Happy Christmas Eve! At OISE Oxford we all hope everyone is enjoying the festivities.
On this festive day many may question who invented Christmas? The typical answer is “The Victorians”, or if not that, then “Coca Cola”. However Britons have been celebrating Christmas for at least a thousand years. The western Church adopted December 25 as the official date for Christ’s birth in the fourth century and the term “Cristes Messe” crops up in Old English two decades before 1066.
On this festive day many may question who invented Christmas? The typical answer is “The Victorians”, or if not that, then “Coca Cola”. However Britons have been celebrating Christmas for at least a thousand years. The western Church adopted December 25 as the official date for Christ’s birth in the fourth century and the term “Cristes Messe” crops up in Old English two decades before 1066.
By the Middle Ages it is very clear that Christmas was a thriving popular holiday, which had combined pagan and pre-Christian traditions, bound them together with the story of the Nativity and come up with a festival of hymns and games, worship and gluttony, which still endures today, when virtually every other Christian feast day except Easter has slipped into obscurity.
In 'The Telegraph' there is an interesting article examining the modern joys of Christmas past. The Middle Ages hold the beginnings of many familiar rituals:
Timing
If you feel that Christmas has already been going on for months, rest assured that at least your complaint is not new. The idea of Christmas as a seemingly long festival stretches back more than a thousand years. In 829 AD, at the court of Louis the Pious, Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Franks, festive celebrations began at Martinmas (November 11) and were still going on at Epiphany (January 6).
Carols
Here your medieval Christmas comes alive. The carol was once among the most popular forms of song. Plenty of carols, especially from the 15th century onwards, still survive, such as Adam Lay Ybounden.
Here your medieval Christmas comes alive. The carol was once among the most popular forms of song. Plenty of carols, especially from the 15th century onwards, still survive, such as Adam Lay Ybounden.
Clothes
The geometrically patterned Christmas jumper is a modern creation, but a medieval approximation may still be found.
The geometrically patterned Christmas jumper is a modern creation, but a medieval approximation may still be found.
In 1322 Thomas Earl of Lancaster – the cousin and nemesis of King Edward II – ordered two new scarlet suits for himself and a “cloth of Russet” for the Bishop of Anjou. Lancaster’s household trimmed their Christmas best with miniver or ermin, and wore purple hoods. All of this sounds not dissimilar to the modern “Santa Suit”.
Decorations
Christmas in the Middle Ages adopted many folk traditions and pagan rituals that had been rife before Christianity. These include the ancient Yuletide custom of hanging up holly, ivy and – if you are too idle to do anything but raid the kitchen storecupboard – bay sprigs.
Food
Christmas has always been about feasting. However, a Middle Ages Christmas dinner would be void of the traditional turkey. There were no turkeys in England until they were brought back from Mexico after the 1520s. Before then, the classic Christmas dish was boar’s head – served, as one carol went, “bedeck’d with bays and rosemary”.
Presents
Sadly, there is no place for Father Christmas in a medieval Christmas. In the Middle Ages, gifts were exchanged not at Christmas but at new year – the “yeresgive”, as it was called.
Merry Christmas!
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/9764194/The-modern-joys-of-Christmas-past.html
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