Saturnalia
By ROSE MACAULAY DI( what steps, we sometimes ask, did ED Christmas become the major offensive into which it has, anyhow in England, now developed? It makes a powerful assault also in Germany (west), America (north), the Scandinavian countries and Holland. And, increasingly, it gathers force, spread by Nordic tourism, in those European countries which, some years ago, gave it little secular attention, but confined it to chtirches, reserving their present-giving and junketing for New Year's Day or Twelfth Day, which has a much longer ancestry as a feast than December 25. When I was a child, many years ago, in a then still almost medieval Italian town, no one but we decorated houses with holly or mistletoe, and ours was the only Christmas tree; we invited our neighbours to see it, and they were overwhelmed with delighted amaze at the candled tree with its angels and coloured glass ornaments. `Che bel costume!' they cried; and they liked too the holly over the pictures, but never, I think, adopted either custom themselves. Nor did we ever see Christmas mummers, and eating and drinking was in moderation, and Christmas presents were not exchanged, nor cards, and no one sang carols in the streets. The twelve days of Christmas passed quietly, and even Twelfth Day was not uproarious. The churches were not decorated either, but they all had a presepio, and the figures for these were sold everywhere; we assembled our own, adding sheep, cows, shepherds, magi, as we could afford them, and once we got a very fine camel. We felt pity for the Italian children, because they had no Christthas stockings, no presents, no tree. We came to regard Christmas as an English feast, which foreigners did not understand, and when we went to live in England and saw the Christmas junketings, the carolling, the carousings, the mum- mers coming round, the churches gay with the ivy and the holly, the Twelfth Night revels, we felt that we had come into our national heritage, disgusting though the weather was.
But we were young. We did not know the grim toil that our saturnalia even then involved for our elders. Nor could we guess that it would swell with the years until it became the monstrous expenditure of time, money, strength, health and temper that now it is. Chaos in the streets, mad- ness in the shops, hard labour in the house, expen- sive toys ill-afforded, expensive food gorged, while in desolate camps far off those driven from their homes shiver and starve. A good time is not had by all, cannot, for lack of means, be had by most. But our rich saturnalia romps along; the churches are crowded for midnight Mass; de luxe Cribs glitter with candles and stars, and the magi ride in with their expensive gifts, while the incense-swinging procession winds round the church, and we sing 'Adeste Pickles,' and the herald angels sing improbably of peace on earth; how in the world did they think of that?
We go home from church to bed, and 'wake to more presents, more fun. By and large, the wrong people get the presents and the fun, the people who had plenty of presents and fun before. Saturnalia is in full swing. We took it from the Romans, and, in England, from the ancient people of, the Angli, says Bede, and turned it into a Christian feast on the same date. It goes very deep, it is native to us, this mid-winter saturnalia which we have half-heartedly tried to christianise. Origen strongly deprecated this keeping of Christ's birthday, 'as if he were a King Pharaoh'; several of the more puritan Fathers of the Church have agreed with him. Had St. Paul known what was to come, doubtless he would have written letters against it in no uncertain terms. Puritans much later than the Fathers have rejected it, 'speaking very spiteful things of our Lord's Nativity,' as they dragged Anglicans from church to jail on Christmas morning. The Scotch Kirk, led by John Knox, declared itself definitely against Christmas. It was complained of as a pagan festival; also it contained that un- seemly word, mass. Neither reason rings true, both were self-deceptive. Had the Kirk objected to pagan festivals, it would not have taken up the weekly day of the sun with such fanatical fervour, such near-idolatry, exalting it high above any of the Christian feasts and fasts. If asked why, the Elders would reply that Sunday was the Lord's Day, which seems to take us back to the natalis invicti souls of their Mithraic ancestors. They supposed it to remind them of the Jewish Saturday, of -which they had read with pleasure in the Bible. But really the Sun God reigned, deeply below reason and consciousness, in their atavistic souls; obscured from them by chill grey Scottish murk, he could not be seen by the eye, but they paid him this hebdomadal honour. So they had little honour to spare for the Christian feasts, despising Good Friday and Easter, Epiphany and Christmas, with impartial distaste, but Christmas the most, because of its merry-making and sin. They could not prevent either merry-making or sin all the year round, for the Scotch are naturally boisterous and have wills of their own; they broke out at Hogmanay, and Hallowe'en, and in long summer junketings; but they might not have the Christmas carnival, or maypoles. They might not even go to church on Christmas Day. The Kirk's brief reign in the 1640s over the pleasure-loving and worldly English was embittering for both.
But the English now have their revenge, for it is said that Christmas has been creeping into the Knox stronghold, and that not only Piskies but Presbies are beginning to set up their trees there. It is getting everywhere, this German tree; it is now to be encountered all over Europe: in France, Italy, even in Portugal and Spain, those strong- holds of conservative tradition. Before long these lands may burst out into Christmas mumming, boars' heads, yule logs, plum puddings ablaze. But Polish children carry boughs of fir, lighted, through the dark streets, and in Provence, Naples and Portugal the stables and the Holy Family and the shepherds and peasants with their animals stand life-size on their cardboard mountains, and processions wind chanting through the towns.
Meanwhile in England, children, asked what event Christmas is about, are not always sure; their Christmas comics have omitted to tell them, and children, it is said, grow increasingly dim- witted. But they know that the hero of Christmas is Santa Klaus, who, in his snow-flecked scarlet gown, hears their whispered prayers.
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