The people of Greccio came to the cave at nightfall on Christmas Eve, bearing candles and torches before them, to attend a Mass held there by Saint Francis. Saint Bonaventure, Francis’ biographer, recounts how the experience was incredibly moving for those present, to the point where the people were “filled with the utmost joy, and shedding tears of devotion and compassion.”
Did you know . . .?
According to legend, the animals who were sharing the stable where Jesus was born, having seen the Holy Infant, suddenly found themselves able to speak. Every Christmas Eve since, farmyard animals the world over find their voices again and converse freely. However, human beings, who are such poor listeners anyway, shouldn’t listen to them; it’s considered bad manners, and to top it all, it brings bad luck. Baaaa humbug! However, one man is credited with creating the Christmas crib more than any other, and that is the thirteenth-century Saint Francis of Assisi. In 1220, Francis made the pilgrimage to Bethlehem. While there, he saw how Christmas was celebrated in the town of Jesus’ birth and was so impressed that he asked the Pope, Honorius III, if he might recreate something like it in his own Italian home of Greccio.
After Saint Francis’ death, the custom of having a Christmas crib spread throughout Europe, with smaller wooden Nativity scenes popping up in churches and homes across the continent. By the seventeenth century, the custom of having a representation of the crib in the home was well-established and highly popular. In England it was even enhanced by the baking of crib pies—precursors of the modern mince pie—made in the shape of a cradle and sometimes with the addition of a little pastry baby Jesus.
Manger scenes almost always have the holy family of Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus in either a barn or a cave, with a donkey and ox present. On top of that there may also be a couple of shepherds in attendance, along with a lamb, and the three wise men. Some scenes even go to the lengths of adding a camel for the travelers from distant lands, a smattering of angels, and possibly even the Star of Bethlehem shining overhead.
However, in Catalonia, Spain, and the Basque Country, there is always another character present, without fail: the caganer. This grotesque individual, who is sometimes a caricature of an unpopular public figure, has nothing to do with the Nativity story but is merely a reflection of the Catalans’ irreverent sense of scatological humor. Caganer means “crapper,” and the figure is that of a squatting man doing his business in the straw, hidden at the back of the stable.
WHAT IS WASSAILING?
Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green,
Here we come a-wandering,
So fair to be seen.
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too,
And God bless you, and send you
A happy New Year,
And God send you
A happy New Year.
Wassailing used to be a popular part of the Christmas festivities in England and the memory of it still lingers in the words of certain carols, but what was wassailing, and how exactly did people go about it?
Wassail itself was a hot drink which pre-dates the Christian festival by some centuries. The word “wassail” comes from the Old English wæs hæl which literally meant “be whole” and so, by extension, “be healthy.” The phrase “hale and hearty” has its origins in this expression as well.
The ceremony from which wassailing developed was a toast to the sun as it rose on the morning after the shortest day of the winter solstice. It, like the veneration of evergreens, was believed to encourage a bountiful harvest (specifically that of fruit) in the year to come. The transformation of the winter festival to a Christian one did nothing to diminish the popularity of the wassail toast and it persisted, like so much else, becoming interwoven with the newer Christianized celebrations.
In Saxon, England, at the start of the year, the lord of the manor would shout the greeting wæs hæl to his assembled household, who would respond with the words drinc hæl, meaning “drink and be healthy.” His lordship would then take a swig from a large wooden bowl—the wassail bowl or wassail cup—before passing it on to the next most senior member of the household. And so it would be passed down the line until everyone had had a drink.
Did you know . . .?
The expression “to drink a toast” actually has its origins in the wassail. By the time the practice of wassailing had left the lord’s manor, with bands of peasants taking their empty wassail bowl from house to house for it to be filled with drink, the wassailers were sometimes given pieces of toast—rather like croutons—to float on the top. Each wassailer in turn took a piece and wished his fellows good cheer before eating the toast and washing it down with a swig of the potent mixture in the bowl. Hence the phrase “to drink a toast.”
The fact that a drink whose constituent ingredient is ale should be called wassail is purely a coincidence. Apples are an important component of the recipe, along with spices and sugar, which was added late in the drink’s development when it became more widely available.
Wassail
6 cups of ale
1 cup of sugar
Pinch of cinnamon
Pinch of ginger
Pinch of cloves
Pinch of nutmeg
6 beaten eggs
4 roasted apples
Heat the ale in a saucepan, add the sugar and spices, and bring almost to a boil. Take it off the heat and gradually add a little of the hot mixture to the beaten eggs. Return it to the saucepan and cook, this time stirring constantly until the mixture has thickened slightly. Put the roasted apples in a punch bowl (which must be heat-proof) and pour the mixture over them.
Due to its unusual mix of ingredients—which could include whipping cream instead of eggs—the contents of the wassail cup often had a frothy, foamy appearance. This gave the wassail drink its other name of “lamb’s wool.” Here is a variation on the wassail recipe which goes by that name.
Lamb’s Wool
6 bottles of brown ale
1 cup of sherry
450 g/1lb. light brown sugar
2 roasted apples, sliced
1 lemon, sliced
½ tsp ginger
½ tsp cinnamon
½ a nutmeg
2 slices of toasted white bread
Heat one bottle of ale. Put the sugar in a large heat-proof bowl and stir well. Grate the half a nutmeg into the sugar-ale mixture, add cinnamon and ginger, then the sherry and the rest of the ale. Leave to stand for several hours. Before serving, finish it off with the sliced lemon and apples and float pieces of the toasted bread on top.
As an alternative to the traditional ale-based wassail or lamb’s wool, you might want to try this West Country recipe for mulled cider.
Mulled Cider
1 liter/2 pints of still cider
2 small eating apples
4 cloves
140 ml/¼ pint of water
50 g/2 oz. soft brown sugar
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tangerines
Stick the apples with two of the cloves each and then bake. Heat the cider and, at the same time, heat the other ingredients (minus the orange) until all the sugar has dissolved, and then simmer for 5 minutes. Place the baked apples and tangerine pieces in a heat-proof punch bowl, strain the spiced water into it and lastly add the hot cider. If you have children among your household who would like to partake of the wassail, or you need to keep a clear head yourself (perhaps it’s your turn to be the designated Christmas driver), then why not try the alcohol-free version overleaf.
By Tudor times, wassailing peasants had become a menace, with the drunken common folk weaving their way from the home of one rich landowner to another, singing carols (with all the tunefulness of a drunk), and refusing to leave until they were paid off with an appropriate gift, or sometimes just hard cash.
A Teetotal Wassail
3 liters/6 pints of apple juice
1½ liters/3
pints of peach juice
½ cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 large orange
Cloves
6 cinnamon sticks
Stick the orange with whole cloves (roughly half an inch apart) and bake it in the oven. After half an hour take it out and puncture it in several places with a fork. Place the orange with the other ingredients in a large pot and cover. Bring the mixture to a boil before simmering for half an hour. Pour the hot mixture into your heat-proof punch bowl, adding the orange and cinnamon sticks. (This recipe makes around 30 servings!) As time went on, the alcoholic element of the wassail took over in popularity, with the ceremony eventually being absorbed into the general eat, drink, and be merry ethos of the raucous celebrations.
In the traditional wassailers’ chant “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” the revellers demand food, in the form of figgy pudding. The words of the carol include the veiled threat of “We won’t go until we get some!” However, in the words of the Gloucestershire Wassail, the threat of physical violence is made perfectly plain:
Come butler, come fill us a bowl of the best
Then we hope that your soul in heaven may rest
But if you do draw us a bowl of the small
Then down shall go butler, bowl and all.
Just as the original pagan wassail ceremony was intended to encourage a bountiful harvest of fruit in the year to come, it was also at Christmastime that wassailers would bless the apple orchards. This practice was most prevalent in the fruit-growing counties of Kent and the West of England, and it took place on Twelfth Night.
In this case it was often cider that filled the wassail cup and, having drunk of it themselves, the orchard owners would then water the roots of the fruit trees with it, in the hope that it would ensure their fertility for the year to come. They would then make as much noise as possible to drive away evil spirits before heading home to get back to the serious business of drinking. In more modern times, in some areas, men would then discharge their shotguns into the branches of the trees, while in Surrey the trunks were whipped!
The practice of wassailing eventually lost favor when the Puritans tried to get rid of Christmas for good. It was the Victorians who really revived the custom, but in the process they converted it into the practice of caroling from door to door that is now so popular. And so, it can be seen that wassail, originally a drink, came to mean the ceremony of which it was an integral part, and from there the song, sung with ale-inspired enthusiasm.
The wooden wassail bowl, or cup, steadily took on greater and greater significance throughout the Medieval period, being decorated with ribbons and greenery. In some parts of England, New Year was celebrated with a wassailing procession. Two young girls bearing the wassail bowl between them would lead the procession from house to house, inviting those they visited to partake of the contents of the cup before refilling it with their own supply of alcohol.
Our wassail cup is made of the rosemary tree,
And so is your beer of the best barley.
Call up the butler of this house
Put on his golden ring;
Let him bring us up a glass of beer,
And better we shall sing.
WHO WAS GOOD KING WENCESLAS?
A popular carol sung each Christmas is “Good King Wenceslas.” Traditionally reserved for the Feast of Saint Stephen’s Day (December 26), it tells the story of the aforementioned good king looking out of his castle to see a poor man foraging for firewood in the forest. In an act of Christian charity, Wenceslas decides to spread the Christmas cheer and sets off with his page, into the cold and the dark, to make sure that the wretch enjoys himself to the full. But who was the real-life inspiration for the saintly monarch, and was good King Wenceslas as good as the carol would have us believe?
Well, first of all you can discard the narrative from the carol as fact, as it was invented by that infamous Victorian caroler, J. M. Neale, in 1853. Neale was the translator of both the Advent hymn “O come, O come, Emmanuel” and the popular carol “Good Christian Men Rejoice.” When it came to “Good King Wenceslas,” he took what was originally the tune of a springtime carol, “Tempus adest floridum,” to provide his saccharin-sweet festive number with a melody.
You’ll be relieved to hear that Wenceslas did at least exist, although he wasn’t a king. He was actually a duke, but you could call him a prince if you were feeling generous. Born circa AD 907, in Stochov near Prague, in what is now the Czech Republic, he was ruler of the principality of Bohemia. He was raised as a Christian by his grandmother Saint Ludmilla. His mother, Drahomíra, was a pagan, and ruthlessly ambitious. She had Ludmilla murdered and then ruled as regent herself until Wenceslas came of age. However, intrigue plagued her court and a desire on the behalf of the populace of Bohemia to see an end to the conflicts between the Christian and non-Christian factions within the region led to Wenceslas taking the reins of government himself.
As a mark of his pious Christian upbringing, it is said that Wenceslas took a vow of virginity and that German missionary priests, seeking to make Bohemia Christian, enjoyed his wholehearted support. By AD 929, Christianity was spreading throughout Bohemia, but Wenceslas’ own converting zeal upset his non-Christian rivals. That same year, faced with the threat of invasions from Germany, Wenceslas submitted to the German king, Henry I. This upset the nobles still further, who then plotted to get rid of him. These same nobles colluded with Wenceslas’ own brother, Boleslav, who waylaid him on the way to mass. Boleslav cut him down at the door to the church, hacking him to pieces. Wenceslas was only twenty-two years old.
Almost as soon as he was buried, there came reports of miracles taking place at Wenceslas’ tomb. In ad932, fear full of reprisals from beyond the grave, the superstitious Boleslav had his dead brother’s remains disinterred and moved to the church of Saint Vitus, in Prague itself. The church was a popular pilgrimage site during Medieval times and eventually became a cathedral. Wenceslas himself was canonized and made patron saint of Bohemia.
WHY DO PEOPLE KISS UNDER THE MISTLETOE?
Like so many others, stealing a kiss under the mistletoe is one of those traditions that are a hangover of our pre-Christian past. Both the Ancient Greeks and the druidic priests of the Celtic peoples revered the mistletoe, believing it to have supernatural healing properties. To the Romans the mistletoe was a symbol of peace and used as part of the Saturnalia celebrations.
Like other plants that remained green all year long, it was taken as a symbol of prosperity and fruitfulness. Thoughts of fertility returning to the land, especially during the seemingly lifeless days of midwinter, were foremost in the minds of the early peoples who relied on the bounteous gifts of the earth for their immediate survival.
In Norse mythology, the plant was sacred to Frigga (also known as Freya) who was the goddess of love. It was an arrow crafted from mistletoe wood that shot and killed Frigga’s beloved son, Balder, the god of light, and this legend is just one possible source of the practice of kissing under the mistletoe. Following Balder’s death, Frigga mourned his passing by sobbing her heart out. The tears that fell from her eyes transformed into the pearly white berries of the mistletoe. She then proceded to kiss everyone who passed under the oak tree where the plant grew, instructing them that whenever they met beneath the mistletoe they should kiss one another in peace, rather than do each other harm.
As far as the Celtic druids were concerned, mistletoe retained its magical properties only if it was cut from a sacred oak where it grew using a golden sickle. It was then allowed to fall from the tree but was caught in a white cloth before it touched the ground. The fact that the plant grew completely off the ground was the reason for the druids’ great respect for it. They imagined that because it apparently grew out of nothing it must have magical properties.
The name we know it by comes from two Anglo-Saxon words and reveals precisely how the mistletoe can grow where it does. Mistel is the Anglo-Saxon for “dung” and tan means “a small branch.
” Birds (usually the mistle thrush) feast on the mistletoe’s berries, then, having had their fill, they do what everyone does after a big meal—they void their bowels. The seeds excreted in this way germinate in the bark of the tree and a new mistletoe plant grows.
To complete the druids’ ritual, two white bulls were sacrificed as a prayer was said. Quite a performance, but as far as the druids were concerned it was worth it. The mistletoe was called the “all-healer.” Among its supposed powers, it was believed to be a remedy against poison and to make barren animals fertile again.
These beliefs persisted into Medieval times, when it was fed to cattle to make sure they calved in the spring, and any woman hoping to fall pregnant would carry a sprig of it about her person. It was also considered an effective treatment for toothache, nervous disorders, epilepsy, heart disease, and snakebites. It was also somehow supposed to bring quarrels to an end and was a sure means of protection against witches and lightning strikes! (One strongly held belief had it that mistletoe was formed when lightning struck a tree.)
Christmas Miscellany Page 10