Wooden replicas of the nativity scene, called "cribs", were invented in 649 A. D. In 1224, St. Francis of Assissi asked the pope’s permission to celebrate Christmas by recreating the nativity scene. St. Francis asked a man named Giovanni Vellita of the village of Greccio to create a manger scene. Giovanni created a nativity scene at Greccio complete with a live ox and ass, meaning a donkey. St. Francis performed mass in front of this early Nativity scene, and it was very well received. Wooden replicas of the Nativity became immensely popular. The production of cribs became a genre of folkart, and they became common not only in churches around Christmas, but common household objects. The little wooden figures in the Nativity scene were called "santons", or "little saints", and they became a genre of folk art in and of themselves. Some of the cribs became very ornate and elaborate, containing gold, clockwork, and music boxes.
In 12th Century Europe, there were a great number of folk songs that were simply secular songs to sung and danced to on festive occasions. The church wanted to make religion more popular with the average person. Therefore, the church took these songs, kept the music the same, and wrote new religious lyrics to them. These were the first carols. They were not specifically associated with Christmas. They were associated with religious holidays throughout the year, or were just about religion in general, analogous to modern gospel music. In the 16th Century, they began to be more popular around Christmas than at any other time. In the 16th Century, old and new carols were sung in every European language. The word "carol" means "song of joy". In medieval England, groups of serenaders called "waits" would travel from house to house singing ancient carols, and spreading the holiday spirit.
In medieval and Renaissance England, they would eat a roasted boar's head at Christmas. The custom goes back to a Norse tradition of celebrating the winter solstice by sacrificing a boar to Freyr, the Norse god of the Sun. However, in medieval England, they were unaware of the origin of the custom, and invented a folktale to explain it. One Christmas, a student at Queen College at Oxford was attacked by a wild boar. The only way he could defend himself was to shove his copy of the works of Aristotle down the animal’s throat. The animal choked and died. Afterward, he was unable to retrieve the valuable book. Therefore, he cut off the boar's head, and carried the head, containing the book, back to Oxford.
In 1517, Martin Luther published his Ninety-Five Theses attacking the indiscriminate sale of indulgences to finance the construction of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Martin Luther, an Augustine monk and professor of theology at the University of Wittenberg, had been unable to find assurance of salvation in traditional church teaching. Luther was excommunicated. Protected by Frederick III of West Saxony, he wrote a series of books and pamphlets and his idea spread rapidly throughout Germany, and then throughout Europe. He said that salvation was a purely personal matter and did not require the church. This tied in with, and encouraged, the Renaissance emphasis placed on the self, and humanity. This movement was called Protestantism. Other writers such as John Calvin fed the movement. The reason this was so popular is because of the enormous corruption of the Catholic church at this time. The movement was a grave threat to the Catholic church which did everything in its power to confront it. Many people felt that the Catholic church was what unified western civilization. There were the religious wars in which a very large number of people were killed. Both Catholics and Protestants accused the other of being on the side of Satan.
In this environment, the Protestants detested anything Catholic. Since the Catholics were very big on Christmas, the Protestants therefore hated Christmas. In addition, many Protestants were followers of John Calvin who declared that you are forbidden from doing anything remotely fun, which of course included Christmas. The most extreme Protestants particularly abhorred Christmas since it was Catholic, pagan, and a time of great merry-making, all of which they detested. In 1642, when the Puritans came to power in Britain, Christmas was banned. Under Oliver Cromwell, the streets on London resounded to the sound of the town criers' shouts of "No Christmas! No Christmas!" When Londoners decked their streets with greenery, the Lord Mayor had the boughs burned. Parliament declared that on the day "commonly called Christmas, no observance shall be had, nor any solemnity used or exercised in churches in respect thereof". One of the primary motivations for restoring the monarchy was so that people could have Christmas back again. Christmas was also banned in New England. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, there was a five shilling fine for "observing any such day as Christmas". Even after the ban was lifted, it was not widely celebrated. In New England, they didn’t commonly celebrate Christmas until after the American Civil War.
There was an inverse relation between how extreme your form of Protestantism, and the extent to which you celebrated Christmas. The Puritans made Christmas illegal. They did not even go to church on Christmas, or in any way acknowledge its existence. Less extreme Protestants would celebrate Christmas but not make a big deal of it. The Anglican church was very similar to the Catholic church. The only reason Henry VIII broke from the church of Rome was so he could get a divorce. Therefore, they continued to celebrate Christmas in Britain but it was a relatively subdued holiday. Of course, the most elaborate Christmas celebrations were in Catholic countries, where the iron butt congregation would prove their devotion to the church by sitting through a long tedious Catholic mass that would drone on for hours in a language which no one could understand. In many countries, the Christmas mass would begin on midnight Christmas Eve, and continue until late Christmas morning.
