Why The Devil Loves Christmas

In 1662, Rebecca Greensmith of Hartford, Connecticut was arrested and charged with witchcraft. She confessed to meeting the Devil, but she denied having signed a contract with him. Well, at least she hadn't signed one at the time of her arrest. Rebecca and the Devil were waiting for a special day to sign it: Christmas.

The Reverend John Whiting of Hartford wrote the following in a letter:

But that the devil told her, that at Christmas they would have a merry meeting, and then the covenant should be drawn and subscribed. ... Mr. Stone (being then in court) with much weight and earnestness laid forth the exceeding heinousness and hazard of that dreadful sin, and therewith solemnly took notice (upon the occasion given) of the devil's loving Christmas. (quoted in David Hall's Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New England.)

That sounds a little strange to modern readers. Why would the Devil love Christmas? Isn't it a holiday about hope, love and charity?

Merry Christmas?

Four-hundred years ago, Christmas was a very different holiday than it is today. It wasn't focused on family, gift-giving, and children. Instead, it was characterized by heavy drinking and public rituals that inverted the social order. Europe and its colonies were agricultural societies then, and food and alcohol were most plentiful during the late autumn and early winter. Crops had been harvested, herd animals slaughtered, and beer brewed. There was no more farm-work to be done.

In short, it was a great time to have a huge party. Wealthy people would feast themselves and their friends at home. People from the lower social classes, usually groups of young men, roamed around at night in disguise. The young men (called mummers) would usually target the homes of the wealthy, where they would perform a skit or song in return for food or beer. This is the origin of the wandering Christmas carolers so often portrayed in Christmas stories or movies. If they were denied entry or not given gifts for their performance, the mummers would retaliate with violence or by vandalizing property.

 

Some hints of this older-style Christmas can still be heard in the lyrics of Christmas carols. For example, "The  Gloucestershire Wassail" describes men threatening a butler to give them good strong beer and demanding entry to a wealthy person's home:

Come butler, come fill us a bowl of the best
Then we hope that your soul in heaven may rest
But if you do draw us a bowl of the small
Then down shall go butler, bowl and all. 

Be here any maids? I suppose here be some;
Sure they will not let young men stand on the cold stone!
Sing hey O, maids! come trole back the pin,
And the fairest maid in the house let us all in.

The lyrics of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" describe something similar:

Oh, bring us a figgy pudding;
Oh, bring us a figgy pudding;
Oh, bring us a figgy pudding and a cup of good cheer
We won't go until we get some;
We won't go until we get some;
We won't go until we get some, so bring some out here

Christmas was raucous, drunken, socially disruptive, and occasionally violent. The Puritans valued order, sobriety, and hard work. They didn't want anything to do with Christmas.

During their brief tenure ruling old England the Puritans tried to suppress Christmas celebrations. The Puritans who colonized New England did the same. It was even illegal to celebrate Christmas in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681. Anyone found doing so could be fined five shillings.

Puritan ministers in New England wrote sermons against Christmas. The Reverend Increase Mather wrote the following, equating Christmas with pagan deities and Satan:

The Feast of Christ's nativity is attended with such profaneness, as that it deserve the name of Saturn's Mass, or of Bacchus his Mass, or if you will, the Devil's Mass, rather than have the holiday name of Christ put upon it. (A Testimony Against Several Prophane and Superstitious Customs, Now Practiced by Some in New-England, 1687).

Mather mentions Saturn for a very specific reason. The Bible doesn't provide a date for Christ's birth, and the early Christian church fathers decided to place it on December 25 to coincide with pagan Roman winter holidays like Saturnalia, which venerated the harvest god Saturn. This compromise between Christianity and paganism was another argument the Puritans used for hating Christmas.

So there you have it. That's why the Puritans thought the Devil loved Christmas. Their efforts to suppress Christmas were modestly successful. Christmas wasn't widely celebrated in New England until the mid-nineteenth century. Christmas is now the biggest holiday in the United States. The Puritans would have blamed Satan, but I think it's just because people like to have fun.

*****

My favorite source for information about Puritans and Christmas is Stephen Nissenbaums's fantastic book The Battle for Christmas. It's great for anyone who wants to really understand the weird history of Christmas in America.

Pot Sasquatch, The Boston Yeti, and The Return of The Wildman

Before I delve into this week's topic, I wanted to let you know I will be speaking at Boskone, New England's longest running science fiction and fantasy convention. Boskone 54 takes place February 17 - 19 at the Westin Boston Waterfront at 245 Summer Street. On Saturday afternoon I'll be moderating a panel titled "New England: The Legend, The Lore, The Mystery," and on Sunday at noon I'll be participating in a panel on how fiction writers use mythology in their work. If you are attending Boskone be sure to say hello! I am sure it will be a great convention.

