Guest Post: Romans needed a mid-winter break too ... it lasted for 24 days

by Richard Flower, University of Exeter

In the Doctor Who Christmas Special from 2010, Michael Gambon’s Scrooge-like character remarks that across different cultures and worlds people come together to mark the midpoint of winter. It is, he imagines, as if they are saying: “Well done, everyone! We’re halfway out of the dark!”

The actual reasons for celebrating Christmas at this particular time in the year have long been debated. Links have often been drawn to the winter solstice and the Roman festival of Saturnalia. Some people have also associated it with the supposed birthday of the god Sol Invictus, the “unconquered sun”, since a fourth-century calendar describes both this and Christ’s birth as taking place on December 25.

Such speculation has inevitably led to claims that this traditionally Christian festival is little more than a rebranding of earlier pagan activities. But questions about the “religious identity” of public celebrations are, in fact, nothing new and were being asked in the later periods of the Roman empire as well.

This is particularly evident in the case of a rather obscure Roman festival called the Brumalia, which started on November 24 and lasted for 24 days. We cannot be sure exactly when it began to be celebrated, but one of our best accounts of it comes from the sixth century AD. A retired public official called John the Lydian explained that it had its origins in earlier pagan rites from this time of year, including Saturnalia.

Dionysus

Some people celebrated Brumalia by sacrificing goats and pigs, while devotees of the god Dionysus inflated goat skins and then jumped on them. We also believe that each day of the festival was assigned a different letter of the Greek alphabet, starting with alpha (α) on November 24 and finishing with omega (ω) on December 17.

A person would wait until the day that corresponded to the first letter of their own name and then throw a party. This meant that those with a wide circle of friends – and, in particular, friends with a wide variety of names – might potentially get to go to 24 consecutive celebrations.

We also have other evidence for the popularity of the Brumalia during the sixth century. A speech by the orator Choricius of Gaza praises the festivities laid on by the emperor Justinian (527–565), remarking that the emperor and his wife, Theodora, celebrated the Brumalia on adjacent days, since the letter iota (ι) – for Justinian – directly follows theta (θ) – for Theodora – in the Greek alphabet. Surviving accounts from the cellars of a large estate in Egypt also detail the wine distributions to officials and servants for the Brumalia of the master, Apion, which fell on the first day of the festival.

Yet, the origins of the Brumalia are far from clear. It seems to have been related to the earlier Roman Bruma festival, which took place on a single day in November and looked ahead to the winter solstice (or bruma in Latin) a month later, but little is known about this.

It is only really from the sixth century onwards that it appears in surviving sources, even though by then most Romans were Christians and had been ruled by Christian emperors for more than two centuries. John the Lydian also states that the “name day” aspect of the celebrations was a recent innovation at this time. As far as we can tell, therefore, this was not merely a remnant from a distant pagan past, but had actually developed and grown at precisely the same time as emperors, including Justinian, were endeavouring to clamp down on perceived “paganism” in their empire.

The historian Roberta Mazza, in one of the most comprehensive modern discussions of the festival, has argued that the Brumalia was simply too popular to get rid of entirely, but that Justinian sought to strip it of “pagan” elements. She says that in doing so, the emperor “reshaped and reinvented the meanings and purposes of the feast” and made it “both acceptable from a religious point of view and useful for constructing a common cultural identity throughout the different provinces of the empire”.

The true meaning of Brumalia

We know that the Brumalia continued to be celebrated at the imperial court in Constantinople until at least the tenth century, but it was certainly not without its opponents. John the Lydian reports that the church was opposed to the Brumalia, and similar statements of disapproval and attempts to ban it were also made by church councils in 692 and 743. For some Christians, it remained just too pagan for comfort. Controversy also surrounded other celebrations in late antiquity, including the wearing of masks at New Year, the Roman Lupercalia (with its naked runners), and the processions and dancing involved in the “Bean Festival” at Calama in North Africa.

How then should we view the Brumalia? Was it still essentially “pagan”, or had it become safely Christianised or secularised? I think that any attempt to neatly categorise these festivals, let alone their participants, is destined to fail. For some people, the religious elements will have loomed larger, while for others they will have been almost entirely irrelevant, as also happens with Christmas today.

The Brumalia could be celebrated in a variety of ways and have a multitude of meanings to different people throughout the empire, even if all of them saw themselves as Christians. Rather than arguing that Justinian or others who enjoyed the Brumalia were “less Christian” than its opponents, we might instead treat it as a vivid illustration of the fluidity and malleability of notions of culture and identity.

We cannot ever discover the true meaning of Brumalia, but we can be sure that it brought people together to commemorate being halfway out of the dark.



Richard Flower, Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, University of Exeter

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Guest Post: Why children believe (or not) that Santa Claus exists

by Jacqueline D. Woolley, University of Texas at Austin

The holiday season is upon us, and so are its attendant myths, most prominent of which is the Santa Claus story. This is the time that many children are told about a man who lives forever, resides at the North Pole, knows what every child in the world desires, drives a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and enters one’s house through a chimney, which most children don’t even have.

Given the many absurdities and contradictions in this story, it’s surprising that even young children would believe it. Yet research from my lab shows that 83 percent of five-year-olds think that Santa Claus is real.

Why?

An evolutionary advantage?

