Chapter V: Modern Chips of the Old Blocks (3)

Of the old English Maypole and all its accompaniments of mirth and feasting, we surely do not need reminding. Probably it was more nearly akin to the feasts of Flora, as observed by the old Romans on the Kalends of May, than to the fiery sun-festival But it does seem strange to us, who know Cornhill only as a centre of London’s busiest business life to hear of days when the streets were crowded with merry-makers, and gaily dressed maidens and smart ’prentices danced and frolicked, while the gigantic Maypole, adorned with flags and streamers, was dragged by forty oxen, all decked with flowers, through Cornhill to the Church of St. Andrew, Undershaft: so named because of the huge Maypole or shaft, far overtopping the church, which from time immemorial had been there erected. Near this Maypole were erected summer-halls, bowers, and arbours; and feasting and dancing went on all day, till evening drew on, when great bonfires were lighted. Another celebrated London Maypole stood in the Strand, at the entrance of a street formerly known as Little Drury Lane, but which after the days of Cromwell was renamed Maypole Alley. It was a stately mast of cedar-wood, 134 feet long, prepared in the London docks, and carried to the Strand by a detachment of sailors, with bands playing and colours flying, amid the rejoicings of the people. When grave citizens ceased to care for such frivolities, Sir Isaac Newton purchased the spar, and conveyed it to Wanstead in Essex to support a great telescope; and thus the poor old Maypole was forced to lend its aid to solemn science after all, a new phase of homage done to the host of heaven!

In the Isle of Man, the month of May is still called Boabdyn or Baal’s fire, and the custom of bonfires on the Eve of May Day is kept up to such an extent “as to give the appearance of a general conflagration, whilst the inhabitants blow horns and hold a kind of jubilee.” Until very recently the Manx used to light two fires near together, and cause their cattle to pass between them, as a protection against murrain. The origin of these fires was of course in honour of Baal.

The same custom prevailed in Ireland up to the tenth century, where May Day is still called La Bealtine, or Latha, which in Celtic means day; and is to be traced in many parts of Germany and Holland, where the Beltane fire festivals are still fully observed. In Scandinavia this night is called Baldersbal or Balder’s-pyre, Balder meaning literally bright-day, and every hill is crested with fire. How Balder is connected with sun-worship I do not know, as he was the god of poetry, son of Odin. He was killed by an arrow made of mistletoe, the only plant which Friga, his mother, had neglected to enlist in her service when she bound all other plants to abstain from harming her son. This insignificant parasite made her pay dear for her contempt, and Scandinavian maids and mothers still gather the mistletoe in sadness of heart.

I am told that the Greeks at Athens still keep May Day according to the old style, on the 13th day of the month, whether with bonfires, I cannot learn. In the centre of the public rooms they hang a circular loaf of bread, with a hollow centre, which is filled with dyed eggs. There (as in all other lands, north, south, east, and west) the children are supplied with the coloured eggs, now generally known as Easter eggs; the ancient emblem of nature’s new life having thus become a Christian symbol of the Resurrection.

This in itself is a very remarkable link between customs old and new. How little our lads and lassies on Highland braes or English downs, dream, as they go out on Easter Monday with their basket of gaily-coloured eggs, dyed with yellow whinblossoms, log-wood, cochineal, or coloured rags, that their playthings are, in fact, the most ancient symbol of a renewed life; and that from the earliest ages the Persians have celebrated the festival of the sun’s new birth, the New Year, by exchanging brilliantly dyed eggs; blue, red, and yellow. The ancient Egyptians also had an egg-feast in honour of the god whom they adored as the Judge of the Dead; and heathen Romans and Greeks likewise reverenced this mystic symbol, which their Christian descendants now pass from hand to hand on Easter morning with the greeting “Christ is risen!”

In Germany we find a quaint variety of this custom. The eggs are laid in a nest of moss, and a hare is set on it. The nest being hidden, the children are sent forth to seek the hare’s nest and eggs. Whatever association of ideas there may be between hares and eggs, we find it again recurring in England, for at Coleshill, in Warwickshire, it is supposed that any young man who can catch a hare and bring it to the parson before ten o’clock on Easter Monday may claim in return a gift of a hundred eggs, and a calf’s head for breakfast, besides a silver groat.

We gain a hint of the egg-giving custom in olden days from an entry in the household expenses of Edward I. to the effect that eighteen-pence had been paid for four hundred Easter eggs! They were even introduced by the Jews in some mystic sense, in celebrating the feast of the Passover. From them the custom was adopted by the Greek Church, and in the museum at Lambeth (collected by Tradescant, who was the Dutch gardener of Charles I.) there were exhibited specimens of “The Easter eggs of the Patriarchs of Jerusalem!”