Now, onto this week's topic. The groundhog saw his shadow, predicting six more weeks of winter, and that certainly seems to be the case in New England. We just had a blizzard last week, and now another storm AND a blizzard are on track for today and tomorrow. Nature's fury has been unleashed, and along with ice and snow our region has been visited by some mysterious creatures.

On February 9, Channel 22 meteorologist Janille Paglie was reporting from Springfield about that day's blizzard when she and her crew noticed something odd behind her. Someone dressed in a Sasquatch costume covered in pot leaves was cavorting around in the snow. At first the "creature" played some hide and seek, and then frolicked openly in the street. Channel 22 dubbed it Pot Sasquatch, and it became an internet sensation.

Pot Sasquatch reminded me of the Boston Yeti, who roamed the deserted streets of Boston during the Snowmageddon blizzards of 2015. Like Pot Sasquatch, Boston Yeti was clearly a human in a cryptid costume who appeared during inclement winter weather. The yeti was eventually revealed to be Someville resident John Campopiano, who said in an interview with The Improper Bostonian that he was always fascinated with UFOs and Bigfoot as a child. The yeti outfit was an old Halloween costume he owned which he felt compelled to don during the 2015 snowstorms. There was very little snow here in 2016, but the Boston yeti did emerge from hibernation for the February 9 blizzard.

OK, so what's going on here? Why did Massachusetts see not one but two cryptid impersonators playing in the same blizzard? Some photos might help explain the situation a little bit.

Boston Yeti (Somerville, Massachusetts)

Pot Sasquatch (Springfield, Massachusetts)

Krampus (Ischgl, Austria)

European winter mummer, photo by Charles Freger

European winter mummer, photo by Charles Freger

Many regions of Europe have traditions of people in monstrous costumes parading at winter. Krampus is probably the one best known in the United States, but there are other similar traditions across Europe. The costumed celebrants in these processions often represent the cold dark forces of winter, although sometimes they instead represent the powers of spring that ultimately banish winter for another year. These mythical creatures are frightening, magical, and sometimes playful, and they are an important part of local seasonal celebrations.

We don't have those traditions in the United States. Some folklore-minded Americans are trying to create Krampus processions here in the States, but I am not sure if it will ever catch one. Most Americans associate spooky costumes with Halloween, not the winter. But when I see Pot Sasquatch and Boston Yeti, I can't help but wonder if our own indigenous version of these traditions might be forming spontaneously. Krampus needs a lot of explanation, but most Americans know what Sasquatch and the Yeti are.

Even if Sasquatch processions don't become a tradition, I think Pot Sasquatch and Boston Yeti show that some people yearn to dress up like monsters in the winter, and that other people repond to them. It just feels right somehow. Maybe the winter makes us wish we could sprout fur and run wild.

Humans have been dressing up as monsters for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks paraded around in satyr costumes, Medieval Europeans dressed like leaf-covered wildmen, and Austrians still disguise themselves as Krampus. Now someone in Springfield has dressed like Pot Sasquatch. He may just seem like a weirdo looking for attention, but he's really the latest incarnation of an ancient time-honored tradition.

Trick Or Treat For Turkey? Masked Beggars At Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is full of traditions. Eating turkey, baking pies, watching football, putting on a costume and begging for food from neighbors...

What's that? You don't dress up and beg for food? Well, I suppose it's not a tradition anymore, but in the past it was common for children to dress up on Thanksgiving and go door to door, asking their neighbors for food.

Records of it can be found in the early 19th century, when the destitute would ask for food from their wealthier neighbors. Here is an account from Salem in the 1820s or 1830s:

For two days before Thanksgiving Day our back door was besieged by pensioners, who all came with the same whining request, "Please give me something for Thanksgiving." My mother always had ready a store of rice, flour, Indian meal and apples, which were dispensed to the crowd, while the more favored family retainers were given in addition tea, sugar, raisins, and oftentimes a pair of chickens or a turkey. Each one brought a stout cotton pillow case into which the measure of rice would be poured, and then a strong twine tied tightly round the outside to separate it from the flour, which came next, and so on to the extreme capacity of the pillow case (Caroline King Howard, When I Lived In Salem, 1822 - 1866, p.110).

