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:
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.
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.
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.
[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.
An article on animosity to puritans was published by history lecturer Dr Fiona McCall recently in The Conversation as part of the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower in the United States. She shows how puritans were often depicted as fools until they had a shot at government, and then the humour got darker.
Fiona specialises in the religious and social history of seventeenth-century Britain, and is currently writing a book, Ungodly Religion in the English Parish, 1645-1660, looking at how and why English people rejected puritan religious extremism in the 1640s and 1650s.
In this blog post, Senior Lecturer in History Mike Esbester introduces an important new seminar series he’s involved in leading: ‘Historians across boundaries.’ It’s based at the Institute of Historical Research, the London-based body that has promoted and championed historical research for nearly 100 years. This important new seminar series will help bring people together in their research into the past.
‘Changing the way we do research’ is certainly a bold claim – but it’s one we hope we can live up to! Earlier this year the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) called for applications to run seminar series in the new ‘Partnership Seminar’ programme. I knew just the crowd who would be interested in this – colleagues with whom I’d been working for some time, passionate about collaboration in historical research. We come from different backgrounds – academics, archivists, family historians, genealogists, local historians and more – but what we all share is the belief that our research into the past is improved when we work together.
The challenge has been how to break down perceived barriers which prevent us from collaborating – something ‘Historians across boundaries’ is designed to do!
Even the name of the IHR’s Partnership Seminar programme was a perfect fit with work I’ve been doing over recent years. In the ‘Railway Work, Life & Death’ project (RWLD), which I co-lead, we’ve been trying to involve all sorts of people as equals in researching accidents to British and Irish railway workers before 1939. This has led me into closer collaboration with family historians, local historians and many more – hence wanting to get the ‘Historians across boundaries’ series off the ground!
RWLD has opened my eyes to the exciting possibilities of community and collaborative research, placing this approach at the heart of what I now do. It’s why I’m really pleased that the IHR has recognised the ‘Historians across boundaries’ seminar series as one of the ones it wants to champion. This is a great way of showing how important history is to so many people, and it’ll help us all work together better in the future.
During 2021 we’ll be putting on a series of events – I’m reluctant to call them seminars, as in this context it suggests a rather traditional format, with a speaker holding forth on the results of their research. Nothing could be further from what we want to do. Instead we’re going to be finding ways to encourage discussion and sharing of best practice, wherever it is found, as well as collaboratively setting an agenda. Sessions will be as informal and friendly as possible, recognising the value of different experience and expertise wherever it is found.
The ‘Historians across boundaries’ series draws on the efforts of the ‘Historians Collaborate’ movement, an informal group of people working to those same aims of bringing together different types of historical researcher. A really good flavour of our work can be found on Twitter, with the #HistoriansCollaborate.
My co-convenors for the series are:
Nick Barratt (Open University, Community Archives and Heritage Group, and Family History Federation)
Else Churchill (Society of Genealogists)
Jackie Depelle (Chair of the Yorkshire Group of Family History Societies, Family History tutor, speaker & event organiser)
Tanya Evans (Macquarie University)
Laura King (University of Leeds)
Julia Laite (Birkbeck, University of London)
Natalie Pithers (Genealogy Stories)
Mary Stewart (British Library Oral History; Oral History Society)
We’re keen to involve others in the series organisation, particularly people from groups either not yet represented amongst the organisers – including Black, Indigenous and People of Colour – and/or who haven’t traditionally engaged in researching the past. It’s important that we do what we can to have an inclusive conversation, recognising that history is for everyone.
What’s even better about the IHR’s Partnership Seminar programme is that one of my friends in the Portsmouth History team, Mel Bassett, is on the convening team for another series that’s been selected: the ‘Coastal Connections’ series. This has grown out of the Coastal History Network Mel and others at Portsmouth have been so instrumental in setting up. You can read more about their series here. So – double success for Portsmouth’s History team!
