16 DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS

 

	Christmas, 1897 Bridges, Robert Seymour, 1844-1930; Daniel, C. H. O. (Charles Henry Olive), 1863-1919 Blessed Mother ! in whose Womb Lay the Light that exiles gloom, God to earth descending : Blessed Maid ! whose spotless breast Gives the King of Glory rest, Nurture, warmth and tending .
	Keeping Christmas (1888]) GOLDWIN SMITH http://www.archive.org/stream/keepingchristmas00smitrich KEEPING CHRISTMAS. "CHRISTMAS comes but once a year " were words familiar and dear to English childhood. They were uttered by the band of mummers who came into the halls of the gen- try on Christmas Eve to exhibit their rude traditional dis- guises and play their uncouth antics, earning thereby the half-crowns wherewith to make themselves a merry Christmas. If you had traced the pedigree of the mum- ers, probably you would have found that they, like Punch, represented the actors of some mediaeval mystery or morality play, now fallen in its estate, since the Church of the Middle Ages, with all its sacred pageantry and dramaturgy, had passed away. Punch will die only with Shakespeare, but the mummers probably by this time the policeman of a refined civilization has ordered to u move on." Besides the roughness and absurdity of the exhi- bition, these fooleries enacted by the lower class to amuse the upper class and draw money from them did smack somewhat of the old regime and even reminded one a little of the Saturnalia of the Roman slave. More than two centuries before, Puritanism had banished forever the Lord of Misrule, under whose reign of tipsy jollity and folly the lawyers of the Temple were once fined for having failed to perform their customary dance before the judges.
	Christmas books (1898, c1892) Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870
	KALENDS OF PROVENCE. THE PLANTING OF ST BARBARA’S GRAIN. http://www.archive.org/stream/christmaskalends00janv the Christmas Kalends of Provence Supper is served on Christmas Eve that is to say, on the feast of the Winter Solstice green growing grain in symbol or in earnest of the harvest of the new year that then begins. The association of the Trinitarian Saint Barbara with this custom the Vidame continued, 'I fear is a bit of a makeshift. Were three plates of grain the rule, some- thing of a case would be made out in her favour. But the rule, so far as one can be found, is for only two. The custom must be of Pagan origin, and therefore dates from far back of the time when Saint Barbara lived in her three-window red tower at Heli- opolis. Probably her name was tagged to it because of old these votive and prophetic grain-fields were sown on what in Christian times became her dedicated day. But what- ever light-mannered goddess may have been their patroness then, she is their patroness now; and from their sowing date the be- ginning of our Christmas feast.