Of Christmas past

AS YOU try to keep your head above the jingling, glittering, till-ringing tide that overwhelms us at Christmas, remember that it was not always thus – particularly in Scotland, when the day wasn't even a public holiday until the late 1950s. I can remember, during the 1960s, helping clear snow off the petrol pumps on my father's garage forecourt, which would be open for the morning at least – they may have been white Christmases then, but for many of us they were also working Christmases.

A backwards browse through the archives shows how we have marked the festival – sometimes reluctantly – over the centuries, from working on the day in the 1950s, back through the invention of the Christmas card in the 1800s, to public remonstrance for "keeping yule" three centuries earlier, at a time when celebration was effectively banned by the all-powerful reformed church.

1500s - 1600s

When the season went underground

PRIOR to its Victorian revival, Christmas as a time of celebration had dwindled since pre-Reformation days. In the early 1500s, the festival was marked by feasting, processions and the election of "Boy Bishops" and other "lords of misrule", in an Auld Alliance echo of the French Ftes des Fous – later to become known here as "the Daft Days" – the "Twelve Days" between Christmas Eve and Uphalieday, or Twelfth Night, on 6 January.

Back then, Christmas Day in Edinburgh would begin officially with the celebration of Mass, amid much pomp, attended by the king and courtiers.

Twelfth Night revels would include the secreting of a bean in a cake: whoever found it would become the Bean King or Queen for the day – a ritual known to have been played out at Holyrood House when Mary Queen of Scots was in residence.

F Marian MacNeil, folklorist and cookery writer, says that on Christmas Day, citizens on the High Street in Edinburgh would provide a torchlight escort for the Provost as he walked home from church.

She adds: "Yule at Old Holyrood was spent in feasting, music and dancing, ending with the mimic pageantry of Twelfth Night." And she says James VI "was no less insistent than his mother, Mary, on maintaining the festival, and in 1600 Christmas was 'solemnellie keepit by the court with shooting of cannons out of the Castell of Edinburgh, and other signs of joy'".

But the Holyrood festivities were by that time the exception. Following the Reformation during the mid-16th century, anything seen to reek of "papishness" or idolatry was swept away in a grim excess of reforming zeal. Christmas went underground, and those caught celebrating it could be given a hard time.

On 27 December 1583, five people in Glasgow were brought before the kirk session and sternly ordered to make public repentance for "keeping Yule". The "baxters" or bakers of the city were expected to report anyone to whom they had supplied "Yule bread", and for five Aberdonians, Christmas 1605 saw them brought before the kirk session for going through the town "maskit and dancing with bellis".

In 1618, Christmas was observed in Edinburgh at the command of King James: two churches opened for service, but attendance was scant.

"The Great Kirk (of St Giles] was not half filled, notwithstanding the provost, baillies, and council's travels … The dogs were playing in the flure of the Little (East] Kirk, for rarity of people, and these were of the meaner sort…"

During his occupation of Edinburgh in the winter of 1651, Oliver Cromwell attempted to ban Christmas outright, although a contrary populace still hung out their festive lanterns in defiance.

For anti-Christmas humbuggery on a spectacular scale, however, a letter dating from 25 December, 1680 (now in the National Library of Scotland) takes some beating. Titled The Scots demonstration of their Abhorrence of popery, with all its Adherents, the piece recounts how the students of Edinburgh University had themselves a jolly Christmas by burning the Pope in effigy.

The letter reports, with scarcely concealed relish, how "Our Chriftmafs, this morning very pleafantly began" with the students burning an effigy of the Holy Father in public, despite an ineffectual proclamation by the authorities against "tumultuous affemblies" and the city guard apprehending some of the ringleaders on Christmas Eve.

The dummy pope was suitably attired, "after his Antichriftian manner" in mitre and keys, perched on a makeshift throne.

After a brief "trial", the students – chanting loudly "There was Herefy in his belly" – set the figure alight in the High Street, "where the fire coming to the Combuftables in his belly, blew off his head, and miferably scattered the remaining members of the Harlot". Even the arrival of the formidable General "Bloody Tam" Dalyell, with two companies of soldiery, failed to prevent the sectarian pyromaniacs escaping.

They really knew how to enjoy themselves back then.

1800s

Christmas cards…invented in Leith

THE invention of the Christmas card is credited to a Leith printer and publisher, Charles Drummond. At Christmas 1841, Drummond issued a card which depicted a cheerful, chubby character and the legend "A Gude New Year/And Mony o' Them". He attributed the idea to his friend, Thomas Sturrock, though. The first Christmas cards to name the day, as it were, were produced in London just a couple of years later.

Despite the best efforts of the Victorians and Charles Dickens (whose popular A Christmas Carol appeared in 1843), Christmas received relatively little coverage in The Scotsman's pages during the early-to-mid 19th century. A trawl through our archives reveals front-page advertisements for Christmas geese, and for various shops offering "Christmas Presents and New-Year's Gifts" as far back as 1820. In 1828, children throughout the land must have been beside themselves anticipating such thrilling Christmas presents as The Infant Scholars Magazine, Vol II, which came with glowing testimonials from Home Missionary journal. Five years later, they may have been more diverted by the marvellous "Phenakistiscope" (even if they couldn't pronounce it), a cardboard disc printed with images of dancing figures, which appeared to move when it was spun.

It may come as a surprise to learn that the institution of the Christmas pantomime was well established by the mid-19th century. Oh yes it was: The Scotsman's front page carried advertisements for pantos at Edinburgh's Theatre Royal in 1842, when the "Christmas Harlequinade" was Johnnie Fa', or "Harlequin and the king of the Gipsies".