‘Historians across boundaries’ will be starting in early 2021 – we’re currently putting together our programme of events at the moment, and will announce more soon, so watch this space!
After a talk with his eventual dissertation supervisor Dr Katy Gibbons, third-year UoP student Richard Grainger was inspired to enrich his knowledge of twentieth-century orientalism in a dissertation which applied his theoretical understanding to the study of a period when Islamic nations were the more dominant powers.
The university’s history department prides itself on delivering a socially and culturally favoured degree curriculum. The emphasis on ‘history from below’ has been particularly enjoyable from my view. One particular historical approach of interest is postcolonial studies, which focus on the cultural impact of empire on the colonised. Edward Said has been influential, and often controversial within this area of study. In Said’s Orientalism, he argues that the Western has to a certain degree always imposed a degree of positional superiority on the East. He argues this transcends all walks of life, both politically and culturally.
Orientalist art often depicts the East as feminine, and by implication inferior to the masculine West. A Lady Receiving Visitors (The Reception), John Frederick Lewis, 1873, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, Accession No. B1981.25.417
My interest in Edward Said’s Orientalism was stimulated primarily from a second-year unit on International Politics of the Middle East. With a focus on the last hundred years or so, the unit gave me an ever increased understanding of British and French dominance and duplicity in their relationships with Islamic nations. As this module focused on the First World War, this was initially my first thought chronologically for my dissertation. Only after a conversation with one of the early modernists in the department, Katy Gibbons,did I begin to look at earlier periods for my research.
Fellah Women Drawing Water, Jean-Leon Gerôme, 1873-5, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Williamstown, Mass., Accession no. 1955.52
I became interested in studying an earlier period where Western dominance was not so self-assured. Whilst the power of Britain and France was considerable in the lead up and aftermath to the First world war, I was interested in a study which went ‘against the grain’ and challenged narratives. The early modern period was a complex period of geo-political reality, and it felt that a study in Elizabeth’s England would be an interesting angle to compare Said’s theory to. As Orientalism was said to have filtered throughout society, I wanted to use two distinctive models to establish whether relations between England and the Islamic powers could be seen as Orientalist. I wanted to understand what England’s place in the world was really like in the 16th Century, and how Englishmen reacted to it.
In order to do so, I wanted to compare both the real-politics and the cultural aspect in a way which was accessible. I therefore chose to analyse English playwriting regarding the Ottomans, Turks, and Islam, and the message or anxieties made visable by playwrights. In comparison, I wanted to see if Queen Elizabeth felt the same way in her diplomatic correspondence with the leaders of Eastern states.
Queen Elizabeth I, Armada portrait: the imperial crown and globe depicted in the painting are thought to signify the pursuit of imperial power.
It was crucial before doing so to understand the geo-political reality, which was that post-Reformation England had to adjust to a new situation in the late sixteenth century which allied themselves with anti-Catholic powers. Elizabeth worked hard to cultivate commercial relationships with the Ottomans and the Moroccans, who had much more extensive empires in their own right, but needed tin, lead and other materials from England. Whilst English expansion was at this stage limited to a claim to land in Ireland, the Ottomans were multi-ethnic, trans-continent and at the peak of their powers towards the end of the century.
I chose three plays right at the end of the 1500s to analyse. William Shakespeare’s Othello (1603); Thomas Heywood’s, The Fair Maid of the West Part 1 (1597-1603); and Thomas Dekker’s Lusts Dominion (1600). These plays would ‘Other’ Muslim characters, but also allow for audience agency, and allowed me to reflect on how Englishmen saw their place in the world.
To compare, I wanted to find diplomatic correspondence between Elizabeth and elites in Morocco and the Ottoman courts to establish whether these fears were shared, but also whether England tried to impose any superiority. As with many diplomatic exchanges, I found that both sides wanted to seek similarities. Protestant England was against the idolatry of the Catholic church, and found commonality with Islamic powers in this regard. Most crucial to dispel Said’s theory of Western superiority was the exchange of gifts which lubricated these alliances, with the more predominant gifts coming from London.
