Category Archives: Christmas

Dec 30 2014
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Christmas

Quot Estis in Convivio

Bring in the Boar's Head [Illustrated London News]

FIFTH DAY of CHRISTMAS:
Bring in the Boar

Today is the perfect day to sing “The Boar’s Head Carol!”

The Boar’s head in hand bear I
Bedecked with bays and rosemary
And I pray you, my masters, be merry
Quot estis in convivio! [So many as are at the feast!]

The Boar’s head, as I understand,
Is the rarest dish in all the land
When thus bedecked with a gay garland
Let us servire cantico! [Serve with a song!]

Caput apri defero,
Reddens laudes Domino! [The Boar’s head I bring, giving praises to God!]

Our steward hath provided this
In honor of the King of bliss,
Which on this day to be served is.
In Reginensi atrio! [In the Queen’s Hall!]

Caput apri defero,
Reddens laudes Domino!

 

And so on the Fifth Day of Christmas, tradition calls for bringing in the boar. This is a tradition that goes back many many centuries in Britain and is associated especially with Queen’s College, Oxford. It’s a tradition that persists despite wild boar being virtually extinct from Britain since at least the 12th century. To the Celts, the boar was sacred, a gift from the Otherworld, ferocious, feared, respected, and the provider of the great feasts of midwinter.

Of course there’s an awful lot of feasting this time of year, what with Christmas and New Years and Twelfth Night. But there is a reason for this, as well. These Twelve Days of Christmas stand outside of ordinary time. In earlier days, most folks did not work for the duration of Christmastide, so big feasts were easier to conjure. In agricultural communities, midwinter was also the time to thin out the herds, so meat was plentiful. Whether they were bringing in the boar or some other beast, the Fifth Day of Christmas had long been a day of great feasting.

Nowadays, we tend to be back to work soon after Christmas Day, so a feast for the Fifth Day of Christmas is not as practical as it once was. But we do have to eat. Why not deliver the meal tonight to the table with pomp and ceremony? Acknowledge that sustenance comes not without sacrifice, be it the death of animal or plant. Bring even the simplest meal to the table tonight in this spirit of humility and appreciation and festivity and I’d say you’ve got the spirit of the day down pat.

“The Boar’s Head Carol” is particularly dear to us here at Convivio Bookworks, for the song is the source of our name. The song goes back to at least the 15th century. It is a macaronic carol, meaning it combines two languages (English and Latin) and the version we sing most often today is one that was first published by one of the first printers in London: Wynkyn de Worde. He published it in a book he printed in 1521, titled Christmasse Carolles. I did a paper on Wynkyn de Worde in grad school in Marcella Genz’s History of the Book class, only because I liked his name so much. I didn’t know about his book at the time, but now I’m rather pleased that Wynkyn de Worde and I have such a fine connection, and I’m sure, considering he printed a book of Christmas carols in 1521, that he was one to shout as much as Seth and I do, “Welcome Yule!”

 

Image: Bringing in the Boar’s Head by St. J. Gilbert, Christmas Supplement to the Illustrated London News, 1855. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Dec 29 2014
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Christmas

The Lord of Misrule

Miniature_Fête_des_Fous

FOURTH DAY of CHRISTMAS:
The Feast of Fools

Tradition calls for the ceremonial reversal today of the normal order of things. Here we have a Christmas custom that is rarely practiced today (though perhaps should be) and one that is definitely pagan in nature, this is a custom that goes back much further than the birth of Christ. It goes back to the feast that is probably at the heart of most of our Christmas customs: the Roman Saturnalia, a winter solstice celebration that predates Christmas by many centuries and that spread throughout Europe with the Roman empire. A big part of Saturnalia was the abandonment of the rules that the Romans loved so dearly. It was a time for disguises and games and in that ceremonial reversal of the normal order, slaves were waited upon by their masters, mock kings were crowned, and general chaos ruled the land.

Old habits die hard. As Rome became Christianized, celebrations that proved difficult for the Church to subvert just became Christianized and so the birth of Christ was assigned to the winter solstice and Saturnalia, with all of its festivity and gift-giving, became Christmas. The chaos of Saturnalia became the Feast of Fools, and it continued on with great conviviality through the medieval period, which was, perhaps, its heyday.

