The 17th Century Almanac for December
The 17th Century almanac for December – when ‘Glad Christmas comes, and every hearth makes room to give him welcome now, even want will dry its tears in mirth, and crown him with a holly bough’.
But Christmas was not always the celebration it is today. Many saw it as a Popish mass, a sinful Pagan Roman Saturnalia. For thirteen long years, Christmas was banned across England, Scotland, Ireland and their colonies in America and the Caribbean. Winter, want, fasting and Puritan prayer were the order of the day.
17th Century Life & Labour in December – hedges, bees & wool
In the 17th Century, during December, farm labourers repaired walls, hedged, cut dikes and split wood. They were the lucky ones, the ones that had been kept on after the summer harvest, the ones that had found employment at the Michaelmas hiring or ‘mop’ fairs. Many were left in want and poverty.
For women and girls kept in domestic employment, it was a time for spinning wool and mending indoors. In gardens, they fed bees with a dish of water and honey to keep them through the winter. The dish was filled with sticks to let the bees climb in and out without drowning.
Newfoundland Trade – cod, wool & Atlantic triangular trade
At sea, December was the month the Newfoundland cod fleet returned to England and its West Country ports. Some 300 barques brough back Spanish wool, wine, iron and timber from Bilbao and Corunna where they had sold their salted cod as bacalao.
This was the last leg of what was the first Atlantic triangular trade. The fleet set sail again for Newfoundland in February. As many as 5,000 men sailed with it. From May until September, they lived in makeshift encampments fishing the Grand Banks in open dories, gutting, salting, drying and packing the cod.
Early Modern Wool Industry – carding, spinning & weaving
The import of Spanish Merino wool was key to England’s wool industry. By the 17th Century, demand for wool to feed weavers’ looms had far outstripped domestic production. There were not enough sheep in Britain to keep the growing number of weavers employed.
Weaving was still a cottage industry. Thousands of families were employed, often in terrible conditions. The youngest children combed and carded the raw wool. Women and girls spun yarn. Men and boys worked the looms, weaving cloth. All worked in poor light, thick dust, cramped conditions and constant clatter.
Cottage Industry – poor weavers, clothiers & market-spinners
Very many cottage weavers existed on the edge of poverty. Most were kept in debt to richer clothiers and market-spinners. The latter sold wool and yarn at inflated prices, buying back the finished cloth at below market rates. Many weavers died young. Some turned to radical political and religious ideas.
There were no trade unions in the 17th Century. They would only emerge with mass employment in larger mills in the 18th Century. Today, we might think that working at home is a good thing. But we should guard against a return to the pressures and poverty that was endemic amongst cottage industries.
Mourning Moon, second new Moon, Winter Solstice & Wassail
Farming and fishing were driven by the seasons, the weather, moon and tide. For those that take an interest, a new moon will rise on the 1st to be full on the 15th of December. It will be the Mourning Moon, or Moon Before Yule, the last full moon before the winter solstice.
This year, December will include a second new moon. This will rise on the 30th to be the year’s Old Moon or Moon After Yule. And then it will be time to Wassail in the New Year and wait for the light to return.
St Thomas – Gooding, Mumping, Corning, Gathering & Doleing
The Winter Solstice and longest night occurs on the 21st. This was also St Thomas’ Day in the old Anglican calendar. It was the day that cleaning and baking for Christmas started. It was also the evening the poor went ‘Thomasing’. They went from door-to-door begging for food or dole to tide them over.
Also known as Gooding, Mumping, Corning, Gathering or Doleing, the custom was first recorded in London in 1560. Gifts of wheat, bread, frumentary pudding or money were given out. In East Anglia, beggars exchanged a sprig of holly or mistletoe. In other places this was simply a night of charity and giving to those in need and want ahead of Christmas and the worst of the winter.
17th Century Christmas – cavalier feast & Puritan fast
For most in the early 1600s, Christmas was still marked by twelve days of feasting. It began with Christmas Eve, when yule logs were dragged in for the fire, halls were decked and warm posset supped.
Christmas Day was an English quarter day and Elizabethan holy day when all must attend church. It was also the first day of the Christmas feast.
Glad Christmas – winter food, hospitality, feasting & want
Whether rich or poor, Christmas was the time when any remaining fresh food that would not keep through winter was eaten. This included any cows, pigs and poultry that could not be kept in the barns or cottager’s croft. There was rarely more than enough winter fodder to keep the breeding stock for the next year.
