HERE WE COME A WASSELING

 

I don't know if you know this, but the Christmas carol started out as a dance, and then became a song. Whereas wassailing started out as a libation and then became a song and then darn near disappeared. Both traditions, caroling and wassailing,  suffered their original metamorphoses for the same reason – Christian fanatics - Puritan kill-joys.  The carol was revived and survives as a gentle Victorian anachronism.  Still, most of the music and some of the words remain recognizable.  

But if somehow you could transport a 12^th century English Celtic villain into a modern wassailing, the first words out of their mouth would be the medieval equivalent of “where is the booze and the broads?”  Call it Christian hypocrisy, or progress, or even just the march of time, but clearly we've lost some English heritage in reaching the 21^st century.  And one of those some things was wassailing. Song

“Here we come a-wassailing

Among the leaves so green,
Here we come a-wand'ring
So fair to be seen.”

During the 2^nd century C. E. when you the walked into any Inn or Public House in that far flung corner of the Roman Empire called Britania,  you were greeted by your fellow vandals with the phrase, “Waes hael”, or “good health”.  And your proper response would be “Drinc hael”, or “A drink to your health”. And what the Celtic holi-poloi would be drinking might be Mead, made from fermented honey, or a fermented version of whatever else grew locally – beer in rye growing areas, or in the hilly west counties of Wales, where the Celts grew apples, hard cider.  Everybody drank these concoctions because the alcohol killed most of the pathogens in the local water supply.  That's why we still call consuming alcohol, drinking. Getting bombed was just a happy side effect.

“We are not daily beggars

That beg from door to door,
But we are neighbors' children
Whom you have seen before.”

The Inn keepers kept their mixture in a large “wassail bowl” as a centerpiece on the common table, so after dinner the paying guests could use their now empty food bowls to dip themselves an after-dinner drink. It is an oddity of these original pubs that the food cost money but the drinks were free. As the food supply increased, this pricing scheme would be reversed. On special occasions, the Mead would be added to the beer or cider, which improved the flavor and the alcohol content. And so taking a holiday drink from the wassail bowl became “wassailing”.

“Good master and good mistress,

As you sit beside the fire,
Pray think of us poor children
Who wander in the mire.”

All of this was ancient enough to be a Celtic tradition long before Rome was Christian. And about a month after the winter solstice the pagan Celts were even wassailing in their fields and apple orchards. They called it in Old English La Mas Ubhal (mangled into modern English as, “lambs wool”), or as perhaps the celebration of the apple. On the Twelfth Night of Christmas (see these pages for Twelve Days of Christmas) apple farmers would lug a large milk container filled with cider and cider soaked cakes into their fields. In the dark and the cold they would build a fire, drink and eat and dance. In song the men would threaten the trees and the women would plead the tree's defense, all to encourage them to produce apples in the coming year.

“We have a little purse

Made of ratching leather skin;
We want some of your small change
To line it well within.”

It was called “An Apple Howling” or a “Luck Visit”. In Devonshire, standing under each tree, the farmers would sing “Stand fast, root! Bear well, top! Pray God send us a good howling crop: Every twig, apples big; Every bough, apples now! Hats full! caps full! Bushel-bushel-sacks full, And my pockets full, too, huzzah!” The cakes were placed in the forks of the tree trunks, baked apple splices were tossed into the crown, and cider splashed on the bark. It seems as if the farmers were trying to give the trees the idea of what they were supposed to produce come spring.

“Bring us out a table

And spread it with a cloth;
Bring us out a cheese,
And of your Christmas loaf.”

And then midway through the 5^th century the Anglo-Saxons defeated the native Celts at the battle of Crayford, and over the next 600 years these invaders squeezed the Celts back into the Welsh highlands and the far west counties, which, by chance, included the apple growing regions. So, wassailing in Wales and Devon became associated more with cider, while in Anglo-Saxon England, beer and ale were what filled the wassail bowls, and the post- solstice celebration morphed into a fund raising venue. Doesn't everything, eventually?

Originally, the English village leaders went house to house, singing a Wassail song at each door and offering the residents a drink from their Wassail bowl. In response, the residents were expected to make a donation to the poor. Eventually, the leadership lost interest in the process and the poor themselves stepped in to fill the vacuum. You can imagine how happy the wealthy were to share their money with a bunch of dirty, young “urban types”, who came begging at their front door, something forbidden the rest of the year. Wassailing door-to-door became frowned upon, mostly by those most  able to donate.

“God bless the master of this house,

Likewise the mistress too;
And all the little children
That round the table go.”

