Читать книгу A Jolly Folly? - Allan J. Macdonald - Страница 10

We have noted the development of Christmas in Britain during the Middle Ages under the guidance of the Roman Catholic Church. We now want to trace its course into the modern world, commencing with its examination upon the rediscovery of scriptural truth at the Reformation.

The reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) provides a point of cohesion for evaluating the Reformation in England but only because of its longevity, rather than the ease of widespread generalizations. We quote at length the comments of the historian Christopher Haigh:

With a reign that lasted over four decades, Elizabeth accomplished what neither of her predecessors could do: she enforced a politico-religious vision. Her methods were not markedly different than any tried before but she incorporated a sensitivity to opposing forces that Edward VI and Mary had not granted.

Her success, originally political and then slowly religious, resulted as much from this approach and her devotion to uniting the realm as it did from her longevity; had she died after five or six years, like her predecessors Edward VI and Mary, indeterminacy would likely have reigned again.

Elizabeth clearly sought to reverse the Marian religious direction, yet competing for her attention and consequently her care in theological decisions, was a fractured domestic scene and tenuous foreign relationships. England was still at war with France and allied with Spain, both Catholic states.

The French were supporting Mary Stuart’s rival claim to the English throne and, if needed, Elizabeth could tap Lutheran states as prospective allies to ward off potential French aggression. Her personal theological preferences; some favoring Protestant thinking, some favoring Catholic ritual, helped shape the religious settlement she fashioned in 1558–59 and the resulting, enduring Anglican Church.

As an institution, the church’s favorable acceptance of the principles of adiaphora (things indifferent) and via media (a middle way), allowed religious liberty and toleration to manifest themselves as never before welcomed. Anglicanism was English, patriotic and not firmly Calvinist. It rejected what was, in its eyes, the bibliolatry of the hard-line Protestant in favor of a more broadly based appeal to tradition, reason, and history, as well as Scripture. It embraced adiaphora and came to tolerate various church polities. By the mid-1550s these values formed the seeds of seventeenth century English Congregationalism and Independency. These ideas emerged both in the exiled congregations, especially at Frankfurt, and in the remaining underground Protestant congregations in England. This religious atmosphere had profound historical consequences as it allowed the growth of various nonconformist groups and the development of Puritan thought, which itself would create an atmosphere conducive to political developments that likely would not have happened in a Catholic society. In the 1560s, London became the center of a movement to accomplish a truly reformed church.

Despite its accomplishments, Elizabeth’s broadly accommodating church had not completely satisfied the urge to purify the church and nowhere was this unquenched thirst for purification felt more strongly than in London. In reaction to Elizabeth’s compromises, viewed as unacceptable and even threatening to those with strong Protestant convictions, the godly moved among parishes seeking one that was more than half-reformed. Puritan movements and separatist tendencies found vitality among the varieties of faith in the city. Believers now faced choices, not only about how to reach salvation, but where, and with whom they could consciously commune. It effected a shift from a religion of symbol and allegory, ceremony and formal gesture to one that was plain and direct: a shift from the visual to the aural, from ritual to literal exposition, from the numinous and mysterious to the everyday. It moved from the high colors of statue, window and painted walls to whitewash; from ornate vestments and altar frontal to plain tablecloth and surplice; from a religion that, with baptismal salt on lips, anointings and frankincense as well as image, word and chant, sought out all the senses, to one that concentrated on the word and innerliness.

There was a shift from a religion that often went out of doors on pilgrimage and procession to an indoor one; from the sacral and churchly to the familial and domestic; from sacrament to word; from the objectivity of ex opere operato and Real Presence, for instance, to the subjectivity of feeling faith and experience. Consequently, the Reformation had produced a Protestant nation, but not immediately a nation of Protestants. Catholic behaviours and doctrines had been removed from worship via political statute but Catholic views of life and salvation took time to die out.45

In Anatomy of the Abuses in England in Shakespeare’s Youth by the Cheshire Calvinist, Philip Stubbes, first published in 1583, he bewails the vain pastimes of the Christmas season.

