Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1884-12-19
Christmas Customs.

Christmas is festival that seems to
be more particularly the property of
children than any other; not that every
body does not join in the celebration
with all their hearts, but that children,
in honor perhaps Of Him who became a
child, are given the chief part in its
pleasures.
In Cornwall on Christmas eve, the
children are all allowed to sit up till
midnight, and to have taste Of cider,
too; and in Devonshire they go, with
their father and all the family and
friends, out in the orchard with cider
and cake, placing the latter in the
crotch of one Of the branches, and
throwing the other over the tree. This
is evidently the relic of an old pagan
rite, bearing every appearance of the
ancient sacrifice, a sacrifice to propitiate
the tree to continue its fruitfulness, al
though, why it should be offered on
Christmas eve is not explained.
Indeed, there are many heather GUS
toms that have been grated upon our
way of keeping Christmas. This will
be understood when it is remembered
that the early Christian fathers found
it hard to keep their focks from join
ing in the Pagan ceremonies at times OF
good-feeling and jollity. They there
fore wisely made their own cerem monies
conform to the same occasion, so that if
their people must celebrate, they could
be celebrating Christian facts. Thus
the old Roman Saturnalia, time Of
great merry making, to speak mildly,
coming at this season of the year, the
early fathers the ght best to harmon
ize it with their Christmas festivities.
From the Saturnalia are descended
the "Mummers, a band of people. who
go about in masks, in England, and en-
act some rude play before the doors.
Whatever this play was in the days OF
the Saturnalia, in the Christian days it
has usually been the story of st. George
and the Dragon old Father Christ
mas, crowned with holly and carrying a
wassail bowl, introducing St. George, a
Turkish knight, a huge scaly dragon,
and doctor to bind up the wounds: to
all OF whom the children at the window
are delighted to throw their half-pen-
MES.
Again in Great Britain the priests Of
the new religion borrowed from the
Druids, for their Christmas use, the
observance of the winter solstice with
great solemnity, and allowed also some
of the customs of the ancient Saxons to
be absorbed. Thus from the Druids
we have the mistletoe, and from the
Saxons the Yule log.
There is cheer and hospitality about
the Yule log which it warns one to
think of. In the places where such a
thing is really burned, when it is cut
and dragged along to be placed on the
hearth, and lighted from the embers OF
last years log, put away for that pur:
pose, every wayfarer raises his hat to ii
as it goes along, it means so much.
From what the "Waits," another &C.
compartment of Christmas, dear tc
English children, have descended is
not certainly ascertained; but there was
company of waits" as early as the
year l40O, and it is understood that
they were then strolling players on
hautboys and other wind instruments
and that is oil they are to-day.
The one purely Christian observance
IN all these glad, gay ceremonies is the
I"Carols." The singers have a pictur'
esqueness as the glimmer Of their Ian
J terms ill1mines them by fits and starts
| IN the darkness on the snow, and thei1
! voices have q. sweetness half stolen from