Wayne Clarke

Part of a series on the traditions of Christmas

One remarkable tale of Christmas is the day peace broke out in 1914. By Christmas of that year fighting on the Western Front in World War One had claimed one million casualties. Those still alive were living in rat-infested trenches.

On Christmas Eve the sky was clear and the night was crisp and fresh. Lights appeared from the German trenches and the allied soldiers thought an attack was imminent. But the Germans raised their voices not their weapons and started singing. The carol Stille Nacht reached the Allied trenches, which they recognised as Silent Night. The lights were small Christmas trees the German soldiers had set up.

Without authorisation soldiers started climbing out of the trenches and wandering into no-man’s land. Enemies ate and drank together. Some British infantrymen ate their Christmas dinner in German trenches. Others joined forces with the enemy to bury their dead. A game of football started, though it’s not recorded who won.

Unfortunately the soldiers’ humanity alarmed their leaders and both sides prevented a repeat of the Christmas truce in the years that followed. But the idea that the peace and goodwill of Christmas could even bring a pause to a war is a remarkable testimony to the power of this season.

Part of a series on the traditions of Christmas

The man who stole Christmas was Oliver Cromwell. Well to be honest it had to more to do with the Puritans who supported Cromwell. In the 1640’s most people loved Christmas as much as we do today. But the English Puritans and the Scottish Presbyterians had two problems with it. One was that they thought a religious festival was being hijacked by people who just wanted to get drunk. But they were also suspicious of any religious festivals which seemed to them to be part of the Catholic teaching they rejected.

In 1644 Parliament passed a law that Christmas was to be a fast and a penance rather than a celebration. For twelve years the law was rigorously enforced. Shopkeepers were arrested for closing on Christmas Day. Evergreen decorations were prohibited. Parliament sat as usual on Christmas Day. Even churches were not allowed to open.

What happened in practice was that people still celebrated Christmas at home and found reasons not to be at work. What lost out was the religious observance of Christmas, while the secular Christmas survived.

Nowadays most Christians are happy to be part of the secular celebration of Christmas and most churches make room for a Christmas tree. Some will even include Father Christmas as part of their services. Most Christians are happy to combine the birthday of Jesus with the old midwinter festival. It is true that more people go to church at Christmas time than any other time of the year, which shows that British people still want something of the Christian festival as well as the secular one that goes alongside it. Even many Jews and Muslims in Britain celebrate Christmas, exchange presents and have the traditional trimmings of the day. British Christmas these days is not wholly religious or secular it’s a mixture of the two, as it has been ever since it began.

Part of a series on the traditions of Christmas

Now here’s a long and complicated story and one which I will tell carefully.

St Nicholas was a bishop in Turkey as long ago as 300 AD. By all accounts he was a generous man. One story told about him is that there was in his town a family with three daughters, but not enough money to pay the dowry necessary to see the daughters married. Nicholas went to the family’s house at night-time and threw through the window, or in some versions down the chimney a bag of gold to provide the first daughter with her dowry. A second night he threw in another bag of gold, and then a third, but by this time the father was so curious he stayed up to see who was giving the gifts. He discovered it was Nicholas and told everyone about the generosity of the man.

The legend of Nicholas lived on after his death and he became the patron saint of Russia, of sailors and of merchants. In some countries St Nicholas Day, December 6th, rather than Christmas Day, is the day children receive their presents.

In the Middle Ages Nicholas was everyone’s favourite saint, and all over Europe there are pictures of him, tall with a robe and long beard, and holding three golden balls in memory of his act of generosity, the same three balls that became the symbol of pawnbrokers. He was particularly popular in Holland where he is Sinter Klaas – St Nicholas in Dutch.

St Nicholas then went to America with the Dutch immigrants who settled around the city of New Amsterdam, or New York as it is known these days. In the 1800’s New Yorkers changed the Dutch Sinter Klass with his long robe and big beard into Santa Claus.

In 1823 a New York newspaper printed the poem “Twas the night before Christmas”.  The poem was written by Clement Moore to entertain his children and never expected it to be published. It was this poem that introduced the world to Saint Nick’s reindeers but still described the man himself as a short and jolly elf. The way we think he looks these days depends on a series of pictures by the American artist Thomas Nast and, strangely a series of adverts for Coca Cola in the 1930’s which dressed Santa in a  red coat to match the label on the Coke bottle.

And then there’s a character who’d been known in Britain for hundreds of years called Father Christmas. Back then Father Christmas was nothing like Santa. Britain had no tradition of St Nicholas but we did have a character who appeared in the traditional street theatre of the mummers. This character could be impish or he could be lean and gaunt and he was variously called Old Christmas, Sir Christmas or Father Christmas. He was a but like Old Father Time, the one who ushered in Christmas. If you know the way Father Christmas appears in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe to bring Christmas into a waiting world you’ll get the idea.

So Father Christmas as we know him now is a mixture of the European St Nicholas, the American Santa Claus and the British Old Father Christmas. By the way, one difference to look out for between Santa Claus and Father Christmas is that the American version is normally drawn with a red suit and a hat while the British way of picturing him is with a long red cloak with a hood. Watch out for that.

Part of a series on the traditions of Christmas

Many Christmas customs have their origins lost in history or legend. But one which we can be sure about is the invention of the Christmas card. The modern Christmas card was invented in Britain in 1843. People have always sent Christmas greetings to one another, but a Victorian businessman called Henry Cole decided he wanted to send out printed cards. He commissioned a well-known artist called John Calcott Horsley to design a greetings card which showed a family Christmas dinner and carried the words ” A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you”. The card created quite a stir in its day because it had on it a picture of a woman giving a young girl a drink from a wineglass. People criticised Cole and Horsley for promoting drunkenness. Even so a thousand of them were told for the extravagant rise of one shilling.

Henry Cole was a businessmen who believed in products that were beautiful as well as useful and his was followed by many others, all designed to decorate the house as well as to send greetings. Cole himself went on to organise the Great Exhibition of 1851, to found the Victoria and Albert Museum, and even to design an award-winning tea set!

By the 1860’s Christmas cards were popular but they were mainly sent by better off people. In 1870 the halfpenny stamp for cards made sending them cheaper, and by the 1880’s everyone was sending and receiving Christmas cards. An article in the Times in 1883 welcomed this new tradition. It said that sending cards was now “the happy means of ending strifes, cementing broken friendships and strengthening family ties.” All that in one little Christmas card! Each year we in Britain spend £250 million on Christmas cards and the send one and a half billion cards to each other each year.

Another Victorian invention was the Christmas cracker which was born just three years after the Christmas card. Tom Smith sold sweets in London and in 1844 introduced the first French bob-bon into Britain. As he was sitting by his fireside one evening he heard a log pop on the fire and the idea came to him of wrapping up his new sweets in paper with two handles which detonated a little firecracker. His crackers were more popular than his sweets so he put a small gift inside instead, and later a paper hat.