Part 1 (1/2)

The Battle for Christmas.

by Stephen Nissenbaum.

Preface.

THIS BOOK had its beginnings more than twenty years ago, when I delivered a speculative scholarly paper t.i.tled ”From 'The Day of Doom' to 'The Night Before Christmas.'” In that paper I dealt with the striking parallels between the best-known American poem of the 1600s and 1700s and the best-known American poem of the 1800s and 1900s. The earlier poem was about G.o.d's wrath, the later one about the goodwill of Santa Claus-but somehow the two were engaging in a kind of dialogue with each other. had its beginnings more than twenty years ago, when I delivered a speculative scholarly paper t.i.tled ”From 'The Day of Doom' to 'The Night Before Christmas.'” In that paper I dealt with the striking parallels between the best-known American poem of the 1600s and 1700s and the best-known American poem of the 1800s and 1900s. The earlier poem was about G.o.d's wrath, the later one about the goodwill of Santa Claus-but somehow the two were engaging in a kind of dialogue with each other.

Actually, though, it is clear that the book began earlier still, with my childhood fascination for ”The Night Before Christmas,” whose verses I recited over and over when December came around. For me, growing up as I did in an Orthodox Jewish household, this was surely part of my fascination for Christmas itself, that magical season which was always beckoning, at school and in the streets, only to be withheld each year by the forces of religion and family. (I once decided that Christmas must mean even more to America's Jewish children than to its Christian ones.) I can remember, one Christmas Day, putting some of my own toys in a sack and attempting to distribute them to other children who lived in my Jersey City apartment house: If I couldn't get get presents, at least no one stopped me from giving them away, and in that fas.h.i.+on at least I could partic.i.p.ate in the joy of what, much later, I would come to think of as the ”gift exchange.” presents, at least no one stopped me from giving them away, and in that fas.h.i.+on at least I could partic.i.p.ate in the joy of what, much later, I would come to think of as the ”gift exchange.”

Much later came soon enough. By the late 1980s I had been a professional historian for some twenty years, and I was also regularly engaging in the nonacademic aspects of my trade. In 1988 I found myself involved in the development of a teacher-training program sponsored by Old Sturbridge Village, the living-history museum in central Ma.s.sachusetts. The theme we decided to focus on with the teachers (they taught grades 38) was holidays holidays. Remembering that paper I had written more than a decade earlier, I figured young children might be intrigued by seeing unfamiliar things in ”A Visit from St. Nicholas,” that most familiar of poems. (”Mama in her 'kerchief and I in my cap ...”? ”Away to the window ... and threw up the sash ...”? ”A miniature miniature sleigh”? ”Eight sleigh”? ”Eight tiny tiny reindeer”?) So I volunteered to take on Christmas myself. reindeer”?) So I volunteered to take on Christmas myself.

Preparing for my session, I made a series of startling discoveries that precipitated me into writing this book. To begin with, in an essay by the preeminent modern scholar of St. Nicholas, Charles W. Jones, I learned that ”Santa Claus,” far from being a creature of ancient Dutch folklore who made his way to the New World in the company of immigrants from Holland, was essentially devised by a group of non-Dutch New Yorkers in the early nineteenth century. (This discovery tied into another new notion I was acquainted with in a different context, that of ”invented traditions”-customs that are made up with the precise purpose of appearing old-fas.h.i.+oned: the idea, for example, that every Scottish clan had its own unique tartan plaid-which turns out to have been the product of a nineteenth-century effort to romanticize the valiant Scots.) Second, from reading a biographical sketch of Clement Clarke Moore, the author of ”A Visit from St. Nicholas,” I realized that the history of his best-loved poem was intertwined with the physical and political transformation of New York City during the early nineteenth century. Moore, it turned out, was a wealthy and politically conservative country gentleman who found himself at war with the encroaching forces of New York's commercial and residential development at the very time he was writing his undying verses about the night before Christmas.

It was my third discovery that helped make sense of that curious convergence. The Christmas season itself was undergoing a change, I learned. From the writings of several obscure nineteenth-century folklorists, along with contemporary historians Peter Burke and Natalie Zemon Davis and Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, I discovered that Christmas had once occasioned a kind of behavior that would be shocking today: It was a time of heavy drinking when the rules that governed people's public behavior were momentarily abandoned in favor of an unrestrained ”carnival,” a kind of December Mardi Gras. And I found that in the early nineteenth century, with the growth of America's cities, that kind of behavior had become even more threatening, combining carnival rowdiness with urban gang violence and Christmas-season riots. (My key guides here were essays by the great British historian E. P. Thompson and one of his American disciples, Susan G. Davis.) Given the changed historical circ.u.mstances of the nineteenth century, I began to understand the appeal of a new-styled Christmas that took place indoors, within the secure confines of the family circle.