At the present day the Greek Patriarch at Moscow gives gilt or red eggs to all who are presented to kiss his hand on Easter Day. He gives one, two, or three eggs, according to the rank of the recipient. All over Russia the custom prevails; all classes carry eggs, generally coloured red; and the ordinary greeting when two friends meet, is to kiss and exchange eggs, with the salutation ‘Christ is risen;’ the same inscription being written on many of the eggs. These ceremonies are kept up for a term varying from four to fifteen days. At Smyrna too, travellers tell us how at Easter-time they are persecuted by crowds of boys offering coloured eggs for sale.

Thus in France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, the same custom is kept up, with more definite meaning than in this land, where I doubt whether many of our children could explain the name of Pask Eggs (Paschal), which rises so readily to their lips. Certainly our Presbyterian Highlanders have no respect for Easter, yet I have seen children on Speyside dyeing their eggs as eagerly as the little ones on the moors of Northumberland, or in the lowlands of Fife and Stirling, where many a kindly cottage wife will offer you a Pask Egg from her bowl of carefully dyed treasures.

It certainly is curious to find this true name for the solemn Paschal feast in such common use, amongst people who have forgotten all reverence for such times and seasons; while we Episcopalians, who so deeply honour this Easter festival, and who would fain associate it only with the traditions of Judea, know it only by a name which, according to the Venerable Bede, is derived from that of Eastre, a Saxon goddess whose feast was celebrated at this season. How the popular name came to be so widely known in this northern land is a question of some interest—a trace perhaps of an earlier Christian teaching, which had not deemed it expedient to borrow names from Saxon mythology. That this goddess claimed the service of fire we may infer from an ancient entry in the disbursements of an old London church, St. Mary-at-Hill, where sixpence is charged for a quarter of _coles_ for the hallowed fire on Easter Eve. In later years great Paschal tapers weighing 300 lb. were adopted in lieu of the bonfires.

The next great Fire festival was on what we now call the Eve of St. John, or Midsummer’s-eve, when the sun had run half his course. At the present time this is especially observed on the shores of the Baltic—in Prussia, Lithuania, and the lands adjacent. Indeed the name of the Baltic, and of many Scandinavian places, still point to the old worship. Lamartine alludes to the ceremonies of this night as now practised in the French Alps. He tells how the peasants have processions, and carry lighted torches of pine-wood and straw. Should they wish especial luck to any young couple, they march round them in a circle, just as the islanders of the West used to do.

Doubtless similar traces of old customs might still be found in the highlands of Auvergne, once the stronghold of Druidism, and the province of all others where Paganism longest reigned in France. Here we are told that idolatrous worship lingered till very recent times; and though the council of Clermont fulminated anathemas against those who worshipped stones—who carried the Eucharist to the graves, or who ate meats offered to devils—still the old rites went on. So that a May-day or a Midsummer’s-eve in Auvergne might still afford us some specimens of Christianised heathendom.

But with equal right may we seek traces of the old Paganism on the shores of Armorica—inasmuch as both in Brittany, and more especially in Finisterre, the people clung to their ancient worship with such tenacity, that beyond the mere fact of baptism, they could hardly, two hundred years ago, be called Christians at all; but continued to worship, as their fathers had done before them, amid the huge ghostly temples which still abound in all that district. Thus we hear of zealous priests going forth in the seventeenth century as Missionaries to preach Christianity to the people of Finisterre as almost a new faith. Even then Church Councils vainly strove to stop the pilgrimages to these Druidic circles.

At the present day they blend, with picturesque effect, in various scenes of peasant life. Thus, on Midsummer’s-eve, all the lads and lassies in Brittany assemble at divers groups of old weather-beaten stones. The lads wear green corn, the girls a bunch of flax, with blue blossoms. They lay their corn and flax on the great grey stones, and dance round them till sunset. Then, according as they find their flowers fresh or withered, they read the fate of their love; and return home, each lad leading his lass by one finger. As the darkness closes in, bonfires are lighted on every hill-top, lighting up all the land with their red glow, and the young people dance wildly round them, hurrying from one bonfire to the next; for all manner of luck in love and life attends those who have danced round nine fires before midnight.

In Sardinia, on this night, the people light great bonfires in their villages and at every cross-road. Men make compacts one with another by passing their hands three times through the flames while grasping a stick. Moreover, they cause their children to leap through the flames, just as their Phœnician ancestors doubtless did in bygone ages. They then go in procession to a church, near which they sit in a circle, and feast on eggs fried with divers herbs. In Southern Germany this night is known as Johannisfeuer; but further north, the principal observance is of Osterfeuer, now celebrated as Easter, though originally held on May-day; our Beltane being there known as Walpurgis-nacht—the night of the witches’ revel—when the depths of the Black Forest and the wild caverns of the Harz Mountains re-echoed the shouts of their orgies.

