tyb
A little history lesson
There is Jesus Christ born on Christmas day.
There is Father Christmas (u.k) bringing the good news of the birth of Christ.
There is Santa Claus (usa)
There is Saint Nichlous
It all gets a bit confusing for the little tykes and most adults too so anon has found a site which details the English traditions.
sit back and relax.
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE U.K AND PEACE ON EARTH TO ALL GOOD MEN AND THEIR BETTER/WORSE HALF
coming next post.
Corp o7
The History of Father Christmas
Festive folklore, winter traditions and very merry myths, the making of a festive icon
By Tom Moriarty
https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/christmas/the-history-of-father-christmas/
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The jolly old man who sneaks into our houses every 24 December is beloved across the world and known by many names. But should you call him Father Christmas, St Nicholas or Santa Claus? What's the difference? Where did he come from? Is he a Christian saint or a corporate stooge?
In this article we'll explore how Father Christmas emerged in England at a time when seasonal celebrations were under attack. We'll also uncover the transatlantic origins of Santa Claus, and find out what happened when these two festive figureheads met in the 19th century.
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The English Origins of Father Christmas
From his earliest days until the 19th century, Father Christmas was a strictly allegorical figure. He was a symbol of the Christmas season, rather than a mythical being. He was often depicted as a merry old man who presided over festive parties, not a gentle giver of gifts. And that's largely because Christmas was celebrated differently, with much more emphasis on entertainment for adults - as can be seen in Kenny Meadows' drawing in the Illustrated London News.
The earliest evidence for a personified Christmas can be found in a 15th-century carol, in which a character called 'Sir Christëmas' shares the news of Christ's birth. He tells his audience to 'Make good cheer and be right merry.'
Another precurser to Father Christmas could be found in York, where a festival called the 'Yule Ridings' took place on the 21 December. A man disguised as Yule carried cakes and meat through the streets and threw nuts into the crowd. In 1572 the procession was banned after complaints of 'verie rude and barbarouse' behaviour.
Elsewhere in Tudor and Stuart times, specially appointed 'Lords of Misrule' oversaw Christmas celebrations in aristocratic houses, and were sometimes given names like ‘Captain Christmas’, ‘The Christmas Lord’ or ‘Prince Christmas’.
But none of these early personifications of Christmas make him out to be a 'father' or an old man. For that, the world had to wait for the playwright Ben Johnson.
continued
Johnson's Christmas, His Masque was performed for the royal court in 1616. In the play, the character of 'Christmas' appears in old-fashioned clothes with a long thin beard, calling himself 'old Christmas' and 'old Gregorie Christmas'. He chides the guards for refusing to let him into the party, and argues that he is ‘as good a Protestant as any in my parish’ - a pointed comment at a time when Christmas celebrations were coming under attack from Puritans.
Johnson's character of Christmas is definitely old, and he is definitely a father. He brings with him several of his sons and daughters, each personifying a different tradition of the period, with names like ‘Misrule’, ‘Carol’, ‘Mince Pie’, ‘Mumming’ and ‘Wassail’. Christmas himself came with no gifts, but one of his sons, ‘New Yeares Gift’, brought ‘an Orange, and a sprig of Rosemarie…with a coller of gingerbread…[and] a bottle of wine on either arme.’
The Puritan attack on Christmas intensified before, during and after the English Civil War (1642-51). Royalists flocked to Christmas's defence, and once again personified the season to make their case, as in the 1645 pamphlet 'The Arraignment, Conviction and Imprisonment of Christmas'. In this allegorical story, a woman asks the Oxford town crier where 'old father Christmas' has gone. She is told that ‘The poor old man…was arraigned, condemned, and after conviction cast into prison amongst the King’s Souldiers; fearing to be hanged.’
Sure enough, in 1647 Parliament banned Christmas altogether, along with Easter, Whitsun and many other traditional holidays.
