My final Yule blog: On the 12th Day of Christmas I Had an Epiphany

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Christmas, Guildford, Magi, Mumming, Pilgrim Morris Men, Rome, Twelfth Night

Happy Christmas! Yes, we can still say it. Just. The 12th day is upon us.

Alright, in some parts of the world they celebrate Christmas beyond Twelfth Night (hear from James Cooper of WhyChristmas.com on this on my latest podcast, and also on my BBC Surrey & BBC Sussex show last week). But for most of us, this weekend sees the decorations come down. Trees will be dragged to join their big pile of relatives in the village hall car park.

So this seems THE time to cease this Yule blog for this year. We might pop back again in the run-up to next Christmas. Or we might consider that we’ve done enough Yule blogging (you can explore the back catalogue throughout this kneeldownstandup.wordpress.com site – anything from August 2017 – January 2018 is on the history of Christmas).

The entire blogging venture has been off the back of my new book ‘Hark! The Biography of Christmas’, which I’m delighted to say scraped the Amazon Top 100 and was a bestseller in a bunch of categories, from ‘Christianity’ to ‘Anthropology’ to ‘Crosswords’ (that last one’s not true, just checking you’re paying attention). So thanks if you bought it! If you didn’t – well there’s always next Christmas.

Went pretty well. Thanks!

So as Christmas wraps up for another year, why do we have a Twelfth Night then?

Well. A few hundred years post-Nativity, Rome had started celebrating Christmas in some form. But the Empire was big – and in the East, they preferred January 6th as a celebration date – the day commemorating Jesus’ baptism, and the visit of the Magi. So Epiphany has been a day for thinking on those Three Wise Men for some time. Then there’s the Gregorian/Julian calendar split, which also helped shift the date of Christmas for many. So either way, Christmas then seems to span these twelve days. To this day, 6 January is Orthodox Christmas Eve.

In 567, France hosted the Council of Tours (the original “Tours de France”) to settle several key disputes of the day. These included the marital state of clergy (monks should live in dormitories not cells; women shouldn’t be allowed in monasteries – and you know I’m talking to you, Sister Florence…) and when exactly to celebrate Christmas. To satisfy both sides of the church, the twelve days between the Western church’s 25 December and the Eastern church’s 6 January were in their entirety deemed holy days – or “holidays”. So the origin of our twelve days of Christmas – telling us when to take down our decorations, or a ditty about five gold rings and a partridge – is built on compromise, to satisfy both sides of the church. Because what are Christmas holidays about, if not keeping both sides of the family happy?

For centuries, Twelfth Night customs made for almost a bigger Christmas party than Christmas itself. There was a Twelfth cake, with a bean or pea inside – and whoever took that slice was elected king or queen for the night – Lord of Misrule – directing the antics. It’s a tradition kept in my local pubs in Guildford to this day – and I’ll be along to see the Pilgrim Morris Men perform their Mummers play around Guildford pubs this January 6th, this very weekend.

The Pilgrim Morris Men of Guildford, with their traditional Mummers play.

Twelfth Night is VERY English. One of the most English things there is. It includes a spot of carolling, passing the wassail bowl around, and blessing the pub by daubing some cider. The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane still keeps the tradition of Twelfth cake too, with the customary cake and shared wassail bowl for the cast each January 6th since 1795, the lucky blighters.

Speaking of plays, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is of course then a Christmas play, though for the very end of Christmas – and it has the usual tropes of an old-fashioned Christmas, with some cross-dressing and general ribaldry. It even debuted at the end of the Christmas season, on… not Twelfth Night, but Candlemas, on February 2nd, a.k.a. Groundhog Day.

A Twelfth Cake. Some would have the Three Wise Men on top. This one favours the King and Queen, of Misrule, to be picked by pea-based lot.

On which, maybe we should return to this Yule blog for Candlemas, the very far end of the Christmas season, wherever you are…

Then again, maybe we best leave it. Christmas has ended by February, nowadays, surely. So as we approach Twelfth Night, may I be the last to wish you a very Merry Christmas. (Bring on the next one…)

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Christmas dinner in a nutshell

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Christmas, Christmas pudding, mince pies, Oliver Cromwell, Turkey, Twelfth Night

At the time of writing, it’s 3 days till Christmas. So baste the turkey warm the plates, stir the pud, bury the coin in mincemeat then cover it in brandy. Let’s check history’s oven and see how our Christmas dinner table got so crowded.

ROOT VEG ‘N’ SPROUTS:
By Tudor times, root vegetables were eaten nearly as much as meat and newcomers like sprouts were joining the plate. These perennial “favourites” (personally I still have to gulp my one-sprout-a-year down with a glass of red) offered highly nutritious vitamins through the season, unusually growing in even the roughest of winters.