Beltane, Candlemas, and Hallow-e’en were the three great days in all witch-lore. For, although every Saturday was a witches’ sabbath, when they held orgies with the devil, their master, near some ruined church, yet these were their chief days of gathering, when all witches from all countries were bound to be present. Those who dwelt in distant lands came across the sea in egg-shells, while those whose homes were within driving distance merely ordered their brooms; and this is the reason why all right-minded people break their egg-shell when they have emptied it, lest the witches should enter therein, and, raising terrible storms, should wreck poor mariners—a danger much dreaded by the wise old Romans. These, then, were the seasons when there was mischief in the wind, and the sons of men needed to guard themselves and their goods against all crafty attacks from the powers of the air. St. John’s-eve seems to have been celebrated in much the same way all over Europe. It seems to have been customary in all towns, Paris and Metz especially, to kindle fires in the market-place. These were sometimes blessed by the parish priest, who offered a prayer in the name of St. John—thus adapting the old heathen festival to Christian use. The young people then leaped over the flames, and threw flowers and garlands into them, singing, shouting, and dancing merrily. Even the great folk sometimes joined in the old games.

In Paris a barbarous custom was long observed on this night, and it was said to be still practised in various French towns in the year 1830, when the mayor put a number of live cats—a dozen or more—into a large wicker-basket, which was thrown into one of the bonfires. This, and the great figures of wickerwork and canvas, which are, or were, annually made at Douay and Dunkirk, and moved about by men concealed within them, are obviously traceable to that colossal figure of which Cæsar, Strabo, and Pliny have left descriptions—a huge image of straw and wicker, containing fuel, live sheep, other animals, and sometimes human victims, which was cast by the Druids into a great sacrificial fire amid the shouts of the people and the noise of unmusical instruments.

In Florence, and other Italian cities, the Midsummer-eve bonfires are, I believe, still kept up as cheerily as of yore. Some quaint old lines by Googe describe how this festival was celebrated in Britain:—

“Then doth the joyfull feast of John the Baptist take his turne, When bonfires great, with loftie flame, in every town doe borne; And young men round about, with maids, do dance in every street, With garlands wrought of motherwort, or else with vervain sweete,” &c.

The gathering of the vervaine, or wild verbena, seems to have been as solemn a mystery as that of the mistletoe itself. He who found it, must draw a circle round it, and approach it cautiously and secretly. Then, suddenly plucking it up by the roots, must throw it up in the air, and straightway make an oblation of money to the earth in atonement for the theft of an herb so precious. Its leaves sprinkled on the floor before a feast were supposed to be conducive to mirth; and as a medicine, it healed both bodily and mental diseases, even reconciling the most bitter foes. We are told that the old Roman heralds always carried a bunch of this peace-making herb when sent on any embassy, and that the Greeks and various Eastern nations employed it in the service of their gods.

In Scotland the Midsummer’s-eve Festival was observed till very recent times. It was customary to kindle great bonfires near the corn-fields, and then make the _Deus Sol_ round the fields, with burning torches, to secure a blessing on the crops. Shaw mentions having frequently seen this done both in Moray and in the Lowlands in the middle of the last century. In Cornwall also the feast was till quite lately celebrated in various villages, and in all probability is still kept up. Great bonfires blazed, and torchlight processions marched sunwise round the fires and round the village.

In Ireland too this night was long considered an occasion for rejoicing; and so late as 1795 a gentleman writes from Dublin to one of the magazines, describing “the lighting of the fires at midnight in honour of the sun; the clamours, and other ceremonies, such as strewing the streets with divers herbs.” Charlotte Elizabeth, describing the huge bonfires in Ireland, and the scenes she herself witnessed, tells how the people all danced everlasting jigs to the music of the pipes. This lasted some hours. Then, when the fire burnt low, _every one present passed through the fire, and children were thrown across the glowing embers_. Lord John Scott, speaking of the same festival, says he has seen parents _force unwilling children to pass through these purifying Baal fires_! Strange, is it not? to find still lingering in Britain so exact a counterpart of the great annual festival held in the Deccan, when (as described by Sir Bartle Frere) huge fires were lighted, through which devotees ran or jumped. I believe that this practice is now prohibited, together with divers forms of self-torture; but, of course, it is still practised in secret, and I myself saw an instance of it in one of the temples at Benares.

Presumptuous as it may seem to hazard ever so vague a guess at the origin of any Masonic customs, it is hardly possible to hear of the celebrations of St. John’s-eve at some of the Scotch lodges without a vision of _Deisul_ and Fire Worship rising to the mind. Take such an account as that given by Wade of the customs at Melrose, where, after electing office-bearers for the coming year, “the brethren walk in procession three times round the market-cross. After dinner they again turn out, walking two abreast, each bearing a lighted torch. Preceded by their banners, the procession again walks three times round the cross, and then proceeds to the abbey, round which it slowly marches thrice, making a complete circuit of the building.” The effect of the mystic torch-lit procession, threading its way through the dark masses of shadow cast by clustering pillars and dreamy aisles, must be eerie enough to satisfy the ghosts of the old Druids; but when at last the procession draws up in a semi-circle round the high altar, where lies the heart of the Bruce, suddenly the grey ruins stand clearly revealed in the cold glare of blue lights, and of such flashing fire-works as would have seemed to our forefathers to betoken some awesome dealings with the meteors and planet-worlds!