He also featured in a pamphlet of 1652 by the Royalist John Taylor called 'The Vindication of Christmas':
And in 1658, a pamphlet entitled 'The Examination and Tryall of Old Father Christmas' depicted him as a man with a white beard and old-fashioned fur-trimmed gown. He's put on trial for his life, but thankfully for us, is acquitted by the jury.
Image: Frontispiece, 'Examination and Tryal of Old Father Christmas' (1687)
==continued
Christmas returned after the Restoration of 1660, and Father Christmas went on to appear in stage plays and folk drama over the next 200 years. But, as Ronald Hutton says in Stations of the Sun, he remained far removed from our understanding of the man:
‘He was essentially concerned with the adult world, personifying feasting and games, he had no connection with presents, and he was not treated with much respect, being generally a burlesque figure of fun.’
Father Christmas enjoyed a mini-renaissance in the first half of the 19th century. In illustrations he was sometimes shown as a winter sprite with garlands of holly on his head, surrounded by food and drink, and he featured in many folk plays of the era. He also closely resembles the Ghost of Christmas Present from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
But Christmas was changing. With the Victorian focus on family life and children, it would no longer be just a time for drinking, feasting and making merry. And this new kind of Christmas needed a new kind of old man to represent it.
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St Nicholas and Sinterklaas
Long before the symbol of Father Christmas emerged in England, the separate legend of Sinterklaas was gaining ground in Europe.
The origins of Sinterklaas can be found in the stories of St Nicholas, a 4th-century Greek bishop from Myra, now in modern-day Turkey.
St Nicholas was credited with a wide variety of miracles. According to one story, he resurrected three youths after they'd been murdered and pickled in a barrel by an innkeeper.
In another tale, he met a poor man who was on the brink of selling his own daughters into slavery. Under the cover of darkness, the saint anonymously threw three bags of gold down the chimney to provide dowries for the girls. The gold landed in their stockings, which were drying by the fire.
St Nicholas's fame spread throughout medieval Europe after his relics were ‘rescued’ from Myra and taken to Italy in 1087. Over time, tales of his gold-giving exploits gave rise to a tradition of leaving gifts for children on the night before 6 December - which was St Nicholas’s Day. In the Netherlands, special markets sprang up to sell toys and treats for the occasion, and St Nicholas, or 'Sinterklaas' impersonators dressed in red bishops’ costumes to delight the crowds. Tradition had it that, in his quest to deliver presents, St Nicholas would enter houses by passing through locked doors or descending down chimneys to leave gifts in shoes and stockings.
Much like the English Father Christmas, Sinterklaas came under attack during and after the Reformation, with Protestants keen to move away from veneration of the saints. The baby Jesus was promoted as a more appropriate giver of gifts – known in Germany as das Christkindl, later Anglicised as ‘Kris Kringle’. St Nicholas markets were banned - as were biscuits baked in the shape of the bishop.
But it’s clear that popular traditions survived. One famous depiction is Jan Steen’s 17th-century painting of The Feast of St Nicholas, which shows a chaotic domestic Dutch scene of gift-giving and feasting.
More evidence of their survival comes from the ways that the Sinterklaas 'universe' expanded to include a host of frightening, violent characters who dished out punishments to naughty children - including Krampus, Pere Fouettard (‘Old Man Whipper’), Ru-Klaus (‘Rough Nicholas’), Pelsnickel (‘Furry Nicholas’) and Knecht Rupert (‘Farmhand Rupert’).
continued
Here Comes Santa Claus
It’s not entirely clear how Sinterklaas made his way across the Atlantic to North America to become Santa Claus. It's possible that his story made its way to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, which later became New York.
In 1773 the Rivington’s Gazetteer in New York reported that the anniversary of St Nicholas, ‘otherwise called St a Claus’, had recently been marked by ‘a great number of Sons of that ancient Saint’.
In 1809 Washington Irvine’s history of New York claimed that old Dutch families still told tales of Sinterklaas on St Nicholas's Day. He was said to fly over the city in a wagon and climb down chimneys to deliver presents. Whether or not Irvine was using poetic licence is unclear, but the idea stuck, and the legend grew, with a poem featuring 'Sancte Claus' published in the New York Spectator a year later.
