Treeton Local History Group

Our meeting for Thursday 26th November 2009 was "Christmas And Its Customs" with Patrick Harding, a real chance to get into the festive spirit!

Patrick was a real treat, his talk was very interesting and his delivery was sparkling with wit and humour.  He started with the story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem 2000 years -  or was it then? He proceeded to separated fact from a lot of fiction. Much of the story that is performed in schools and churches at this time of year is not strictly Biblical:  the 'Inn' where there was no room for the holy family may well be a mis-translation; there is no mention in the Bible of a stable or animals, etc; and we don't really know how many Magi there were, and certainly not their names!  These are all assumptions and later 'embroidering' that have become part of the Christmas story.

He also questioned the date when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, which was actually was just chosen by church leaders to tie in with other festivals that occurred at that time. No-one really knows the date, and in fact different dates are used by different churches within the Christian faith. We can’t even rely on it being 2009 years ago, because errors where made when calculating the first calendar.

He also looked at the many traditions that have arisen over the years, the origins of Father Christmas, or Santa Claus, which seems to be a mixture of St Nicholas, who was Turkish, and a Norwegian native Holy Man who was high on magic mushrooms - or was he invented by the writer of the poem ‘The night before Christmas’? And he concluded that the reindeers pulling the sleigh had to be females, which sounds about right, as we all know that women do all the work at Christmastime.

He talked about the first Christmas cards that cost as much as a  working man's weekly wage, but soon became cheaper and more popular thanks to the penny post.

He also talked about Christmas fayre, central to which originally would have been the goose, but in the late 19th century thanks in some part to Charles Dickens' inadvertent advertising in ‘A Christmas Carol’ this role was taken over by the Turkey, except, perhaps for the royal family who were still allowed to eat swan! The accompaniment to the Turkey was usually bread sauce, until the Americans, who had a lot of cranberries left over from ‘Thanksgiving’ in the early 1990's decided with the help of Sainsbury's to encourage us to change to cranberry sauce.

All in all Patrick investigated the myths and magic of Christmas and I think we all learned something new in a fascinating night's entertainment.