Perhaps the most interesting trace that still remains to us of this Midsummer homage to the sun is a custom which, for ages unknown, has been observed at Stonehenge, and which acquires double importance in these days, when this, and all kindred buildings, are set down as being either merely sepulchral, or else memorials of old battles. Mr. Wm. Beck writes, that every year, on 21st June, a number of people assemble on Salisbury Plain at 3 A.M., in the chill of early dawn, and make for the circles of Stonehenge, from the centre of which, looking north-east, a block of stone, set at some distance from the ruin, is so seen that its top coincides with the line of the horizon, and if no mist prevail, the sun as it rises on this, the longest day of the year, will be seen coming up exactly over the centre of the stone, known from this circumstance as the Pointer. Mr. Beck has himself repeatedly witnessed this interesting proof of the solar arrangement of the circles of Stonehenge; has watched the sun thus come up over the Pointer and strike its first ray through the central entrance to the so-called altar-stone of the ruin. He points out how this same huge stone is set at such an angle that at noon it marks the shadow like the gnomon of a sun-dial.

In Yorkshire also some of the old customs still linger. I believe that at Brimham Crags, near Harrogate, the Midsummer-eve bonfires still blaze as they have done from time immemorial. It is a rocky hillside, covered with Druidical remains, and was one of the great strongholds of the old faith. Its name is said to be a contraction of Beth-Rimmon, under which name the ancient Irish _worshipped the sun, moon, and stars collectively_. If this be so, there may be some foundation for the identification of this worship with that of Rimmon the god of Damascus, in whose temple Naaman the Syrian craved permission to attend the king, his master.

That the Bel of the Druids was identical both with Baal and the Molech of the Ammonites—

“For whom the race of Israel oft forsook
Their Living Strength, and unfrequented left His righteous altar”—

is evident, from every allusion in Holy Scripture to the idolatries of the Jews; of whom we are told again and again how they made groves, and set up images under every green tree and on every high hill, and _worshipped all the host of heaven_, and served Baal, or reared up altars for Baal. Also how they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divination, and enchantments, and witchcraft, and dealt with familiar spirits and wizards; and how, even in the Temple of the Most High, men knelt between the porch and the altar, with their back toward the Temple of the LORD, the Sun of Righteousness, and their faces towards the east, and worshipped, the sun toward the east.[39]

On the other hand, the reverence with which the holy fire was guarded in this and many other lands seems almost like a tradition of the worship of Israel, of that altar of the Most High, whereon the fire was, by divine command, to be kept “for ever burning,” never to be put out, or suffered to go out. It was carelessness concerning this sacred flame which cost the sons of Aaron so dear, when they ventured to offer incense before the LORD with _strange fire_, which He commanded them not, so that there went out fire from the LORD and devoured them.[40]

In like manner the precious oil, with which it is recorded that the Celts, like Hindoos of the present day, anointed their sacred stones, suggests a parallel not only to the old custom which prompted Jacob to pour oil upon the stones at Bethel, but also to that holy oil which, by the Levitical law, it was death for any Israelite to compound for his own use, as “a perfume, to smell thereto,”[41] but which was to be kept exclusively as a holy anointing oil, wherewith to anoint the Tabernacle and all sacred vessels.

In truth, nothing is more strange in the traces of these divers faiths than to note how closely the false and those which we deem true seem sometimes to assimilate their ceremonies and their symbols, blending and intertwining till the mind becomes well-nigh bewildered in the attempt to separate them. For it is not as though the old idolatries, having once diverged from the clear stream of truth into a polluted channel of their own, were thenceforth a thing apart. On the contrary, the very same outward and visible signs which to the people were one day types of an abhorrent creed, had but to be invested with some new meaning to become at once emblematic of all that was most pure and holy. Thus when Elijah desired to prove to the worshippers of Baal the supreme Divinity of his Master, the test he chose was that which most directly appealed to their reverence. “The GOD that answereth by fire, let Him be GOD,” and the shouts of the people proclaimed that henceforth the very element that they had held in deepest awe as the representative of Baal was once more acknowledged as the type of One stronger than he. Again, the Israelites had scarce forsaken the land of Egypt, among whose many abominations the worship of living serpents ranked foremost, when, in the hands of Moses, and by Divine appointment, the Brazen Serpent became a type of life to be held in such reverence as, ere long, led to a relapse into the old idolatry. And in later ages it was when idolatrous systems of dove-worship and fire-worship prevailed in diverse lands, that the mystic dove, and the cloven tongues came down from heaven, thenceforth becoming to all Christian people the very types of all they deem most sacred.

The next great Fire Festival in Britain seems to have occurred on the 1st November, when all fires, save those of the Druids, were extinguished, and from whose altars only the holy fire must be purchased by all householders for a certain price. Terrible penalties were in store for any rash person who dared to kindle a flame from any other source. This sacred fire was fed with the peeled wood of a certain tree, and must never be blown with the breath lest it should be polluted. Precisely similar is the custom which prevails among the Guebres and Parsees of the present day. All fires being allowed to die out, each family must procure sacred fire from the temples, wherewith to rekindle the domestic hearth. In the Talmud it is stated that the Israelites who were captives in Persia adopted this practice.