Some historians think that Irving and other New Yorkers were inventing new traditions to create a gentler, family-oriented kind of Christmas tradition in the city, which had begun to suffer from unpleasant bouts of drunken mob violence in the days around 25 December.
In 1821 an anonymous illustrated poem called ‘Old Santeclaus with Much Delight’ introduced Santa’s red coat, reindeer and sleigh, and put his arrival on Christmas Eve rather than St Nicholas’s Day. Two years later Clement Clark Moore, a professor of Hebrew in the city, embellished the legend in his poem 'A Visit from St Nicholas' (better known to us as 'The Night Before Christmas’.)
In it, 'St Nick' got his bushy beard and a whole herd of magical flying reindeer. His appearance was decidedly not that of a Dutch bishop – instead he was ‘a right jolly old elf’ with ‘clothes all tarnished with ashes and soot’, twinkling eyes, merry dimples and a beard ‘as white as snow’.
Other writers and artists added new layers to the legend, and gradually ‘Santa Claus’ took over from ‘St Nicholas’. For several decades of the 19th century he took a variety of forms – tall and short, fat and thin, his robes a rainbow of colours. In 1863 a cartoonist, Thomas Nast, depicted him dressed in the stars and stripes, speaking to Union troops during the American Civil War.
Nast eventually did more than any other artist to set the standard for Santa’s classic look. By 1881 Nast had perfected his vision of Santa, as seen in his ‘Merry Old Santa Claus’. His illustrations for ‘A Visit from St Nicholas’ were hugely popular, and he introduced the world to Santa’s workshop, as well as the notion that his base of operations could be found at the North Pole.
While we’re here, it’s worth pointing out that the idea that Coca-Cola invented Santa is a myth. The fizzy-pop-pushers didn’t start using him in their adverts until the 1930s.
continued - almost done, stay with anon
Father Christmas meets Santa Claus
Historians think that Santa Claus first stepped foot in England in 1864, when he featured alongside Father Christmas in a story by the American author Susanna Warner. In her tale, Santa Claus brought gifts, while Father Christmas appeared in a mummer’s play. And there's evidence that in the 1860s other beings, such as fairies, were responsible for clandestine Christmas gifts.
But the new legend of Santa Claus soon displaced the fairies, much to the confusion of English folklorists in the 1870s, who were at a loss to explain the emerging tradition. One, a Mr Edwin Lees, wrote in a letter to Notes & Queries in 1879:
‘On Christmas Eve, when the inmates of a house in the country retire to bed, all those desirous of a present place a stocking outside the door of their bedroom, with the expectation that some mythical being called Santiclaus will fill the stocking or place something within it before morning…From what region of the earth or air this benevolent Santiclaus takes flight I have not been able to ascertain.’
Image: fromFun,Issue 763, 24 December 1879, p 256.
By the 1880s Santa Claus had almost completely merged with Father Christmas, and was popular across all parts of the country. The Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore notes that a French visitor to England in 1883 said it was a matter of common knowledge that Father Christmas came down chimneys to put toys and sweets in stockings.
By the end of the century, Punch magazine was depicting 'Father Christmas not-up-to-date' as the old, food-focused figure of the past, and 'Father Christmas up-to-date' as a much more modern figure, dashing through the snow on a car carrying a box full of toys.
The English Father Christmas was now Santa Claus in all but name. Despite being invented by New Yorkers hankering after old Dutch traditions, Santa was exactly the kind of hero the Victorians needed for their new, family-friendly Christmas.
continued
A Very Victorian Christmas Icon
The Victorians did more than anyone to give us our ‘modern’ Christmas. For them, Christmas was a time for children, charity, and religion. There was no more room for the raucous Lords of Misrule, or the kinds of celebrations presided over by Ben Johnson’s Old Christmas and his gang of delinquent children.
