The Traditions of Christmas - The Truth About Christmas Part 1

well welcome I've been asked to record some thoughts about Christmas I want to give you two talks the first is historical where it all started and where it all came from and then in the second talk we'll look at the Bible and the actual story of the birth of Christ and how all this fits together or even whether it does fit together as most of you probably know Christmas is not a Christian festival it began long before Jesus Christ was born it was originally a pagan fertility cult and it was a celebration of the winter solstice the fact that the Sun was just beginning to get stronger again and they waited till the Solstice was over on December 21st and then celebrated the sun's been born again and the spring is on its way again because of course they lived much closer to nature than we do much more dependent on the seasons their food didn't come and stay in the refrigerator all the year round or the freezer they had to depend on the seasons for their food so this was a matter of celebration especially during the cold dark winter it was good to have a carnival which is what it really was now it was mainly in Europe that this began and in Northern Europe it was the festival of you why you le the origin of the Yule Log and Yule tide for one of the central features of the celebration was a huge bonfire round which they kept warm and for that end they used to chop down a big tree and the trunk as the Yule Log and that bonfire with a big log in the middle was the center of the Yule celebration in northern Europe in southern Europe it was called the Saturnalia after the gods Saturn the Romans celebrated Saturnalia and made a great deal of the Sun God Mithras so it was all a celebration of nature it was part of a fertility cult and fertility then was a very important feature Fela Tillett II in the fields fertility of the animals and of the people and so there was this annual carnival Oh Festival which I'm afraid developed into quite an indulgent festival because the normal rules of life were canceled for the festival and it wasn't just one day it was 12 days and lasts until January the six even today I remember in our home decorations had to be taken down on January the 6th the twelfth day I had no idea why I didn't then know about the 12 days of Christmas when my true love said to me and of course that is a clue to what went on normal restraints were removed and all kinds of things happened as a result for example the normal rules of social relationships were canceled and therefore one part of that was that there were no longer upper and lower classes over Christmas and they often change places indeed masters would serve servants their meals on that day and there's a survival of that in the British Army it is still the custom at Sandhurst for the officers to serve the privates Christmas lunch it's a reversal of the social order just for a time but it was mainly in the realm of sexual relationships that the release came and restrictions were removed and that is still seen in office parties kissing under the mistletoe goes right back to these festivals when they decorated their homes with evergreens like fir and Holly and above all mistletoe all these evergreens were taken in and used to decorate the home putting a wreath of Holly on your front door goes right back to those pre-christian festivals and one of the features was very amusing in the carnival they could dress up how they liked and they reversed the sex of people dressing up and so men dressed as women and women dressed as men and we've still got that today in every pantomime the principal boy is a girl with the longest legs and the mother of the principal boy is a dame who is a man and that's a cross-dressing that goes right back to the carnivals of the original midwinter festival there are more things than that I'd like to mention was a time of gluttony when it didn't matter how much you ate you could eat yourself under the table and that was all right at Christmas that still happens with Christmas dinner and the turkey and the plum pudding when we eat far more than we'd only eat for lunch it's a relic of the old fertility festival and the drinking too you could drink as much as you like and drink yourself under the table too and that too is survived again at the office party or over Christmas the pubs are full of people getting drunk what else has survived well the social rules have reversed the sexual rules and reversed the eating and drinking rules have set free and interestingly enough gambling which was normally frowned on during the year at Christmas you could really gamble as much as you liked and that certainly has a modern counterpart in the money that is spent over Christmas which leaves many people in debt to face the new year and pay off what they've had on credit over Christmas so all these things go right back to those twelve days of Christmas many communities elected a Lord of misrule who ruled over the twelve days and had the freedom of any woman in the community during those twelve days and that's the origin of the 12 days of Christmas when my true love said to me so we have a very indulgent festival when people simply let go and could do what they wanted it was a self-indulgent festival but there was a good side and that was that the rich were expected to help the poor over Christmas the haves were concerned about the have-nots and especially the poor and the lonely and the disabled were a special concern