Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan | Page 7

aspect of the history of Christianity; it is certainly
shown in an absorbingly interesting way in the development of the
Christian feast of the Nativity. The conflict is keen at first; the Church
authorities fight tooth and nail against these relics of heathenism, these
devilish rites; but mankind's instinctive paganism is insuppressible, the
practices continue as ritual, though losing much of their meaning, and
the Church, weary of denouncing, comes to wink at them, while the
pagan joy in earthly life begins to colour her own festival.
The Church's Christmas, as the Middle Ages pass on, becomes
increasingly "merry"--warm and homely, suited to the instincts of
ordinary humanity, filled with a joy that is of this earth, and not only a
mystical rapture at a transcendental Redemption. The Incarnate God

becomes a real child to be fondled and rocked, a child who is the
loveliest of infants, whose birthday is the supreme type of all human
birthdays, and may be kept with feasting and dance and song. Such is
the Christmas of popular tradition, the Nativity as it is reflected in the
carols, the cradle-rocking, the mystery plays of the later Middle Ages.
This |27| Christmas, which still lingers, though maimed, in some
Catholic regions, is strongly life-affirming; the value and delight of
earthly, material things is keenly felt; sometimes, even, it passes into
coarseness and riot. Yet a certain mysticism usually penetrates it, with
hints that this dear life, this fair world, are not all, for the soul has
immortal longings in her. Nearly always there is the spirit of reverence,
of bowing down before the Infant God, a visitor from the supernatural
world, though bone of man's bone, flesh of his flesh. Heaven and earth
have met together; the rough stable is become the palace of the Great
King.
This we might well call the "Catholic" Christmas, the Christmas of the
age when the Church most nearly answered to the needs of the whole
man, spiritual and sensuous. The Reformation in England and Germany
did not totally destroy it; in England the carol-singers kept up for a
while the old spirit; in Lutheran Germany a highly coloured and
surprisingly sensuous celebration of the Nativity lingered on into the
eighteenth century. In the countries that remained Roman Catholic
much of the old Christmas continued, though the spirit of the
Counter-Reformation, faced by the challenge of Protestantism, made
for greater "respectability," and often robbed the Catholic Christmas of
its humour, its homeliness, its truly popular stamp, substituting
pretentiousness for simplicity, sugary sentiment for naïve and genuine
poetry.
Apart from the transformation of the Church's Christmas from
something austere and metaphysical into something joyous and human,
warm and kindly, we shall note in our Second Part the survival of much
that is purely pagan, continuing alongside of the celebration of the
Nativity, and often little touched by its influence. But first we must
consider the side of the festival suggested by the English and French
names: Christmas will stand for the liturgical rites commemorating the

wonder of the Incarnation--God in man made manifest--Noël or "the
Birthday," for the ways in which men have striven to realize the human
aspect of the great Coming.
How can we reach the inner meaning of the Nativity feast, its
significance for the faithful? Better, perhaps, by the way of |28| poetry
than by the way of ritual, for it is poetry that reveals the emotions at the
back of the outward observances, and we shall understand these better
when the singers of Christmas have laid bare to us their hearts. We may
therefore first give attention to the Christmas poetry of sundry ages and
peoples, and then go on to consider the liturgical and popular ritual in
which the Church has striven to express her joy at the Redeemer's birth.
Ceremonial, of course, has always mimetic tendencies, and in a further
chapter we shall see how these issued in genuine drama; how, in the
miracle plays, the Christmas story was represented by the forms and
voices of living men.
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Part I--The Christian Feast

CHAPTER II
CHRISTMAS POETRY (I)[8]{1}
Ancient Latin Hymns, their Dogmatic, Theological
Character--Humanizing Influence of Franciscanism--Jacopone da
Todi's Vernacular Verse--German Catholic Poetry--Mediaeval English
Carols.
[Illustration:

MADONNA ENTHRONED WITH SAINTS AND ANGELS.
PESELLINO
(Empoli Gallery)]
Christmas, as we have seen, had its beginning at the middle of the
fourth century in Rome. The new feast was not long in finding a
hymn-writer to embody in immortal Latin the emotions called forth by
the memory of the Nativity. "Veni, redemptor gentium" is one of the
earliest of Latin hymns--one of the few that have come down to us from
the father of Church song, Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan (d. 397).
Great as theologian and statesman, Ambrose was great also as a poet