At the root of this paradox is a very basic question regarding the nature of the young child as an inherently credulous being – that is, believing everything he or she is told – versus a rational one.

The noted author and ethologist Richard Dawkins, in a 1995 essay, proposed that children are inherently credulous, and prone to believing in just about anything. He even suggested that it was an evolutionary advantage for children to believe.

He illustrated that quite convincingly with an example of a young child living near an alligator-infested swamp. His point was that the child who is skeptical, and prone to critically evaluating his parents’ advice not to go swimming in that swamp, has much less chance of surviving than does the child who unthinkingly heeds his parents’ advice.

This view of young children who believe easily is shared by many, including 18th-century philosopher Thomas Reid, and developmental psychologists, who argue that children are strongly biased to trust what people tell them.

Not very different from adults?

Yet research from my lab shows that children actually are rational, thoughtful consumers of information. In fact, they use many of the same tools as adults to decide what to believe.

So, what are some of the tools that adults use to decide what to believe, and what evidence is there that children possess them?

I’ll focus on three: One is attention to the context in which new information is embedded. A second is the tendency to measure new information against one’s existing knowledge base. And the third is the ability to evaluate the expertise of other people.

Let’s look first at context.

Imagine reading an article about a new species of fish – let’s call them “surnits.” Then imagine you’re reading this article in two very different contexts – one in which your doctor is late and you’re in the waiting room reading the article in a copy of National Geographic, the official magazine of a scientific society.

In another context, you encounter a report of this discovery while waiting in line at the grocery store and perusing the National Enquirer, an American supermarket tabloid. My guess is that the context surrounding your introduction to this new information would guide your judgment about the reality status of this new fish.

We essentially did this with children. We told them about animals they’d never heard of, like surnits. Some children heard about them in a fantastical context, in which they were told that dragons or ghosts collect them. Other children learned about surnits in a scientific context, in which they were told that doctors or scientists use them.

Children as young as four were more likely to claim that surnits really existed when they heard about them in the scientific context versus in the fantastical context.

How children use knowledge and expertise

One of the primary ways we, as adults, learn about new things is by hearing about them from others. Imagine hearing about a new kind of fish from a marine biologist versus from your next-door neighbor who often regales you with reports of his alien abductions. Your evaluation of the expertise and trustworthiness of these sources presumably will guide your beliefs about the true existence of this fish.

In another research project, we presented young children with novel animals that were either possible (e.g., a fish that lives in the ocean), impossible (e.g., a fish that lives on the moon) or improbable (e.g., a fish as big as a car). Then we gave them the choice to figure out on their own whether the entity really existed or to ask someone. They also heard reports from either a zookeeper (an expert) or a chef (a nonexpert).

We found that children believed in the possible entities and rejected the impossible ones. Children made these decisions by comparing the new information to their existing knowledge. For the improbable animals – ones that could possibly exist but were rare or odd – children were significantly more likely to believe in them when the zookeeper claimed they were real than when the chef did.

In other words, children use expertise, just as adults do.

It’s the adults

If children are so smart, why do they believe in Santa?

The reason is simple: Parents and others go to great lengths to support the Santa myth. In a recent study we found that 84 percent of parents reported taking their child to visit more than two Santa impersonators during the Christmas season.

The Elf on the Shelf, originally a children’s picture book about elves who inform Santa about children’s behavior around Christmastime, is now a multi-million-dollar franchise. And the United States Postal Service now promotes a “Letters from Santa” program in which it provides personal replies to children’s letters to Santa.

Why do we feel compelled to go to such great lengths? Why does Uncle Jack insist on climbing onto the roof on Christmas Eve to stomp around and shake jingle bells?

The answer is simply this: Children are not unthinkingly credulous and do not believe everything we tell them. So, we adults must overwhelm them with evidence – the bells on the roof, the live Santas at the mall, the half-eaten carrot on Christmas morning.

How children evaluate

Given this effort, it essentially would be irrational for children not to believe. In believing in Santa Claus, children, in fact, exercise their scientific thinking skills.

First, they evaluate sources of information. As ongoing research in my lab indicates, they’re more likely to believe an adult than a child about what’s real.

Second, they use evidence (e.g., the empty glass of milk and half-eaten cookies on Christmas morning) to come to a conclusion about existence. Other research from my lab shows that children use similar evidence to guide their beliefs about a fantastical being, the Candy Witch, who visits children on Halloween night and leaves new toys in exchange for candy.

Third, research shows that, as children’s understanding becomes more sophisticated, they tend to engage more with the absurdities in the Santa Claus myth, like how a fat man can fit through a small chimney, or how animals could possibly fly.

Wondering what to tell your child?

Some parents wonder whether they are harming their children by engaging in the Santa myth. Philosophers and bloggers alike have mounted arguments against perpetuating the “Santa-lie,” some even claiming that it could lead to permanent distrust of parents and other authorities.

So, what should parents do?

There is no evidence that belief, and eventual disbelief in Santa, affects parental trust in any significant way. Furthermore, not only do children have the tools to ferret out the truth; but engaging with the Santa story may give them a chance to exercise these abilities.

So, if you think it would be fun for you and your family to invite Santa Claus into your home at Christmas time, you should do so. Your children will be fine. And they might even learn something.