Those discoveries became the basis of much of the first three chapters of this book. Before long, I found myself exploring other issues, issues that stemmed from what I was learning about the creation of a new-styled domestic Christmas: At what point, and in what fas.h.i.+on, did Christmas become commercialized? What happened to family relations.h.i.+ps on this holiday, when children became the center of attention and the recipients of lavish gifts? (After all, before our own day, weren't parents supposed to have avoided at all costs such gestures of intergenerational indulgence?) So I began to think about Christmas in the context of the larger history of consumer culture and child-rearing practices. Once again, I came up with some rather unexpected findings, findings that drove me to the conclusion that where Christmas was concerned, the problems of our own age go back a long way. The Christmas tree itself, I discovered, first entered American culture as a ritual strategy designed to cope with what was already being seen, even before the middle of the nineteenth century, as a holiday laden with cra.s.s materialism-a holiday that had produced a rising generation of greedy, spoiled children.

Those issues became the subjects of Chapters 4 Chapters 4 and and 5 5. The remaining two chapters, about Christmas charity and Christmas under slavery, respectively, resulted from two very different circ.u.mstances. I had intended, from an early point, to write about d.i.c.kens's novella A Christmas Carol A Christmas Carol, that other cla.s.sic text of the holiday season (along with Moore's poem). But when I reread d.i.c.kens's book (for the first time in many years), I was led to explore the intricate and not always proud history of face-to-face Christmas charity, especially as it related to impoverished children. As far as Christmas under slavery is concerned, it was my students at the College of William and Mary, where I taught during the 198990 academic year, who provoked my interest in that subject. The doc.u.mentary materials several of these students brought to me proved to be something of a revelation. I glimpsed a picture of Christmas under slavery that oddly resembled the pre-nineteenth-century carnival celebration I had discovered at the beginning of my work. As I struggled to achieve a deeper understanding of the slaves' holiday, I realized that with this topic my project had come full circle and it was time to stop.

One consequence of stopping there was that my book would essentially come to a halt with the turn of the twentieth century, well before the present day. But, I decided, this was exactly where I wished to stop. By the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, the Christmas celebration practiced by most Americans was one that would be quite familiar to their modern descendants. Between then and now, the modifications have been more of degree than of kind, more quant.i.tative than qualitative. The important changes-the revealing revealing changes-had all taken place. And those were the only changes I really cared about. changes-had all taken place. And those were the only changes I really cared about.

For the real subject of this book is not so much Christmas itself as what Christmas can tell us about broader historical questions. In writing about the commercialization of Christmas, for example, or the way Christmas made children the center of attention and affection, I have always tried to remember that those changes were expressions of the same forces that were transforming American culture as a whole. But it has been equally important for me also to see Christmas as one one of those very forces-as a cause as well as an effect, an active of those very forces-as a cause as well as an effect, an active instrument instrument of change as well as an indicator and a mirror of change. From that angle, Christmas itself played a role in bringing about both the consumer revolution and the ”domestic revolution” that created the modern family. of change as well as an indicator and a mirror of change. From that angle, Christmas itself played a role in bringing about both the consumer revolution and the ”domestic revolution” that created the modern family.

To raise such questions in this context is new. Until recently, the history of holidays has pretty much been written in what could be called an ”antiquarian” fas.h.i.+on, as a subject that existed in isolation, sealed off from matters of broad importance. It is largely the work of anthropologists that has provoked a new look, by showing that the holiday season has long been serious cultural business. Christmas rituals-whether in the form of the rowdy excesses of carnival or the more tender excesses that surround the Christmas tree-have long served to transfigure our ordinary behavior in an almost magical fas.h.i.+on, in ways that reveal something of what we would like to be, what we once were, or what we are becoming despite ourselves. It is because the celebration of Christmas always illuminates these underlying features of the social landscape-and sometimes the very ”fault lines” which threaten to divide it-that the content of the holiday, its timing, and even the matter of whether to celebrate it at all, have often been hotly contested. For this reason the book I have written const.i.tutes just a single large chapter in the history of the perennial battle for Christmas.

