Tag: Christmas

  • Christmas under the puritans

    Christmas under the puritans

    Dr Fiona McCall is a Senior Lecturer in early modern history, teaching a third-year module on the British Civil Wars, the first-year Beliefs, Communities and Conflicts module and a second year option, Underworlds. Her research investigates traditionalist resistance to puritan values in English parish churches during the 1640s and 1650s, and in this post, updated with further research from an earlier one, she discusses how Christmas was banned during this period.

    Between Two Fires, Francis Davis Millet (1846–1912), Tate shows puritans around a table.
    Between Two Fires, Francis Davis Millet (1846–1912), Tate

    Christmas was officially banned during the late 1640s and 1650s along with the rest of the church calendar.  But the interdict was widely ignored.  Trawling through various counties’ quarter sessions depositions for the period, I have found frequent references to Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, and various saints days, the witnesses (even those testifying against suspected royalists) usually oblivious to the fact that these festivals are no longer supposed to be celebrated.  At Bristol the Mayoral court was even postponed from December to January ‘because the feast of Christmas comes betweene’.[1]  Some were clearly mindful that Christmas was a sensitive issue: a 1651 Cheshire case refers to the ‘tyme Commonly called Christmas’, while a 1655 Northern Circuit assize deposition refers to the twelfth day after Christmas ‘so commonly Called’ [2]   The term ‘Christide’ was frequently preferred instead, but not by everyone: one Devonshire witness timed the events he reported to ‘the Feast of the birth of our Lord god last past’. [3]

    Josiah King, The Examination and Tryall of Old Father Christmas (1658)

    Churches were supposed to be closed on Christmas Day and shops open.  That was the theory, anyway. At Norwich in 1647, the Mayor of Norwich apparently gave notice that Christmas Day was to be observed, the market kept the day before instead, and even invited the ejected Bishop of Norwich, Joseph Hall, to preach in the Cathedral. [4]  The authorities in Canterbury attempted a harder line.  On the 22 December 1647, the town crier there proclaimed that a market was to be kept on Christmas day.  This ‘occasioned great discontent among the people’ causing them to ‘rise in a rebellious way’, throwing shopkeepers’ ware ‘up and down’ until they shut up shop, and knocking down the mayor when he attempted to quell the ‘tumult’ with a cudgel.  [5] ‘That which we so much desired that day was but a Sermon’, protested Canterbury Prebendary Edward Aldey, ‘which any other day of the weeke was tollerable by the orders and practise of the two Houses and all their adherents, but that day (because it was Christ’s birth day).  [6] Elsewhere in Kent, parishioners crowded round the puritan minister Richard Culmer’s reading desk in protest at the lack of a Christmas day service, and assaulted him in the churchyard. [7] Gloucestershire minister Mr Tray, unpopular on account of his opposition to the festival, became the target of malicious rumours.  Stories were spread that he had sabotaged the Christmas pies of his parishioners, baking in the communal oven, by sending his own unconventional confection to be baked alongside them.  Lines of verse were placed under Tray’s cushion in the pulpit:

    Parson tray, on Christmas Day

    To help on reformation

    Instead of the word did bake a t[urd]

    And poyson’d his congregation  [8]

     

    (more…)

  • Have yourself a puritan Christmas

    Have yourself a puritan Christmas

    Dr Fiona McCall is a lecturer in early modern history, teaching units on the British Civil Wars, and Crime, Sin and Punishment in early modern Britain, amongst others. Her current research project investigates traditionalist resistance to puritan values in English parish churches during the 1640s and 1650s, and in this blog she discusses how Christmas was banned during this period.