“Especially,” he says, “in Christmas time, there is nothing else used but cards, dice, tables, masking, mumming, bowling, and such like fooleries; and the reason is, that they think they have a commission and prerogative at that time to do what they want, and to follow what vanity they will. But (alas!) do they think that they are privileged at that time to do evil? The holier the time is (if one time were holier than another, as it is not), the holier ought their exercises to be. Can any time dispense with them, or give them liberty to sin? No, no; the soul which sins shall die, at whatever time it offends . . . Notwithstanding, who knows not that more mischief is at that time committed than in all the year besides?”46

During the Elizabethan Period poets wrote carols of a more polished character but still dealt with the life of the Christ Child. One of the best known of this era would be Nahum Tate’s “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks.” This work was more of a transitional piece from true carols to hymns and paved the way for such Methodist Revival hymns as “Hark The Herald Angels Sing,” “Angels From the Realms of Glory,” or “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” These were made widespread over the years by careful editors and enterprising publishers. On Christmas Day in England, these and other carols took the place of psalms in the churches, especially at afternoon service with the congregation joining in. At the end of the service the parish clerk would usually declare in a loud voice his wishes for “a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”

Puritan Era

When the Puritans had gained the upper hand they proceeded with the suppression not only of seasonal abuses but of the season itself. On September 2, 1642, the largely Puritan Parliament outlawed the performance of plays, including Christmas pageants and plays, and the theaters were closed.47 On June 12, 1643, Parliament abolished the offices of Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors, Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, declaring “and other Ecclesiastical Officers depending upon the Hierarchy, is evil, and justly offensive and burthensome to the Kingdome.”48

On August 26, 1643, legislation was passed which included a bill entitled, “An Ordinance for the utter demolishing, removing and taking away of all Monuments of Superstition or Idolatry.”

The aim was to facilitate an improved observation of the Lord’s Day, and thereby the “better advancement of preaching God’s Holy Word in all parts of the kingdom.”

Communion tables were to be moved from their customary location on the east side of churches, to be fixed in some convenient place in the body of the church. All altars and rails, tapers, candlesticks, basins, crucifixes, crosses, images, pictures of saints or the Virgin Mary or depicting the Persons of the Trinity, and superstitious inscriptions in churches or churchyards, were to be taken away or defaced.49 Church organs were also moved from many churches.

An excellent opportunity for turning the annual Christmas feast into a fast, as the church had done earlier with the Kalends festival, came in 1644. It had been the practice in the past to preach a sermon to the Lords in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day, something that a growing number of Puritans were uncomfortable with. The issue came to a head in that year, when Christmas Day happened to fall upon the last Wednesday of the month, a day already appointed by the Lords and Commons for Fasting and Humiliation. Parliament published the following “Ordinance for the better observation of the Feast of the Nativity of Christ,” on December 19, 1644:

Whereas some doubts have been raised whether the next Fast shall be celebrated, because it falleth on the day which, heretofore, was usually called the Feast of the Nativity of our Savior; the lords and commons do order and ordain that public notice be given, that the Fast appointed to be kept on the last Wednesday in every month, ought to be observed until it be otherwise ordered by both houses; and that this day particularly is to be kept with the more solemn humiliation because it may call to remembrance our sins and the sins of our forefathers, who have turned this Feast, pretending the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights; being contrary to the life which Christ himself led here upon earth, and to the spiritual life of Christ in our souls; for the sanctifying and saving whereof Christ was pleased both to take a human life, and to lay it down again.50

This, in effect, banned the celebration of Christmas that year, 1644. Edward Calamy (1600–1666) from London, preached the Lord’s sermon on December 25. He stated:

This day is commonly called The Feast of Christ’s nativity, or, Christmas-day; a day that has formerly been much abused to superstition, and profaneness. It is not easy to say, whether the superstition has been greater, or the profaneness. . . .

And truly I think that the superstition and profanation of this day is so rooted into it, as that there is no way to reform it, but by dealing with it as Hezekiah did with the brazen serpent. This year God, by his Providence, has buried this Feast in a Fast, and I hope it will never rise again. . . .

I have known some that have preferred Christmas Day before the Lord’s Day. I have known those that would be sure to receive the Sacrament on Christmas Day though they did not receive it all the year after. This was the superstition of this day, and the profaneness was as great. There were some that did not play cards all the year long, yet they must play at Christmas.51

In 1645 the English Parliament approved the Directory for the Public Worship of God, which stated, “There is no day commanded in Scripture to be kept holy under the gospel but the Lord’s day, which is the Christian Sabbath. Festival days, vulgarly called Holy-days, having no warrant in the word of God, are not to be continued” (this document is examined in more detail below in the penultimate chapter, “Twelve Reasons Justifying the Endorsement of Christmas”). It was on June 8, 1647, that Christmas, along with all other holy days, was formally banned by an ordinance or Act of Parliament.