The festival is still known in Ireland as Samhein or La Samon, _i.e._, the Feast of the Sun; and on the eve of the 1st of November all manner of old games and customs are still observed just as fully as in Scotland, where, however, though All Saints’ Day is a thing forgotten, the heathen festival has assumed the name of Hallow-e’en.

Of the countless varieties of Hallow-e’en games, it would be superfluous to write, as they are so well known. Only it is curious to notice that they all retain some trace of old practices of divination. First, the mystic apple comes into play—the apple that so often appears in Celtic fairy lore. These swim in water, and each person in turn must catch one in his mouth. The apple when caught must be carefully peeled, and the long strip of peel passed thrice, _sunwise_, round the head, and thrown over the shoulder, when it will fall in the form of the true love’s initial-letter. Then advancing to a mirror, without looking back, a face will presently be therein reflected, looking over the shoulder, and it needs good nerve to resist looking round. This too is a relic of that form of divination with mirrors which was condemned as sorcery by the popes of old. Hence we find hand-mirrors among the emblems sculptured on the stones of Pagan Scotland. Next, each alone must go to the kail-yard to pull up a cabbage-stalk, which symbolises the form and character of the favoured lover. Thence passing on to the peat-stack, still alone, and never looking back, each must walk round it thrice _sunwise_, and at the end of the third turn some one will appear as in a vision. Another means to the same desirable end is to go alone to a stream of running water, and therein plunge the arm thrice, so deep as to wet the sark-sleeve. Mystic words must be repeated while so doing, but no other sound may be uttered, either in going or returning.

In Strathspey, a favourite game is the expedition to the kiln for drying corn, which is attached to every farm of any consequence. Each lass must steal away by turn from the kitchen fire, and going alone to the kiln, must throw a ball of worsted into the empty furnace, and slowly wind it up, saying certain words. It is supposed that _some one_ will take hold of the end of the worsted, and appear to her in the form of her future lover. She must not speak, either going or coming.

Formerly, every farm over the length and breadth of the land had its Hallow-e’en bonfire, which was often surrounded by a circular trench, symbolical of the sun.

These fires are in many districts nearly burnt out, but it is not many years since Sheriff Barclay says he could count thirty fires blazing on the hill-tops between Dunkeld and Aberfeldy, and could discern the weird figures of the people dancing round them, while the faint echoes of their choruses gave a still more unearthly feeling to the midnight. In the neighbourhood of Crieff, also in Perthshire, the balefires, as the people call them, still blaze as brightly as ever, as we have had full opportunity of observing in the course of long twilight drives, when it seemed as if every cottage we passed had its little bonfire for the children; while later in the evening larger fires were lighted by their elders, and kept up till midnight. We saw groups of dark figures dancing round the fires; the principal refreshment consisting of milk, thickened with oatmeal. Here, as in the northern counties, especially in Banff and Aberdeenshire, all rejoicings are deferred till the 11th November; that is Hallow-e’en old style. Sometimes, when the bonfire begins to burn low, a circle of stones is placed round it; one to represent each person present. Should any stone be moved before morning, it is a token of evil to that person. He is said to be _fey_, and his death within the year is considered probable.

The night of the 1st of November, Christianised as the Eve of All Souls, was especially sacred to Samhan, who merely represented the sun in another character. It was a night for special intercession by the living for the souls of those who had died in the preceding year. For the office of Samhan was to judge these souls, and either award them their place of reward or of punishment. He was also called Bal Sab, or the Lord of Death. In this character he seems to have been a kindlier master than when at Beltane he claimed sacrifices of blood. At this harvest festival he only needed offerings of the fruits of the earth; and his name, Samhein or Samtheine, denotes peace-fire. It is probable that Saint Samthena, whose day is still marked in the Romish calendar, was in some way connected with this festival.

On the 25th December, when the shortest day was past, the great winter festival called Yule was celebrated, to mark the turn of the year—the sun’s new birth. It was a day of solemn worship and a night of feasting. Fires blazed on every hill, which were rekindled on the twelfth night subsequent to Yule. All manner of sacred plants were cut—more especially the ivy and mistletoe. It has been suggested that in olden days a kiss of peace was probably part of the ceremonial, and the origin of the well-known kiss under the mistletoe, which in later years has led to its prohibition in church decorations; though it is certain that till the middle of last century it retained its place of honour as the chief decoration on the altar of York Minster.

From the day answering to this 25th December, the ancient Hindus also reckoned the beginning of their new year, distinguishing the day as “the morning of the gods.” How the seasons of their year were made to balance, is a standing mystery; for we know that, like the Druids of the West, they reckoned by lunar years of 360 days.

