VOL. LXX.

No. CCCCXV.

It may be that the belief in Shake

did "in part believe," that the cock crows all night long on the eve of Christmas, had its origin in the crowing of the cock in that gray dawn when Peter denied his Lord. The crowing was a sign that gracious influences prevailed, with which the bird was in sympathy. The ghost in Hamlet "faded on the crowing of the cock," but we are led to think that it was owing to its connection with this holy festival that the "bird of dawning" had its charm against evil.

Some matter-of-fact writers say that the cock is deceived by the abundant lights of the festival, for Christmas is sometimes called in the Latin Church the Feast of Lights, so many candles are used. In Belgium, from Christmas to Epiphany the children go about carrying paper stars with a lighted candle in the centre, commemorating the appearance of the star in Bethlehem. Whether it is the artificial light or sympathy with the season that keeps the cocks awake all night, their crowing at such unseasonable hours was sometimes regarded as an unfavorable omen. The story is told in a country parish in England of a poor woman in a dangerous illness, who was greatly depressed by this overture of Chanticleer to the dawn, believing that it was a sign of death. But when the well-known passage from Hamlet was read to her, and she was told that it was written by the cleverest man in England, she brightened up, and began to recover immediately. It was the child-like faith of the Middle Ages that all created things were in sympathy with the Nativity; the cocks crew, the bees in their hives made a more melodious noise, and the cattle in their stalls went down on their knees. In the western part of Devonshire, at twelve o'clock at night on Christmas-eve, the oxen in their

as in an attitude of devotion, and making "a cruel moan like Christian creatures." And it was remarked as singular that after the alteration of the old style to the new they continued to do this only on the eve of the old Christmas-day, which was proof of the faithfulness of the ox and his disregard of style.

It was indeed a gracious time," and as we read of the revels and ceremonies and fond foolish beliefs of Christmas Past, we might regret what we have lost in this tamer and less picturesque age, if we did not know that never before in history was Christmas kept so truly and heartily in the spirit of the day as it is now. We have dropped a good many rude and some pretty customs, but we have gained a broadening spirit of almost universal charity, a feeling of real brotherhood, that is perhaps none the less real that it is held in check a good deal during the rest of the year.

In the old time the Christmas season properly began on the 16th of December (described in the Prayer-book calendar as O Sapientia), and ended January 6, with Twelfth-night. When the learned Dr. Parr was asked what day in December it was proper to begin eating mince-pie, he said, “Begin on O Sapientia; but please to say Christmas pie, not mince-pie-mincepie is Puritanical." If there is any merit in eating mince-pie, as this association of it with the holy season seems to imply, then we have a certain test of the piety of the Pilgrims to New England, for they and their descendants did not hesitate to eat mince-pie any day in the year they could get it, and had so much grace that they could take it with impunity for breakfast on a summer morning.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this whole season was given up to revels and jollity, in which eating and drinking

VOL. LXX.-No. 415.-1

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 black-jacks 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 round the marketplace 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 maid-servant to ask the man for 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 mincedpie, the plum-porridge, turkeys, geese, and plum-puddings, were all brought upon the board at once, and every one 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 an

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 torch-light, 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