Not everyone was in the position of being able to avail themselves of such festive delights, though. On 19 December 1829 we reported that the governor of Calton Gaol had received "the usual donation of two guineas, from the benevolent gentleman who has for many years given a similar donation, to provide a dinner for the poor prisoners on Christmas day". As Calton was then the largest prison in Scotland, it's interesting to speculate just how much fun two pounds, two shillings provided, even then.

1900s

An extra rasher of bacon if lucky

IN DECEMBER 1957, Postmaster General Ernest Marples (later the minister of transport who brought in parking meters and seatbelts), pleaded with the public to post their cards early for Christmas and to wrap their parcels properly. The previous Christmas, he complained, the wrapping on 13,000 parcels had fallen apart. How different a picture of Scottish Christmas that paints compared to a few years earlier, when the country was languishing in post-war austerity. The Scotsman reported in November

However, that didn't stop the Scots from celebrating. On Boxing Day 1950 The Scotsman reported that: "Everywhere in the city, the increasing observance of Christmas Day has been noted. The citizens were early abroad, quite a number of them making their way homewards during the first hour of the day, returning from carol services and midnight services at various city churches, their way in Princes Street at least lighted by the Christmas trees."

We also reported the largest congregation ever to take part in a Christmas service at St Giles (except for the year when the festival had happened to fall on a Sunday) and, while many shops were shut, clearly working life went on as usual, with joy unconfined as "carol singing followed the Christmas lunch at the North British Rubber Works".

Sir Andrew Murray, Edinburgh's Lord Provost, and his wife took a Christmas-morning jaunt to the State cinema, where no fewer than 1,350 pensioners were being entertained by members of the Gaiety theatre company. And what arcane custom was invoked as the Chief Constable, William Merrilees, distributed a florin (two bob to you) to each pensioner?

Dr Charles Warr, minister of St Giles and Royal Chaplain, said that while Christmas was "still largely unobserved as a religious festival in many parts of Scotland, (it] was rapidly coming into its own again and was likely soon to supplant New Year's Day, which had no religious significance at all, in the affection of the Scottish people".

Those listening to their radios on that Christmas Day during the Cold War might have heard President Truman calling for his fellow Americans to join in a crusade of prayer against "godless Communism". So much for goodwill on Earth to all men…

1950s

Drowning protest with organ music

CLIMATE change is nothing new, going by The Scotsman's reports from Christmas 1900, the final year of Queen Victoria's reign. "The seasons seem to have undergone so much change of late that orthodox Christmas weather, with its associations of frost and snow, and its exhilarating atmosphere, would appear to be almost a thing of the past."

So far as our seasonal observance was concerned, however, the paper observed that: "Every year goes to show that the celebration of the Christmas festival is on the increase in Scotland, and yesterday seemed to be more generally observed in Edinburgh than on any former occasion."

It was certainly being celebrated with more zest than the previous December, 1899, with its "black week" of British defeats by the Boers in Africa. Since then, Mafeking had been relieved and, in St Giles church, the Rev Dr Cameron Lees gave thanks for this change in fortunes – and also noted: "In Scotland (Christmas] was now kept as it used not to be kept, and the northern people had come to join with those of their kith and kin throughout the world in celebrating with tolerable unanimity the time…"

The cantankerous ghost of Christmas "banned" was still abroad, however: the Reverend Jacob Primmer and his fellow stalwarts of the Protestant Defence Association attempted to create a stooshie during the Christmas service at Dunfermline Abbey Church. He was drowned out by the organ, however, and, according to reports in this paper, "those of the congregation who observed what was going on only indulged in an amused smile".

The paper also observed a significant change in seasonal customs: "There can be no doubt that the Christmas card is steadily growing in popularity…"

THE ORIGINS

CAROLS

CAROLS were essentially folk songs – and originally dances. The popular 16th-century protestant songbook, The Gude and Godlie Ballatis, contains some "carols", while The National Library for Scotland has a copy of one of the earliest printed books in Scotland, the "Aberdeen Breviary" or Breviarium Aberdonensis, which dates from 1508 and includes Latin hymns.

CHRISTMAS CARDS

WHILE the first commercial Christmas card is often said to have been produced in London in 1843, designed by the painter John Callcott Horsley, in 1841 the Leith printer and publisher Charles Drummond produced a Yuletide card and sold it at his shop in the Kirkgate. It bore the message: "A Gude New Year / And mony o' them."

SANTA CLAUS

WHILE Father Christmas can be traced way back into English folklore, Santa, or Saint Nicholas, emerged from Holland, as Sinter Klaas.

The template for the jolly, rubicund gent was set in 1822, by the American writer Clement Moore in his poem The Night Before Christmas.

On 15 November 1880 The Scotsman reported "the first drops of the shower of Christmas cards", including "what is called the santa claus series, whereon messengers of the chubby seraphic type are depicted bringing gifts".

CHRISTMAS TREES

THE arrival of the Christmas tree in Britain is attributed to Queen Victoria's German consort, Prince Albert, who imported a custom long established on the continent. In 1846, the Illustrated London News carried an image of the Royal Family standing round a Christmas tree. Just three years later, The Scotsman carried advertisements for "Christmas trees, fancy sweetmeats and Chinese boxes of tea" from MacLean & Son's on Princes St.

CHRISTMAS BAKING

DURING the 16th and early 17th centuries, when Christmas celebrations were prohibited, bakers could be fined and made to do public penance for baking "Yule bread".

Black bun, these days associated with Hogmanay, stems from the old Yule cake or Twelfth Night Cake, a rich concoction of fruit, almonds, spices and moistened with whisky or brandy.