Unless meat could be smoked or salted to preserve it, it was eaten at Christmas. Any excess was shared with hospitality. Traditionally, those who could, fed, hosted and entertained the many who had less. All aimed to pack in enough calories to get them through the months of want that would follow.
Twelve Days of Christmas – alms boxes, bonuses, pears & maids
Boxing Day, or St Stephens Day, was the day that churches opened their collection boxes and gave their contents to the poor. Servants too were given a gift of money, or Christmas bonus, often contained in a small clay box. Most were then released for the day to return home to visit their families.
The remaining ten days of Christmas included more feasting, carolling and dancing. Entertainment included Miracle plays, Morris dances, mumming and tumbling acts. Those who could went hawking or stag hunting. Drinking, dicing and playing at cards were all commonplace.
‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ carol gives some idea of the revelry that could take place in a larger house. However, not all of this was good clean fun. The images of a partridge (a lusty suitor) in a pear tree (the pear was a very male symbol) and maids a milking all had sexual connotations.
Puritan Prayer – Christmas Popery, sin & Saturnalia
But not everyone rejoiced with cavalier excess. Strict Puritans saw nothing in the Bible to suggest that God had instructed man to celebrate the nativity of Christ with twelve days of feasting and foolery. This Christ’s mass was a remnant of Popery. It was a Pagan Roman Saturnalia of excess and sin.
Philip Stubbes expressed the Godly Puritan view in his The Anatomie of Abuses.
‘More mischief is that time committed than in all the year besides… What dicing and carding, what eating and drinking, what banqueting and feasting is then used… to the great dishonour of God and the impoverishing of the realm.’
Dorothy Hazzard – Mistress Kelly of Bristol, witness for God
Some Puritans refused to recognise Christmas Day in any way. One example was Dorothy Hazzard, also known as Mistress Kelly of Bristol, who barricaded Frome Gate against Prince Rupert during the Storming of Bristol 1643. She refused to shut her grocer’s shop on the High Street on Christmas Day.
‘She would keep open her shop on the time they called Christmas Day, and sit sewing in her shop, as a witness for God in the midst of the city, in the face of the sun, and in the sight of all men.’
Christmas banned by Parliament – solemn fasting & work
On the 19th of December 1644, England’s Parliament banned any celebration of Christmas. (It was banned in Scotland from 1640.) Christmas Day was due that year to fall on a Wednesday. The last Wednesday of each month was a Parliamentary fast day. Parliament issued an ordinance declaring that the 25th of December was to be a fast day for all. There were to be no church services and no holiday.
‘This Day in particular, is to be kept with the more solemn Humiliation, because it may call to Remembrance our Sins, and the Sins of our Fore fathers, 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 led here on Earth, and to the Spiritual Life of Christ in our Souls.’
Parliament went a step further in 1647, outlawing any celebration of Christmas, Easter or Whitsun. The banning of Christmas led to riots. But the ban remained in statute until the Restoration in 1660. During the Protectorate and Republic, Christmas was renamed ‘Christ Tide’ to remove any reference to a Catholic mass and declared a normal working day. Dancing, drinking, games and carols were prohibited.
Old Father Christmas – welcome or not, will never be forgot!
In the meantime, Father Christmas went ‘underground’. He occasionally appeared in broadsheets or plays disguised as Old Christmas. In one Protectorate play he made an appearance to declare,
‘In comes I, Old Father Christmas. Be I welcome or be I not, I hope that old Christmas will never be forgot!’
Christopher Merrett & Champagne – an English invention!
Finally, I hope you have every chance this December to dry want’s tears, to welcome in Christmas ‘and crown him with a holly bough’.
If you partake of some fizz, raise a glass to Christopher Merrett. He was a founding fellow of the Royal Society and is credited with perfecting sparkling wine and the glass bottle strong enough to contain it in 1662 – long before Don Pérignon purloined champaign in 1697. We cannot be certain, but it is very likely that he was a close relative of Mr Merrett, a gentleman of ordnance in the king’s battery at the Battle of Edgehill.
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Whether you celebrate Christmas with Cavalier excess, Puritanical restraint, or plain old-fashioned cheer, I wish you mirth and joy. If this post is not the celebration you were expecting, please correct my folly.
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