Huron Expositor, 2007-12-19, Page 3The Huron Expositor • December 19, 2007 Page 3
News
Origins of today's Christmas traditions a fascination
for Northside Church's Rev. John Gould
Aaron J a c 1. l i n
Rev. John Gould of Northside
United Church in Seaforth has
always been fascinated by the ori-
gins of customs.
"I like researching obscure topics,"
he says, "like, where do things come
from and why do we do them?"
One of those topics is the origins
of the Christmas traditions we take
for granted.
Gould says that we owe many of
our traditions to a queen and a nov-
elist from the 1800s: Queen Victoria
and Charles Dickens.
The two were friends in a time
when Christmas was different from
what we know it as now.
Christmas had been a religious
event since the fourth century, but
for most of that period up to
Victoria's time, it was a very minor
festival.
"Easter was the big festival in the
Christian year," Gould says.
Then came the Oliver Cromwell
era in the 1600s, where Christmas
came in and out of fashion.
"Christmas was effectively abol-
ished and that caused riots at the
time," he says.
Cromwell was the Lord Protector
of the Commonwealth.
"Oliver Cromwell passed laws to
lock churches on Christmas Day,"
he says.. "He also passed a law that
Christmas pudding couldn't be
made, but the aver-
age person got
around that by mail
ordering them from
France."
It wasn't even until
the 1780s that
Christmas became a
holiday in the British
Commonwealth.
Gould says Queen -
Victoria ascended the
throne in 1839.
"Christmas just
generally wasn't
observed," he says.
"There was some
stuff going on at
church, there was a
religious observance,
but without many of
the carols we recog-
nize."
Gould says Victoria
reinvented
Christmas.
"She thought that it
needed to be a family
time and she thought
the religious aspect of
it _ needed to be
spruced up," he says,
noting those were her personal deci-
sions.
"She was a German herself, one of
the House of Hanover, and she mar-
ried Prince Albert of Saxe -Coburg
and Gotha, who was a German
prince."
Aaron Jacklin photo
Rev. John Gould holds a pineapple, a common tree
decoration on the Eastern Seaboard dating b9ck to
Elizabethan times. Because sea captains brought
them back from their voyages, pineapples were very
rare and very expensive.
They popularized a number of tra-
ditions that had come and gone in
the past.
"Martin Luther invented the
Christmas tree, but it wasn't gener-
ally practised. Albert liked to put
lights on trees, so Victoria put lights
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on trees and everyone followed
suit," Gould says, tracing our light-
ed Christmas trees and decorations
back to that.
"She liked turkey," he says, "so
there was feasting. And everyone
followed suit with turkey."
Gould says Victoria and Albert
started giving gifts in their family.
"Again, everybody followed suit."
Before Victoria, the Christmas
period in Christianity went on for
12 days.
"In that system, as much partying
went on at Epiphany as on
Christmas day and before," says
Gould.
Victoria collapsed everything into
one day.
"She moved Christmas cake from
Epiphany to Christmas Day and she
resurrected the Christmas pud-
ding," he said. "There was the realm
of house parties, which she initiat-
ed."
"It's strange to think that Victoria
was a party girl," he says.
Gould says you can see examples
of a house party if you watch the
film adaptation of Charles Dickens'
A Christmas Carol.
"Ebenezer Scrooge wasn't that far
off the mark because Christmas
Day as a holiday was relatively new
and he was begrudging Bob
Cratchit his half day off, or whatev-
er he got," he says, noting it was a
See SCROOGE, Page 9
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