Jacqueline D. Woolley, Professor and Department of Psychology Chair, University of Texas at Austin

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Guest Post: 5 Laws That Could Send Santa to Federal Prison

by David Rosenthal

While most people know Jolly Old Saint Nick as a friendly figure, he too is not immune from the perils of administrative overreach and overcriminalization.

To get you in the Christmas spirit, here is a list of some of the potential crimes and violations of federal law Saint Nick as he prepares to take flight for 2016.

1. The Reindeer Act

Many have tried finding Santa’s workshop—without success—but children have long mailed letters to the Santa Claus House located at 101 St. Nicholas Drive in North Pole, Alaska. This office location is the first source of trouble for Father Christmas. Under the Reindeer Act, signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937, only Alaska Natives are allowed to own reindeer in Alaska.

While Santa has been operating out of the North Pole for many years, only Eskimos, Indians, and Aleuts inhabiting Alaska at the time the United States purchased the land from Russia are considered natives under the act, and Saint Nicholas is from the Greek village Patara in modern-day Turkey. Luckily for Santa, he might be able to avoid the $5,000 fine for violating this provision of the Code of Federal Regulations, but only if he applies for and is granted a special use permit to possess reindeers as a non-native.

2. The Lacey Act
Even if Santa gets around the Reindeer Act, he may face civil and criminal penalties under the Lacey Act if his purchase, sale, possession, or use of reindeer—or any other flora or fauna— violates any state or federal law or the law of any foreign nation, no matter what language or code that foreign law is written in.

Just as some unwitting Americans have been convicted of offenses such as the “importation of Caribbean spiny lobsters from Honduras” in violation of Honduran packaging laws, Santa could be committing a crime each time he crosses borders to deliver flora or fauna.

3. Flying Without a License
Despite Santa’s many years of experience, there is no Mr. Claus listed in the Federal Aviation Administration’s pilot certificates database. If Santa is piloting his sleigh without an airman’s certificate, he is in violation of 49 U.S.C. § 46317.

Any pilot who operates an aircraft without a proper license is guilty of a federal crime punishable by three years in prison (the sleigh would almost certainly be deemed an aircraft under 49 U.S.C. § 40102(a)(6)). And that is only for Santa’s role as a pilot. If his sleigh is not deemed airworthy, Santa will be in violation of 14 C.F.R. § 91.7 and subject to additional civil penalties by the FAA.

If Santa’s sleigh is approved, he then must post “within” the “aircraft” a copy of the registration, airworthiness certificate, and other official documents, to be displayed “at the cabin or cockpit entrance so that it is legible to passengers or crew,” per 14 C.F.R. § 91.203(b); the sleigh’s baggage compartment must be installed subject to Subsection C with a copy of FAA Form 337 authorizing such installation maintained on board the sleigh; and all fuel venting and exhaust emissions must meet additional requirements.

Hopefully Santa has a good compliance team.

4. False Statements
Any white lie that falls within the jurisdiction of the U.S. government could be a federal crime. As Heritage scholars have written elsewhere, there is one general federal statute for false statements that “should be broad enough to reach any fib or whopper that the federal government could have a good reason to prosecute.”

But there are dozens more specific criminal statutes that punish false statements regarding such minutiae as fluid milk products. If Santa parks his sleigh on federal land and encounters a park ranger while coming down the chimney, he’d better not tell a fib about what he’s up to or he could end up in big trouble. (He would also be violating another federal law if he parks his sleigh in a way that inconveniences another person on federal land, but I digress.)

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg once observed that, under federal false statement statutes, “the prospect remains that an overzealous prosecutor or investigator—aware that a person has committed some suspicious acts, but unable to make a criminal case—will create a crime by surprising the suspect, asking about those acts, and receiving a false denial.”

Here, once Santa gets off the ground, his real legal trouble is only just beginning. A government agent need only ask Santa if he committed burglary, trespass, or larceny, or ask him, “Are you really Santa Claus?” In that case, Santa really would need a Miracle on 34th Street to stay out of the slammer for lying.

5. IRS Tax Gift
Even if Santa evades capture during his Christmas Eve flight, he then must deal with Uncle Sam upon his return to the North Pole. Under IRS gift tax rules, the giver of gifts above a certain threshold is taxed at a rate up to 40 percent of the value of the gift. While individuals are allowed to make gifts up to $14,000 per recipient without encountering any tax consequences—most toy trucks and dolls would probably fit under this exemption—gifts above the limit must be reported on IRS Form 709.

As such, each time Santa drops off a shiny new BMW for mom or dad, he will be on the hook for an even bigger tax bill on April 15. Willful failure to file a gift tax return can land Santa in prison for up to one year under 26 U.S.C. § 7203. Let no good deed go unpunished.

The List Goes On
While those are just a few examples of how Santa may be held criminally and civilly liable for violating U.S. law, there are several other ways in which he operates in legal gray areas.

For instance, how does Santa compensate all of his elves who are working around the clock to finish making toys before the big day? If they are not receiving proper overtime pay in a safe work environment, Santa will be in violation of numerous provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Finally, given the size of his operation, Santa must be complying with the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate.

If Santa cannot even stay in line with every single government rule and regulation, how is the average American supposed to keep up? Attorney Harvey Silverglate argues that the average American unwittingly commits three felonies a day due to vague laws and governmental overreach.