It was the Lord of Misrule who was elected to reign over the Christmas revelry. Much like the election of the Boy Bishop that we discussed in yesterday’s chapter of the Book of Days, the Lord of Misrule was usually someone who would not typically be in a position of power. He might be a servant in ordinary time, but now, during Christmastide, he was lord of the revelry and he reigned without fear of retribution. His charge, actually, was to act as foolishly as possible. The Lord of Misrule reigns until Twelfth Night, as Christmas comes to a close.

Not much of this aspect of Christmas survives today. We are not a people given to chaos, when you get right down to it. We like order and routine. Some remnants you might find from the Feast of Fools, however, are the mummer’s plays and morris dancers that make their rounds in villages at this time of year. The mummer’s plays and morris dancers are mostly an English phenomenon, but mummer’s plays are also popular in Philadelphia at the new year. The mummers and morris dancers, guised in ribbons and bells and strange costumes, are direct descendants of the Lord of Misrule. The practice of baking a coin in a pudding or a charm in a cake also harkens back to these ancient celebrations. It was often the person who found a coin in his pudding who was elected lord of the revels.

So from whence comes all this chaos? One of the most beautiful things about the Twelve Days of Christmas is a mathematical thing: Half of those twelve days fall in the old year, half in the new. The old year is dying, disintegrating into chaos. Out of that chaos is born the new year, and order returns along with the return to ordinary time after Christmas. That is rich and potent symbolism. The Romans understood this, our medieval ancestors understood this.

 

Image: A miniature illumination from a French fourteenth century book depicting a Fête de Fous (Feast of Fools) scene.

 

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Dec 28 2014
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Christmas, St. Nicholas

Unless Ye Become as Little Children

Boy_bishop

THIRD DAY of CHRISTMAS:
Holy Innocents’ Day, Childremas

The Christmas story is not entirely one of peace and harmony. King Herod was one of those greatly disturbed by the news of the birth of the child at Bethlehem, as the story goes, he responded by ordering the slaughter of the children of Judea. These are the Holy Innocents we remember especially on the Third Day of Christmas. It has long been considered an unlucky day, and there are many people who will avoid beginning any venture on the 28th of December for this very reason.

Being focused on those unfortunate children, the Third Day of Christmas has always been about children. One of the oldest traditions associated with this day is the ceremonial beating of children. And before everyone gets all bent out of shape about this, or thinks that I am advocating any particular method of child-rearing, let’s just step back and remember that it was not that long ago that even schools practiced corporal punishment for naughty children. (I was a boy when we moved here to Florida and I distinctly remember being seated in the dean’s office at Deerfield Beach Middle School on my first day with another new kid. He welcomed us, then pulled a wooden paddle out from behind his desk and said, “Ya know, we paddle here, boys,” and I pretty much resolved then to keep out of trouble. And I did.)

The ceremonial beatings for Childremas would be done often with evergreen branches of pine or rosemary or bay, often accompanied by the words Fresh, green, fair and fine / Gingerbread and brandy-wine! The “beatings” were not just for the children; even husbands and wives would exchange token blows on the Third Day of Christmas, as would servants and masters. All of this was in done in good fun and was not at all cruel.

If practical jokes seem childish, then this connection with children may explain the tradition through Spain and Latin America of practical jokes on the Third Day of Christmas. It’s kind of like April Fools’ Day, except the exclamation after the prank is “Inocente!” and the victims of the pranks are called inocentes, too… which obviously takes us back to the Holy Innocents.

In medieval Europe, a Boy Bishop would be elected at cathedrals each Sixth of December for St. Nicholas’ Day. He wore bishop’s vestments and performed all the duties of a bishop (save for celebrating Mass) and his reign ended today, on Childremas, when the Boy Bishop was allowed to be a child once more. The idea of turning reality on its head was a popular one back then, and we’ll see this again tomorrow on the Fourth Day of Christmas with the Feast of Fools.

Of course, children love to turn reality on its head, and this is often the great divide between children and adults. We adults are much less willing to suspend our disbelief and we sometimes are poorer for it. I think of Childremas as a good day to honor children but also to honor the children that we once were. That child is still there, deep inside, deeper for some than for others. But it is important to reconnect with that child every now and then. So go on, break out the marbles or the pogo stick or the video games and give these things you once loved another shot. If you know children now––your own kids or grandkids or nieces or nephews, or the neighbor’s kids––teach them a favorite game you remember from your childhood. Chances are you will both enjoy it.

Image: An old engraving of a Boy Bishop attended by his canons.

 

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