TO UNDERSTAND THE SCENE

Christmas

Christmas is the feast of peace for the angels proclaim: “Glory to God and peace to men”; for centuries it was traditional to stop fights on that night; it was the truce of Christmas.

The birth of Jesus is celebrated on December 25^th. The date was fixed by the Pope in 354; it replaced a Roman pagan feast in honour of the sun. Actually the feast of Christmas, which corresponds to the shortest days of the year, celebrates the victory of light over night.

Three masses were often said: that of the night, that of dawn and that of the day. The midnight mass has remained a tradition and when it was forbidden to eat before mass, it was followed by a feast or midnight supper; Alphonse Daudet wrote a nice tale about it.

The Christmas folklore

The building of a crib is a tradition dating back to St Francis of Assisi in the 13^th century. It became very popular above all in Italy and in Provence where they used small mannequins or figures of earthenware personifying not only Mary, Joseph… the shepherds but also the inhabitants of the village busy at their occupations as if the Nativity repeated itself here and there each year.

The Infant Jesus is surrounded by the magi and the shepherds accompanied by many musicians; all of them are in a ruin which symbolises the old world that is about to be renewed by the birth of Christ.

Crib, 18th century;
Musée national du Moyen Âge,
Paris, France Site

Jesus was born in the Middle-East in a hot Mediterranean climate but the feast has been europeanised; one erects a fir-tree, a tradition of German origin, and covers it with snow. In the old days, a big log of wood burnt all night; there remains today a good pastry with the same shape. As for the presents, they originate from the New Year’s gifts of good omen. They were first offered to children, then to everybody. Christmas is a good example of the secularisation of a religious feast, that is to say, of the transfer from the religious domain to the social one with the whole economic dimension it involves.

The Christmas tree was popularised by the German Protestants who refused the Catholic crib. The fir-tree recalls the Tree of Life in the earthly paradise. It was in the 19^th century that it spread over the whole of Europe. In France, it was Helen von Mecklemburg, married to the Duke of Orleans, who had a fir-tree decorated in the Tuileries Palace in 1837, then the Alsatians expelled after 1870 from their province, spread the fir-tree over the whole country.

Queen Victoria and her husband put the German Christmas tree
with its bright lights in the centre of the family celebration
 of Christmas at Windsor Castle.

And Father Christmas? The personification of a feast is fairly classic. Scandinavians celebrate St Lucia whose name means light, the inhabitants of the Rhone valley and of the plains of the North puts St Nicholas, feasted on December 6^th, in charge of bringing sweetmeats to children. It was difficult to “folklorize” the Infant Jesus, and the name of Father Christmas “sires Noeus” appeared as early as the 13^th century in a song by Adam de la Halle. But one had to wait until the 20^th century to see the figure spread gradually over Europe. They are probably the German Protestants who brought their “Weihnachtsmann” or “Christmas Man” from the United States to dethrone the “papist” St Nicholas. Father Christmas, having become an American hero, came back to triumph in Europe.