    Christmas was officially banned during the late 1640s and 1650s along with the rest of the church calendar.  But the interdict was widely ignored.  Trawling through various counties’ quarter sessions depositions for the period, I have found frequent references to Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, and various saints days, the witnesses (even those testifying against suspected royalists) usually oblivious to the fact that these festivals are no longer supposed to be celebrated.  At Bristol the Mayoral court was even postponed from December to January ‘because the feast of Christmas comes betweene’.[1]  Some were clearly mindful that Christmas was a sensitive issue: a 1651 Cheshire case refers to the ‘tyme Commonly called Christmas’, while a 1655 Northern Circuit assize deposition refers to the twelfth day after Christmas ‘so commonly Called’ [2]   The term ‘Christide’ was frequently preferred instead, but not by everyone: one Devonshire witness timed the events he reported to ‘the Feast of the birth of our Lord god last past’. [3]

    Josiah King, The Examination and Tryall of Old Father Christmas (1658)

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Churches were supposed to be closed on Christmas Day and shops open.  That was the theory, anyway. At Norwich in 1647, the Mayor of Norwich apparently gave notice that Christmas Day was to be observed, the market kept the day before instead, and even invited the ejected Bishop of Norwich, Joseph Hall, to preach in the Cathedral. [4]  The authorities in Canterbury attempted a harder line.  On the 22 December 1647, the town crier there proclaimed that a market was to be kept on Christmas day.  This ‘occasioned great discontent among the people’ causing them to ‘rise in a rebellious way’, throwing shopkeepers’ ware ‘up and down’ until they shut up shop, and knocking down the mayor when he attempted to quell the ‘tumult’ with a cudgel.  [5] ‘That which we so much desired that day was but a Sermon’, protested Canterbury Prebendary Edward Aldey, ‘which any other day of the weeke was tollerable by the orders and practise of the two Houses and all their adherents, but that day (because it was Christ’s birth day).  [6] Elsewhere in Kent, parishioners crowded round the puritan minister Richard Culmer’s reading desk in protest at the lack of a Christmas day service, and assaulted him in the churchyard. [7] Gloucestershire minister Mr Tray, unpopular on account of his opposition to the festival, became the target of malicious rumours.  Stories were spread that he had sabotaged the Christmas pies of his parishioners, baking in the communal oven, by sending his own unconventional confection to be baked alongside them.  Lines of verse were placed under Tray’s cushion in the pulpit:

    Parson tray, on Christmas Day

    To help on reformation

    Instead of the word did bake a t[urd]

    And poyson’d his congregation  [8]

     

    (more…)

  • Have yourself a (not quite so) very merry Christmas film

    Have yourself a (not quite so) very merry Christmas film

    In this blog, UoP Senior Lecturer Rob James reflects on the changing popularity of the, now well-regarded, festive classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Rob tells us that the film’s success was not predetermined, and that it took a mixture of chance and luck, along with a well-told story of course, for the film to achieve its status as a seasonal favourite. Rob’s research covers society’s leisure activities and this feeds into a number of optional and specialist modules he teaches in the second and third year.

    Final scene from It's a Wonderful Life showing everyone celebrating Christmas.
    Final scene from It’s a Wonderful Life.

    In a recent poll featured in The Independent newspaper of the ‘Best Christmas Movies’, the 1946 Hollywood-produced film It’s a Wonderful Life came in at number one, followed by Home Alone (1990) at number two, Elf (2003) at number three, and The Snowman (1982) and Love Actually (2003), at numbers four and five respectively, making up the rest of the top five most highly-rated Christmas films.[1]

    It’s a Wonderful Life is, by far, the oldest film featured in the top 5, and is the second oldest film in the twenty-film list – the oldest being the 1944 wartime hit Meet Me in St Louis, featuring Judy Garland, who sang the tear-jerking, pathos-filled song Have Yourself a Very Merry Christmas at a time when many people could certainly not look forward to having a very merry Christmas at all.

    Despite being released in 1946 – and filmed in black-and-white – It’s a Wonderful Life maintains a particular resonance with contemporary audiences.  The film often sits atop these types of seasonal all-time Christmas movie lists, keeping all other films, even popular newcomers, at bay. In fact, It’s a Wonderful Life has, for some time now, been recognised, and frequently-voted as, the favourite Christmas film by both film critics and the film-loving public. Indeed, in a Radio Times poll in 2018 the film came top having received just under 10% of the overall votes.[2] As James Munby has rightly noted, It’s a Wonderful Life has ‘assumed the status of the Christmas movie’.[3]

    Cinema poster showing how the film was advertised when first released.
    Cinema poster showing how the film was advertised when first released.