Candy canes were invented in 1670, when the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, bent the sugar-sticks into canes to represent a shepherd's staff.
Christmas continued to be celebrated as a relatively minor holiday in Britain and America, outside of New England, until the early 19th Century. In the late 18th and early 19th Century, there was the industrial revolution. There was increasing mechanization and mass production. People moved from farms into the cities to work in the factories and mills, often in wretched conditions. Factories belched thick black smoke into the air. The steam engine and the telegraph brought rapid transportation and instant communication. Society was completely revolutionized. There was enormous social upheaval. People longed for stability in their lives. This triggered a backlash against this new modern world. Many people considered the pre-industrial world to be the good old days. They invented an idealized version of their own past, and longed wistfully for it. This created what is known as the English country revivalist movement. This took many forms. Poets wrote about an idealized English country life. Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote epic poetry about King Arthur. They invented the highland games in Scotland. People started envying gypsies as having some sort of perfect free life. Folklorists went out to record the fast disappearing folktales and other traditions of the English countryside. One aspect of this movement was to try recapture the Old English Christmas. They hearkened back to almost forgotten Christmas traditions along with other traditions as part of their nostalgia for pre-industrial society. In the process of doing so, they invented the Victorian Christmas which was actually quite different from any previous form the holiday had taken.
Queen Victoria came to power in 1837. Victorian England was not a religious society, and the Victorian Christmas was not a religious holiday. They reinvented Christmas as a completely secular holiday. This enabled Christmas to become a much bigger holiday. If you have a religious holiday, only religious people celebrate it, and usually in somber tones. When a holiday is secularized, then everyone can celebrate it, and you can drop any pretense of being somber, and so everyone can just enjoy it. Therefore the Victorian Christmas became a huge holiday. A large number of new Christmas carols were written. The Victorian Christmas had new emphasis on family and children. Although it was very different from our Christmas in many respects, you could make a strong argument that the modern Christmas originated in the Victorian Christmas more than any of its previous incarnations, as evidenced by the amount of 19th Century imagery we continue to associate with the holiday.
The centerpiece of the Victorian Christmas was plum pudding. In the 17th Century, plum pudding contained spices, dried fruit, and meat. It was not associated with Christmas. Plum pudding was considered an English delicacy by foreigners. Therefore, in 1714, the new English king, first king of the House of Hanover, George I, a German prince, wanted to eat plum pudding at his first English Christmas. From then on, in imitation, everyone ate plum pudding on Christmas. In the 19th Century, it no longer contained meat, and was sweeter than its earlier version. They never contained plums. Originally "plum" was a word for dried fruit of any sort.
In Victorian England, plum pudding was the focal point of the holiday. It was eaten with much fanfare in all but the most impoverished households. Preparations began several days before Christmas. The fourth Sunday of Advent was also called Stir-up Sunday. This was the day on which the plum pudding would be ceremoniously stirred. First it was stirred by the wife, then the husband, then the male children, in order of descending age, female children, in order of descending age, other relatives, other guests, and then the servants in order of descending rank. Each member of the household must stir exactly seven times, stirring only in a counterclockwise direction. The reason for the counterclockwise direction is because if you face north, the Sun rises on your right, and sets on your left, and thus appears to move in a counterclockwise direction. Therefore counterclockwise was considered the more natural direction in the Universe. A twopence, and perhaps silver coins or charms were placed in the pudding. The pudding was wrapped in cloth and boiled for exactly seven hours. After the Christmas feast would be an elaborate ceremony presenting the plum pudding. It was shaped into a sphere, and a sprig of holly would be placed on top. The plum pudding was soaked in brandy, and then ignited. All candles, lamps, and other lights were extinguished. The flaming plum pudding was carried in. The husband tasted it first. Everyone hoped to find the twopence in their piece. The monetary value of a twopence is negligible but it supposedly brought good luck. The idea of finding something baked in food was similar to the Epiphany cake.
