The Daily Alaska empire., 1936-12-21
Christmas Means Same Thing in
 All Languages
Holiday Has Long History But Analysed Total
 Up to Happiness

Joyeux Noel!
 Schtastlive vianoce! Giuchliche Weihnachten!
 Wesotych Swiat
 Merry Christmasl
 Hundreds of ways to say it, and it all means the same = joyous things-abundant health, steadily increasing security, new friends. and above and crowning all, a love for the adventure of living such as no year has ever brought before. Christmas seems made to talk about Christmas, and no matter how many gay and entrancing tales we have heard in our lives about the Yuletide season in foreign lands-customs oddities, and de- lightful native foods-we always love to hear more.
 You've doubtless heard it sad that Christmas is a tremendously old custom-far older than the opening of the Christian era. That is partly true However as a gener- ally celebrated ecclesiastical festival Christmas is less than 1.600 years old, having brought with it the midnight mass which is still the center of the peoples celebration in all the Latin countries of Eu- rope and South America. having brought, too the nome made creche of the Infant, first worshiped in the Middle Ages, and still later brought the carol singing and the gift giving by St. Nicholas, the children's saint.
 Yule Log
 But the other side Of our Christ mas gayety - the purely secular merrymaking-began to accompany the carols and religious services while England was still in the Mid dle Ages, and it was these ceremon- ies of the boar's head the Yule Log, and the evergreen tree, the Wassailing and feasting and the masking and mumming which found their start back in far-off pagan times and which, though now much changed in meaning and practice, still cling to our holi- day merrymaking and speak of hospitality, good will, and renewal of old friendships.
 All this while, uletide gayety in Merrie England grew faster and faster, until, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and King James it reach ed sort of frenzied peak, to drop almost at once quite out of sight, with the advent of Cromwell and the Puritans. who religiously ban ned Christmas by law.
 But before the ban at Christmas time every Saxon table boasted wassail-the spiced hot ale swim ming with roasted apples and drunk with toasts to health, happiness, and long life But the more the years the more the fare! By the end of the Fifteenth century the tables groaned indeed while Henry VII ate his astounding feast of one hundred and twenty dishes. It opened by the ceremonial entrance of the boar's head on a golden plat ter and was climaxed by a roasted peacock with tail outspread!
 
 118 Dishes
 And what of the other one hun dred and eighteen dishesl One we know which was always present in all homes from the kings pal ace to the hut of the cottager was the Christmas roast beef and the minced pies" which were really meat pies pure and simple. Of the rest we hear stories of swans, stur- geon, conger, herons, and blanc mango cleverly formed into still more animal shapes. Plum porridge, or frumenty, were English favorites and probably the grandparents of their stiffer successors, plum pud- dings.
 Roast goose was another old time Christmas custom in England and probably entered trussed, spit ted, and garnished somewhere be- tween the board and the peacock. The baron's cook would have told you, as will any old English COOK book, that the true feast calls for green" goose which, being in- terpreted, means a bird that is young and tender "a youngster of about four months, weighing be- tween nine and twelve pounds. The same test will determine it's 'greenness' today as in the old days.
 ] And when the goose "hangs high?"
 Those words signify that the green t goose has been singed, washed, and dried within and without and generously salted
 ] Today. in modern Enpland