The American people—and Mr. Claus—deserve better. Heritage scholars have identified a comprehensive strategy to combat the problem of overcriminalization, which threatens liberty by using the criminal law and penalties to attempt to solve every problem in society and compel compliance with regulatory schemes.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Reprinted from The Daily Signal.


David Rosenthal is a visiting legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Guest Post: How did we come to celebrate Christmas?

by Bronwen Neil, Australian Catholic University

Christmas is literally “the mass for Christ”, the day on which Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Pope Leo I

The western date for Jesus’ birth is quite arbitrary. It was chosen by Pope Leo I, bishop of Rome (440-461), to coincide with the Festival of the Saturnalia, when Romans worshipped Saturn, the sun god. This was the day of the solar equinox, the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, which officially marked the halfway point of winter.

Leo thought it would distract his Roman congregation from sun worship by celebrating the feast of Christ’s birth on the same day. He described Jesus as the “new light”; an image of salvation, but timely in that the days began to lengthen from 25 December onwards.

The date of the feast varies within Christian denominations. Western Christians celebrate the Nativity on a fixed date, 25 December. Some Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate it on 6 January together with Epiphany, the revelation of the infant Jesus to three wise men. The Greek and Russian Orthodox celebrate Christmas on 7 January and Epiphany on 19 January.

Where did Christmas traditions originate?

It is true to say that the western Christmas began as a Christianized pagan feast. The Christmas tree is also a pagan symbol of fertility.

In northern countries, when the nights are long and cold, the feast of Christmas traditionally gave Christian people something to look forward to: rich food (reindeer if you are in Sweden, pork and lamb if you are in Greece), lots of candles, Catholic Mass at midnight or Protestant services on Christmas morning. Fir trees were brought inside and lit with candles as a symbol of the hope that spring would return with new crops and plentiful food.

Fir trees were brought inside to symbolise the return of spring, new crops, and plentiful food. It’s also a pagan symbol of fertility.
Ievgenii Meyer/www.shutterstock.com

The early church also celebrated Christ’s Resurrection in spring, the season of new life, since it coincided with the Jewish Passover feast on 14 Nisan, a date that depended on when the first full moon occurred in March or April. Many of our Easter symbols, like the bunny and the egg, are ancient fertility symbols. No one knows how chocolate got dragged in!

It is also an interesting coincidence that the Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah, falls in November or December each year, and is celebrated with the lighting of the candelabra (menorah), traditional foods, games and gifts.

Where did Santa Claus come from?

The Santa Claus myth (spoiler alert: don’t read any further if you are under 10!) came from the legend of Saint Nicholas. Nicholas was a bishop in the city of Myra (in modern Turkey), who wanted to help poor young women get husbands. He left bags of money of the doorsteps of their family homes in secret, an anonymous gift to the poor to be used as a dowry.

A 1950s Coca-Cola advertisement

For this he became known as the patron saint of virgins and children. Over time, his generosity was remembered by people giving gifts to children in secret on the feast of St Nicholas, celebrated on December 6 (in western Christian countries) and 19 December (in the eastern churches). His name in English became Clause, after the Dutch Sinterklaas. Dutch children and others in western Europe leave food out in a shoe or a clog for Nicholas’ horse on the eve of 6 December, and receive presents on the day of the feast.

Our modern image of Santa Claus as a rotund gentleman of a certain age dressed in a red-and-white suit and matching hat comes from an incredibly successful marketing campaign by Coca-Cola in the 1930s. Since then, suburban Santas always dress in the image created by the Coke brand.

But this image comes from an earlier depiction of Father Christmas who had nothing to do with the American Santa Claus until the 1850s.

Until the Victorian era, when childhood was recognised as a separate stage of life, and the Christmas feast came to centre around children, Father Christmas, or Lord Christmas as he was also known, was the personification of a mid-winter feast of merrymaking for adults – and he brought no presents. He was useful as a symbol for Catholic-sympathising writers in the early 17th century who wanted to defend Christmas from attacks by the Puritans, radical Protestants who intended to ban the feast.

(For a Jewish perspective on the Wars of Religion, see Stephen Feldman’s book, Please Don’t Wish Me a Merry Christmas: A Critical History of the Separation of Church and State (1997).)

Tuck Postcard, Photo Oilette Series, 1919.

From the 1850s onwards, the English Father Christmas was depicted as a bearded old man wearing a long red robe trimmed with white fur and a pointed red hat, who brought gifts to good children. This image can be seen on English postcards from the early 20th century.

Christmas in the modern era

A lot of the significance of the original feast is lost when we in the southern hemisphere celebrate it in the middle of summer. A family barbecue at the beach cannot really capture the atmosphere of a cold and dark mid-winter.

This seems to be the main reason for the emergence of the alternative “Christmas in July”. Today we give presents to adults as well as kids on the eve or day of 25 December, and usually not anonymously. It would be interesting to see what would change if none of our gifts had name tags attached – Secret Santa at the office is based on the same concept.

Our gifts are also reminiscent of the tributes that the three Magi – who symbolise, according to tradition, the non-Jewish peoples – gave to the infant Jesus.