Forasmuch as the feast of the nativity of Christ, Easter, Whitsuntide, and other festivals, commonly called holy-days, have been heretofore superstitiously used and observed; be it ordained, that the said feasts, and all other festivals, commonly called holy-days, be no longer observed as festivals; any law, statute, custom, constitution, or canon, to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding.52

The Puritan parliament was concerned, however, that this would deprive many people, especially those employed as servants, of having this as a day off work in accordance with past custom (just as the Genevan Reformers were similarly concerned a hundred years previously). To mitigate the loss of the day, they stipulated in another ordinance three weeks later that all servants were to have “with the leave of their masters, such convenient reasonable recreation, and relaxation from labour, every second Tuesday in the month throughout the year.”53 The ban on Christmas was reiterated in 1652 and 1657, with all shops in London required to remain open as usual for business on December 25. Research based on the records of 367 English parishes reveals that between 1645 and 1649, the vast majority ceased to observe Christmas “festival communion,” but the records do not always represent reality, especially outside London.54

As an aside, it is a complete myth without any documentary evidence that Oliver Cromwell or any of his peers banned the eating of mince pies, even though some pamphleteers of his day on the Christmas topic speak as a matter of fact of Parliament formally banning them.55 The myth has been perpetuated to this day, particularly by those opposed to the godliness reflected in the lives of the Puritans. The myth possibly arose as a consequence of the monthly fast. This was instituted by Act of Parliament in August 1642, due to the perceived low state of true religion in England and Wales. The Act required that on routinely set days, once a month, the public should engage in acts of humiliation and prayer, enjoined with public worship, with abstinence from the normal eating routine. As we noted above, in December 1644 this fast day fell on the twenty-fifth day of the month, so that the normal Christmas Day feasting (which would undoubtedly have included the consumption of minced pies) was forbidden. No legislation was ever passed during the Puritan Interregnum outlawing mince pies or any other particular food!

All these measures were insufficient and celebrations continued, often covertly, despite the penalties of fines and imprisonment. The English people’s love of Christmas could not be destroyed. This is not surprising, given that the Christmas season was traditionally the longest calendar period of celebration and that many felt that this meteorological time of year was when joy was most needed.

A satirical pamphleteer, Josiah King, put it this way in his fictional personification of Christmas:

Christmas is a very kind and loving man; inoffensive to all: a hater of strife, a lover of harmless mirth. . . . He uses all means to bring us together, & to renew friendship: he is a great Peacemaker.

In his account of Christmas’s trial before the Puritan courts, a needy man gives the following evidence:

I dwell at the Town of Want, in the Country of Needs . . . poor in estate: and had it not been for old Christmas I had been poorer. . . . If you take away this merry old Gentlemen from us, you take away all our Joy, and comfort that we have.56

Various protests were made against the suppression of the festival. Although Parliament sat every Christmas Day from 1644 to 1656, the shops in London did not always open and those that did were often roughly harassed. In 1647 evergreen decorations were put up in the city, and the Lord Mayor and City Marshal had to ride about setting fire to them! There were even riots in country places, notably Canterbury, Bury St. Edmunds, and Norwich. The following account from Canterbury, although undoubtedly biased and pro-Christmas, gives a flavor of the unrest:

The mayor, endeavouring to keep the peace, had his head broke by the populace and was dragged about the streets; the mob broke into diverse houses of the most religious in the town, broke their windows, abused their persons, and threw their goods into the streets, because they exposed them to sale on Christmas Day. At length, their numbers being increased to above two thousand, they put themselves into a posture of defence against the magistrates, kept guard, stopped passes, examined passengers, and seized the magazine and arms in the town-hall, and were not dispersed without difficulty.57

A petition with more than ten thousand signatures from the Kent region demanded either the restoration of Christmas or else the king back on the throne. The unpopular laws banning Christmas likely played some part in the English cry for the restoration of the crown.

