The Old Testament

This chapter surveys the passages from the Old Testament that have traditionally been used in Christian churches in the Christmas season. It argues that sometimes these passages may have generated features in the Christmas story, and that their use is a reading of the Old Testament with the hindsight provided by Christian belief: some of the ‘prophecies’ of the coming of Jesus were not regarded as messianic before Christians began to read them in the light of their own distinctive beliefs, for example passages in Isaiah and Micah. The texts used in Christmas festivals were not taken over from contemporary Jewish reading of the Old Testament Scriptures.

The Reformation and Early Modern Periods

From the sixteenth through to the eighteenth centuries, Christians in Western Europe and North America celebrated Christmas in a variety of ways. Some of the practices or elements of celebration are familiar as they are still a part of many Christmas celebrations today, such as gift-giving, hospitality, feasting, singing, and decorating with greenery and Christmas trees. Other aspects of Christmas revelry were reduced during this period, as reformers in both the Protestant and Catholic Churches worked to rid the holiday of some of its excessive forms of festivity, such as misrule, social inversion, or superstitious practices. While in some areas, namely Scotland, England, and New England, radical reformers, including the Puritans, did away with Christmas festivities in the late-sixteenth and early- to mid-seventeenth centuries, these legal strictures were difficult to enforce and were not long-lasting. Instead, in both Protestant and Catholic countries, Christmas celebrations continued, though they often changed from what they had been in the Middle Ages. By the nineteenth century, traditions such as Christmas carols, Christmas trees, Nativity scenes, and Saint Nicholas iconography had been established that were taken up and popularized on a wider scale, but claims that those traditions were not invented until the nineteenth century are often rather overstated. Instead, many of these traditions grew and blossomed throughout the early modern period, sometimes despite radical Reformation attempts to get rid of Christmas, sometimes because of reforms in its celebration.

Fiction

The most lasting Christmas fiction tends to use Christmas as a setting not as the main subject and to draw from the warmth and sensory onslaught of the holidays and on friends and families gathering, not on the specific religious origins of the holiday. Yet religious themes persist in Christmas fiction right up to the present day, even when the stories take place in fantasy worlds, such as in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter stories and C. S. Lewis’ Narnia. This chapter is not comprehensive in its coverage but instead focuses on those works that seem to have had the greatest cultural impact, including those of Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Hans Christian Andersen, and Louisa May Alcott.

Carols and Music Since 1900

This chapter defines and describes a core repertory of seventy-five Christmas songs that have been frequently recorded for popular consumption in the United States since 1900. Song titles in the repertory enjoy an enduring presence on the Billboard charts and on twenty-first-century streaming platforms. While traditional Christian carols from before 1900 survive in this repertory, secular popular songs introduced between 1942 and 1965 dominate. Christmas narratives, whether religious (birth of Jesus) or secular (arrival of Santa Claus; holiday celebrations set in cold weather), provide consistent points of reference for carol and song lyrics respectively. In some cases, Christmas songs have added new characters (Frosty the Snowman; the Little Drummer Boy) to a season centred on stories. Popular Christmas songs also explore the varied temporal nature of this holiday as event, season, and annual recurrence.

Food and Drink

Christmas food traditions around the world differ, both as to what foods and drinks are consumed and when the main festive meal takes place (Christmas Day, Christmas Eve, or Epiphany). Charles Dickens can be credited or blamed for many aspects of what are now regarded as age-old Christmas foods and ceremonies. The countries with the greatest international influence have been Germany and Britain, providing models especially for sweet cakes and biscuits. Christmas food tends to evoke a more-or-less medieval precedent, one emphasizing good cheer rather than religious adoration. Spicy and sugary treats such as gingerbread, and food or drink seldom eaten at other times (eggnog, plum pudding) give the occasion a special quality, connected to an imagined past.

Gabriel and the Angels

A full appreciation of the angel Gabriel’s character and role in the Christmas story depends on an appreciative understanding of the many ways in which he is both consistent with the extensive cast of angelic beings throughout the Old Testament and yet a synthesis and culmination of their roles in forwarding the grand narrative of the history of salvation. Particularly important are the narratives involving the births of Ishmael, Isaac, and Samson, unusual births to very aged or barren parents, and Gabriel’s appearances to Daniel in the second half of the book that bears his name. The unusual birth narratives contextualize Gabriel’s impatience with Zacharias’ doubt that he and Elizabeth can trust the angel’s announcement, the apocalyptic vision, and Gabriel’s interpretation of them in Daniel illustrate the attitude of heart underscoring the priestly prayer of Zacharias more positively, and the responses of Mary, exemplar of the faithfulness for which Daniel also prayed.

The Holy Family

The Holy Family, as such, is all but absent in Christian imagination and devotion for the first thousand years of the Church’s existence. In close connection to the cult of St Joseph, the Holy Family gains new prominence toward the end of the medieval period, and then grows dramatically in importance in the early modern period. Traditions in the New World such as Las Posadas are also discussed in this chapter. Especially important in Catholic thought and practice, the Holy Family has come to have central symbolic importance for all Christians in contemporary Christmas celebrations such as children’s Nativity plays and pageants.

Roman Catholicism

Worshippers at Catholic Christmas services may come seeking festivities focused on the infant Jesus but will find in the Scriptures proclaimed and the proper texts of the Christmas liturgies all-encompassing theological claims about salvation through an adult Christ who suffered, died, and rose from the dead. The official Christmas liturgies of the Roman rite were shaped by doctrinal concerns and historical circumstances. They emphasize a ‘holy exchange’ between divinity and humanity in Christ incarnate that opens a way for redemption accomplished historically, celebrated liturgically, and fully realized eschatologically. The celebration of Christmas in Roman Catholic worshipping communities involves situating Christ’s birth in the broader context of his death and Resurrection, negotiating the placement of paraliturgical and cultural customs that nourish the piety of the people and contextualize the feast, and preaching the Gospel in ways that inspire worshippers to become witnesses for Christ in the world.

The United Kingdom

The United Kingdom played a key role in the development of many of the ideas central to the modern Christmas. However, British festive practices always varied by class, gender, region, and the four nations of the United Kingdom. Some of these variations lessened in the second half of the twentieth century due to the rise of affluence and the growth of a mass media. Indeed, Christmas in modern Britain came to be an integrative experience. It brought people closer to their family, friends, neighbours, community, compatriots and, occasionally, the poor and suffering. It crossed any notional boundaries between the private and public spheres and helped maintain a common way of life in a society divided by class, ethnicity, and taste. Christmas thus came to be viewed as part of a British way of life, even if variations remained in the precise ways people celebrated.

The Middle Ages

The High Middle Ages witnessed Christmas emerge as a major Christian feast in western Europe, a time of merriment and miracles. Always intended to celebrate the Incarnation, Christmas became a time to honour the little baby in the manger and his loving mother, as part of a spiritual shift towards remembering the human Jesus. Although Kalends traditions continued on from Antiquity, which engaged the lay population in carnivalesque revelries that included mumming, games, and feasting, clerics developed new practices that infused ecclesiastical celebrations with the same sense of inversion and fun. Feasts of Fools, Boy Bishops, and extravagant liturgical dramas allowed reformers to channel festive energy in ways that showcased developments in the arts, especially in the large churches of north-western Europe, without losing the joyful character that came with honouring the paradox of God made man.