Incidentally, according to two of the four Gospels, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but given the lack of corroborating evidence for a census there that year, it is now thought that Jesus was more likely born in Galilee, where he grew up. Bethlehem was significant for the Gospel writers as being the birthplace of King David 1,000 years earlier, and a royal city for the Jews.

The Magi gave Jesus gold, frankincense and myrrh, when they understood that the baby they were looking at was both human and the son of God. That mystery at least remains intact.



Bronwen Neil, Associate professor, Australian Catholic University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Why young children often prefer wrapping paper and boxes to actual presents

by Julie Brierley, University of Hull

We’ve all been there: you spend an unthinkable amount on a child’s toy – lulled by the promise that the interaction with the flashing lights and whooshing noises will excite, stimulate and educate our little people. Yet on the big day, we watch as our child’s interest in the toy quickly diminishes and the attraction of the discarded wrapping paper and packaging takes over.

We watch with confusion as our young children show us the real pleasures of Christmas – not their new shiny toy, but all that is destined for the recycling bin. And as they roll around on the floor in the wrapping paper and jump in and out of the boxes, we question our own sanity in spending ridiculous sums of money on a child who would have clearly preferred a cardboard box for Christmas.

But while our child’s preoccupation with screwed up wrapping paper and packaging may seem barmy to us adults, it is in fact just another way to play – and can help children to learn about themselves and the world around them.

The psychology of wrapping paper

At a very early age, children use play to drive their own learning. And when young children are allowed and actively encouraged to explore and follow their own interests, they develop understanding from their actions.

In recent years, neuroscientific studies have led to a greater appreciation of the importance of young children’s brain development. These studies have shown us that the first three years of a child’s life are a critical period for learning and development. This confirms a direct relationship between the quality of experiences young children gain and the growth and development of the brain.

‘Just look at this paper!’
Shutterstock

So, when children explore and experiment with objects such as boxes, paper and ribbons, they are using both their sensory and physical senses to extend their thinking.

“What is this and what can I do with it? Can I fit my hand inside? what else fits in?” – young children’s questioning minds are pivotal to their learning. And engagement in self-directed play helps to aid learning and supports the development of language as well as mathematical, scientific, creative, personal and social concepts.

The power of play

In today’s society, the power of play is frequently misunderstood and underestimated. Children these days have less time to “free play” given that so much of their playtime is structured or involves a parental onlooker.

But young children are physical beings, who gain sensory perceptions and feedback from the whole of their bodies – and these perceptions contribute to essential brain development. So seemingly meaningless actions such as twirling, jumping, rolling and messing around with objects can actually help children to learn about who they are and the world around them.

Through the sensory and physical exploration of the discarded boxes and Christmas wrapping paper, the foundations of learning and cognitive development are occurring. Children become sensitised and motivated to further their explorations, allowing more complex thoughts and understanding to develop.

Living the dream.
Shutterstock

So a young child who repeatedly fills and empties a box, climbs in and out, puts things in then tips them out, is not just making a mess. Instead they are exploring the “insideness” of the object – which helps them to understand concepts such as capacity, volume and space.

And with this in mind, rather than just filling the toy cupboard with a load of manufactured creations, it is important that young children are also able to make their own discoveries and to construct their own understanding, too.

So this Christmas, make sure your child has a chance to play with all the wrapping paper before it is neatly tidied up and disposed of. Because not only are you helping them to cultivate a desire to learn, you are also helping to develop their inquisitive resolve and creative expression.

You will also be allowing them the opportunity to strengthen the bits of their brain that are responsible for development – and this will help to ensure they have the foundations for future learning. And what could be a better gift than that?



Julie Brierley, Lecturer in Early Years & Education, University of Hull

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Guest Post: What would you have eaten for Christmas in medieval times?

by Iona McCleery, University of Leeds

With Christmas almost upon us, there will be plenty of frenzied present shopping and meal planning. Haven’t made that Christmas cake yet? Fear not. If you were preparing the festive meal 600 years ago you’d have far more on your plate.

The picture below is a calendar page from a Book of Hours, a type of prayer book popular among pious rich people in the Middle Ages. Apart from the costumes they are wearing, the people at the bottom of the page seem much like us – keeping warm and enjoying their food and drink.

The 12th Day of Christmas

It may surprise you to learn that this particular calendar month is January. The feast day celebrated by the couple is Epiphany on January 6, picked out in red (Epyphania). Our Christmases, hectic though they may be, are actually a doddle compared to the traditions of old. Medieval people celebrated all 12 days of Christmas, from December 25 through to Epiphany – the day the three kings turned up with gifts for the newborn Jesus – although they did not usually feast every day. Some households had their big feast on Christmas Day. For others it was the first of January or the 6th, depending on local custom.

Wealthy or poor

There’s not much detail as to what the couple ate at their winter feast. The artist was more interested in depicting the strawberries and flowers in the margins than in putting food on the table. This is typical of medieval manuscript art. Even elaborate descriptions of royal feasts say little about food. We know even less about what the poor ate, although lords probably feasted their tenants at least once over Christmas.

We do know that preparations for winter would have begun in the late autumn. Humans and animals both ate the same basic foodstuff: grain. Poorer people did not have enough grain for animals over winter so most pigs and cattle were fattened up on acorns and slaughtered. Calendars commemorate this strategic act for the months of November and December as in the images below, paired with the relevant signs of the zodiac (Sagittarius and Capricorn).

