CEREMONIES FOR CHRISTMAS.

Come bring with a noise, my merry, merry boys,
The Christmas log to the firing,

While my good dame she-bids ye all be free,
And drink to your heart's desiring.

With the last yeer's brand-light the new block, and
For good success in his spending,

On your psaltries play-that sweet luck may
Come while the log is teending.

Drink now the strong beare, cut the white loafe here,
The while the meat is a shredding,

For the rare mince-pie, and the plums stand by,
To fill the paste that's a kneeding.

From Barnaby Googe's translation of Naogeorgus, we learn that the solemnities began immediately after midnight, when three masses were sung by the priests.

This done, a woodden child in clowtes is on the aultar set,
About the which both boyes and gyrles do daunce and nimbly jet;
And carrols sing in praise of Christ, and for to help them heare,
The organs auns were every verse with sweete and solemne cheare;
The priests do rore aloude, and round about the parents stand,
To see the sport, and with their voyce do helpe them, and their hande.

The Christmas carol (derived from cantare to sing, and rola, an interjection of joy) is of very ancient date. Bishop Taylor observes, that the "Gloria in excelsis," the wellknown hymn sung by the angels to the shepherds at our Lord's nativity, was the earliest Christmas carol. In former ages bishops were accustomed to sing these pious canticles among their clergy. Warton tells us, that in 1521 Wynkyn de Worde printed a set of Christmas carols. "These were festal chansons, for enlivening the merriments of the Christmas celebrity; and not such religious songs as are current at this day with the common people, under the same title, and which were substituted by those enemies of innocent and useful mirth, the puritans. The boar's head, soused, was anciently the first dish on Christmas day, and was carried up to the principal table in the hall with great state and solemnity, to the chanting of a special carol, which Wynkyn de Worde has given us in the miscellany just mentioned."* At this season it was customary for the

*Ellis's edition of Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. i. p. 375.

chandlers to give candles to their customers, and for the bakers to present to them the yule-cake, a kind of baby or little image in paste, the origin probably of our mince-pies. Among the ancient Romans the laurel was an emblem of peace, joy, and victory; whence it has been conjectured we have taken the custom of dressing up our houses with laurel, as an emblem of joy for the victory gained over the powers of darkness, and of that peace on earth and good-will towards men which the angels sang over the fields of Bethlehem. Other evergreens were subsequently added. The misletoe, however, as a heathenish and profane plant, appertaining to the rites of druidism, was never admitted into churches, but was hung up in kitchens, subjecting every female who passed under it to a salute from any young man who was present. The Christmas-box was a box containing the money gathered against this season, that masses might be said by the priests to obtain forgiveness for the debaucheries committed by the people. Servants had the liberty to collect box-money, that they too might be enabled to pay the priest for his masses; knowing well the truth of the proverb-"No penny, no paternosters." Hence our modern Christmas-boxes.

"Our ancestors"-we quote from a paper in The World, No. 104-" considered Christmas in the double light of a holy commemoration and a cheerful festival; and accordingly distinguished it by devotion, by vacation from business, by merriment and hospitality. They seemed eagerly bent to make themselves and every body about them happy. The great hall resounded with the tumultuous joys of servants and tenants, and the gambols they played served as amusement to the lord of the mansion and his family, who, by encouraging every act conducive to mirth and entertainment, endeavoured to soften the rigour of the season, and mitigate the influence of winter." The hobby-horse, the

* Ellis's edition of Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. i. p. 375. That we might not encumber our page, we have only occasionally stated our authorities for these brief holyday notices. They have been principally Brand's Popular Antiquities, edited by Ellis; Strutt's Sports and Pastimes; Malcolm's Customs of London; Fosbrocke's British Monachism; Douce's Illustrations of Shakspeare; and Hone's Every-day Book; to which latter, a work equally replete with information and amusement, the reader who wishes to see the subject more fully illustrated may refer without fear of disappointment.

mummeries, the morris-dancers, the lord of misrule, with other merry sports and pastimes that gave a zest to the feast, and accelerated the circulation of the wassail-bowl, at this the greatest festival of the year, will be hereafter more particularly noticed.

