Christmas Explained, from A(dvent) to Z(oophagous)

It's 1st December again, the night's have drawn in, there's a distinct chill in the air, and what better way is there to prepare yourself for the coming of Christmas than to dip into Christmas Explained - Robins, Kings and Brussel Sprouts every day in Advent.

You'll discover all sorts of fascinating Yuletide facts, including the origins of the Advent calendar, the origins of Yule, and the origins of the traditional family pantomime.

Christmas Explained is available now from Snowbooks (appropriately enough) and via Amazon.

Oh, and if you'll able to (and up early enough), why not tune in to BBC Radio Wiltshire this morning between 8.00am and 8.30am, when I will be making an 'appearance' on Ben Prater's show?

Happy Saturnalia!

Christmas (a.k.a. the Feast of the Nativity) is pre-dated by two major pagan festivals, the Roman Saturnalia and the Viking Yule. Saturnalia is well-known for its turning of the established order on its head, with servants becoming the masters and vice versa. December 17 is the actual date when the Ancient Roman festival - held in honour of the god Saturn, the god of agriculture - began, running until December 23.

Its legacy lived on in the Medieval Christmas when a Lord of Misrule was appointed to oversee the often noisily and disorderly festive celebrations. And its legacy lives on today in modern pantomimes which still involve a reversal of fortunes; Cinderella marries her prince while poor Jack makes a million. This swapping of roles didn’t just apply to master-servant relationships either, but also to traditional gender roles.

The Romans sang ritual songs during the feast of Saturnalia while the mead halls of the Norse would have rung to the sound of sagas being sung around the burning Yule log. During the festival of Saturnalia, people decorated trees with small pieces of metal. Our Roman ancestors also considered evergreens lucky and during the feast of Saturnalia decorated their homes with boughs of holly and the like, believing that both brought good luck, while mistletoe was a symbol of peace. Those participating in the annual Saturnalia celebrations even wore hats, which is part of the reason why we find paper crowns hidden in the crackers we pull at Christmas dinner.

It is thought that these midwinter festivals were transformed into Christmas celebrations after the arrival of Saint Augustine in England, at the end of the 6th century, and the subsequent widespread adoption of Christianity by the British. Certainly Christmas Day AD 598 was marked by a spectacular event, when more than 10,000 Englishmen were baptised as Christians.

So... Happy Saturnalia!

From Mummer's Play to Pantomime, via School Nativity

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 12

For an old school friend of mine, it's panto season once again. And yesterday I got to enjoy my daughter's school nativity play.

One of the things you can read about in What is Myrrh Anyway? is how the traditional mummers' plays helped influence the development of the popular pantomime, not to mention the classic school nativity.

The words ‘mummer’ and ‘mumming’ either come from the German mumme, meaning a ‘mask’ or ‘masker’, or the Greek momme, meaning specifically ‘a frightening mask’. To hide their true identities (disguise being an important part of the mummers' ritual performance) many mummers wore masks made to look like different animal heads. One of these was the stag.

Just such a 'classic' Medieval mummer mask appears in an fourteenth century illuminated manuscript in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University. A marginal panel in the lower right corner of the verso of Plate 21 shows a stag masked mummer leading four other dancers (two women and two masked men) to a musical tune provided by a man playing the lute.

The stag mask itself is particularly ancient, dating to the stone age in Europe. A painting on the wall of a cave named Le Trois Freres in France clearly shows a shaman wearing a stag mask and costume. The style of the paintings in the cave place the image at the end of the Ice Age, around 15,000 to 10,000 BC!

Modern Wiccan believers see the stag as representing the powerful male spirit of the animal world, 'the source of masculine energy; he is the raw force, wisdom and law'. Some Medieval writers also identified the stag as a force for good, determined to stamp out evil, as in the natural world the animal will trample any snakes it comes upon.

The Chrismologist's Advent Calendar - Day 17

Christmas (a.k.a. the Feast of the Nativity) is pre-dated by two major pagan festivals, the Roman Saturnalia and the Viking Yule. Saturnalia is well-known for its turning of the established order on its head, with servants becoming the masters and vice versa. December 17 is the actual date when the Ancient Roman festival - held in honour of the god Saturn, the god of agriculture - began, running until December 23.

Its legacy lived on in the Medieval Christmas when a Lord of Misrule was appointed to oversee the often noisily and disorderly festive celebrations. And its legacy lives on today in modern pantomimes which still involve a reversal of fortunes; Cinderella marries her prince while poor Jack makes a million. This swapping of roles didn’t just apply to master-servant relationships either, but also to traditional gender roles.

The Romans sang ritual songs during the feast of Saturnalia while the mead halls of the Norse would have rung to the sound of sagas being sung around the burning Yule log. During the festival of Saturnalia, people decorated trees with small pieces of metal. Our Roman ancestors also considered evergreens lucky and during the feast of Saturnalia decorated their homes with boughs of holly and the like, believing that both brought good luck, while mistletoe was a symbol of peace. Those participating in the annual Saturnalia celebrations even wore hats, which is part of the reason why we find paper crowns hidden in the crackers we pull at Christmas dinner.

It is thought that these midwinter festivals were transformed into Christmas celebrations after the arrival of Saint Augustine in England, at the end of the 6th century, and the subsequent widespread adoption of Christianity by the British. Certainly Christmas Day AD 598 was marked by a spectacular event, when more than 10,000 Englishmen were baptised as Christians.

So... Happy Saturnalia!