On this night the Persians from time immemorial celebrated the birth of their god, Mithra, the sun, whom they also worshipped under the name Tseur, or Saviour, because of his saving them from the empire of Ahriman, the power of darkness. (Hence, it is said, the name of the ancient Druidic city of Tseur in Yorkshire, now called Aldborough.) The Persian festival of the New Year is known as the Naurutz; the Shah and all the court wait in solemn silence till the astrologers announce that the sun has reached the equator, whereupon there follows a burst of music, and the city is given up to rejoicing and mirth. Amongst other games peculiar to this day, both among Persians and Arabs, is one known as the game of the Beardless Rider, when men, hideously disguised and painted, ride through the city on asses, playing all manner of whimsical pranks, and going from door to door, followed by an admiring multitude, to solicit small gifts. The custom answers precisely to that of “guizarding,” still practised in various parts of Scotland, and known in England as mumming and morris dancing.

Not alone in Persia was this day held in honour. In ancient Babylon it was sacred to Rhea and Nin, the latter being the child of the sun, born of a human mother. That mother was Semiramis the Great Queen, who, doubtless well aware of the tradition that of the seed of a woman should be born the promised Messiah, chose to assume the title of Spouse of the Sun and Queen of Heaven; and taught the people to reverence her son accordingly. Hence that worship of a mother and child which spread from Chaldea to so many other lands, and which so amazed the Jesuit missionaries, who first penetrated to India and China, and there, in heathen temples, found images apparently representing the Madonna of their own faith.

It is said that in Etruria, Gaul, and even Britain, a similar form of worship was observed on this birthnight, and that the goddess of the year was represented as nursing the infant god of day.

When the earlier teachers of Christianity found themselves unable to abolish times and ceremonies so widely observed, and with so great a hold on the faith of the people, it seems to have been judged expedient to engraft the great Christian festival on that already established without too rigid an attempt to alter external customs. There is no doubt that this day first began to be observed as that of our LORD’S nativity, about the middle of the fourth century, under the Roman Bishop Liberius, and was not adopted by the Eastern Church till somewhat later. St. Chrysostom, in preaching at Antioch A.D. 386, speaks of it as having been first observed in that city about ten years previously. Had the feast been of certain date, it would be very strange that the city in which the disciples first received the name of Christians, should have been so tardy in making it a day of annual rejoicing. St. Augustine also admits that the observance of this feast, now so dear to every Christian heart, was neither sanctioned by any great council nor derived from apostolic usage. In fact it was never mentioned by any of the ante-Nicene Fathers, even while enumerating the other festivals of the Church.

It does seem strange, indeed, that the early Christians should have retained no definite tradition of the exact date of the Nativity. Indeed there is the greatest possible doubt when any feast commemorating it was instituted. Some believe it to be traceable to the first century, but the first certain information we have respecting it was its being sanctioned as a Church Festival by Pope Telesphorus about A.D. 137. We next hear of it in the persecutions under Diocletian, who burnt a church full of Christians while they were celebrating this feast. But though the observance of a birthday festival gradually spread, every branch of the Christian Church selected whatever day seemed best in its own eyes, and such was the diversity of opinion on this subject that we are told that no less than 136 different days in the year have been fixed on for Christmas-day by various Christian sects and learned men. They have been summed up as follows: “The Egyptian Christians said the right season was in January. Wagenseil thought February or August, but inclined to the latter. Bochart was for March. Some, mentioned by Clemens Alexandrinus, placed it in April, and others in May. Epiphanius mentions two sects, one fixing it in June, the other in July. Lightfoot says September 15th. Scaliger, Casaubon and Calvisius are for October. Several others put it in November. The Latin Church decided on December 25th, which is the day now universally recognised by Christendom. This was decreed by Pope Julius I. A.D. 337, and he fixed it on the same day that the ancient Romans celebrated the feast of their goddess Bruma, a festival much observed by the heathen in the winter solstice.” It would, however, appear as if December could lay even less claim to this honour than most of the other months suggested, inasmuch as the rainy season in Judea being then at its height, the shepherds would probably betake them to their homes rather than watch all night in the open fields. Nevertheless, in the absence of a certain date, the selection of one particular day was a mere matter of expediency. Neander and others, writing on this subject, observe that precisely at this season of the year, a series of heathen festivals occurred so closely interwoven with the whole civil and social life, that it was impossible to wean the people from them. First came the Saturnalia, the maddest, merriest day of the year. Then the custom of making presents (the Strenæ), followed by the _festival of infants_, when the little ones received gifts of images. Next the birthday of the New Sun. Therefore it was advisable to draw the Christians away from sharing in the revelries of their Pagan neighbours, by substituting some legitimate cause of rejoicing, and what more natural than the birth of CHRIST, the Spiritual Sun appearing to dispel the powers of darkness and to be Himself the Light of the world?