But if I am concerned with those larger issues, I remain fascinated by Christmas itself, as fascinated today as when I was a child in that Jersey City apartment house-perhaps even more so, in the light of what I have learned in writing this book. For if I am writing about Christmas with the larger goals of a social and cultural historian, I also aim to tell a good story in a new way. Whether I have succeeded or not, I know that I have at least (and at last) managed to make Christmas my own, and I hope I have done so without betraying either its enduring meanings or my own patrimony.

Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts June 1995

CHAPTER 1.

New England's War on Christmas THE P PURITAN W WAR ON M MISRULE.

IN NEW E ENGLAND, for the first two centuries of white settlement most people did not celebrate Christmas. In fact, the holiday was systematically suppressed by Puritans during the colonial period and largely ignored by their descendants. It was actually illegal illegal to celebrate Christmas in Ma.s.sachusetts between 1659 and 1681 (the fine was five s.h.i.+llings). Only in the middle of the nineteenth century did Christmas gain legal recognition as an official public holiday in New England. Writing near the end of that century, one New Englander, born in 1822, recalled going to school as a boy on Christmas Day, adding that even as late as 1850, in Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts, ”The courts were in session on that day, the markets were open, and I doubt if there had ever been a religious service on Christmas Day, unless it were Sunday, in that town.” As late as 1952, one writer recalled being told by his grandparents that New England mill workers risked losing their jobs if they arrived late at work on December 25, and that sometimes ”factory owners would change the starting hours on Christmas Day to five o'clock or some equally early hour in order that workers who wanted to attend a church service would have to forego, or be dismissed for being late for work.” to celebrate Christmas in Ma.s.sachusetts between 1659 and 1681 (the fine was five s.h.i.+llings). Only in the middle of the nineteenth century did Christmas gain legal recognition as an official public holiday in New England. Writing near the end of that century, one New Englander, born in 1822, recalled going to school as a boy on Christmas Day, adding that even as late as 1850, in Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts, ”The courts were in session on that day, the markets were open, and I doubt if there had ever been a religious service on Christmas Day, unless it were Sunday, in that town.” As late as 1952, one writer recalled being told by his grandparents that New England mill workers risked losing their jobs if they arrived late at work on December 25, and that sometimes ”factory owners would change the starting hours on Christmas Day to five o'clock or some equally early hour in order that workers who wanted to attend a church service would have to forego, or be dismissed for being late for work.”1 As we shall see, much of this is misleading or exaggerated. It is true that the New England states did not grant legal recognition to Christmas until the middle of the nineteenth century, but neither did most of the other states. There were were Christmas Day religious services in Worcester before 1850. And nineteenth-century factory owners had their own reasons for treating Christmas as a regular working day, reasons that had more to do with industrial capitalism than with Puritan theology. Still, the fact remains that those factory owners were indeed operating within a long New England tradition of opposition to Christmas. As early as 1621, just one year after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, their governor, William Bradford, found some of the colony's new residents trying to take the day off. Bradford ordered them right back to work. And in 1659 the Ma.s.sachusetts General Court did in fact declare the celebration of Christmas to be a criminal offense. Christmas Day religious services in Worcester before 1850. And nineteenth-century factory owners had their own reasons for treating Christmas as a regular working day, reasons that had more to do with industrial capitalism than with Puritan theology. Still, the fact remains that those factory owners were indeed operating within a long New England tradition of opposition to Christmas. As early as 1621, just one year after the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, their governor, William Bradford, found some of the colony's new residents trying to take the day off. Bradford ordered them right back to work. And in 1659 the Ma.s.sachusetts General Court did in fact declare the celebration of Christmas to be a criminal offense.