In Victorian England, the main course at Christmas dinner was a goose. The reason a goose was eaten is because there was nothing else you would rather eat, or nothing else you would prefer that you would have any hope to afford. First of all, a goose was the largest bird available. It was larger than a chicken, turkey, or duck. Second of all, geese contain a large amount of fat. Therefore for the most important meal of the year, you would have a goose as a special treat. Many poor families would not normally be able to afford a goose. They would therefore band together and buy in bulk. Let’s say ten poor people got together and pooled their resources. They would each contribute the same amount to a fund which would then be used to buy geese. The poulterer would sell ten geese simultaneously for less than he would sell ten geese individually. Then each of the ten poor people would get a goose. In this way, poor people would be able to get geese that wouldn’t be able to get them otherwise. These consumer collectives were known as "goose clubs" and were usually set up by pubs. Then, as now, pubs were the fundamental social economic unit of British society. There existed a few bible-thumping moralists who condemned pubs, and were thus against goose clubs also.
Another dilemma facing lower income people is once you get your goose, where do you cook it? You needed a large fireplace, and poor people often lacked the facilities. Therefore on Christmas morning, long queues would form outside the local bakery. The baker would charge each housewife a small fee for the use of his oven. Since each goose took a long time to cook, there was a long line in front of each bakery, and people showed up before dawn to get a good place in line. It's touching to see how even poor families would go to such enormous effort to keep Christmas at least in some small way. Geese were mostly eaten in southern England. In northern England, they would eat beef on Christmas. In the 1870’s, they shifted to eating turkey on Christmas.
At a formal Christmas dinner, you should have a large number of plates and bowls at each table setting. You would have a very large number of eating utensils. Every course would need its own utensil, and there were such things as an oyster fork. The servants would spend all day polishing up the silver. At each place setting, there was a written list of the evening’s menu, written in French of course. The oysters were left off the menu because it went without saying that of course you would have oysters at the beginning of the meal. Since this was in the winter, the fruit and vegetables either had to be preserved in some way, or be of a type that they had in the winter. Often this dinner was extremely formal, and required very precise etiquette. This is one of the reasons why the Victorians enjoyed afternoon tea since it required less formality, although it was still very formal by our standards.
In 1840, Queen Victoria married her first cousin Albert, prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, whom she had known for about four years. His first Christmas in Britain was in 1841, and that year, since he was German, he put a Christmas tree in Windsor Castle. The tree was physically brought from Germany. It wasn’t the first Christmas tree in Britain. German immigrants did Christmas trees in Britain and America prior to that. However, Prince Albert’s tree captured the public imagination. Many aristocratic families imitated the royal family by putting up a tree also. Despite this, Christmas trees were very rare before the 1870’s. When a custom reaches a certain threshold of popularity, it reaches a critical mass that causes most of the remaining people to do it just because it was popular. By the 1890’s, one Covent Garden retailer supplied trees up to 40 feet tall, and could boast sales up to 30,000 a year.
The first Christmas trees were like those they had in Germany. They were small, and placed on top of a table. They had natural ornaments such as dried fruit, or gilded nuts. Later they would have a gift tree. This was a small tree in which small gifts for children were physically placed on the tree itself which had few other ornaments. The parents would make up the tree, and then open the doors to the parlor, and the children would come running in. The tree would be stripped bare, as the kids took their presents. In the late 19th Century, people would have a large tree on the floor. They had the first mass produced ornaments such as glass balls. Color printing was a recent invention, and they were mesmerized by it. Therefore, they would cut out colored pictures of angels and other things, and use them as ornaments. The main decorations on late Victorian trees were these colored paper ornaments. In Dresden, Germany, they produced very beautiful and elaborate ornaments made of paper. There were some expensive ornaments made in the 19th Century. The trees had actual candles on them. The candle holders had large counterweights at the bottom to keep them upright. Keep in mind that the tree would only be put up on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. The candles were only lit for about ten minutes. There was always an adult keeping watch over the tree when the candles were lit. They had a bucket of water, and a stick with a sponge on the end to snuff out any flare ups on the tree. Sometimes they would hang an ornament that looked like a pickle somewhere on the tree. The child who found the pickle first would get a special gift. Sometimes they would hang on one of the lowest branches an ornament that looked like a devil, called the "Devil of York". This was supposed to be a counterpoint to the angel at the top of the tree. Throughout the 19th Century, they had peppermint sticks. However, it was at the very end of the 19th Century, when most people got Christmas trees, that they thought up the idea of shaping them into a hook so you could hang them on the tree. The first large decorated outdoor Christmas tree intended for an entire city was in New York in 1910. In the 19th Century, you had the first artificial trees which were made of feathers dyed green.