Fattening in November and slaughtering in December.
Courtesy of the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds

Of course, the wealthy could continue to keep their animals alive, so they had fresh meat all winter. It’s not true that they used spices to liven up rotten meat: cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and pepper were imported from India or Indonesia, so if you could afford them you could afford good meat. The rich could also afford sugar – candied fruit, sugared almonds and sweets have always been popular Christmas treats.

The poor would have eaten sausage and bacon instead, salted fish if they could get it, stored or dried apples, peas and beans, perhaps a bit of honey, and would only have had the added flavours of onion, leeks and garlic. Even salt was expensive. The hungriest time was actually not the months that we associate with winter cold, but the months of April and May. It was then that stores had run out and there would be little growing yet in the garden. Nor was there much dairy as hens naturally lay less in winter and cows don’t produce milk until after they have their spring calves.

Yuletide feasting

The best way to find out what the wealthy ate is to turn to their financial accounts and cookery books. Cookery books such as the Forme of Cury, written for the household of King Richard II (1377-1399), provide some tasty recipes. For a recent project we made recipes from this text and others for the public to try at festivals and markets around Yorkshire. In Castleford Market in December 2012 we prepared seasonal tastes such as gingerbread, mutton stew (mounchelet) and apple pudding (pommesmoile).

An opulent Christmas feast.
Courtesy of the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds

But it was nigh on impossible to prepare the main dishes that the rich had at their feasts. Turkey originally came from the Americas so was not found on English tables until the late 16th century. It probably replaced a showier but much less tasty bird: the peacock. The price of these birds meant that most people had to be content with another large expensive bird, the goose, which was a traditional Christmas main course until relatively recently. Also closely associated with Christmas was the wild boar – a boar’s head was often brought into the hall to accompanying carols. But it wasn’t always intended for eating.

And then elaborate displays of prepared meat, sugar or wax in the form of fantasy animals, angels and castles were often part of the entertainment, sometimes even moving mechanically or exploding.

So count yourself lucky as somebody who won’t go hungry this winter. You may have left the pudding quite late but you can leave the peacock and pommesmoile for next year.



Iona McCleery, Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Leeds

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

From the Archives: TV star Tina Fey argues for importance of the arts at University of Virginia

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on September 14, 2013. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

TV star Tina Fey argues for importance of the arts at University of Virginia

Award-winning actress, writer, and producer Tina Fey was the inaugural speaker at the University of Virginia's President’s Speaker Series for the Arts on September 14. Fey, a 1992 graduate of the University, was introduced by UVA president Teresa Sullivan and, following her lecture, engaged in a Q&A with drama professor Robert Chapel. Virginia Film Festival director Jody Kielbasa opened the evening's proceedings.

In a wide-ranging, hour-long address that drew on her experiences on stage in high school and college, in television on Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock, and as a mother of two young daughters, Fey discussed the importance of the arts – including music, theatre, film, and graphic arts – to society and human fulfillment.

Fey singled out three artists that she particularly admires and views as role models: British feminist playwright Caryl Churchill (Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Mad Forest); stand-up comedian Chris Rock; and Broadway composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim (Into the Woods, Follies).

These three artists, she explained, “meant a lot to me,” saying that, although she had often acknowledged the influence of comediennes like Mary Tyler Moore, Gilda Radner, and Carol Burnett, “I've never really talked about these particular people whose work really thrills me and really inspires me, which is the way I think art should make you feel.”

Caryl Churchill

Churchill's work, she said, is “so fascinating to me because it really made you think about what you think is normal and what is deviant and what is societally acceptable. It didn't tell you what to think, but it made you think about it.”

The things she “loves most about Caryl Churchill's writing,” Fey explained, are that she writes “spare dialogue,” that she plays around with theatrical conventions, and that “she inspires me to write politically, to try to write about something, to write about things that are important.”

On that latter point, Fey gave the example of her film Mean Girls, costarring Lindsay Lohan.

That movie, she said, was a high school comedy but also “intended to be a jumping-off point for a conversation about what they call 'relational aggression' among girls."

"And we fixed it; the movie fixed it,” she added sarcastically.

The TV series 30 Rock, she explained, was meant to explore gender, class, and racial differences among the main characters, Liz Lemon, Jack Donaghy, and Tracy Jordan.

Chris Rock

What she admires about Chris Rock, Fey said, is that he is “the greatest stand-up comedian of his generation, of my generation.”

Rock, she explained, has a special ability to “look closely, to look at the world really, really, really closely and notice something that's true, that no one's ever said before, and then say it. Call out something that no one's ever said out loud before. That's the best way to write a joke because only the truth is funny.”

Rock's social and (sometimes) political commentary, Fey noted, is sometimes too vulgar to repeat in front of a general audience like the one gathered in the McIntire Amphitheatre, but it is no less sharp-edged and relevant because of that.

Stephen Sondheim

“Obviously, the third artist in this completely organic triumvirate of my favorite people, is musical theater composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim,” Fey said, noting that she used to watch the VHS copy of Into the Woods every Friday night in UVA's Clemons Library.

