255: THE CHRISTMAS LAMENT

The myth

Christmas isn’t what it used to be – but until recently, it was.

The “truth”

What xmasologist Neil Armstrong of Teeside University called “the Christmas lament”, the belief that we’ve abandoned the true, traditional holiday and replaced it with something ghastly and perverted, is far from a modern development. Armstrong traced it back to 1616, when King James I of England made a speech decrying the dying of the old-school Xmas. In the Middle Ages and Tudor period, all wealthy families were expected to provide open-house banqueting to rich, poor and middling alike through the festival period. This was the essence of the English Christmas: hospitality, social unity, celebration. To what extent this actually happened is beside the point: precisely as people today believe that in (or just before) their own childhood there was an unchanging tradition of Christmas, which is now gone, so James was convinced that the old English Xmas of charity and good cheer was fading away. An emergent rich class preferred to spend a private Xmas in London, rather than at their country seats. There, they would entertain only their own family and close friends, their doors barred against the commons. As is usually the case in such laments, James saw this as emblematic of the end of the Good Old Days, not only in December but in general.

Disclaimer

All history is contentious. We don’t want to fall out with anyone at this special time, so please send any disagreements you may have with the above, gaily wrapped and temptingly bulging, to the letters page.

Sources

Christmas in Nineteenth-Century England, by Neil Armstrong (MUP, 2010); www.timetravel-britain.com/articles/christmas/jacobean.shtml

Mythchaser

From the illegality of mince pies to a ban on extra chairs in shopping centres, there are hundreds of absurd Xmas myths. But can you find one that’s actually true?