fun with this over the years. Since 1984, PNC Wealth Management based in the United States has maintained the Christmas Price Index. This is a pricing chart that plots the current cost of one se
t of each of the gifts given by the “true love” of the carol. This has even been used as a more general economic indicator. However, it is also used to calculate the True Cost of Christmas, in other words the total cumulative cost of all the gifts listed, including repetitions. (The people mentioned in the song are hired, not purchased.) According to PNC, in 1984 the True Cost of Christmas for the romantically inclined was $61,318.94. However, by 2007 it had risen to $78,100.10.
There is a growing trend for people to buy more and more of their Christmas gifts online to save money. However, if the “true love” of the carol had done that in 2007 he would have actually been even worse off. The True Cost of Christmas purchased over the Internet would have set him back $128,886.00!
Did you know . . .?
The Mesopotamian holiday of Zagmuk lasted for twelve days and featured the symbolic sacrifice of the king (replaced by a convenient convict) which compensated for the sins of the people. Sound familiar?
WHY IS FISH EATEN ON CHRISTMAS EVE?
In many households it is still traditional to eat fish on that arose during a more religious time in our country’s history. During the Middle Ages, it was the tradition to eat fish on a Friday (because Friday was a day of abstinence when the Catholic Church prohibited the consumption of meat) and this is still a not uncommon practice today.
For Catholics—the night of December 24 is the Vigil of the Nativity and, as such, is a fast. That being the case, meat is not to be eaten at this time either. However, our Medieval forebears did not consider fish to be meat, and so a fish dish is permissible.
During the reign of King Henry V (he of Agincourt and Sir Laurence Olivier fame), at one Christmas at court, a huge range of fish was consumed, everything from salmon, lobster, and roach to carp, lampreys, and pike!
Special kinds of fish are enjoyed throughout Europe on Christmas Eve. In Brittany, in France, cod is the fish of choice. In many parts of Germany and Styria it is carp, while herring salad is the favored dish in Saxony and Thuringia. Further afield, in Italy, a great supper—called the cenone—has fish at its center, with stewed eels being particularly popular.
Christmas Eve; but why? This custom is one of those
Did you know . . .?
In 1289 the Bishop of Hereford, Richard de Swinfield, spent Christmas at his manor of Prestbury, near Gloucester. Christmas Eve was kept as a fast, as was the tradition, but that didn’t stop the bishop and his household consuming rather a large amount of food. Herrings, conger eels, codlings, and a salmon were eaten, and 150 large plates, two hundred small plates, and three hundred dishes were required for this fasting feast.
But that was as nothing compared to what was eaten from Christmas Day to the feast of Saint John the Evangelist on December 27. During those three days, those spending Christmas at Prestbury managed to put away one boar, two and three-quarter cows, two calves, four doves, four pigs, sixty chickens and capons, eight partridges and two geese, and still found room for bread and cheese. Forty gallons of red wine were consumed, along with four gallons of white wine. How much ale (which was everyone’s everyday beverage) was drunk is not recorded!
Of course Christmas Eve is probably best known as the night when Santa Claus delivers presents to those children who have been good during the previous year. However, there are many more traditions and customs associated with Christmas Eve above and beyond the visit of poor, over-burdened Santa Claus and his beleaguered team of reindeer.
A custom associated with Christmas Eve was that of the Dumb Cake. This was a very dumb cake indeed, as it was actually a kind of loaf that was baked on Christmas Eve by any single girl who wanted to find out who she was eventually going to marry.
For the magic of the Dumb Cake to work, the desperately seeking singleton had to make the cake alone and in silence. Once done, she pricked it with her initials and then went to bed, but leaving the door open. At the stroke of midnight, her husband-to-be was supposed to enter the house and prick his initials next to hers. A variation on this tradition had the young lady’s intended entering the house and turning the cake as it cooked in the oven.
Christmas Eve has also long been the traditional time to decorate the house and put up the tree ready for Christmas morning. However, in our modern age it is a well-documented fact that Christmas starts earlier and earlier each year, so that trees and decorations festoon streets and department stores from as early as the beginning of October.
For many people, Christmas celebrations themselves start on Christmas Eve. For some nationalities, such as the people of Poland, it is the time when families gather to exchange gifts. For others, Christmas starts with Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. At this time, bells are sometimes tolled to announce the death of the Devil and the coming of Christ.