During the 19th Century, there was a rise in the middle class. For the first time, there were a large number of people who had leisure time. Later, people would spend their free time listening to the radio or watching TV, but in the 19th Century, people had to think up other things to do to fill the hours. A very popular form of recreation was to play games. They played board games, games with dice or dominoes, or outdoor sports. They played a wide variety of card games, many of which, such as Wist, have since fallen into obscurity. Unique to the 19th Century were what may be called parlor games. These might be word games that are done verbally, such as Simile. They might be games that are physically acted out in some way. There was a wide variety of such games, and they were immensely popular. Only a few parlor games survived into the 20th Century such as Hide-and-seek and Charades. There were games that the Victorians would traditionally play on Christmas. Examples include Blindman’s Bluff, which actually dates from medieval times, Hunt the Slipper, Forfeits, and Musical Chairs. The most famous Victorian Christmas game was called Snapdragon. It was traditionally played by children on Christmas Eve. Raisins are placed in a bowl filled with brandy. The brandy is then ignited, and all other lights are turned out. The people playing then try to snatch the raisins out without burning their fingers. One person would chant the following refrain, "Here he comes with flaming bowl. Don't he mean to take his toll. Snip! Snap! Dragon! Take care you don’t take to much. Be not greedy in your clutch." This does point out the difference between their society and ours, since few parents in our society would allow their children to play a game in which they are suppose to deliberately stick their hands in a fire.
Another way in which people in the 19th Century would entertain themselves was with music. Every middle class household had a piano. Throughout the year, they would gather around the piano to sing songs. Sometimes when you went to someone's house, you would bring sheet music with you, and leave it in the cloak room with the top hats and coats, and then fetch it after dinner. Parents forced their children to take piano lessons so they could participate socially, and some parents continued to do this into the 20th Century, when it was a complete anachronism. Obviously, music figured very prominently in how they celebrated Christmas. The family would gather around the piano to sing Christmas carols. Also, people would go caroling from house to house. In the 19th Century, if you wanted to hear music, you could either go to a concert performed by other people, or stay at home and perform it yourself. The only time that you would ever hear music or songs while in the comfort of your own home, without having to physically play or sing it yourself, was when you were being serenaded by carolers outside your house on Christmas. We don’t fully appreciate what a special treat this would have been for them.
In the 19th Century, when Christmas became a big thing, a large number of Christmas carols were written, rediscovered, or translated into English. "Jingle Bells" was written by James Pierpont in 1857. "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" was originally a poem written by Charles Wesley in 1739, but the music was written by Felix Mendelssohn in 1840. The words to "Silent Night" was written by Joseph Mohr in 1816, and the music was written by Franz Gruber in 1818. There is a fictional story that says it was written because mice had eaten the bellows of the organ in the church. "Deck the Halls" was originally medieval Welsh but the modern words are 19th Century American. "The First Noel", originally 16th or 17th Century French, was translated into English by Sir John Stainer in 1833. The words to "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" were written by Unitarian minister Dr. Edmund Sears in 1849, and the music was written by Richard Starrs Willis in 1850. "O Holy Night", originally in French, was translated into English by John Sullivan Dwight. "We Three Kings of Orient Are" was written by John Henry Hopkins in 1857. The words to "What Child is this?" were written by William Chatterton Dix in 1865. The music was taken from "Greensleeves", a baudy Elizabethan song. The first written version of "Away in a Manger" dates from 1885. "O Little Town of Bethlehem" was written in 1868, with words by Philip Brooks, and music by Lewis Redner. "O Come All Ye Faithful" was translated from the original Latin into English by Reverend Frederick Oakley in 1853. "Good King Wenceslas" was written by Jason Mason Neale in the 19th Century. Of course, they also had a large number of Christmas carols which are no longer sung today.
The first Christmas card was produced in 1846 by Sir Henry Cole, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and designed by his friend John Horsely. It showed a family raising their glasses in toast, and said, "A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to You". It sold only 1,000 copies. In 1851, an English company was printing Christmas cards for the mass market. In 1870, the halfpenny post was introduced for cards in unsealed envelopes. The post office would say, "post early for Christmas". Sending out Christmas cards was a natural for the Victorians since they both loved Christmas, and loved doing their correspondence. The first Christmas cards were simply decorated calling cards but soon they showed sentimental snow scenes, angels, robins, and nativity scenes.
In the 19th Century, gift giving became a much bigger part of the holiday, although obviously not on the scale of our Christmas today. Before that, only children might get candy or a small toy. In the 19th Century, adults started giving each other gifts. The Victorians wrapped their gifts in brown paper. Therefore they had to decorate them themselves. Many Victorians bought "scraps" which were albums of printed sheets of decorative alphabets and pictures, usually produced in Germany. The letters and pictures were then cut out and glued on packages. A handwritten message and glossy ribbon completed the effect. By the late 19th Century, pretty colored borders and cut-out angels were being produced. It was only in the 20th Century, with increasingly cheaper color printing that you had pre-printed gift wrapping paper.