The people doing the begging in this case were not children, but actual adults who either needed the food or worked for the King family and collected the food almost as a bonus. While her mother seems to have taken her role seriously, Caroline King Howard's use of the word "whining" doesn't sound very charitable. Some local children even thought it was funny to dress like they were poor and go begging too:

It used to be a great joke for the young people of those days to dress up in shabby old clothes, and on the night before Thanksgiving to go around as beggars, imposing upon their friends, and I remember the glee with which my friend Lucy used to describe her working upon her mother's sympathy to such a degree, by her eloquent and lifelike personation of a poor widow with two small children to support, that her pillow case was overbrimmed with good things... (Howard, When I Lived In Salem, 1822 - 1866, p.111)

A similar account is found in George Lunt's 1873 book Old New England Traits:

It was the practice of some of this class to knock at the doors of those thought to be better off, on the evening before, begging "something for Thanksgiving"; and, by way of a joke, the children of comfortable neighbors and friends would often array themselves in cast-off bizarre habiliments, and come in bands of three or four to the houses of those
whom they knew, preferring the same request... It was a queer fancy, thus to simulate poverty... (pp. 106 - 107)

So what's going on here? The answer partly lies in the agricultural cycle of Northern Europe and England, where the first New England colonists came from. In pre-modern Northern Europe, late fall and early winter was the time when there was the most food available. The crops would have been harvested, the beer brewed, and the animals slaughtered before winter. It was often the only time of year when fresh meat was available. However, this season's rich bounty was not evenly distributed. The wealthy usually had more than they could use, while their poor neighbors often didn't have enough.

Photo: Library of Congress

The tradition of seasonal begging, sometimes called mumming or masking, arose as a way to address this disparity. The poor, often wearing masks or outrageous costumes, would travel from house to house, asking for food and alcohol. Sometimes they would sing a song or perform a short play in return. This is where the tradition of Christmas caroling comes from. Although many carols are now religiously themed, some of the older carols are explicitly about begging for food. For example, these lyrics from "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" are pretty blunt:

Now bring us some figgy pudding

Now bring us some figgy pudding

Now bring us some figgy pudding

And a cup of good cheer

We won't go until we get some

We won't go until we get some

We won't go until we get some

So bring it right here

I'm listening to a version of this song right now, and it's being sung by a choir of charming children. It should really be sung by a group of drunken hungry peasants in a vaguely threatening manner.

But perhaps the children's choir is not totally inappropriate. According to Stephen Nissenbaum's excellent book The Battle for Christmas, children and teens often joined their poor neighbors in their masked begging. They might not have needed the food as much, but like the poor they were very low in the social hierarchy. So maybe a choir of drunk, threatening children would be the most authentic?

Photo: Library of Congress

The Puritans who colonized New England did not condone the celebration of Christmas, claiming there was nothing in the Bible to support the raucous parties and mumming found in England and Europe. In the New World, they wanted a society free from the drunken disorder associated with Christmas and banned its observance. Instead they instituted religious holidays like Thanksgiving, where people were supposed to reflect on the good things God had given them.

Give people an inch and they'll take a mile, the old aphorism says, and that's what happened with Thanksgiving. By the early 19th century, Thanksgiving celebrations lasted for several days and involved feasting, dances, games and heavy drinking. Thanksgiving was never as raucous as the old European Christmas celebrations, but it was the closest thing New England had.

Thanksgiving is now always held on the fourth Thursday of November, but that's a recent innovation. In the past it was sometimes celebrated as late as December. Thanksgiving was in many ways the Puritan replacement for Christmas, and the masked begging associated with a traditional English Christmas became attached to Thanksgiving instead.

Interestingly, in some places this tradition continued well into the 20th century, particularly among children. I don't think New England was one of them, and the photos used in this post are mostly from New York City, where children dressed up and begged until the 1950s. Interestingly, they often dressed like poor beggars, a practice so common that children were often organized into "Ragamuffin Parades." Pretending to be poor as a joke is not something that's approved of today, so it all seems kind of weird and maybe a little cruel to me. The tradition seemed to finally die when Halloween trick-or-treating became widespread.

I think this is a fascinating topic and I have lot of questions. How widespread was this practice in New England? The two examples I found are both from Massachusetts, and in his book Thanksgiving: The Biography of An American Holiday, historian James Baker claims it was only found on the North Shore. But if that's the case, how did the same practice end up in New York City?

I think there's a lot more that could be written about we ended up with the traditions that we have today. If by chance a stranger in a creepy mask knocks on your door this Thanksgiving, make sure you give them something nice to eat!