    However, its popularity has not always been so failsafe. Despite America’s Variety magazine heaping praise on the film upon its release, describing it as ‘gleaming, engaging entertainment’, it generally received mixed reviews, and didn’t perform at all well at the box-office.[4] In fact, it lost money – some half a million dollars; a considerable sum now, let alone in the austerity-ridden post-war years. This came as something of a surprise considering it was directed by the renowned Hollywood producer Frank Capra, whose films had usually struck gold.[5]

    It was the film’s bleak subject matter that caused alarm among its critics. Contemporaries were often left feeling rather nonplussed after watching the tale of wholesome family man George Bailey, played by the popular film star James Stewart, contemplating suicide and only accepting his life had meaning – and was worth living – after the timely intervention of guardian angel, Clarence (Henry Travers). One contributor to the British film fan magazine Picturegoer, for example, thought the film was ‘well handled’, but showed ‘signs of being too well worn’.[6] More acerbically, a The New York Times writer criticised its tendency to put a positive spin on its subject matter, describing it as ‘a figment of Pollyanna platitudes’.[7]

    Nevertheless, despite this rather inauspicious start, It’s a Wonderful Life continues to appeal to generations of film lovers, offering something as warm and cosy as a comfortable pair of slippers. What caused this revival? Partly it is the film’s subject matter. As The Guardian‘s Lucinda Everett has noted, it’s the film’s message that ‘we are loved, and our lives matter more that we could imagine’ that cements it as one of the festive season’s best offerings.[8]

    However, the story hasn’t changed – it’s still very bleak – it’s just that the context has. At the time of its release in 1946 audiences didn’t really want to watch a film that reminded them of the struggles facing the American ‘Everyman’. They demanded something more upbeat.[9] So, it’s not just the subject-matter that helps to create popularity, it’s also a matter of timing.

    There’s even more to it than this, though. The film also owes its modern-day success to chance. Having been sold to television when its releasing company RKO collapsed in the mid-1950s, and then falling out of copyright in the 1970s after its license wasn’t renewed, It’s a Wonderful Life became free to broadcast, leading more cash-strapped TV companies to show it as competition against other big holiday specials scheduled by the larger stations.[10] As film critic Peter Bradshaw has noted, ‘a seasonal tradition was invented and this little-regarded film began to grow inexorably in popularity and retrospective importance’. [11]

    Ever since then, this festive fantasy comedy drama has grown in the public’s affections and featured high in the Christmas movie popularity stakes. So, while It’s a Wonderful Life has not always been viewed as capturing the spirit of this festive time of year, and while its subject matter may not be as reassuringly comfortable as the fluffy dressing-gown worn as we settle down to watch it with a glass of port or brandy-infused Christmas pudding, it nonetheless serves as a reminder that a film’s popularity fluctuates, that successful films are often the result of luck or happenchance, not just a darn good story, and that these things are always historically contingent. Perhaps, then, to repurpose (and mangle) the film’s closing lines, it’s not every time a bell rings that an angel manages to get its wings. Or perhaps it is, judging by the film’s current day ubiquity. I’ll leave that for you to decide. Merry Christmas.

    [1] Alexandra Pollard, ‘The 20 greatest Christmas movies, from Home Alone to The Muppets Christmas Carol’, The Independent, 8 December 2020. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/best-christmas-movies-films-ranked-b1765604.html. Accessed 8 December 2020.

    [2] Radio Times Staff, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life named Britain’s favourite Christmas film’, Radio Times, 19 December 2018.

    [3] James Munby, ‘A Hollywood Carol’s Wonderful Life’, in Mark Connelly ed. Christmas at the Movies: Images of Christmas in American, British and European cinema, (London: I.B Tauris, 2010), 39-57; 39.