Why? What accounts for this strange hostility? The Puritans themselves had a plain reason for what they tried to do, and it happens to be a perfectly good one: There is no biblical or historical reason to place the birth of Jesus on December 25. True, the Gospel of Luke tells the familiar story of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth-how the shepherds were living with their flocks in the fields of Judea, and how, one night, an angel appeared to them and said, ”For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” But nowhere in this account is there any indication of the exact date, or even the general season, on which ”this day” fell. Puritans were fond of saying that if G.o.d had intended for the anniversary of the Nativity to be observed, He would surely have given some indication as to when that anniversary occurred. (They also argued that the weather in Judea during late December was simply too cold for shepherds to be living outdoors with their flocks.) It was only in the fourth century that the Church officially decided to observe Christmas on December 25. And this date was chosen not for religious reasons but simply because it happened to mark the approximate arrival of the winter solstice, an event that was celebrated long before the advent of Christianity. The Puritans were correct when they pointed out-and they pointed it out often-that Christmas was nothing but a pagan festival covered with a Christian veneer. The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston, for example, accurately observed in 1687 that the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so ”thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian [ones].”2 Most cultures (outside the tropics) have long marked with rituals involving light and greenery those dark weeks of December when the daylight wanes, all culminating in the winter solstice-the return of sun and light and life itself. Thus Chanukah, the ”feast of lights.” And thus the Yule log, the candles, the holly, the mistletoe, even the Christmas tree-pagan traditions all, with no direct connection to the birth of Jesus.3 But the Puritans had another reason for suppressing Christmas. The holiday they suppressed was not what we we probably mean when we think of a traditional Christmas. As we shall see, it involved behavior that most of us would find offensive and even shocking today-rowdy public displays of excessive eating and drinking, the mockery of established authority, aggressive begging (often involving the threat of doing harm), and even the invasion of wealthy homes. probably mean when we think of a traditional Christmas. As we shall see, it involved behavior that most of us would find offensive and even shocking today-rowdy public displays of excessive eating and drinking, the mockery of established authority, aggressive begging (often involving the threat of doing harm), and even the invasion of wealthy homes.

It may seem odd that Christmas was ever celebrated in such a fas.h.i.+on. But there was a good reason. In northern agricultural societies, December was the major ”punctuation mark” in the rhythmic cycle of work, a time when there was a minimum of work to be performed. The deep freeze of midwinter had not yet set in; the work of gathering the harvest and preparing it for winter was done; and there was plenty of newly fermented beer or wine as well as meat from freshly slaughtered animals-meat that had to be consumed before it spoiled. St. Nicholas, for example, is a.s.sociated with the Christmas season chiefly because his ”name-day,” December 6, coincided in many European countries with the end of the harvest and slaughter season.4 In our own day the Christmas season begins as early as the day after Thanksgiving for many people, and continues to January 1. But our culture is by no means the first in which ”Christmas” has meant an entire season season rather than a single day. In early modern Europe, the Christmas season might begin as early as late November and continue well past New Year's Day. (We still sing about ”the twelve days of Christmas,” and the British still celebrate ”Twelfth Night.”) In England the season might open as early as mid-December and last until the first Monday after January 6 (dubbed ”Plow Monday,” the return to work), or later. rather than a single day. In early modern Europe, the Christmas season might begin as early as late November and continue well past New Year's Day. (We still sing about ”the twelve days of Christmas,” and the British still celebrate ”Twelfth Night.”) In England the season might open as early as mid-December and last until the first Monday after January 6 (dubbed ”Plow Monday,” the return to work), or later.5 But it isn't very useful, finally, to try to pin down the exact boundaries of a ”real” Christmas in times past, or the precise rituals of some ”traditional” holiday season. Those boundaries and rituals changed over time and varied from one place to another. What is more useful, in any setting, is to look for the dynamics of an ongoing contest, a push and a pull-sometimes a real battle-between those who wished to expand the season and those who wished to contract and restrict it. (Nowadays the contest may pit merchants-with children as their allies-against those grown-ups who resent seeing Christmas displays that seem to go up earlier and earlier with each pa.s.sing year.) But it isn't very useful, finally, to try to pin down the exact boundaries of a ”real” Christmas in times past, or the precise rituals of some ”traditional” holiday season. Those boundaries and rituals changed over time and varied from one place to another. What is more useful, in any setting, is to look for the dynamics of an ongoing contest, a push and a pull-sometimes a real battle-between those who wished to expand the season and those who wished to contract and restrict it. (Nowadays the contest may pit merchants-with children as their allies-against those grown-ups who resent seeing Christmas displays that seem to go up earlier and earlier with each pa.s.sing year.) In early modern Europe, roughly the years between 1500 and 1800, the Christmas season was a time to let off steam-and to gorge. It is difficult today to understand what this seasonal feasting was like. For most of the readers of this book, good food is available in sufficient quant.i.ty year-round. But early modern Europe was above all a world of scarcity. Few people ate much good food at all, and for everyone the availability of fresh food was seasonally determined. Late summer and early fall would have been the time of fresh vegetables, but December was the season-the only season-for fresh meat. Animals could not be slaughtered until the weather was cold enough to ensure that the meat would not go bad; and any meat saved for the rest of the year would have to be preserved (and rendered less palatable) by salting. December was also the month when the year's supply of beer or wine was ready to drink. And for farmers, too, this period marked the start of a season of leisure. Little wonder, then, that this was a time of celebratory excess.

