CHRISTMAS FEASTING

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 19, 1892

CHRISTMAS FEASTING.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this whole season was given up to revels and jollity, in which eating and drinking had a prominent part. In London in the fifteenth century the first duty of the lord mayor and corporation was to dine, and then go, as soberly as might be, to the Church of St. Thomas Acon, and sit through the whole service. On other festival days and Sundays they had a habit of skipping out after the prayers were under way, but on Christmas they were bound to set an example of perseverance. Service over, their worships rode on horseback, by torchlight, through the market of Chepe and back to the church, where, being in a liberal frame of mind on account of the day and the good dinner, they made a money offering to the church. Each man contributed the magnificent sum of one penny to its treasury. This duty done, they returned to their own houses, and made more or less a night of it, after the immemorial manner of good city fathers, in private, the custom not having yet arisen of manifesting happiness by "painting the town red." We read a good deal about the excess of the Christmas dinners. Sir John Reresby in his memoirs makes a penitential note of a dinner at Thyrberg, in 1681: "The Earl of Huntington, my Lord Ellend, and some others dined with me, when we ended the year in more than an ordinary debauch, which God forgive me, it being neither my custom nor inclination much to do so." The next year there was at table a "Mr. Bolton, an ingenious clergyman, but too much a good fellow." The good fellows liked Thyrberg; during the holidays as many as fourscore gentlemen and yeomen, with their wives, dined daily at the hall.

Christmas was always a democratic festival; all classes mingled in the games and merriment, and hospitality was universal. An English gentleman in the country, on Christmas day in the morning, had all his tenants and neighbors enter the hall by daybreak. The strong beer was broached, and the blackjacks went plentifully round, with toast, sugar, nutmeg, and good Cheshire cheese. The great sausage (the Hackin) must be boiled at daybreak, and if it failed to be ready, two young men must take the maiden (i. e., the cook) by the arm and run her around the market-place till she was ashamed of her laziness. The maids had, however, some privileges of retort. In some places in Oxfordshire it was the custom for the maidservant to ask the man for some ivy to dress the house, and if the man refused or neglected to fetch the ivy, the maid stole a pair of his breeches and nailed them up to the gate in the garden or highway. During the festival days the tables were perpetually spread; the sirloin of beef, the minced pie, the plum porridge, turkeys, geese, and plum puddings, were all brought upon the board at once, and everyone ate heartily and was welcome, so that the proverb originated of, "'Tis merry in hall when beards wag all." The gentlemen went to early service in the church, and returned to breakfast on brawn and mustard and malmsey. Brawn was a dish of great antiquity. It was made from the flesh of large boars which lived in a half-wild state, and when put to fatten were strapped and belted tight around the carcass, in order to make the flesh become dense and brawny. It came to market in rolls two feet long by ten inches in diameter, packed in wicker baskets. At dinner the first course served was the boar's head on a silver platter, adorned with bays and rosemary, carried into the hall with much state, preceded by the master of revels, and followed by choristers and minstrels singing and playing compositions in its honor. A stanza of a common carol sung was this:—

Then sett downe the swineyard, The foe to the vineyard, Let Bacchus crowne his fall; Lett this boar's head and mustard Stand for pigg, goose, and custard, And so you are welcome all.

Another dish common in Shakespeare's day, which added at least to the show of the feast, was the "stately pye," that is, a peacock or pheasant pie. In the days of chivalry the knights took their vows at a solemn feast, on presentation of a roasted peacock in a golden dish. This custom was kept up at Christmas by the bringing in, on the most magnificent dish the house could afford, of a peacock in a pie, preserving as much as possible the form of the bird, with the head elevated above the crust, the beak richly gilt, and the beautiful tail spread out to its full extent. It was from this superb dish that the oath came, "By cock and pye, sir." At the supper two servants attended bearing fair torches of wax next before the musicians and the trumpeters. —Christian at Work.