Sondheim “is the master of many things,” she said, recommending his two books on lyric-writing to the audience. “My favorite thing about him is that he's the master of a beautiful song in a creepy context,” giving as an example “Not While I'm Around” from Sweeney Todd, as well as the show Assassins.

Like Fey, Sondheim is in the theatre because “he's interested in communication with audiences.”

What she has hoped to have learned from Sondheim, Fey said, are to “set the level of difficulty really high … and to challenge your audience, expect them to pay attention and to be smart, expect them to love language.”

Sondheim's work is “so finished,” she said, “it's made with so much care,” adding that she and her colleagues at 30 Rock would treat their script pages “as though they were going to the Smithsonian.”

“We would check every detail of the set because it's your work. It doesn't matter if it's a school play or a dumb TV show. It's your work. You should care about it so much that people get annoyed with you.”

Another lesson Fey learned from Sondheim is that it's OK to make things that are not for everyone. Setting out to create a huge commercial success is like “a recipe for Cream of Wheat.” She suggested that the “best-selling book in the world,” Fifty Shades of Grey, was written by a malfunctioning ATM machine.

“Money is not the way to measure success in the arts,” Fey concluded.

Guest Post: A short history of three very famous Christmas carols

by Peter Roennfeldt, Griffith University

Singing and Christmas seem to go naturally together, like plum pudding and custard. Even those who would not normally attend a choir concert or church service throughout the year might happily participate in a civic Carols by Candlelight or a Midnight Mass. In these settings, the carols come thick and fast, and everyone joins in, almost involuntarily. But what is the origin of the choral music which adorns these settings?

The tradition of carol singing dates from the Middle Ages, and was not restricted to the Christmas season. There were carols for Easter, for New Year, and sometimes even for political events such as the Battle of Agincourt.

The poetic form was simple: a succession of stanzas with different texts, interspersed with a recurring refrain. In more recent times, the term “carol” has come to mean any song associated with Christmas.

Medieval carols from England and elsewhere have survived, though much transformed.
Good Christian Men, Rejoice dates from the 14th century, though only its text has been reliably attributed, to the Dominican friar Heinrich Seuse (Suso). The melody is known in Latin as In dulci jubilo (in sweet joy), and has been frequently used as the basis of extended instrumental or vocal compositions.

This song found its way into English through the 1853 publication Carols for Christmastide by J.M. Neale. This and other volumes of carols contributed materially to the Victorian era’s wholesale adoption of seasonal trimmings, along with royally sanctioned Christmas trees and greeting cards.

During the centuries between the first iteration of a carol tradition and the Dickensian revival of the Christmas spirit in the mid-1800s, there was comparatively little in the way of English composition of new works in this genre. A few pieces that are more appropriately termed Christmas hymns were, however, produced during the 18th century.

One of these is Adeste fideles or O Come, All Ye Faithful. Its authorship is disputed, but the most likely source is the 1751 volume Cantus diversi, published by John Francis Wade. Like most other Christmas carols, its text has clear Christian references.

Interestingly, it is also thought to contain covert Jacobite symbolism, with the phrases “all ye faithful” and “to Bethlehem” referring respectively to the supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie and England itself. Wade fled to France after the failure of the 1745 Jacobite uprising, but his hymn soon came into regular use, particularly amongst English Catholics.

An indication of its wider adoption is the inclusion of O Come, All Ye Faithful within the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, a familiar modern day tradition inaugurated at Cornwall’s Truro Cathedral in 1880. In the age of mass media, this most renowned Christmas ceremony, as practised in King’s College Cambridge has become universally familiar, firstly on radio and then television. Choirs around the world also perform their own Lessons and Carols programs every December, and most often conclude with this piece.

The most famous Christmas carol of all time is undoubtedly Silent Night, Holy Night. The original words for Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht were written by Joseph Mohr in 1816 and the melody two years later by Franz Xaver Gruber, when both were living in villages near Salzburg.

The German version was published soon afterward, and the familiar English translation in 1859, since when it has become known in nearly 150 languages. Due to its universality, Silent Night was in 2011 designated by UNESCO as an intangible item of cultural heritage.

With its stereotypical overlay of European winter costumes and snow-covered fir trees, the translation of Christmas traditions around the world is problematic. In Australia, there have been several attempts to develop parallel traditions of carols that eschew northern hemisphere references, in favour of local culture.

The best known are those composed by W.G. James, former federal controller of music for the ABC, to texts by John Wheeler. Outback images of drovers, summer heat, red dust and red-gold moon, dancing brolgas, mulga plains, Christmas bush, gully creeks and grazing sheep recur throughout these songs.

They were published in several sets, commencing in 1948. Despite several recordings by major ensembles, their familiarity and popularity has fluctuated greatly. However, two of James’ carols recently made it into a “top 10” list of Aussie Christmas songs by the Australian Times, whose target audience is expats living in the UK.

The tradition of singing Christmas carols is embedded in the season, even though the contexts where they are performed may differ widely from that where the words and music originated. We happily ignore the obvious disconnect between the imagery of some familiar carols and our hot Australian summers, and there is something reassuring about hearing and singing them once again, with feeling, every Christmastime.