As usual in most of our festivals, the edible and potable celebrations have survived all the others, or constitute the sole portions that are observed with any of the ancient zeal. These accessories have in fact become principals. The waits, or watchmen, who sounded the watch, and perambulated the streets during winter to prevent depredation, have nominal descendants, who may still be occasionally though rarely heard, stealing pleasantly upon the midnight silence, and startling the drowsy ear with the sweetness of their dreamlike and mysterious melody; but these invisible minstrels of the Nativity, lacking an appropriate echo to their silver sounds, will, it is to be feared, soon follow into oblivion the lord of misrule, the abbot of un-reason, the morrisdancers, the hobby-horse, and other by-gone functionaries of the Christmas pantomime. Mince-pies, however, still maintain a savoury remembrance in our mouths; but the boar's head, holding with its teeth a lemon for its own seasoning-once the symbol of good cheer, and the favourite sign of taverns and cooks'-shops-has been dethroned from its eminence, and has long ceased to crown the festive board. It has been superseded by the turkey; which, being introduced about the time of the Reformation, became connected with the new observances of the reformed religion, without any other apparent claim than that it attains its fattest and most luxurious state about the time of Christmas. From an historical account of Norwich, we learn that between Saturday morning and Sunday night of Christmas, 1793, one thousand seven hundred turkeys, weighing nine tons two cwt., were sent from that single town to London, and two days after half as many more.

Let the external decorations and the superficial forms of this anniversary fade and fall into desuetude, or be replaced with newer glories, as fashion and caprice may dictate; but let not the spirit of Christmas, at once holy and festive, ever evaporate from our feelings, or be chilled by a non-observance of this happy season. Let the laurel-the symbol of peace and good-will-be green in our hearts, though it no

longer adorn our parlours. A proper observance of the prescribed religious duties, hospitality and social brotherhood; an interchange of love-promoting presents; the festive board; the blazing fire; the moderate bowl, enlivened by music, wit, and song; the harmless sports and pastimes for which none are too old who find a reflected pleasure from delighting the young, or who can renew, even for a single evening, the pleasant memories of their own childhood; but above all, that enlarged philanthropy which prompts us to look beyond our own circle of smiling faces, and to light up a similar gladness in the cottages of the poor by seasonable acts of charity-these are the observances which every man, to the extent of his ability, is strictly bound to maintain; for they constitute the noblest way in which a Christian can commemorate the Founder of that religion which inculcates universal love.

Of the festivals and holydays prescribed by our ancient ritual we haonly noticed a portion. Most of these had their vigil, or previous eve, which was celebrated with festive observances; so that when we add to this long list the numerous wakes and fairs, and merrimakings, of which we catch frequent glimpses through the mist of antiquity, we are apt to think that mankind, at least in the lower orders, were much happier then than they are now, an impression which often prompts us to give vent to our feelings by an en. thusiastic eulogy of "the good old times." This golden age, however, can only be found in chronology, when we shall have fixed the exact spot occupied by Plato's Atlantis, or Sir Thomas More's Utopia. Our old Christmas gambols and tumultuous revelries, like the Saturnalia, from which they were borrowed, were only destined to reconcile the people to their habitual wretchedness and degradation by a short season of iot. They derived their great attraction from the poverty and privation of the inferior classes, who rarely tasted fresh meat in the summer; while in the winter their best fare was salted ling and other coarse fish, which even in nobleme.'s families formed the ordinary diet of the servants. The greater the hardships and oppressions of life the more intense is the delight of their transient forgetfulness, whether it proceed from the drunkenness of the bowl, or the intoxication of holyday mirth. The Christmas turkeys, the roast-beef, the plum-pudding, nay, even the

vegetables, were once rarities and expensive luxuries, which were coveted with an avidity, and enjoyed with a delight, commensurate with their cost and scarcity. Most of these, except to the abjectly poor, are now within reach of at least occasional procurement, and their great attraction has vanished since they ceased to be dainties of rare occurrence.

If our humbler classes be incalculably superior to their predecessors in the essential comforts of food, clothing, fuel, and lodging, their advantages are still more distinctly marked with reference to intellectual gratifications. Theatres, reading-rooms, newspapers, magazines, reviews, novels, and mechanics' institutions, which the diffusion of education enables all ranks to enjoy, have substituted for occasional fooleries and mummeries, and stated periods of public revelry, domestic habitual fireside recreations of an infinitely higher order, and not less delightful, because they are not periodically obtruded upon our attention. The industrious operative, who can now command these every-day comforts as a right, earned by his honest exertions, wants not the frantic extravagance of the carnival, and scorns to depend for his enjoyments either upon gratuitous holydays, or eleemosynary feastings. A fortnight's frolic he would disdain to accept with a twelvemonth's subjection. He knows that he is no longer a vassal or a serf; and this very feeling of independence is a perpetual feast to his heart, worth all that were ever celebrated or registered even in the overloaded calendar of the Romanists.