Finding sources was thoroughly enjoyable. I enjoyed reading plays, letters and pamphlets depicting the East from an English perspective. I had to tread carefully not to leap to texts which confirmed my narrative, and had to really think hard about whether they contributed to a general sentiment, or allowed for audience agency. The ambiguities themselves made the project especially enjoyable.
The moorish Ambassador to Elizabeth I, Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, 1600, Shakespeare Institute, Stratford on Avon, PFH1166942
I found that firstly, English positional superiority did not apply to the late sixteenth century over the East. Secondly, contemporaries responded to this situation in their representation of the East, which served to define English national character. What became clear was that contemporary visions of England’s place in the world would vary from fear and othering of the East, to a proactive global vision articulated and pieced together by the Queen herself.
Third year student Kathryn Watts chose an original focus for her dissertation in investigating the eighteenth century attack on Scottish culture. As she argues below, colonialism is often looked at in the global context, but the domestic colonialism of Scotland (and Ireland) predated it, and provided a prototype for many of the colonialist ideas of racial hierarchy and methods of cultural indoctrination which followed. It has been fascinating supervising Kathryn’s dissertation journey – ed.
In this 1766 satirical print, the devil is shown wearing tartan and playing the bagpipes: British Museum print J,1.111
On April 16, 1746, the bloody battle of Culloden ended with Jacobite defeat; the rebellion of Bonnie Prince Charlie, crushed. This date became synonymous with the decimation of Highland culture, as pro-Government forces sought to destroy Jacobite support, which was equated with the Highlander. My dissertation, entitled Demonisation and Appropriation: Transitions of Scotland Post-Culloden, 1746-1784, explored the impact of appropriation of highland culture by wealthy lowland and English elites. I organised my chapters into three, exploring the historiography first, then examining domestic colonialism and then romanticism respectively.
I chose this topic as my dissertation, having had prior interest in the Jacobite movement, and noting the romantic approach taken by historians, I was interested in examining the ways in which Scottish culture, but in particular Highland culture, was decimated. This was achieved through a concept of domestic colonialism within British borders, an approach taken by both lowland Scottish and English elites who felt they were racially superior to the supposedly ‘uncivilised’ Celtic highlander.[1] Both lowland and highland Scots were demonised, but highlanders especially were designated as the ‘uncivilised’ brute that both lowland and English perceptions sought to change.
After the battle of Culloden, whether through satire, religion, language, or culture, the highlanders were demonised at the same time as legislative reforms were put in place to strip the highlanders of their culture. The Disarming Act of 1746 specifically ordered the ban of the use of tartan and the Highland costume – the kilt – which was identified as a symbol that became equated to the Jacobite movement. It further demanded the removal of the use of bagpipes citing them as a weapon of war.[2] Breaking this Act faced severe punishments: to break the act first time meant six months in prison, a second time could mean transportation for seven years.[3] This Act was not enforced strongly everywhere: most convictions were in towns or villages that were near garrisons.[4]
This 1745 etching caricatures the Scots using a folkloric legend of the cannibalistic Sawney Bean. Whilst the legend dates back much earlier, it was used in the mid eighteenth-century to accentuate the Scot as primitive. Entitled Sawney in the Boghouse, the uncivilised Scot is shown sitting on the toilet, but unable to properly use the ‘lavatory pans’.
Furthermore, the Heritable Jurisdiction’s Act of 1747 stated that any Jacobites’ land would now be in control of the government, and destroyed the former clan structure. The government had observed how clan leaders were able to rouse Highlanders into fighting for the Jacobite cause (though it is contested on how well they were actually able to do this).[5] By removing the clan leaders, the government felt they could then ‘civilise’ the Highlanders by destroying their political structure, and instead anglicise it.