TURKEY:
The Southern Mexican turkey was a domesticated bird, making it very easy to transport, so by 1525 these birds started appearing in European ports. Originally it was confused with the African guinea fowl, arriving via the Ottoman empire, land of the Turks. So the turkey suered a case of mistaken identity; though it had never even been to Turkey, the name “turkey” stuck.

The whole naming of this bird is one giant fiasco, to be honest. The country it was thought to be from wasn’t even called Turkey until after World War I, so the bird was (wrongly) named first. Then there’s the fact that the bird they thought it was wasn’t even from Turkey (which wasn’t called Turkey) but East Africa – the birds just changed hands a few times between Turks en route. Finally, the world over, they all seem to call it different names based on other places that it’s not even from. The Turks themselves called it “an Indian bird”, as did the French who call it an “Indian rooster” (a “coq d’Inde”, now abridged to “dinde”). In Malaysia it’s a “Dutch chicken”, while the Portuguese call it a “Peru bird”. The humble turkey should really be called “Mexican guinea fowl lookalike”.

Turkeys being walked from Norfolk to London, to their ultimate dinner-plate fate. They were even given little leather boots to protect their feet. True. 

GOOSE:
Michaelmas, on 29 September, was the day that each goose should look over its shoulders. They’d been popular with the Celts in their Samhain festival and also in our very old friend Yule.

Long before the Dutch/American/Mexican/Peruvian/Indian turkey could get its claws onto our Christmas menu, the goose beat it to it. This was all thanks to another sea explorer, not bringing anything back from the New World but defending the Old World. Sir Francis Drake and Lord Charles Howard led the defence against the Spanish Armada, and on 29 September 1588 word reached Queen Elizabeth of their success. She was tucking into her traditional Michaelmas goose at the time, and was so overjoyed at the victory that she decreed that goose become celebration food from then on. That Christmas, roasted goose was the bird of choice – so when Michaelmas later declined, the goose clung to Christmas instead.

JOINT OF HAM:
It’s all that’s left of one of Britain’s oldest continuing Christmas customs: the Boar’s Head. There’s even a carol or two to go with it, and the tradition is alive and well at certain posh colleges – notably Oxford claims an origin story, of a student meeting a wild boar on the way to Midnight Mass, so shoved a philosophy book down its throat to save from a mauling. It was served at royal feasts with a lemon or apple in its mouth and garnished with rosemary and bay leaves.

CHRISTMAS PUDDING:
The Christmas pudding owes a lot to sea imports of the Crusades. Spices arrived and joined wheat, almonds, eggs, even fish and meat, to make a classic English porridge called ‘frumenty’, stirred by the whole family for special occasions. It became the popular plum porridge, then eighteenth century plum pudding – which debuted in a cookbook alongside the first recipe for orange marmalade. George I loved it so much, they called him ‘The Plum Pudding King’.

It was made by wrapping the mixture in a cloth and swinging it around, forming a ball. Remove the cloth, halve the ball, lose the fish and meat (I would) and you have Christmas pudding. Light it on fire to remind us of Yule. Count the ingredients and stir up as a family on Stir-Up Sunday, to remind us of the Christian Christmas. The Christmas pudding is a bit of everything: just like Christmas.

An old style crib-shaped mince pie, banned by Cromwell.

MINCE PIES:
Mince pies originally contained real mince, while its shape was possibly the most Christian thing about Christmas food: it resembled a crib, or perhaps a coffin. The theologically-minded saw both, but Cromwell’s Puritan parliament saw potential idol-worship. So when Christmas was banned, so was this pastry crib. But change the shape, flout the law. The round, minceless mince pie is all we have.

CHRISTMAS CAKE:
No room for this? It’s all that’s left of the popular ‘Twelfth Cake’ that closed the season on January 6th. A coin would be hidden inside to pick the fool-in-charge for the night (or a wedding ring, to pick a bride) – and with no more Twelfth Cake, this custom has remained popular in many a Christmas pud.

 

Hark! The Biography of Christmas (published by Lion Hudson) is out now priced £7.99, to be found in all good bookshops, on all good websites, and in all good Christmas stockings.

 

Keep mum(ming)…

Tags

Book launch, Christmas, Guildford, Mumming, Pilgrim Morris Men, Pubs, Twelfth Night

Last night at The Keep pub in Guildford saw the local leg of the launch do for my new book, Hark! The Biography of Christmas. We carolled, we caroused, we conquered. There was much (early) festive rejoicing – plus for good measure, a pub landlady who hates Christmas (especially on October 2nd). If you’d like to join for the London version of this, it’s on Wed 11th October 2017, and you just need email to be on the free list – details here.  For the London book launch, I’ve picked the nearest bookshop to Dickens’ house. Seems apt.