With the restoration in 1660, Christmas naturally came back to a position of full recognition but most English Calvinist ministers still disapproved of Christmas celebration. Misson, the French traveller, reported as follows:

From Christmas Day till after Twelfth Day is a time of Christian rejoicing; a mixture of devotion and pleasure. They . . . make it their whole business to drive away melancholy.58

Seventeenth Century Baptists

During this period, English Protestants were still working out what practices were acceptable and unacceptable in worship. Take, for example, Benjamin Keach (1640–1704), a Particular Baptist pastor in London. The Child’s Delight was written by Keach as a primer for children and reveals in clear terms Keach’s antagonism to the corruption, as he saw it, of the Roman Catholic Church. First published in 1664 as The Child’s Instructor, this handbook stirred up a controversy and landed Keach at the Assizes in Aylesbury before Lord Chief Justice Hyde, on the charge of violating the 1662 Licensing Act, the law regulating the content of printed books.

Keach eventually served two weeks in prison and saw the primer burned in an effort to purge the land of heresy. Among other things, the Licensing Act forbade the printing of any:

heretical, seditious, schismatical or offensive books or pamphlets, wherein any doctrine or opinion shall be asserted or maintained which is contrary to the Christian faith or the doctrine or discipline of the Church of England.

It is interesting to note which issues Keach chose to be of fundamental importance in writing the primer. He presented lessons on the character of God, the child’s place before God, and a series of Solomon’s proverbs. He also set the Ten Commandments into verse form for ease of learning. Part 2 of the manual’s catechism refuted the Roman church, teaching a rejection of any priest or vicar other than Christ and of the sacrifices by priests of the Roman church. We note with particular interest his view of worship, taking a strict constructionist view of acceptable worship, arguing that elements of worship are acceptable only as long as they are directly authorized by Scripture.

Keach’s religious position, strongly Protestant and unashamedly anti–Roman Catholic is clear. His pro-Reformation writing may not differ much from other separatists and nonconformists of the time but he was clearly operating from the mentality of the Reformation as the most important guiding force in recent history.59

The Breach Repaired, Keach’s exposition to prove congregational singing, serves as another example of how he intertwined the Reformation with his aim of purifying the church. When Keach wrote The Breach Repaired in 1691, twenty-seven years after his initial primer appeared, he explicitly affirmed the vitality and relevance of the Reformation to his cause. He depicted the church as still in the process of Reformation, newly come out of “the Wilderness, or Popish Darkness and not so fully neither, as to be clear as the Sun, as in due time she shall.” Reformation, he argues, is and ever was a hard and difficult work, it being no easy thing to restore lost ordinances.

How then did Keach and other seventeenth century Baptists, such as Hercules Collins and John Spilsbury, treat Christmas in their worship? This is not easy to answer as there are virtually no extant writings on this subject by any seventeenth century Baptist. There are several passing references to events which took place on December 25, where the term “Christmas Day” is used, but as this was the social norm among the majority of the populace, it tells us little. Clearly, the scarcity of any written treatment of the subject tells us that it simply was not an issue in their church life. Arguments from silence must always be handled with caution, but what does this written silence imply? Was it the case that Christmas services formed an integral part of worship throughout their congregations and therefore was not an issue for discussion, or was it the case that Christmas services formed no part of worship throughout their congregations and so there existed unanimity on the issue? It is extremely likely to have been the latter. Baptists had consistently received a very bad press from paedo-baptists, whether Anglicans, Presbyterians, or Independents. It was commonplace for them to be portrayed as a threat and likened to the radical Zwickau Prophets and Thomas Müntzer, from the era of Luther and who appeared to have influenced the emerging Anabaptist movement. Throughout the seventeenth century, Baptists, especially Calvinistic Baptists, sought to demonstrate their orthodoxy to their paedo-baptist counterparts and this was one of the main reasons lying behind The First London Baptist Confession of Faith, published in 1644 prior to the Westminster Confession of Faith. There is no known dissent from Baptists to the Puritan outlawing of Christmas in Parliament. There is much in Baptist writings, such as Keach’s just referred to, which show their aversion to all things Roman Catholic.

The General Baptist, Thomas Grantham (1633–92), spoke of the suspicious nature of “festival days” including Easter:

And indeed the variety of the usages of Ancient Christians touching the Lent Fast, shews it to be an Innovation, and not of Divine Authority: No, the Observation of Easter itself is acknowledged by Socrates Scholasticus to have crept into the churches.60