Methods of anti-Scottishness was also introduced through schooling of children. Extra focus was placed on removing the Scottish Gaelic language, and instead teaching English to highland children – implanting dominant English culture over the Highland culture.[6] This was implemented by the missionary group entitled the Scottish Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK). The form of teaching that the SSPCK used in highland schools was a prototype for what would later be used in the global colonial settings, where punishment was strict, and the enforcement of English culture was to be dominant.[7] Whether it can be said to be successful is doubtful. Rumours, for example, spread that if any person had attended at a school on the Earl of Lovat’s land, they would immediately be transported to the colonies, which dramatically lowered the attendance of that school.[8]
Pompeo Batoni, Colonel William Gordon of Fyvie, painted 1766, National Trust for Scotland, Fyvie Castle, Aberdeenshire, personal photo.
After a series of successive laws that removed the highlanders of their culture, wealthy elites of both England and the Lowlands sought to appropriate their culture for their own personal benefit. Within this period, paintings such as Pompeo Batoni’s Colonel William Gordon of Fyvie (as seen below; figure 1) became common amongst the wealthy classes, removing the connotations of tartan from Jacobitism to a romantic fashionable item. Batoni’s painting is one example of this. The man featured in the painting, Colonel William Gordon of Fyvie, is dressed in both a British uniform jacket married with a philibeg costume (a traditional kilt that was worn over the shoulder). Furthermore, Batoni features classical influences, such as the background behind Colonel William Gordon, suggesting he is the epitome of the civilised gentleman.
However, it was only after British colonialism had decimated Highland culture, and the Jacobites were no longer a threat, that highlanders began to be considered romantic, antiquarian freedom fighters who had lived in a primitive lifestyle. They were ‘uncivilised’ but they were also now romantic. Books such as James Mcpherson’s Ossian, published in the 1760s, benefited from this new perception of the highlanders. Through portraits, literature, poetry, and clothing and particularly the later work of Burns and Sir Walter Scott in the mainstream of the Romantic period, the highlander came to be seen from a restrained Lowland/English perspective – tamed of his former ‘brutish’ manners.
Whilst this is an under-researched topic, I found this dissertation to be extremely rewarding. Scottish colonialism in the eighteenth-century is an under-developed scholarly field, which, in attempts to decipher, unravels a whole lot more about the context of early Scottish enlightenment. Where there is information about the highland clearances, this is often looked at from an economic perspective, rather than the damage to highland culture. Colonialism is often looked in the global context, but there should be greater emphasis placed on domestic colonialism where not only the English, but lowlanders too, saw themselves as racially superior to that of the highlander.
[1] Robert Knox, The Races of Men. A Fragment, (Philadelphia, PA, 1850), 18. Quoted in Iain MacKinnon, “Colonialism and the Highland Clearances,” Northern Scotland 8 (2017): 35.
[2] Fitzroy Maclean, A Concise History of Scotland (London: Thames and Hudson, 1970), 182.
[3] T. M. Devine, The Scottish Nation: A Modern History (London: Penguin, 2012), 233.
[4] J. Telfer-Dunbar, History of Highland Dress (London, 1962), 6-8; NLS, MS 5129, fo. 42 (Disposition of Troops in the Highlands, April 1749). Quoted in Charles W. J. Withers, Gaelic Scotland: The Transformation of a Culture Region (London: Routledge, 2016): 83.
[6] Peter Womack, Improvement and Romance: Constructing the Myth of the Highlands (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989): 4.
[7] Silke Stroh, “The Modern Nation-State and its Others: Civilising Missions at Home and Abroad, ca. 1600 to ca. 1800,” in Scotland in the Colonial Imagination: Anglophone Writing from 1600 to 1900 (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2017), 67.
[8] Deposition of John Grant, January 17, 1753, British Library Add. 35, 447, 379. Quoted in Geoffrey Plank, Rebellion and Savagery: The Jacobite Rising of 1745 and the British Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 113.