As the 19th century wore on, new traditions were imported, invented and reinvented to support this tamer, domesticated Christmas. Prince Albert and Queen Victoria popularised the German Christmas tree; gift-giving shifted to Christmas from New Year; Tom Smith invented the Christmas cracker; mass-produced cards were sent across the country and around the world and carol singing enjoyed a renaissance.
The old English Father Christmas loved a good party, but the Victorians needed more from him that that. Generous, jolly and dedicated to children, Santa Claus was the ideal character for their new version of Christmas – just as he was for the New Yorkers who did so much to shape his legend earlier in the century. To conquer the English imagination, he just needed to assume a more familiar name.
Whatever we call him, he continues to dominate the popular culture of Christmas across the world – and he’s showing no sign of slowing down.
end - Merry Christmas to Anons and Lurkers
>>22227732, >>22227743, >>22227755, >>22227763, >>22227769, >>22227776, >>22227787 The History of Father Christmas - english.heritage.org bun
MARK STEYN MUSIC ON THE BIRTH OF JESUS
Note: Anons can listen to this for free without signing up, use link below and just click on audio to play.
excellent stuff for a history lesson with old hymns.
Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols
with Randy Bachman, Tal Bachman, Rhoda Barfoot, Rebecca Enkin, Monique Fauteux, Patsy Gallant, Anthony Kearns, Emma Kershaw, Emer McParland, Peter Noone & Herman's Hermits, Elisabeth von Trapp, Carol Welsman; Mary Carewe & Janet Mooney; and Laura Perrins
Seasons of Steyn
December 24, 2024
Audio Recording
—
Merry Christmas to our listeners in every corner of the world, from Vancouver to Vanuatu, Kokomo to Kiev - and welcome to our annual presentation of ancient scripture and brand new versions of favourite carols, from various members of the Steyn Show musical family drawn from the worlds of folk, jazz, rock, opera plus a bevy of Top Five pop stars from across the last half-century.
If you're in the mood for a very distinctive telling of events in Bethlehem two millennia ago, do please click above.
This year's broadcast is dedicated to our late friend, the brilliant guitarist Russell Malone, who died far too young in August while on tour in Tokyo. Russell was a big part of our Yuletide observances over the years, including the very first presentation of our Christmas Eve
Anon thought so to
and it is real history not reimagined crap.
learned some stuff.
don't tell the tykes thou
tell them about the birth of Christ which all of them are celebrating.
Got to keep the magic alive for their little minds
childhood is too short.
God Wins.
it is not worshipping, it is traditions.
don't they always
apparently her mother is her accountable and the old man paid for her education
both liberals.
tragic really
that is a waste of time.
never act in front of female.
females are crazy and hate to be played although that is all the do to men.
they are not difficult to figure out
entitled and leisure class meow thanks to the internet and the state backing.
oh great here we go again
no matter the victory of getting trump elected the problem with women will continue.
sticking your dick in crazy is like shooting yourself in the foot repeatedly.
you have not taken the final red pill yet.
and if you are a female
tell someone who cares
saddlebags.
>you have no self esteem
what like paying for ladyboi and pretending
who are you trying to convince
stop projecting
until you face the truth you will get racked through the divorce courts and have females taking the piss and playing the victim with the stupid coppers always siding with them cos women and girls need to be protected whilst voting for moar laws to take away your rights so they can stay safe.
they only decided to join when it got out of hand and they were in danger,
before than it was feminism and #metoo
seriously
anon is so far away from statists beliefs.
only came here to help because they attacked the children.
if it was just the females, anon had already walked away.
can take them or leave them.
will not put up with any gaslighting or crap.
respect is earned and goes both ways.
do not hate women,
took 6 years to come out of the mgtow red pill
it is a mindfuck and as old as time.
if anon can find one who is unvaxxed and has some old time traits great.
back in the day, Norwegian females were fantastic.
confident, independent and knew how to treat a man whilst remaining feminine.
will see what habbens next.
still have some outstanding things to do and places to visit.