AN OLD FESTIVAL

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21355, 24 December 1934, Page 8 (Supplement)

AN OLD FESTIVAL

CHRISTMAS THROUGH THE AGES

It is often taken for granted that Christmas came into being when Christ was born and in a way this is true. But at that early time it was only the germ of the Christmas we now know that was produced. The festival we know—in various forms in different countries—was not celebrated until perhaps four or five hundred years after the birth of Christ. But there was a celebration of an old feast day which fell round about our Christmas time, for hundreds of years before the birth of the Saviour and for many years afterwards. This was the feast day or festival of Saturnalia; it fell towards December 25, probably a little before, and marked the turning point of the year. Just as we regard June 22 or 23 as the turning-point, the time when the days are shortest, so the ancients regarded the December days of the winter solstice, when the sun appeared to stand still for a time until each

Teachers of the Christian religion made use of the old festival to celebrate the birth of the Saviour of mankind. And so we find that the newly-converted Christians continued in their practices for celebrating the old festival when they had a new cause for celebration and worship. The holly, the mistletoe, the singing and dancing, the Chris'tmas ti°e and the offerings of goodwill were all part of the old observances as they became of the new. Yet these customs have not come down through the ages quite unchanged or unchallenged; the mistletoe was once a guardian against evil spirits in the days when the Druids of ancient England hung it in the leafless winter trees; later it was used as a charm and through its influence certain persons were given their freedom during the period of Christmas; and for the last several hundred years the use of the mistletoe has

day it began to rise higher and higher in the sky as the spring and summer advanced. In those days, thousands of years ago, men and women did not know much about the laws and processes of Nature; each year it seemed to them a miracle when the world turned from the darkness of the depth of winter and the sun encouraged the green things to spring and the blossoms to appear. So they worshipped the Sun God and spent the days of what is now our Christmas time in rejoicings and merrymakings. With the introduction of Christianity there was at first little change in the manner of these rejoicings—and indeed, many of the customs followed in pagan times are with us to-day in the New World as well as in the Old World of the cold north countries.

delighted the young men who have had the right to kiss unwary maidens who passed beneath the whitish berries and the bright green leaves. So with the Christmas tree the customs have changed since pagan times. Then the tree was the symbol of the new life put forth in the springtime of the year; the pagan Egyptians used a twelve-branched spray of the palm tree, each branch representing a month in which new growth would be made. In the north the fir tree was the favourite for use as the Christmas tree and it is written of in accounts of medieval northern England; it is probable that the oak tree took its part too, and was worshipped as the symbol of new life and gifts of fruitfulness. Later the tree was laden with offerings and lights.

It is written in an old note on the proceedings of Parliament in Commonwealth England, under the date December 24, 1652, that members spent considerable time discussing the possibility of abolishing Christmas Day, which appeared dangerously to them to be celebrated as "Anti-Christ's Masse'' and not as Christ's Masse at all. At various other periods in English history there were agitations against the festivity on the grounds that it was not sufficiently solemn; but public opinion, influenced from time to time by Shakespeare and John Evelyn and Robert Herrick, and most of all by Charles Dickens, clung to the old and rejected the new when the old meant merry-mak-ing and the new meant prayerful solemnity. Christmas has remained as it always was, a time of joy and thanksgiving, a time of laughter and goodwill; a time that comes but once a year, but that may yet learn to carry its glad spirit right through the twelve months, that are its faithful regular followers.