A Righte Merrie Christmasse. John Ashton

The Story of Christ-tide

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      By John Ashton.

       Copperplate Etching of

       "The Wassail Song," by

       Arthur C. Behrend.

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      London: published by the Leadenhall

       Press, Ltd., 50 Leadenhall Street;

       Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent

       & Co., Ltd. New York: Charles

       Scribner's Sons, 153–157 Fifth Avenue.

       [1894]

TO THE READER

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PREFACE

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      It is with a view of preserving the memory of Christmas that I have written this book.

      In it the reader will find its History, Legends, Folk-lore, Customs, and Carols—in fact, an epitome of Old Christ-tide, forming a volume which, it is hoped, will be found full of interest.

      JOHN ASHTON.

      A little light upon this ballad may possibly be found in a letter from John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton (21st December 1627):—"Divers lords and personages of quality have made means to be dispensed withall for going into the Country this Christmas according to the proclamation; but it will not be granted, so that they pack away on all sides for fear of the worst."

      As we are now getting near the attempted suppression of Christmas under the Puritan régime, it may be as well to notice the extreme licence to which the season's holiday and festivities had reached—and perhaps a more flagrant case than the following can scarcely be given. On 13th January 1626 the Commissioners of the Navy write to the Duke of Buckingham that they have received information from persons who have been on board the Happy Entrance in the Downs, and the Nonsuch and Garland at Gore-end, that for these Christmas holidays, the captains, masters, boatswains, gunners, and carpenters, were not aboard their ships, nor gave any attendance to the service, leaving the ships a prey to any who might have assaulted them. The Commissioners sent down clothes for the sailors, and there were no officers to take charge of them, and the pressed men ran away as fast as the Commissioners sent them down. If they had beaten up and down, they might have prevented the loss of two English ships taken by the Dunkirkers off Yarmouth.

      This, naturally, was a state of things which could not be allowed, and on January 15 the Duke of Buckingham wrote to Sir Henry Palmer as to the officers and men quitting their ships at Christmas time, and called upon him "presently to repair on board his own ship, and to charge the officers of all the ships composing his fleet, not to depart from their ships without order."

CHAPTER IV Attempts of Puritans to put down Christ-tide—Attitude of the people—Preaching before Parliament—"The Arraignment, etc., of Christmas."

      As soon as the Puritans became at all powerful, their iconoclastic zeal naturally attacked Christmas, and the Scotchmen, such as Baillie, Rutherford, Gillespie, and Henderson, in the Westminster Assembly of Divines, tried in 1643 to get the English observance of Christmas abolished—but they only succeeded so far as coming to a resolution that whilst preaching on that day, "withal to cry down the superstition of that day." Next year they were happier in their efforts, as is shortly told in Parliamentary History, December 19, 1644. "The lords and commons having long since appointed a day for a Fast and Humiliation, which was to be on the last Wednesday in every Month, it happening to fall on Christmas day this month, the Assembly of Divine sent to acquaint the lords with it: and, to avoid any inconveniences that might be by some people keeping it as a Feast, and others as a Fast, they desired that the Parliament would publish a Declaration the next Lord's day in the Churches of London and Westminster; that that day might be kept as it ought to be, that the whole kingdom might have comfort thereby. The houses agreed to this proposal, and directed the following Ordinance to be published; which bore this title—

      "An Ordinance for the better observation of the Feast of the Nativity of Christ.

      "Whereas some doubts have been raised whether the next Fast shall be celebrated, because it falleth on the day which, heretofore, was usually called the Feast of the Nativity of our Saviour; the lords and commons do order and ordain that public notice be given, that the Fast appointed to be kept on the last Wednesday in every month, ought to be observed until it be otherwise ordered by both houses; and that this day particularly is to be kept with the more solemn humiliation, because it may call to remembrance our sins and the sins of our forefathers, who have turned this Feast, pretending the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights; being contrary to the life which Christ himself led here upon earth, and to the spiritual life of Christ in our souls; for the sanctifying and saving whereof Christ was pleased