Excess took many forms. Reveling could easily become rowdiness; lubricated by alcohol, making merry could edge into making trouble. Christmas was a season of ”misrule,” a time when ordinary behavioral restraints could be violated with impunity. It was part of what one historian has called ”the world of carnival.” (The term carnival carnival is rooted in the Latin words is rooted in the Latin words carne carne and and vale vale-”farewell to flesh.” And ”flesh” refers here not only to meat but also to s.e.x-carnal as well as as well as carnivorous.) carnivorous.) Christmas ”misrule” meant that not only hunger but also anger and l.u.s.t could be expressed in public. (It was no accident, wrote Increase Mather, that ”December was called Christmas ”misrule” meant that not only hunger but also anger and l.u.s.t could be expressed in public. (It was no accident, wrote Increase Mather, that ”December was called Mensis Genialis Mensis Genialis, the Voluptuous Month.”6) Often people blackened their faces or disguised themselves as animals or cross-dressed, thus operating under a protective cloak of anonymity. The late-nineteenth-century historian John Ashton reports one episode from Lincolns.h.i.+re in 1637, in which the man selected by a crowd of revelers as ”Lord of Misrule” was publicly given a ”wife,” in a ceremony led by a man dressed as a minister (he read the entire marriage service from the Book of Common Prayer). Thereupon, as Ashton noted in Victorian language, ”the affair was carried to its utmost extent.”7 Episodes like these offered another reason, and a deeper one, for the Puritans' objection to Christmas. Here is how the Reverend Increase Mather of Boston put it in 1687: The generality of Christmas-keepers observe that festival after such a manner as is highly dishonourable to the name of Christ. How few are there comparatively that spend those holidays (as they are called) after an holy manner. But they are consumed in Compotations, in Interludes, in playing at Cards, in Revellings, in excess of Wine, in mad Mirth....

And Increase Mather's son Cotton put it this way in 1712: ”[T]he Feast of Christ's Nativity is spent in Reveling, Dicing, Carding, Masking, and in all Licentious Liberty ... by Mad Mirth, by long Eating, by hard Drinking, by lewd Gaming, by rude Reveling ...”8 Even an Anglican minister, a man who approved approved of ”keeping” Christmas (as it was then put), acknowledged the truth of the Puritans' charges. Writing in 1725, the Reverend Henry Bourne of Newcastle, England, called the way most people commonly behaved during the Christmas season ”a Scandal to Religion, and an encouraging of Wickedness.” Bourne admitted that for Englishmen of the lower orders the Christmas season was merely ”a pretense for Drunkenness, and Rioting, and Wantonness.” And he believed the season went on far too long. Most Englishmen, Bourne claimed, chose to celebrate it well past the official period of twelve days, right up to Candlemas Day on February 2. For that entire forty-day period, it was common ”for Men to rise early in the Morning, that they may follow strong Drink, and continue untill Night, till Wine inflame them.” of ”keeping” Christmas (as it was then put), acknowledged the truth of the Puritans' charges. Writing in 1725, the Reverend Henry Bourne of Newcastle, England, called the way most people commonly behaved during the Christmas season ”a Scandal to Religion, and an encouraging of Wickedness.” Bourne admitted that for Englishmen of the lower orders the Christmas season was merely ”a pretense for Drunkenness, and Rioting, and Wantonness.” And he believed the season went on far too long. Most Englishmen, Bourne claimed, chose to celebrate it well past the official period of twelve days, right up to Candlemas Day on February 2. For that entire forty-day period, it was common ”for Men to rise early in the Morning, that they may follow strong Drink, and continue untill Night, till Wine inflame them.”

Bourne singled out two particularly dangerous seasonal practices, mumming and (strange to modern readers) the singing of Christmas carols. Mumming usually involved ”a changing of Clothes between Men and Women; who when dressed in each other's habits, go from one Neighbor's house to another ... and make merry with them in disguise.” Bourne proposed that ”this Custom, which is still so Common among us at this Season of the Year, [be] laid aside; as it is the Occasion of much Uncleanness and Debauchery.” As for singing Christmas carols, that practice was a ”disgrace,” since it was ”generally done, in the midst of Rioting and Chambering, and Wantonness.”9 (”Chambering” was a common euphemism for fornication.) It was another Anglican cleric, the sixteenth-century bishop Hugh Latimer, who put the matter most succinctly: ”Men dishonour Christ more in the twelve days of Christmas, than in all the twelve months besides.” (”Chambering” was a common euphemism for fornication.) It was another Anglican cleric, the sixteenth-century bishop Hugh Latimer, who put the matter most succinctly: ”Men dishonour Christ more in the twelve days of Christmas, than in all the twelve months besides.”

