Where to start?
Let me start by wishing you all a Happy New Year. I am writing this during Twelvetide, so it seems a little redundant to say Merry Christmas now. This is my favourite time of year. So full of expectation and of something else. Something that has withstood the tests of time. Something that transcends humanity.
Am I waxing lyrical? Probably. What it does not change is that something that is in the air that connects us to our past and propels us into our future. We all know that the future if not a blank slate is something that we can change if we wish to. It is this principle that leads us to make new goals and to wish to make changes at New Year. However it is also a time for reflection and a look back at the history both of where we have come from, but also the history of the world that has brought us to where we are.
Our history has a lot to teach us. Since a child I have loved learning my history and knowing the how’s and wherefore’s of everything. From lapping up historical facts to simply pulling a pen apart to seeing how it worked (and usually losing the biro spring in the process so that I broke the pens). However, I also grew up in a very conservative Christian household where Christmas, Easter and other holidays were blanket viewed as pagan and therefore something to be eschewed. However, even we had had the time as a family and i still remember having plenty of food for snacking and of course the obligatory Christmas dinner followed by the Queen’s yearly speech. We did not exchange presents, nor did we decorate the house, and yet the warmth of family and the general spirit of the season is woven into my memories. Since I separated from my now ex-husband I have spent The Christmas season alone and wonder if in doing so I am falling into the age old trap of romanticising the past. At the age of forty-one I hope that I have not yet slipped into that bad habit and yet I sometimes catch myself wishing for those simpler days when we had less tech. It is easy to look back and say life was easier back then. However, I do not believe it was. True we did not have smartphones attached to our hips and technology in easy reach, but life was still hard and challenging. I would wish to say my childhood was a happy one, but that does not do it justice. Nor does it do it justice to say it was miserable. I had my personal challenges that although I did not know it at the time, made me angry and caused me think and act like a victim. Which, although I still do not wish to be viewed as such, I was. Things happened that were incomprehensible and I had to come through them, although I confess there are at least three points in my life I can point to where I nearly did not come through. All before I began this wonderful journey to produce books that I hope are enjoyable.
So why this waffling about my personal past? Perhaps I am infected with a touch of Charles Dickens book A Christmas Carol and the Ghost of Christmas past has finally made me face up to my own past with Christmas. Fanciful? Definitely. Yet having watched three different versions over Christmas I do not think one can help being touched a little by that. No, it is all about context. One thing I never quite understood in a Christmas Carol was why it was only the Ghost of Scrooge’s past and not the Ghost of Christmas past in general. Well that I have come to the conclusion is because Dickens simply did not have time to research and tell the story. Writing a novella in a month is no mean feat, but that is exactly what Dickens did with A Christmas Carol. A novel in six weeks that carried a social narrative — how bad the plight of the poor actually was. I happily salute Dickens for such a masterful strike of creative genius. Ok take away that it was not Dickens intention to tell the history of Christmas, and take away that he intended to highlight the conditions of the poor and what are we left with? Why was it the Ghost of Scrooge’s past and not the Ghost of all past? After all the Ghost of Christmas present seems to take Scrooge out beyond himself to show the ‘present day’ celebrations, and of course the Ghost of Christmas yet to come again narrows into the results of Scrooge’s life and the Cratchet family tragedy. Well there is only one way to answer the question that we keep coming back to. That is simply that Christmas does not have have one clear origin and nor does it have a linear progression of traditions. It is quite simply an amalgamation of various practices that were held around the winter solstice.
The winter solstice was a bleak time of year. It was during that time that the sun waned giving minimal light to the earth for the shortest amount of time over the course of three days. Our pagan ancestors began certain practices in order to appease the gods and bring back the sun. In the northern hemisphere this included bringing in the Yule log which would be burnt for twelve days and then what was left of it would be used to light the next year’s Yule log. I do not know if anyone still practices this tradition or whether it has simply been replaced by the confection we know it as today. However, the traditions around Twelvetide (as the twelve days of Christmas are known) are very interesting.
Why twelve days of Christmas? That in itself is a mystery. Why is Twelvetide 25th December to 5th January? That is odd too. The ancient celebrations that preceded Christmas seemed to begin Twelvetide on 21st December (the days of the solstice) and end it on January 1st. Even the dates of Saturnalia and other such feasts were oriented around the 21st December and their duration seemed to vary from one day to seven days and beyond. The tree? Well that goes back to palm fronds and evergreen boughs being placed in homes and temples around the season. So other than an arbitrary choice of a date for the birth of Jesus 25th December itself had no significance — and even for Christians it could be argued that the date has no significance, as we do not know when Jesus was born. So coming back to why Did Dickens not write about all Christmas’s past? It would have been difficult since there is no clear single origin. No one place to look for the answer and while it was Dickens who more than any other ‘created’ the family Christmas we know today, no one person or event can ever account for the feast we now know and love.
Having mentioned Twelvetide I would be remiss not to mention my book, Twelvetide Chaos. When writing Twelvetide Chaos back in July 2019 I literally had Christmas in July as from morning to night I sang or listened to The twelve days of Christmas — what is it about six geese a laying that is so forgettable? After a full month of back to back singing of that dreadful round I still forget six geese a laying. Yet I can remember the rest of it. That song is younger than one might assume being only released in 1780, although it it did not have the same catchy (or aggravating ear worm tune) that we know today.
Much of the customs of Twelvetide have disappeared, from the King and Queen of Misrule on Twelfth night to the fact that it was simply twelve days of revelling, feasting, and drinking. Indeed so much has disappeared from Twelvetide that there are few who even understand that it is the period between Christmas Day and Epiphany. What is epiphany? And when is it? Celebrated on the 6th January Epiphany celebrates two important events in the life of Jesus — the wise men visiting and his baptism. No I am not going to turn this into a religious discussion, but it is important to understand the time around this to understand Twelvetide itself. I have to confess until I researched for my book Twelvetide chaos I was ignorant of why twelve days of Christmas and what it represented.
What does Christmas mean to you? I would love to hear of your customs during this time of year.