In the late 19th Century, Tom Smith, a younger baker, was holidaying in France, and saw bon-bons. He decided to sell them in Britain. After a while, the sale of his novelty sweets declined, and he tried to think up some way to boost sales. The image of two children fighting over the bon-bons, having a tug-of-war, inspired him to incorporate a tiny explosive charge, a chemically treated strip of paper, into the candy. When children fought over the candy, it was explode with a loud pop. They were called "crackers" and were a huge success. Then instead of putting candy in the crackers, he put in other things, such as tiny phials of perfume, miniature toys, games, and then a printed love message, motto, or riddle. It became common to include a paper crown. In 1900, he sold 13 million crackers worldwide. They are still popular in Britain at Christmas today.
In 1828, the United States sent its first ambassador to Mexico. His name was Joel Roberts Poinsett, and he just happened to be an amateur botanist. He was exploring the Mexican state of Taxco, when he found an unusual plant. The Aztec name for it was "cuetlaxochitl", which means something like "leathery petals". He sent cuttings back to the U. S. Botanists named it "Euphorbia pulcherrima" which means "the prettiest euphorbia". It was grown on the east coast as a greenhouse plant, and acquired the common name "poinsettia". Since it was red and green, and bloomed in the middle of winter, it came to be considered a Christmas plant.
Distilled sugar cane is called rum. Any drink made with rum is called grog. In the colonial south, they invented what sounds like a nauseating concoction of rum with eggs in it, which they called "egg grog". In the 19th Century, this evolved into eggnog. It was also influenced by various dessert drinks and medicinal drinks.
Gentle Reader, that man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not aroused, in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened, by the recurrence of Christmas. So wrote Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870), considered one of the greatest writers of the English language. Although difficult to read today, because of his dense Victorian purple prose, he was immensely popular when he lived. In his enormous body of works, Dickens combined storytelling, humor, pathos, irony, sharp social criticism, and acute observation of people and places. He wrote 55 major works including "The Pickwick Papers" (1836), "Oliver Twist" (1837 - 38) "David Copperfield" (1849 - 50), "Bleak House" (1852), "A Tale of Two Cities" (1859), and "Great Expectations" (1860 - 61). He was also an outspoken advocate of Christmas. He obviously felt passionately about the holiday, since he never passed up a chance to extol it, and wax eloquently about how wonderful it is. He glorified Christmas in a large number of works. In "The Pickwick Papers", he described the scene of great merriment, as Mr. Pickwick kisses the ladies under the mistletoe at Mr. Wardle’s Christmas Eve party. The quote at the beginning of this paragraph is from "A Christmas Dinner", where he goes on and on describing how glorious a Christmas dinner is, and says, "Who can be insensible to the out-pourings of good feeling, and the honest interchange of affectionate attachment, which abound at this season of the year? A Christmas family party! We know of nothing in nature more delightful! There seems a magic in the very name of Christmas! Petty jealousies and discords are forgotten. Social feelings are awakened in bosoms to which they have been long strangers. Father and son, brother and sister, who have met and passed with averted gaze, or a look of cold recognition months before, proffer and return the cordial embrace, and bury their past animosities in their present happiness". He can and does go on like this at extraordinary length.
Charles Dickens' most famous work is "A Christmas Carol", written in 1843. In that year, he visited one of the Ragged Schools in the slums of London. These were institutions where dedicated teachers worked in appalling conditions to give poor children a basic education. Dickens was profoundly moved by the visit, and decided to write a pamphlet exposing the hardships of the poor. Then he realized that far more people would read it if it was in the form of a short story. He wrote the story in six weeks, and published it at his own expense in time for Christmas. It was a huge success, and sold 6,000 copies on the first day of publication. Charles Dickens would go on reading tours in Britain and America where he would read "A Christmas Carol" out loud. On the way home from such a reading, a factory owner in Vermont said to his wife, "I feel that after listening to Mr. Dickens' reading of 'A Christmas Carol', I should break the custom we have hitherto observed of opening the works on Christmas Day". Keep in mind that it was Scrooge's evil self at the beginning of the story who gave Bob Cratchit Christmas Day off, with pay. Despite that, most factory workers did have to work on Christmas Day, so at least one factory owner was moved to emulate Scrooge's evil self at the beginning by giving them Christmas Day off. Aside from that, "A Christmas Carol" alerted the world to the terrible conditions of the Victorian poor, and inspired many benevolent acts.