    [4] Bert, ‘Film Reviews’, Variety, 26 December 1946, 12.

    [5] Munby, ‘A Hollywood Carol’s Wonderful Life’, 39.

    [6] M.W., ‘A wonderful life for Donna’, Picturegoer, 7 June 1947, 8.

    [7] Cited in Munby, ‘A Hollywood Carol’s Wonderful Life’, 46.

    [8] Lucinda Everett, ‘What is the best Christmas movie? You asked Google – here’s the answer’, The Guardian, 27 December 2017.

    [9] Munby, ‘A Hollywood Carol’s Wonderful Life’, 46.

    [10] Munby, ‘A Hollywood Carol’s Wonderful Life’, 39-40.

    [11] Peter Bradshaw, ‘The Santa supremacy: Peter Bradshaw’s top Christmas movies’, The Guardian, 15 December 2010.

  • A Christmas reading list

    A Christmas reading list

    In this festive-themed blog, Dr Katy Gibbons, Senior Lecturer in History, recommends a few texts that feature a link to Christmas. Katy specialises in the religious and cultural history of 16th century England and Europe, and teaches amongst other units, a Special Subject ‘Conflict, Conspiracy, Consensus? Religious Identities in the Reign of Elizabeth I’.

    With Christmas fast approaching, no doubt many historians are adding reading material to their Christmas lists! For some historians, though, Christmas is the focus of the research they carry out – and there is a wealth of academic history that considers the changing significance of this festival over many centuries. So, for our blog readers, here are our pick of history-writing about Christmas, each of which is connected to the research and teaching activity of History at Portsmouth. All of these are available for our current students via the University Library – so, happy Christmas, and happy reading!

    1). Given the central importance of Christmas to the Christian Calendar, what happened when England’s Christian population was divided by the Reformation? Did Protestants and Catholics begin to find separate ways in which to mark Christmas? Here Phebe Jensen considers festivity and Christmas celebrations amongst Catholic families in Protestant Britain:

    https://capitadiscovery.co.uk/port/items/888707?query=region+religion+patronage&resultsUri=items%3Fquery%3Dregion%2Breligion%2Bpatronage

    2). What did Christmas-lovers do in 17th century England, when the celebration and ‘merriment’ of Christmas was officially outlawed by the authorities in the Commonwealth period? How ‘popular’ a move was it, and did people resist or ignore these demands? Here Christmas is part of Bernard Capp’s wider consideration of Puritan attempts to regulate all kinds of social behaviour:

    https://capitadiscovery.co.uk/port/items/1296826?query=england%27s+culture+wars&resultsUri=items%3Fquery%3Dengland%2527s%2Bculture%2Bwars

    3). Christmas as we think of it today is often seen to be a Victorian ‘invention’. Here Neil Armstrong considers one aspect of the Victorian Christmas – the practice of sending Christmas greetings cards:

    http://jvc.oup.com/2013/12/21/christmas-greetings-2/

    4). Perhaps one of the most famous Christmas scenes relating to the global conflicts of the 20th century is that of the Christmas truce on the Western Front.  Revisiting this is particularly relevant given the 2018 centenary of the end of the First World War. Here Terri Blom Crockers offers a challenge to older interpretations of what the truce meant:

    https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/portsmouth-ebooks/detail.action?docID=4012423

    5). And, finally, Christmas is a time when much TV (and films) are watched! It also sparks the production of Christmas-themed material. Some of this has spooky content, such as the adaptations of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Here Derek Johnston considers the significance of the Christmas Ghost Story in a number of different formats and contexts:

    https://capitadiscovery.co.uk/port/items/1214412?query=christmas+history&resultsUri=items%3Fquery%3Dchristmas%2Bhistory%26offset%3D10

    And before you settle down to watch that festive film, have a read about the ways in which Christmas has been rendered on film in this edited collection from Mark Connelly:

    https://capitadiscovery.co.uk/port/items/507971?query=christmas+at+the+movies&resultsUri=items%3Fquery%3Dchristmas%2Bat%2Bthe%2Bmovies