When Cromwell banned Christmas
We all have our idea of a traditional English Christmas. Turkey, a tree and repeats of ‘Only Fools and Horses’ Christmas specials perhaps. But some traditions are more traditional than others. So what would a London Christmas have looked like in times past?
The idea that Christmas began tidily on the 25 December, in year zero, and has been celebrated ever since is a myth of course. The winter solstice celebration long predates the birth of Christ, and the Christmas we have today is a mix of numerous old festivals. But at certain points over the last 2000 years, Christmas died out and was even banned.
The birth of Jesus almost certainly didn’t take place at the end of December. The earliest reference to the date comes from historian Sextus Julianus Africanus in 221AD - Sextus writing a history of the world from the Creation to 221 (5723 years in his calculation). The Annunciation does conveniently take place exactly nine months earlier, on 25 March. More likely, the early Church grafted their main celebration onto existing pagan festivals, which themselves followed the turning of the seasons and the year. 21 December is the shortest day of course, though with the various calendars in use over the millennia, even that date would have moved around a bit. With the days lengthening again a celebration would have been in order, there was less work to do out in the fields. And people would have yearned for a last blow out after months of hard work and before the hungry months ahead - perhaps the modern equivalent of which is paying off the credit card, post Christmas.
Those early Romans who founded Londinium in 43AD would have celebrated Saturnalia and Dies Natalis Solis Invicti. Queen Boudicca’s Iceni, who burned Londinium to the ground in 61AD, would have lit huge bonfires around the solstice to bring back the sun. They would also have slaughtered the fatted animals for a solstice feast, thus avoiding feeding them over the winter on scarce supplies. And as London passed from invader to invader, so new ‘Christmas’ traditions were pasted onto the ancient celebration. Roman London rose and fell again during the second and third centuries, in came the Anglo-Saxons and then in 851AD the Vikings. The Norsemen celebrated Yule, with its log and 12 days of revelry. All through the Dark and Early Middle Ages, elements from all over Europe were being added to the traditional London Christmas.
In fact it’s from the East that Christmas then emerged, being celebrated in the Eastern Church as part of the revival of Catholicism from around 380AD. From Constaninople the celebration spread west with the resurgence of Christianity, though it wasn’t universally loved. Many considered the festival a trivial distraction even then, creating a cult of Christ’s (supposed) birth date rather than focusing on the real meaning of religion. But the canny Church had learned that trying to expunge older festivals didn’t work - far easier to graft the Christian version onto an existing celebration.
In the Early Middle Ages, Christmas was still a sideshow to the main event of Epiphany, in early January. Emperor Charlemagne promoted Christmas as ‘the’ Christian festival though, and William I had himself crowned King of England on Christmas Day 1066. As England and Europe generally became less chaotic, with the last of the Barbarian invasions, a surge in population and a sense of (relative) order, the festival grew in popularity. From this High Medieval period we have the holly and the ivy and the giving of presents. In 1377, Richard II gave a Christmas feast at which 28 oxen and 300 sheep were consumed.
Medieval Londoners wouldn’t have been tucking into turkey of course. That bird didn’t arrive in Europe from the Americas until the 1520s. Until then the main course was usually goose if you were rich, or humble pie if you weren’t. The ‘humbles’ of an animal were the offal, with nothing going to waste. Liver, kidneys, brains and heart … everything went into the pie.
During the Reformation, Protestants took issue with the increasingly lavish celebrations, and from 1647 until the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660, Christmas was banned. The Puritan ethic was exported to New England, with Boston banning Christmas from 1659 to 1681.
And though Christmas was permitted in London during the 18th century, it was a long way from the 12 days of Bacchanalian revelry enjoyed in the Middle Ages. Noncomformist clergy still disapproved. By the 1820s some English writers were looking back nostalgically to the Tudor Christmas (much as we do to a Victorian one) and worrying that the whole thing might die out.
There was a concerted effort to revive the festival. Much of what we now accept as Christmas tradtion came from Victorian times. Prince Albert popularised the indoor Christmas tree, hung with decorations. Christmas cards, made possible by the new penny post, became popular. And Charles Dickens, strapped for cash (as ever) in 1843, decided to quickly dash off a moneyspinning tome in time for Christmas. Casting aside the sprawling plots and huge casts of characters that filled his earlier works, he penned the simple tale of Scrooge - the miser being gradually won round to the ‘traditional’ virtues of goodwill, charity and the family.
Dickens of course had endured a traumatic childhood - his father being cast into debtors’ gaol and the future novelist being sent to work in a blacking factory. For the sentimental Dickens, the colour and warmth of Christmas was part imagination and part memory of days spent at the house of his beloved godfather, Christopher Huffam, in Limehouse. If Dickens’ memory added to the quantity of bunting, the depth of the snow and the size of the Christmas turkey then no matter … it’s given us the ‘traditional’ Christmas we know and love today.