The Puritans knew what subsequent generations would forget: that when the Church, more than a millennium earlier, had placed Christmas Day in late December, the decision was part of what amounted to a compromise, and a compromise for which the Church paid a high price. Late-December festivities were deeply rooted in popular culture, both in observance of the winter solstice and in celebration of the one brief period of leisure and plenty in the agricultural year. In return for ensuring ma.s.sive observance of the anniversary of the Saviors birth by a.s.signing it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been. From the beginning, the Church's hold over Christmas was (and remains still) rather tenuous. There were always people for whom Christmas was a time of pious devotion rather than carnival, but such people were always in the minority. It may not be going too far to say that Christmas has always been an extremely difficult holiday to Christianize Christianize. Little wonder that the Puritans were willing to save themselves the trouble.

THE P PURITANS understood another thing, too: Much of the seasonal excess that took place at Christmas was not merely chaotic ”disorder” but behavior that took a profoundly ritualized form. Most fundamentally, Christmas was an occasion when the social hierarchy itself was symbolically turned upside down, in a gesture that inverted designated roles of gender, age, and cla.s.s. During the Christmas season those near the bottom of the social order acted high and mighty. Men might dress like women, and women might dress (and act) like men. Young people might imitate and mock their elders (for example, a boy might be chosen ”bishop” and take on for a brief time some of the authority of a real bishop). A peasant or an apprentice might become ”Lord of Misrule” and mimic the authority of a real ”gentleman.” understood another thing, too: Much of the seasonal excess that took place at Christmas was not merely chaotic ”disorder” but behavior that took a profoundly ritualized form. Most fundamentally, Christmas was an occasion when the social hierarchy itself was symbolically turned upside down, in a gesture that inverted designated roles of gender, age, and cla.s.s. During the Christmas season those near the bottom of the social order acted high and mighty. Men might dress like women, and women might dress (and act) like men. Young people might imitate and mock their elders (for example, a boy might be chosen ”bishop” and take on for a brief time some of the authority of a real bishop). A peasant or an apprentice might become ”Lord of Misrule” and mimic the authority of a real ”gentleman.”10 Increase Mather explained with an anthropologist's clarity what he believed to be the origins of the practice: ”In the Saturnalian Days, Masters did wait upon their Servants.... The Gentiles called Saturns time the Golden Age, because in it there was no servitude, in Commemoration whereof on his Festival, Servants must be Masters.” This practice, like so many others, was simply picked up and transposed to Christmas, where those who were low in station became ” Increase Mather explained with an anthropologist's clarity what he believed to be the origins of the practice: ”In the Saturnalian Days, Masters did wait upon their Servants.... The Gentiles called Saturns time the Golden Age, because in it there was no servitude, in Commemoration whereof on his Festival, Servants must be Masters.” This practice, like so many others, was simply picked up and transposed to Christmas, where those who were low in station became ”Masters of Misrule.”11 To this day, in the British army, on December 25 officers are obliged to wait upon enlisted men at meals. To this day, in the British army, on December 25 officers are obliged to wait upon enlisted men at meals.*

The most common ritual of social inversion during the Christmas season involved something that is a.s.sociated with Christmas in our own day-we would call it charity. Prosperous and powerful people were expected to offer the fruits of their harvest bounty to their poorer neighbors and dependents. A Frenchman traveling in late-seventeenth-century England noted that ”they are not so much presents from friend to friend, or from equal to equal ..., as from superior to inferior.”12 That may sound familiar enough. But the modern notion of charity does not really convey a picture of how this transaction worked. For it was usually the poor themselves who initiated the exchange, and it was enacted face-to-face, in rituals that would strike many of us today as an intolerable invasion of privacy. That may sound familiar enough. But the modern notion of charity does not really convey a picture of how this transaction worked. For it was usually the poor themselves who initiated the exchange, and it was enacted face-to-face, in rituals that would strike many of us today as an intolerable invasion of privacy.