Romance of Past Still Lingers in Christmas.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19258, 20 December 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

Romance of Past Still Lingers in Christmas.

(Written For 7 he “Star” By J. K. Stone.)

COME English people were amusedly inspecting the windows of a big shop in a New Zealand city, windows which tastefully displayed choice goods for the Christmas season, and which might not have shamed Bond Street. It was not the windows that amused these people; it was the fact that the expensive articles they contained were set in surroundings suggestive of mid-winter, with English robins and holly and an occasional discreet cotton-wool snowflake. It struck these visitors as being strange that the present generation of New Zealand window-dressers could not present a Christmas display without

just another such coach as that which conveyed the Pickwickians for part of their journey to Manor Farm. The coach itself is painted black, red and yellow, but little of these colours is visible, the sides being covered with suspended poultry and game. On top, boxes and packages are stored with piles of holly, while finally, half-hidden under the luggage, appear the snowtopped hats of the “ outsides.” It must have been a work of art to sandwich everything into the coaches, but one never reads of anything being left behind, and the incident of Mr Weller, the guard and the codfish illustrates the lengths to which it was sometimes necessary to go to get all aboard. It is interesting to compare a Dickensian description of a coach journey with that of a foreigner. Washington Irving gives a picture in “ The Sketch Book ” of a Christmastide journey;—“The coach was crowded both inside and out, with passengers who, by their talk, seemed principally bound to the mansions of relations or friends to eat the Christmas dinner. ... A

suggesting that Christmas should, come rightfully in an English winter. It may seem strange to visitors, but to New Zealanders the old Christmas customs and superstitions belong to a wintry landscape rather than to a sunburnt summer countryside, and this is the reason for the artificial snow in the shop-windows. And, after all, why not? The traditional English Christmas—that is, the Christmas of Dickens and Washington Irving—is an institution It is one of the “ ties of sentiment ” which Imperialists make such a to-do about, and which they say hold the Empire together more firmly than treaties and tariffs. Is it strange, then, th,at New Zealanders do their best with cotton-wool in a valiant attempt to reconcile the festival with mid-sum-mer? Certainly not. Christmas belongs to snow-swept fields and lanes; to villages of thatched cottages clustering round ancient church towers; to mellow bells pealing out over timbered gables; to robins and holly and carols. , “ Approach to Christmas.’ 1 In a certain book of old coaching prints there is a picture entitled “ Approach to Christmas.” Now the oldtime Christmas, whether described by Dickens or by anyone else, always started with a coaching scene. Possibly the romance associated with the English stage-coach is due wholly to the glamour which imagination throws over the past. A .Coach must have been as “unexciting to Georgian England as .an omnibiis is to-day. But there is no doubt that the coach did much to create' the Christmas atmosphere when it carried its alluring burden • of packages to waiting villages along its way. “Approach to .Christmas” depicts

stage-coach carries animation always with it, and the horn produces a general bustle. . . . As the coach rattles through the village everyone runs to the window, and you have glances on every side of fresh country faces. ... “In the evening we reached a village where I had determined to pass the night. As we drove through the great gateway of the inn I saw on the one side the light of a rousing kitchen fire. ... I entered, and admired, for the hundredth time, that picture of convenience, neatness and broad, honest. enjoyment, the kitchen of an English inn. . . Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve should really be frosty, with clear moonlight shining on a blanket of frozen snow. This makes an ideal night for the waits, those cheerful and long-suffering folk who, as jn “Under the Greenwood Tree,” go their rounds risking the chance of receptions such as 'that given by Farmer Shinar to the Mellstock choir. But, beside carol-singing, there are other important.rites to be observed—tnost of them ante-dating Christianity. So at Manor Farm, Dickens says, the whole family assembled in the kitchen —“ according to annual custom on Christmas Eve observed from time im-

memorial ” —where a huge 'branch of mistletoe had been suspended from the centre of the ceiling. Here the company played games and afterwards “ sat down by a huge fire to a substantial supper and a mighty bowl of wassail.” Then there was the ancient custom of the Yule Log. Irving wrote: “The Yule Log is a great log of wood brought with ceremony into the house on Christmas Eve and lighted with the brand of last year's log. It was to burn all night; if it went out, it was a sign of ill-luck.” Christmas Day. The statement that Christmas brings an atmosphere that belongs to Christmastide alone would probably be dismissed by “Punch” as “ a * staggering glimpse of the obvious.” But nevertheless it is perfectly true in every sense. And Christmas, in the olden times, meant more than it does now. When travel was a somewhat difficult and lengthy undertaking, it was only at this time that families and friends were

reunited. But the spirit of Christmas has survived all changes. Christmas bells and Christmas music still flood mfnster and village church alike with pulsating sound, giving an undercurrent to blend with the merriment of the English Christmas. . . . In the time of Washington Irving, and to a lesser extent in that of Dickens, however, England was still a farming nation. As such she jealously preserved the ancient customs, games and ceremonials that had been handed down from forgotten, half-legendary days, and •which made for the lightheartedness of rural England. It was when the greater body of the contented (more or less) peasantry disappeared during the Industrial Revolution that the old Christmas went to a large extent out of fashion. The old Christmas dinner was a meal that must have been capable of putting the' New Health Socie’ty .out of exist 1 cnee. Even in Dickens's time it was degenerating. It was in its heyday several centuries earlier . , . • Then, for statel}' entertainments, it appears, the peacock was greatly in demahd. -It was made into a-pie, usually, with the head appearing at one end “abpve the crust, in all its plumage, with the beak richly gilt,” and at the other end was arranged the complete tail. An old

verse describing Christmas dinners mentions the peacock, and makes the statement that it was necessary to have the “ carcases of three fat wethers bruised for gravy to make sauce for a si..gl_e peacock.” And, lastly, the Wassail Bowl arrived to conclude matters. One very old recipe gives the ingredients as “ ale, with nutmeg, sugar, toast, ginger and roasted crabs.” As a nineteenth century contrast to these revels comes that famous celebration of the Cratchit family, who lived on a salary of fifteen shillings a week, and on whose board, consequently, no peacocks figured. The goose and the pudding were both small, but “ no-one said they were small for so large a family—that would have been rank heresy!” A Dickens Christmas is always merry, whether it is celebrated in an historic manor or in a London slum. . To-day. In English Christmas scenes of fiction and tradition, the wintriness of the landscape seems to add to the warmth of welcome offered by cottage and farmhouse fireside. The frozen beauty of the fields, hedges and woods makes a vivid contrast to the life in the villages of typically English houses, with thatched roofs, latticed windows, and gardens sheltered by magnificent trees. Not long ago it seemed that these scenes were to be destroyed by modern “ progress,” as surely as the coach had been destroyed by the railroad. But

to-day there is, all over England, a revival of interest in ancient customs, just as there is a staunch fight being waged for the preservation of the countryside. Nevertheless, although it is still possible to find in England Christmas kept in the old-time fashion, superstition has gone from the old customs. They may still be dbserved, but the old beliefs are dead—animals no longer receive th§ power.of speech at the time between Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. Ghostly forms no longer hold revels in the night silences when the last embers of the Yule Log glow red. , . . *

But whatever has gone, the.'spirit of Christmas remains. Modernity has yet a long way to go before it can rob the English people of all reverence for the romance of the past.