A CHRISTMAS custom which was well known to our ancestors is the mummer’s play – a rarity today but common in many Hampshire villages less than a century ago.

One account tells of “the weird mummers wending their way to perform their little play in the villages and at the country houses around”.

They were usually draped in paper streamers, often cut from wallpaper and attached to their hats and coats, and their faces disguised to avoid being recognised.

The theme of the mummers’ play is always the same, the battle between good and evil.

The hero is usually St George and his task is to slay the dragon or a fierce knight.

He succeeds, of course, but is wounded in the process and requires to be healed by another of the characters, the doctor or medicine man.

The pre-Second World War Women’s Institute book, It Happened in Hampshire quotes a man who took part in plays with the Woodhays Mummers before they ended in 1884.

“Seven acted, one playing a concertina, and they met to rehearse in a shed at the back of the old cottage facing the green at East End,” says the account.

Another custom in Wessex was the Christmas Bull, a pagan practice involving people in animal disguises which sometimes included a hollowed out bull’s head complete with horns and bottle-glass for eyes.

“Thus disguised, the bull went round the parish at Christmas-time, usually at dusk, with a man who acted as his keeper, and an attendant band of men and boys,” says one local history book.

On arriving at some unsuspecting household, the bull would be given the freedom of the house as the family within fled before him.

The Christmas Bull is a thing of the past but many customs with roots deep in history survive as everyday features of the festive season.

Some date back hundreds of years, some even pre-date Christianity itself. In this league the Christmas card is a newcomer on the Yuletide scene.

Cards developed from the increasingly popular late 18th and early 19th-century trend of sending complimentary verses to friends at Christmas and other special occasions.

These customs led to ornamental stationery and this in turn to the Christmas card, with its printed message and picture or decoration.

Christmas presents, in contrast, have an age-old ancestry, for gift-giving was an important part of pagan ceremonies and was widespread in Roman times.

The tradition of Christmas greenery such as holly, ivy and mistletoe also has pre-Christian origins.
“Bringing in greenery for the decoration of buildings in the mid-winter festival is a custom of extreme antiquity,” says the history book.”

Daily Echo:

Similar traditions thrived throughout not only Europe but western Asia, though kissing under the mistletoe was an exclusively English habit probably inspired by our medieval ancestors’ enthusiasm for kissing as a form of greeting.

The Christmas tree has German roots going back to 1605 when a writer described how people in France “set up fir trees in the parlour an

Candles appeared in the following century but the Christmas tree reached America before England, taken there by German settlers.

Our first recorded Christmas tree was an evergreen brand decorated by a German member of Queen Caroline’s household for a children’s party in 1821. 

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert made the Christmas tree fashionable with their widely-publicised lighted trees at Windsor Castle in the 1840s.