Did you know . . .?
The Devil’s Knell of Dewsbury in Yorkshire is a very special tolling. Each Christmas Eve the tenor bell of All Saints parish church, known as “Black Tom,” is tolled once for every year since Christ’s birth in the minutes leading up to Christmas. At midnight all the bells ring out in joyful celebration of the Devil’s death!
Midnight is usually known as the witching hour, when fell powers hold sway over the land, but this rule is turned on its head on Christmas Eve. Evil spirits lose their powers and one Irish legend has it that at that time the gates of Heaven open so that anyone who dies at that selfsame hour will go straight to heaven, rather than having to wait until the last trump of Doomsday.
Did you know . . .?
In 1867, Macy’s department store in New York City remained open until midnight on Christmas Eve for the first time, effectively initiating the tradition of last-minute Christmas shopping.
WHEN, AND WHY, WAS CHRISTMAS CANCELED?
There is a classic, line in the movie Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves when an enraged Sheriff of Nottingham (played by Alan Rickman, hamming it up to within an inch of his life) declares, in a moment of moustache-twirling villainy, “Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas!”
What many people don’t know is that Christmas was canceled, for real, but it wasn’t in the twelfth or thirteenth century. It was in fact in the seventeenth century.
During the 1640s and ’50s it was against the law to celebrate Christmas, with various pieces of legislation put in place making it illegal for churches to open on Christmas Day (unless it was a Sunday of course), for mince pies to be eaten and for people to decorate their houses with holly, ivy, and mistletoe. Many people have blamed the Lord Protector of England at this time, the kingkiller Oliver Cromwell, for this cessation of festive fun, but in reality it was just part of the seventeenth century Puritan crackdown on fun and frivolity in general.
From the late sixteenth century onwards, many pious people had come to frown upon the paganthemed Christmas celebrations; they disliked the extravagance, waste, disorder, sin, and immorality to which it inevitably led, and they saw it as a link back to Roman Catholicism—it was called Christ’s Mass after all (mass being a specifically Catholic ceremony). The Puritans argued that there was nothing in the Bible that said God wanted the faithful to mark Christ’s birth in any special way. And it wasn’t only Christmas they wanted to get rid of because they thought it was ungodly. They had it in for Easter and Pentecost as well.
In the early 1640s, the Long Parliament had already begun to clamp down on Christmas, even changing its name to “Christ-tide,” so as to distance themselves from the feast day’s Catholic connections. Parliament said that if Christ-tide was to be kept at all, it should be as a day of fasting and prayer. It was business as usual when the Long Parliament convened on December 25, 1643. In 1644, parliament stressed that December 25 was to be kept as a time of fasting and humiliation, when the faithful should think on the sins of those who had turned the day into a feast in the past. Both Houses of Parliament attended intense fast sermons on December 25, 1644. That year Cromwell’s administration passed an Act of Parliament that banned
any form of celebration during the twelve days of Christmas.
However, strict Puritans took the greatest exception to the pagan elements making up the Christmas festivities, which, let’s face it, was most of them. Christmas Day itself was dubbed “Satan’s working day” by the more extreme members of the Puritan cause, or even the “Antichrist’s Mass.” They particularly loathed the idea of wassailing—the practice of going door-to-door carol-singing—which more often than not ended up as an out-ofcontrol drunken revel.
In January 1645, parliament in England produced a new Directory of Public Worship which made it clear that Sundays were to be strictly observed as holy days, for the worship of God, and that there were to be no other “festival days, vulgarly called Holy Days.” Accompanying legislation made it illegal for any other forms of worship or church services to take place, especially Christmas. In June 1647, the Long Parliament passed an Ordinance making it absolutely clear that the feasts of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost were abolished.
During the 1650s further laws were passed. Christmas carols were banned, shops and markets were ordered to stay open on December 25, and those found holding or attending a special Christmas church service could be fined or put in the stocks—whether they were men, women, or children. In London, soldiers were ordered to patrol the streets and take any food suspected of being cooked for an illicit Christmas celebration, by force if necessary. Nativity scenes were banned as the worship of idols, and the use of the word “Christmas” itself was seen as taking the Lord’s name in vain.
Christmas Miscellany Page 7