Singer Majella Yorston played some Christmas songs; Paul Kerensa waffled away about Christmas and plugged his book like it was his launch or something…

Why did I pick The Keep pub for the Guildford event? Well, it’s in the book. In researching the history of Christmas, I discovered that King Edward III celebrated Christmas 1348 in Guildford, from Halloween to Candlemas (a.k.a. Groundhog Day), with a vast Roman Saturnalia-themed season-long party. There were masks and costumes for eighty people, dressed in animal skins and a generous amount of cross-dressing. Guildford hasn’t changed much.

Alright, Edward III didn’t celebrate at The Keep pub as far as we know, but he did enjoy a medieval mummers play. Who doesn’t love a bit of mumming? These ancient plays are still performed today, so if you pick the right pub near you, you can find a local performance of one this very Christmas, possibly on Twelfth Night. Go see! And that’s where The Keep comes in.

It was on Old Twelvy Night this year that I visited The Keep (or I could have visited The Star, The Royal Oak, The Angel Hotel…) to witness The Pilgrim Morris Men perform Guildford’s own mummers play. As to what a mummers play is exactly, well maybe we’ll find out on the next blog post. This time, here’s my summary of events that evening, back in my local on January 6th this year, and every year…

Photo courtesy of http://www.pilgrimmorrismen.org.uk

✧ WASSAILS NOT JANUARY SALES… The High Street may look like a commercial jungle, but look to the pubs and you’ll and the community. They vary nationwide, but in the Surrey town of Guildford, the mummers’ play tours five pubs each Twelfth Night, a half-hour performance in each. Most pub-goers have no clue what’s about to happen; in ours, a policeman thinks his retirement party has booked it all just for him.

✧  VERY FANCY DRESS… In the summer, they’re Morris dancers; in midwinter, they’re mummers. Replete with rainbow-coloured costumes, from Mad Hatter to a green Father Christmas, dozens of dressed-up (often well-oiled) wassailers fill the pub. It’s a health and safety nightmare: sloshing alcohol, flammable costumes, the odd candle, a packed pub… in fact many can’t fit in and shiver outside like the little match-girl – but at least they’ll be first in the next pub.

✧  PANTO MEETS PUB CRAWL… Most are following rather than performing, but they sing heartily and quaff from tankards they’ve brought specially. Ours is their second pub of the night, and some stops have variations. The first pub, The Star, saw the Twelfth Cake shared out; I’m told that Colin found a bean in his slice, crowning him Colin II, King of Misrule for the next few hours. The third pub features extended carolling, and I get the impression that by the fifth pub, The Royal Oak, the play will have evolved from The Star’s sober performance.

✧  DRINKHAIL!… The wassail bowl is passed around. I of course take a sip, much to the eye-rolling of my wife, already fearing whatever seasonal virus we’ll all share, before she takes a drink too.

✧  I KNOW THIS ONE… The half-hour pop-up performance is like an ancient flashmob, opened, closed, and middled with carols. Some have familiar words, some do not. None have familiar tunes. Yet the regular mummers (some of whom may have enjoyed eighty or more Old Twelvy Nights) don’t waver. By the eighth or ninth verse, I nail the tune too. I couldn’t sing “As I Sat on a Sunny Bank” to any other tune now. I’m surprised to see so much Christian tradition: even unfamiliar carols feature Jesus and Mary, as well as yes, holly, ivy, the wassail bowl, and a maid in a lily-white smock. Oh my.

✧  ANCIENT AND MODERN… The wassailing shows no signs of waning. Smartphones and our love of tech may keep many of us at home, but we still crave community. As we sing, selfies are taken, group photos are posted to Instagram, and there’s the joyous sight of a face-painted, bearded seventy-year-old in tinsel hat and outlandish outfit, reading the half-millennium-old “Boar’s Head Carol” from his illuminated iPad.

✧  THE PLAY’S THE THING… As for the play itself, like all mummers’ plays it’s a variation on a theme. The words may change, but the characters and loose storyline are pretty much the same. Overacting is essential, cheers and jeers from the crowd are encouraged, and if you can see or hear what’s going on then that’s a bonus (or not, depending on the acting). I’ll be there again next year. Wassail!

Some medieval mummers. Or giant animals. You decide.

So cheers to The Keep, the other pubs, The Pilgrim Morris Men and all those that keep the tradition alive. And maybe after the London leg of the book launch, right by Dickens’ house, we’ll explore something of Mr Dickens himself.

Hark! The Biography of Christmas is available in all good online bookstores, my car boot, and hopefully some shops, priced £7.99