and that was a good feature of the annual Winter Festival and that is survived Boxing Day is when the boxes in church were emptied for the poor and the boxes were then used to distribute whatever had been put into them on Christmas Day to those who were needy on box well now that's how it began and it went an up and down sort of journey through the ages I'll just mention one or two of the downs and one or two of the ups during the Middle Ages it wasn't particularly popular except among the aristocracy and the upper classes then it steadily declined over the centuries until the 19th century and then Christmas as we know it really began not until the 19th century when two authors wrote stories about Christmas on this side of the Atlantic it was Charles Dickens and much of what we know as Christmas today we owe to Charles Dickens not just his book a Christmas story and Scrooge and the turkey in that story the turkeys came over from the States originally but over there there was also an author called Washington Irvin and he was the Charles Dickens of America and so the modern Christmas developed both sides of the Atlantic in a kind of cross-fertilization and set off by these two authors and their stories really raised interest but I suppose the biggest factor over this side of the pond was Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert from Germany and of course our Kings had a strong German taste about them and they had already brought Christmas over some of our kings and queens were very keen on the celebration the carnival aspect the buffoonery as Henry the eighth's celebrated Elizabeth the first was known to dance and gamble on Christmas Day and right through the stood Stuart and the Tudor times Christmas was celebrated particularly by the royal family but it was Victoria and Albert who focused on the family as the main celebrating unit not the community but the family and they stamped family life on Britain and it was Albert who introduced the Christmas tree to Britain Germany being full of forests and a very tree country he introduced the Christmas tree to the home as the main visible sign of Christmas and during Victoria's reign it became a very major part every family had to have a Christmas tree and during the 19th century someone thought of sending a Christmas card to your relatives and friends and a card was relatively simple and cheap the penny post became the Haney post for Christmas cards and that difference between letters and card postal lasted quite a long time right into ours our time so these were a quick way an easy way of greeting your relatives and friends instead of writing long letters all you can do is sign a card and send it off for happening and that really took off in the 19th century so it is to that century that we really owe the modern Christmas and in particular a gentleman who was known on this side of the Atlantic as father Christmas but on the other side of the Atlantic Santa Clause and we'll find out where that came from it came from Holland because New York in which Santa Claus the first appeared was a Dutch colony it was not New York it was called New Amsterdam and in Holland there was a strong emphasis on a saint from long ago called Saint Nicholas st. Nicholas was a man in Turkey and a bishop in a very kind man concerned for the poor and there was in Turkey a father who had three daughters who had no chance of getting married though they were good-looking because they didn't have any money for a dowry and a bride was supposed to supply money all the bride's father was supposed to provide the dowry and the peasant couldn't so goods and Nicholas smuggled some gold coins wrapped in a cloth into the cottage of the peasant he didn't climb down the chimney and he didn't put it in a stocking but he wrapped these gold coins in cloth and threw them through the window and the three girls were able to get married now this story really captured the Dutch imagination in Holland and Saint Nicholas became almost their patron saint they called him Santa Klaus which is short for Saint Nicholas and then in New York Santa Claus as we know him was born and given red robes aged in white ermine and with the hunting boots and a long white beard and we had the Santa Claus that we know and I remember when we had our little three children in bokkeum shrah we took them out in the car one morning to go and see Santa Claus in a big shop but on the way we saw another cent of claus getting on a bus and we saw yet a third santa claus walking along the street and I remember the confusion is led to with our three children santa claus seemed to be everywhere we went that morning and of course he is everywhere now he's part of Christmas so all that happened in the nineteenth century I'll tell you in a moment about the Christians who opposed it all quite strongly but public sentiment was too strong for the protestors I'll come back to that later what has been added in the twentieth century to all this well there's no question the biggest thing is commercialism and already now we're recording this in October and already the advertisements for Christmas displayed on our TV and the shops are beginning to take stock and stock up for Christmas and so on and it's interesting that the bulk of the advertising is aimed at children very expensive toys too but the advertising is aimed at children now it's not now focused on family but the 20th century has focused christmas on children which the Victorians did not do children could be