’Twas the night before Christmas

From how the fly agaric fungus and its hallucinogenic properties might have influenced the image of a jolly, red-faced Father Christmas to cross-dressing in pantomimes, Octavia Pollock examines some common festive customs

Octavia Pollock examines the origins of our festive customs

ROUND and plump, garbed in red and white, glimpsed occasionally in early winter. No, not Father Christmas, but fly agaric, a mushroom noted for its hallucinogenic properties, which just may have contributed to the image of the gift-giving chimney scramble and team of flying reindeer.

Accounts of how Christmas customs began are legion. The legend of St Nick is said to start with the birth of Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, in about

AD245 in Byzantium—he gave away his money to those in need, anonymously. On hearing of three girls whose father couldn’t afford their dowries, he dropped a sack of gold down the chimney.

This legend could have given rise to stockings by the fire, but another theory traces the tradition to a joke by American writer Washington Irving. He was so keen to satirise John Pintard, who was obsessed with making St Nicholas patron saint of New York, that he constructed an elaborate hoax. It involved a missing Dutchman called Knickerbocker, who had absconded without paying his bill and leaving behind a mysterious manuscript, A History of New York, which weaves St Nicholas into every event.

The flying wagon and Santa’s entrance via chimney receive their first mention here, although the reindeer arrived, mysteriously, in an anonymous poem of 1821.

The following year, Clement Clarke Moore took up the baton with ’Twas the night before Christmas. Louisa May Alcott mentioned the elves in 1850 and Santa’s grotto was first unveiled in east London at the J. P. Roberts department store in 1888. Rudolph was the product of an obscure Chicago copywriter, Robert L. May, commissioned to write a story that vaguely involved Christmas and an animal. Incidentally, Coca Cola had nothing to do with any of this. Far away from American publicists and English shopkeepers, however, darker and colder places share similar legends. In snowy climes, the mindaltering drug derived from fly agaric prompted a euphoric and booming ‘ho-ho-ho’ and caused the taker to believe they were flying. Reindeer themselves were known to get high, by licking urine from carousers. Shamans who prepared the drug dropped into a yurt via the ‘chimney’, bearing gifts of knowledge. The colours come from the toadstool itself. Perhaps even the Norse gods indulged. Santa Claus bears comparison with Odin and his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, who would pause from his Wild Hunt with his sword-maiden Valkyries to drop toys and sweets down chimneys. Children would fill their boots with straw for Sleipnir, who would probably have preferred carrots. Odin also happened to be lord of Alfheim, home of the elves. Another Norse legend tells of Odin’s son, Baldur the Beautiful, beloved by all. When Baldur dreamt of a fearful misfortune, his mother, Frigg, obtained a promise from all things that they would not harm the young god. Unfortunately, she neglected to ask the mistletoe, believing it to be too innocent, and, in her innocence, revealed the omission to the wily Loki. He made an arrow from mistletoe, which pierced Baldur’s heart.

Some versions consign Baldur to the underworld forever, whereupon the mistletoe was condemned to hang alone and Frigg’s tears became the pearlescent berries. In others, Frigg is successful in begging the gods of the underworld to let him return and kisses everyone under the mistletoe, as we do.

The dark winters of the frozen north have long been broken by feasts of light and cheer. For the Romans, lamenting the loss of Mediterranean sunshine, the festival of Saturnalia was life-affirming. In a reversal of the natural order, men became women, old became young, slave became master. The idea endured past the Dark Ages, with medieval and Tudor aristocratic households whipped up into a fever of festive chaos by a Lord of Misrule.

Henry VIII enjoyed Misrule, but banned the concurrent practice of Boy Bishops, believing, somewhat hypocritically, that it damaged the dignity of the church. Today, the tradition has been revived, with Girl Bishops being allowed, too, a development that would probably have been considered even more topsy-turvy in Tudor times.

Topsy-turvyness emerges again in pantomimes, where cross-dressing dates from the earliest days of the theatre. In the 19th century, the traditions of principal boy and dame were crystallised, with the clown Grimaldi playing the Baroness in Cinderella. The first buxom, booming Widow Twankey of Aladdin was invented by a distant cousin of the elegant Lord Byron, the playwright H. J. Byron, who also created Buttons and cast men as the Ugly Sisters. He named the Widow in his 1861 production, after a tea popular at the time; ‘she’ was played by James Rogers.

Earlier theatrical jamborees were Paradise Plays, which featured the tale of Adam and Eve as one of hundreds of Biblical stories told through performance. An essential prop was, of course, a Tree, described in Freiburg in 1419 as being adorned with apples, gingerbread and tinsel. The Reformation and numerous po-faced laws banned them, but they remained popular in Germany and returned to England after George III’S wife, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-strelitz, instigated the tradition. Fortunately, a live snake is not an accepted decoration.

For a celebration of Christ’s birth, Christmas customs owe surprisingly little to Christianity. Whatever your faith, hang your stockings, kiss under the mistletoe and raise a glass to light amid the dark.