Ancient Christinas Customs.

Hastings Standard, Issue 204, 23 December 1896, Page 4

Ancient Christinas Customs.

Among the vestiges of an cunt customs which still linger in the most socially advanced States of Europe, there is none more curious than the pagan and semi-pagan observances connected with Christmas throughout the stretch of country which may be called the French Midlands. In this district the <lc Xuit, or Christmas log, is still a ponderous piece of timber ■ worthy of typifying the heavenly light | whose rays sustain all organic nature, and whose worship was the inspiring motive of the great winter festival before the introduction of Christianity obscured, and finally effaced, the signification of the heathen cult. This log frequently consists of the entire trunk of a tree, and requires the united strength of many men to place it in the wide-mouthed chimney, where it is to feed the flame of the house-hold hearth till the end of the three days during which the sacred feast is most actively kept up. According to venerable tradition, it .should be taken from an oak felled at midnight, and ought to be placed where it is to be consumed just as the bell rings for the elevation of the Host during the midnight mass on Christmas Eve, when it is to be kindled by the head of the family, after receiving a sprinkling of holy water. It is on the two extremities of the Christinas log, savs Laisnel de la Salle, in his " Crayances et Legendes du Centre de la France," that cakes, fruit, and other gifts are arranged for the children of the house, who have been sent off to bed with the promise that l«»t-/mtinne Xaii —our Father Christmas—or !<• jirtit Xiiulrt, the Christmas child, who figures in German legend as the ('hrist-h'iml, will bring them a present while they sleep. Sometimes, however, the same authority tells us, the smaller branches of the juniper are used as an urhn' tlr Xtw, or Christmas-tree, being placed near the hearth and hung with gifts. This arbrr ili- Xmi is evidently not unlike the native English Christmas-bough, which consist of bunches of evergreens, bound on a frame of hoops, and suspended from the ceiling of the kitchen, or family sitting-room, after being adorned with nuts, apples, the carefully blown shells of the eggs used in the Christmas pudding, and various presents and ornaments. The remains of the Christmas log in the province of l!erry, as was formerly the case in many English counties, are preserved from one year to another. Being placed under the bed of the master of the house, a fragment of the wood is always ready to hand should a thunder storm gather when apiece of it thrown into the iire ought to guard the family and its possession against damage by lightning. The custom in some parts of Germany of burning a Yule log for three days and nights in each homestead is almost certainly a survival from the adoration once offered to the sun at the winter solstice. Three centuries after the Christian era sun worship was still maintained in Brittany ; and in Normandy, not more | than a hundred years ago, the household lire was extinguished on Dec. j 21, and the Christmas log was ignited by the aid of a ilame procured from j the lamp burning in the neighborI ing church. This fact affords a curious j instance of the probable transference of respect and reverence from the | s-icred fire of a purely heathen creed to the ecclesiastical lights of Catholicism. When the pagan rights for procuring unsullied lire were forbidden, or fell into desuetude, the ideas to which they own their origin and | development, instead of perishing, ' continued to exist more or less perfectly, by attaching themselves to ! usages and ceremonies having no direct association with them. In the inclement regions of the far north, where the severities of the winter combined with the isolation of their inhabitants, tended to keep alive the old veneration of the sun, it was not till the tenth century that Christmas took the place of the heathen feast; and even now traces of the divine honor once paid to the sovereign light of the firmament are to be discovered in every country of Europe. In Berry, at a certain moment

during the midnight mass, every animal in the parish is supposed to kneel before its manger in silent prayer, and after this mute adoration, if there happen to be two bullocks which are brothers in the stable together. they will begin to_ converse. Among the Icelanders it is at St. -John's Tide, the summer solstice, dumb beasts thus address each other, and according to an old superstition in Lincolnshire, they are endowed with words not only at Christmas, but on the eve of St. Mark, an ecclesiastical holy day connected with all kinds of eerie superstitions, resembling those of Hallow E'en, which appears to occupy the place of some polytheistic spring festival, and to be the English equivalent of the German Walpunttsnacht. In central France, and in many other parts of the Republic, it is related that on a certain Christmastide a bullock driver who happened to be with his beasts at the solemn moment when the power of speech came on them, overheard one demand of the other : " What shall we do to-mor-row '?" to which question he received answer that they should carry their master to the grave. The lad, terrified by this declaration, and warned by one of the animals to bid his employer prepare for death, hastened to acquaint him with the prediction. The farmer, however, being a man of indifferent morals and incredulous mind, scoffed at the message, and, leaping up from among the boon companions with whom he was carousing under the pretence of honoring the sacred season, seized an iron fork, and rushed out of the house with the declaration that he would pay the brute out for his prophecy. Scarcely had he reached the middle of the court lying between his dwelling and the stables, continues the tradition, than he was observed to reel and fall, and when his convives lifted him up it was a corpse they raised from the ground. Since this disastrous event, which is said to have taken place in the far-off long ago, no one has been anxious to hear the vaticinations uttered by the cattle on the night of Christmas.