seen but not aired then but now children have become the focus of Christmas for many families another thing that's been added this time is what we call the Christmas broadcast of the Queen become a ritual and you can't imagine Christmas without it now but it was begun by her grandfather George v and he made the first Christmas broadcast and quoted that memorable thing I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year oh I've almost forgotten it but the reply of the man was put your hand into the hand of God and you can go into the future safely yeah I forgot the quotation but it it really struck a chord in the nation when King George the fifth quoted that and therefore he went on making a radio broadcast every year but his son King George the sixth stopped doing that because of his dreadful stammer and I'm sure you've seen the film The King's Speech or heard of it and you know all about that stammer so he said I'm not going to make a broadcast every Christmas however in the first year of World War two for the sake of the soldiers who are away from home he was persuaded to make it and he managed to do it and he kept it up right through the war so his daughter our queen has to make the Queen's royal broadcast usually just perform welcome and wise but that's part of Christmas now as his television entertainment and it's interesting that all the mass media now or caching on Christmas as early as I think 1900 The Times never mentioned Christmas in its December issues but if you look at newspapers and magazines today Christmas takes over for a time and becomes the main subject so those are the historical features none of which are Christian of course and all of which have so gripped the public sentiment the thought of abolishing all that really horrifies the British public and the American public oh one other 20th century a distant addition to the mess is Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer with his shiny nose and that's become now such an important part of Christmas so it's a funny mix well now let me just begin to look at how Christians have coped with this annual pagan fertility custom in the first four centuries good Christians ignored it and they really were convinced that Christians should not be involved in such an indulgent thing the carnival aspect particularly worried them in the fourth century Pope Gregory sent a missionary to England called Augustine not the Augustine who wrote the confessions the other one who was one in Africa the one we know best but another Augustine was sent to England and he reported back a year or two later he'd made progress he'd baptized the King of Kent he had a number of people coming to a church which later became Canterbury Cathedral but he said I have not been able to win the British off their annual fertility cult fest all namely Christmas though it wasn't called that then and try though he could his best he could not get them off this indulgent activity so he asked Pope Gregory what can I do about it in Pope Gregory actually said if you can't lick them join them but what he actually said was baptized it into Christ bring it into the church and do it in the name of Christ furthermore he suggested as they celebrate the birth of the Sun you can say we'll celebrate the Sun of righteousness S UN who is risen with healing in his wings that's a quote from the Old Testament and so December 25th became the official birthday of Jesus of course it isn't anything of the kind he wasn't born in December scheppers don't wash their flocks by night in December there's often snow on the hills of Israel in December and we're told in the Bible when he really was born which was not anything like December but just as the Queen has her own birthday and an official birthday when they have the parading of the color on the Horse Guards square so now Christ was given an official birthday which was not his birthday but was celebrated as such and that was the profound beginning of a Christian Christmas and what was included to make it especially Christian was a Roman Catholic Mass and then the name Christ mass came into being and it's been known as that ever since so this was the Roman Catholic Church's missionary strategy if you couldn't get people to drop things then bring them in and make them part of the church's program and that will keep everybody happy I'm not convinced about it at all but in the Philippines in in America I found that Catholics still practice animism and spiritism because that was their original religion and the Catholic Church encouraged to come in and it's quite disturbing to find out how far these old things are still deeply rooted so that was the beginning and it was Pope Julius following probe Gregory who made it an official institution of the whole church though it was originally only for Britain and to get the British to drop certain things over the medieval period there was a steady decline of interest but there's still a medieval feel about Christmas stagecoaches on Christmas cards and old thatched roofs you've seen them all there's a kind of nostalgia for the good old days they weren't all that good but we nostalgia looks at them through rose-colored spectacles now all that changed radically when the Protestant Reformation came and my time has gone on for this talk so I'm going to have to pick up the story in my next talk you

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Length: 26min 15sec (1575 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 23 2016