A feast so reasonable found ready acceptance, though it was long ere the churches agreed on which day it should be celebrated; those of the east still preferring to observe it on the 6th January, which had there already been adopted as the Feast of the Epiphany. It was not till the sixth century that anything like unanimity prevailed on the subject, between the Eastern and Western Churches, and that all acknowledged the wisdom of substituting a series of Christian feast-days, for those heathen merry-makings which the converts were called on to abjure. Nevertheless the universal feasting was still liable to abuse, and too often degenerated into mere revelry and drunkenness; puppet shows and miracle plays were devised to replace the idol worship of the temples, and pagan superstition and excess still continued to reign under a new and more sacred name. Yule having thus been deposed in favour of Christmas, it followed as a matter of course that the Midsummer Festival, just six months earlier, must represent the nativity of St. John the Baptist. Thus two of the principal Pagan festivals were at once utilized, and the bonfires, the exchange of gifts, the cutting of evergreens, and the feasting were endowed with new meaning, and so continue to this day; though the wild rejoicings of Yule have resolved themselves into more sober Christmas mirth.

Do you remember Scott’s lines on this subject?

“Heap on more wood, the wind is chill,
But let it whistle as it will.
We’ll keep our Christmas merry still.
Each age has deemed the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer.
E’en heathen yet, the savage Dane,
At Jol more deep the mead did drain;
High on the beach his galleys drew,
And feasted all his pirate crew.
Then in his low and pine-built hall,
Where shields and axes deck the wall,
They gorged upon the half-dressed cheer,
Caroused in seas of sable beer,
While round in brutal jest were thrown,
The half-gnawed rib, the marrow-bone.”

Our brewers can tell how well our Christmas ales keep up their demand, though Thor no longer claims his libations. As to the crescent-shaped cakes, which on this night were baked in honour of Astarte, queen of heaven, they have long since been rounded at the ends, to give them somewhat the form of a cradle.

The mistletoe of the Druids, and the Yule-log which once blazed in honour of Odin and Thor, still hold their honoured place, and until very recent times, the charred remains of the log of one year, were preserved carefully until the following Yule, when they served to light the new log; their presence in the house, being a safeguard against fire. A monstrous candle called the Yule candle was also lighted, and was expected to burn for twelve nights. Hence the Twelfth Night, so dear to the little ones; a day of Pagan rejoicing, exactly corresponding with the Feast of the Epiphany,—the manifestation of Christ as “the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” Whether this heathen festival was in the first instance purposely utilized by the Christian Church, does not appear, nor indeed whether it existed in those eastern lands where the Epiphany was first observed. One of its customs, however, as described by St. Chrysostom is curiously akin to one practised among the worshippers of the sun. He says that in memory of our Saviour’s baptism in water, the people did on this day carry home water at midnight from the church, and lay it up, where it would remain for several years as fresh and uncorrupt, as though it had just been drawn from some clear fountain. One of the most ancient practices of the priests of the sun in Ceylon, and still continued by their successors, was on the morning of the New Year to draw water from the river, just as the sun’s first ray lighted thereon, and in like manner to store it up as a thing most precious, and incapable of pollution.

Of the Pagan observance of Twelfth Night in this country, the latest trace lingered in Gloucestershire, where it was the common custom in the last century, for all the servants of each farm to assemble in one of the fields sown with wheat, and to make twelve small bonfires in a row, the twelfth being larger than the rest in honour of the Twelfth Night. Round this they gathered in a circle, and drank cider, returning home to feast on cakes and ale. This method of preserving the crops from all manner of evil, seems to have lingered in the parish of Pountley till very recent days, and certainly affords a clear proof of the origin of the festival.

There seems also no doubt that the Christmas-tree of Germany, now so common among ourselves, was also a relic of old idolatry; of that tree-worship common all over the world, which has ever reverenced special trees as the chosen abode of some Divinity. It is said that the custom of always using a fir-tree for this purpose, is traceable to very remote days, when the Chaldeans worshipped their new-born god, under this symbol, as _Baal-bereth_ or _berith_, _i.e._ lord of the fir-tree, or lord of the covenant, a sort of priestly pun to conceal the higher meaning from the populace.

On Yule morning, offerings of oatmeal and of various grains were made to Hulda, the Divine Mother, to induce her to send abundant crops; and the people feasted together. Hence the bowls of furmety or sowans, _alias_ sour gruel, which in our childhood we always shared in the early Christmas morning. Hence too the custom of all the lads and lassies going from farm to farm, each carrying their own bowl and spoon, to share the brew of each gude-wife. Probably it was also in her honour that those curious “Yule doughs” originated, still common in the north of England, where many a time we have assisted at the manufacture and baking of wonderful dolls, adorned with currants. Dolls masculine and dolls feminine, to be duly distributed as sweethearts to every lad and lass in the house—and many such have we received as offerings from the cottage wives. Curiously enough, the same custom exists in New Granada, where on New Year’s morning the native inhabitants assemble in their temples, and the priests distribute to each worshipper a figure made of flour of maize, which is to be eaten as a charm. The first month of their year is called “The month of the ears of maize.”