Peter Roennfeldt, Professor of Music, Griffith University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

From the Archives: Holland Taylor supplies engaging on-stage portrait of Ann Richards in ‘Ann’

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on December 22, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016. I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Holland Taylor supplies engaging on-stage portrait of Ann Richards in ‘Ann’

'Ann,' a new play written by and starring Holland Taylor, at the Kennedy Center through January 15, 2012

On its way to Broadway in 2012, Ann, an affectionate portrait of the late Texas Governor Ann Richards (1933-2006), officially opened at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater on December 21 for an engagement that ends January 15.

Starring Holland Taylor, who also researched and wrote the script, the play’s setting is a college graduation ceremony, where Richards is the commencement speaker. (This kind of set-up seems almost required for one-man or one-woman shows. Thurgood, which also played at the Kennedy Center, had Laurence Fishburne as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall deliver a lecture on a college campus. A lecture is, perhaps, the most believable conceit that can explain why one person on stage talks at an audience for two straight hours.)

Holland Taylor has a long list of distinguished credits on stage, screen, and television, but today she is best known as the acerbic mother/grandmother on CBS-TV’s Two and a Half Men. Known for playing strong (sometimes headstrong) women, Taylor brings all of that attitude and edginess to her portrayal of Ann Richards.

History lesson

Richards begins by noting that she was not the first female Texas governor. That would have been “Ma” Ferguson, wife of the aptly named “Pa” Ferguson, who was elected in the 1920s after her husband was impeached and sent to prison for selling pardons to convicted criminals. “Ma” Ferguson’s winning campaign slogan was “Two governors for the price of one.”

Taylor’s script does not make the explicit connection, but this episode in Texas history may explain an aspect of Texas law that comes up in a later sequence, when in the second act Richards, who is trying to figure out what to do about the fate of a death-row inmate, complains bitterly that only the state’s parole board can grant a pardon, while the best she can do to prevent the man’s death is to issue a 30-day stay of execution.

Ann’s “commencement speech” traces her life from her childhood in a hamlet near Waco called Lakeview (“where there was no lake to view”) through her marriage and divorce and her early political career, first as a county commissioner, then as a state treasurer, and finally as governor from 1991-95, with a coda regarding her post-statehouse activities.

Along the way the audience is treated to a stream of quips, slightly dirty jokes, shaggy dog stories, and a “day in the life of the governor” when the stage is transformed from a lecture hall into Ann Richards’ office in the state capitol.

Hard work

Not shy about expressing herself, Ann says “I have a lot of opinions. Can you imagine if I were your mother-in-law? I could fix you.”

Reflecting on her work ethic, which she absorbed from her parents, Ann remembers a slogan of her local civic group: “If we rest, we rust.”

Even when the play takes a darker turn, Ann keeps her sense of humor. In discussing her battle with alcoholism, which hit her hard in her early 40s, just as her political career was about to launch, Ann says she “was like a poster child for functioning alcoholics everywhere,” because she never let her drinking get in the way of her many tasks and commitments.

At the time, she claims, being an openly alcoholic politician was something novel and noteworthy. “Nowadays,” she points out, just about rolling her eyes, “you can’t even get into a primary unless you’ve been to rehab.”

What’s missing?

Oddly enough, the play continues for two hours without Richards ever mentioning the names of her two bêtes noires, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush (who defeated her gubernatorial re-election bid in 1994).

Even more amazingly, although the play opens with a “clip” of the 1988 Democratic National Convention speech that made then-state treasurer Ann Richards a national celebrity, Taylor’s script never quotes the snarky line that made Richards famous: “Poor George! He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.” That comment alone sent Michael Dukakis’ poll numbers soaring – although that may have been the high point of his ill-fated presidential campaign.

Throughout the play, and especially in the extensive “day in a life” sequence, Taylor’s Richards expresses the political and social values that animated her: concern for equality, racial harmony, gender equity, justice, and a “government that looks like Texas.”

“Life is not fair,” says Richards, in one of many epigrammatic utterings, “but government should be.”

Given the subject, it should come as no surprise that the play has a liberal bias. There’s no hidden agenda, though it was somewhat disconcerting when some in the opening night audience applauded Richards’ mocking of Second Amendment rights. (Ann speculates that her pro-gun control views were what led to her defeat for re-election.)

Despite exhibiting the rough-and-tumble life of the governor, the on-stage Taylor always looks elegant as Richards, from the famous silver beehive (“Molly Ivins said I have Republican hair”) to her businesslike jacket-and-skirt combination. In this, Taylor is ably assisted by costume designer Julie Weiss.

Production design

Other aspects of the physical production are noteworthy, as well. Scenic designer Michael Fagin has created a fluid set that benefits from projections (by Zachary Borovay) of long-ago Texas scenes and from the lighting design by Matthew Richards (presumably no relation to the title character).

Benjamin Endsley Klein took on the difficult task of directing an actress in a play of her own creation. Not to suggest that Holland Taylor is herself a diva – I have no evidence of that and suspect that it is not true – but it must be daunting to translate page to stage when the playwright is also the star.

It is clear from this production that Taylor has a great deal of respect for her subject, and also substantial affection. At the risk of committing a cliché, she embraces the role with gusto, radiating both energy and intelligence along the way.

Ann continues at the Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater through January 15, 2012. Ticket prices start at $54. For ticket information, call the Kennedy Center box office at (202) 467-4600 or (800) 444-1324, or visit www.kennedy-center.org. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes.