CHRISTMAS CHEER.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20731, 16 December 1932, Page 30

CHRISTMAS CHEER.

Old Customes of Yuletide. FEASTING AND MAKING MERRY. Although the feasts of a century ago are no more, Christmastide is still a time of good cheer, and even work-a-day folk observe the season with some exuberance. At this time of the year they raise no strong objections to moderate indulgence. The earliest written records of man's existence indicate that he held high festival in December and that liquor was indispensable to the feast. The Christmas of Christianity absorbed the pagan custom, and did not banish Christmas beer. In fact, so deep had the pleasant custom of Christmas indulgence grown its roots that while the Puritan regime effectively damped down a hundred harmless observances of this merrymaking time, that which was hated above all survived the harshest restriction, and beer, wine, and good meats still occupy a place with the good things that make Christmas jolly.

no, in appropriate Christmas moralising after good meat and drink, or in banishing the old year's rgrets with ■whatever happens to bo in the New Year's bottle, one upholds a strong eumulative tradition. The average Briton would rather see the beloved Shakespeare indubitably proved to be Bacon than lose his Christmas pottle. Bread and beer, the historian writes, is tb.3 traditional sustenance of England; ale is the foundation of all old English merrymaking; the wassail howl testified to the universal goodness of heart, and •Tea to-day, when every tradition ises to suffer, men drink according to tradition, and sigh reflectively over tales of the hard-drinking ancestors,

men of courage, liberality, and loyalty. Has it not been boasted, that Shakespeare ended a gloriously chequered career !>y dropping dead after a merrymaking, and did not the great Earl x>£ Pembroke expire of "apoplexy after a full and chearful supper"? Did not "Good Queen Bess" ape the man and drink beer at Christmas? The race was betrothed to beer irrevocably in the fifteenth century, and ■would carol its willingness to go bare and cold so long as at Christmas man could "Stuff his skin so full within Of jolly good ale and old." Go back even another five centuriea to King Edgar, who found that, at Christmas, so wild was the frolic that he had to upbraid the clergy for drunkenness. Plebeian Beer. At Christmas the ordinary man drinks the national beverage, beer, and lie drinks a liquor steeped in tradition. A man was encouraged, by Alfred tho Great himself, to stretch his capacity for English ale over a period of twelve days—the Christmas feasting period set

by Alfred, and observed even under the Tudor and early Stuart regimes. - Then the holiday waxed truly merry. A Lord of Misrule, selected as much lor his ability to keep the bowl circulating as for his ability as a gamesmaster, presided over the banquet, and made the spicy ale his proven ally. Beer linked all classes together; beer cheered hearts and brightened faces, inspired courage, loyalty, liberality, and music. "At Christmas there was goode drinke . . . brown pudding and sause, mustard withal,, capon, turkey, geese, apples, nuts, and jollie gambols, bub above all English ale." Or, better still: "Hogsheads of honey, kilderkins of mustard, Muttons, fatted beeves, and bacon ■ swine;

Heron and bitters, peacocks, swan, and bustard, Teal, mallard, pigeons, widgeons, and, in fine, I'lum puddings, pancakes, apple-pie and custard, And therewithal they drank good Gascon wine, With, mead and ale and cider of our own, ' * For porter, punch, and negus were not known." Age-old Custom. The English devotion to beer may have waned alarmingly in recent years, but nevertheless is rooted in tradition as eld as Christmas itself; but if ever, during the tedious months between, there is an epicurean who deplores this obvious sign of decadence, his sorrow must be lightened by the universal recourse to the tankard at the Christmas period. Beer temporarily regains the social prestige which it enjoyed before wine challenged its supremacy in the Middle Ages. Not that New Zealanders turn their Christmastide to an immoderate rout; for the spiritual significance of the time puts restraint to indulgence.