Alan Crosby reflects on what Christmas carols meant to our forebears
ALAN CROSBY lives in Lancashire and is the editor of The Local Historian
Christmas will be only days away by the time this issue of the magazine goes on sale, which makes me wonder what our ancestors really thought about it. We know that it was a time of celebration, and that there were special meals and feast-day foods… and there’s a lot of evidence from diaries, journals and letters to show that by the beginning of the 19th century Christmas had become one of the high points of the annual calendar. It was a time of bright celebration during the coldest and darkest weeks of the year, and for many people there was a welcome holiday – or at least, a day off from the quotidian burden of heavy work and hard labour.
Unlike Easter, which was (and still is) the most important celebration in the Church calendar, Christmas did not have challenging theological messages – the birth of a baby was surely much easier to comprehend than the cruel and agonising execution of a man and his miraculous resurrection three days later. There was a wealth of religious art showing the familiar scenes of the Nativity, while the age-old stories of the journey to Bethlehem, the lodging in a stable, the manger, the shepherds, the kings and the angelic hosts must have been no less familiar and well-remembered. The tales were told year after year from the pulpit in the majestic and poetic language of the 1611 King James Bible, while as the centuries passed a great collection of sacred music developed around the events of Christmas.
As villagers shivered in unheated churches, sniffing and coughing and snuffling, shifting from foot to foot and rubbing their hands to try to keep warm, there must have been a sense of understanding and empathy. They knew all about mangers, shepherds and stables, and could immediately identify with the plight of the Holy Family as the innkeepers told them there was no room, and could understand from their own experience what it was like for the shepherds out in the fields watching their flocks.
It’s no accident that many of the folk carols that were popular in different parts of the country, and which survive and flourish in some districts to this day, were associated with these ‘everyday’ aspects of the Christmas story – the youn