Thus in our Christmas rejoicings we trace a strange combination of Druidical rules, with German and Scandinavian customs, together with those of the grim old Saxons. Nor has the Saturnalia of the Romans failed to leave its mark. It is to such blending of divers creeds that Dr. John Henry Newman refers when he tells us that Constantine, in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred to it the outward vestments to which they had been accustomed in their own ceremonies. “The use of temples, and those dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps and candles; holy water; asylums; holy days and seasons; the use of calenders, processions, blessing on the fields; sacerdotal vestments; the tonsure; the ring in marriage; turning to the east; images; ... _are all of pagan origin_, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church.”

The name of Yule is said to be derived from the Arabic “_Yul_,” the day of (the Sun’s) revolution. The Norse _Yol_ and the Icelandic _Hoil_ bear much the same meaning, and here we have the very name, Heul, under which the Celts worshipped Helios the Sun-god; the Heli of the ancient Sanscrit. The word Heul is still retained in Cornwall, while on the opposite shores of Brittany it becomes Heol. In Frisian _Yule_ means a wheel, as does also the Gothic _Giul_, and the word would naturally mark the turning point of the year. Hence our English word _while_; Gothic _hucila_, to express the wheeling, or revolution of time. It is said that on the old Clog Almanacks, Yule tide is simply marked by a rude wheel. This being the case, it is curious that the French word Noel should be so generally referred to a Latin derivation (from _natalis_). Is it not more probable that like the Irish Nolagh, the Gaelic Nollig, the Cornish Nadelig, it may rather be traced to the old Chaldee Sun-worship; to such a word as _Noulad_, to be born; or _Naugol_, to be rolled along; and may, in some remote age, have been brought to our shores by those same Phœnicians whose sun temples remain to this day? Not only is this view corroborated by the common use of the word _Noel, Noel!_ as a shout of greeting from the populace, when processions, or great men, passed by, but it is also noteworthy that the term Noel and its symbolic wheel, were not in olden time applied exclusively to the winter festival, but were used with reference to divers other periods in the revolution of the great Wheel of Light, or as it is called in the Edda, the fair and shining Wheel.

Hence, so late as the year 1823 we find rolling a fire wheel (an obvious relic of sun-worship), mentioned among the common sports of Midsummer’s Eve, among the villagers of Konz on the Moselle, and at Trier; where it was customary to take a great wheel wrapped in straw to the top of a hill, where it was set on fire, and made to roll down, flaming all the way; and if it reached the Moselle before the flames were extinct, it betokened a good harvest, and filled the people with gladness.

Even among ourselves, a trace of this Wheel-emblem exists in one of the common sports of Beltane, when smooth circular cakes, or bannocks, of divers sizes, are carried up a grassy hill and thence rolled down. They must be made very smooth and flat at the edge, like the tire of a wheel, so as to run readily. The Badnock-Brae at Grantown is a gathering point well known to all the young folk of Strathspey, who from their infancy have assembled there on May morning to roll their bannocks, and their hard-boiled eggs.

Among the New Year’s-eve customs in Hamburg and other parts of Germany is one which savours of the old divination by fire. Like the Hindu maidens at the Ganges, each person anxious to know his fate, or that of his friend, places a tiny light in a walnut shell, which is set floating in a flat dish full of water. Should the light go out within a certain time, sore trouble will come within the year, probably death.

In Sweden, fire and light constitute the Jul decoration of the churches, which are all illuminated; the pillars are wreathed with candles, the galleries are adorned with double rows of them, the pulpit and the altar alike glow with light, and in short the whole church is decked with lighted candles just as ours are with evergreens. In the country districts where old fashions most prevail, every window of every house, however poor, displays a lighted candle in early dawn of Jul morning, while long before daybreak the people pour into the churches for the Jul-Otta or morning song, many of them sledging twenty miles and back in the chilly night to be present at the service, and invariably bringing their children, to secure various phases of good luck supposed to be then bestowed on them. The farmers especially are careful to be present at a festival, which secures a blessing on their harvest. Then all the sledging parties dash home again, blowing horns as they go. Then follows the mirth of the Jul-bord, the consumption of the Jul-cakes, the distribution of Jul-gifts. Nor are the inferior creatures forgotten in the rejoicings. All the farm animals receive a double portion of food, and a sheaf of unthreshed corn is hung upon a high pole as a Jul feast for the famishing birds. This yule sheaf is always laid up unthreshed at harvest time, and any hard farmer who might grudge the birds their offering would assuredly pay dear for his churlishness in the failure of the next crop.

In Scotland and the northern counties of England the Midwinter festivities are divided been Yule and New Year’s-eve, or Hogmanay as the people call it; a name whose origin, like that of some of its customs, seem lost in the mist of ages. Chambers suggests two derivations as equally plausible, one the Scandinavian term Hogenat, the eve of Yule, when various animals were slaughtered for sacrifice and for feast (hogg meaning, to kill), or failing this, it might be traced to “Au qui menez” (lead on to the mistletoe), of course referring to Druidical custom. Be this as it may, the word is in the mouth of every child who comes to the door, demanding the customary gift of oat-cake; as also of the mummers or _guisers_ who go from house to house dressed up and singing. In many cases they still take the old turn round the house to bring it luck.