In 1066, King Henry and his Normans conquered Anglo-Saxon England. The Normans not only brought French words to the island, but they also brought a militant brand of Christianity. And that religion would prove to be wassailing's most determined foe. We know wassailing was still popular in 17^th Century London, because just after New Years in 1625 the anal retentive Sir John Francklyn made a notation in his account book of the one pound 6 pence he paid for “the cup”

“Love and joy come to you,

And to you your wassail, too,
And God bless you, and send you
A Happy New Year,
And God send you a Happy New Year.”

But after the Puritans chopped off the head of Charles I in 1649, they began to remake Britain in the their image of God. And their God pedantic and dull, dull dull. The Puritans were suspicious of wassailing, of all that drinking and dancing in the dark, and they disapproved of peasants directly asking their “betters” for money. So laws were passed, and punishments metered out. Some who celebrated the pagan days were even burned at the stake. 

The impact of their moral divide survived even until the end of the 20^th century, as evidenced by the laws allowing advertising of wine and beer on television, but restricting the same for the sacrilegious “hard” liquors.  So if, at your next Christmas party you should find a wassail bowl bubbling away on the stove, dip a cup, and enjoy. It is a faint after taste of our shared pagan past, a harmless reminder that before Christianity, there was a god in every tree and every apple, as well as every soul.

"Wassail, wassail, out of the milk pail

Wassail, wassail as white as my finger nail
Wassail, wassail in snow, frost, and hail,
Wassail, wassail that never will fail.”

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HERE WE COME A CAROLLING

 

I strongly suspect that 6^th century Christian theologian Benedict of Nursia was completely tone deaf.   Its the only way I can explain why his Rules of Saint Benedict left Christianity trying to tap its toes to the monophonic Gregorian Chant – lavishly described as a melody with no harmony.  This was music invented to pacify the spirit, almost to put it to sleep, to pledge devotion with no emotion - and in Latin, which limited its popularity.  It would take another 800 years, until Francis of Assisi, for Christianity to break free from that acoustic prison.

Phillippe de Vitry is the man responsible. He was a 14^th century poet and musician, and evidently in his spare time the Bishop of Meaux. He could afford to spread himself thin because there just wasn't that much music to know in 1350.  Syncopation and Baroque pop had yet to be invented.  But Phillippe was also credited with the Ars Nova, or the “new technique” for writing music, although I suspect Phillippe was more of a Phil Spector than a Brian Wilson in this regard.  Anyway, the primary new idea in “Ars” was to combine folk tunes with bible stories, a perfect fit considering how many whores with hearts of gold and cheating alcoholic husbands fill the sacred texts.  And like The Beach Boys, the Ars advocated above all else, harmony.  Western music begins with the Ars Nova, including our subject here, Christmas Carols, and one choral in particular.

The Motown of the early Christmas song was medieval France, and the 14^th century Chubby Checker was Chretien de Troyes, using the refrain and verse style as advocated by the Ars Nova. Chretien's hard driving lyrics for his “Legends of King Arthur” made people want to get up on their feet and move, in a sort of communal “twist”, the circle dance or the Bransles, also called a carol.  And just like disco, the name of the dance would label the entire genre of music.  

In the absence of recordings, Chretien's music was preformed by traveling minstrels, who would sing the verse, while the simple refrains (also called “the burden”), was usually something like “Fa la la, la la,”. This could even be sung by the village idiot, thus avoiding the Mick Jagger mumbled lyrics problem. Of course when the top 1% held a party, they were not required to sing along. That would have been undignified, particularly if they couldn't sing well. So, they hired somebody else to sing for them, thus inventing girl groups and boy bands – the choir.

We should still be singing the mega-hits written during this golden age of Christmas music, when songs like “That Was My Woo”, by the artist formally known as Robert Faiyrfax, ruled the top 40 charts, but we aren't, at least not in English. In fact we have little record (except Fairfax's two beat rhythms) of the exciting English plainsong tunes from the Golden Age of Christmas because at the beginning of the 17^th century came the biggest buzz-kill in Christmas history, an English religious fanatic named Oliver Cromwell and his band, the Puritans. They outlawed Christmas and dancing entirely, and burned every page of music they could lay their anti-aria hands upon. It was as if Mr. Scrooge had turned pyromaniac after being left in charge of the office Christmas party. Not much was left.

After the Reformation stuffed the Puritans back into their music-less box, English Christmas started again, from scratch. The first reborn popular hit was “The Wassail Song”, which was not much of Christmas carol, since it starts, “Here we come a-wassailing, Among the leaves so green”. Leaves have not been green in England during December since the island was a lot closer to the equator, about 240 million years ago. So the English Carol Kings and Paul McCartneys of the 18^th and 19^th centuries began looking for tunes and lyrics in those places the Puritans had not reached - France.

“Angels from the Realms of Glory” was translated from its original French in 1816, and sung to the tune which would later be used for “Angles We Have Heard on High”. And then there is the cheerful, “Un flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle!”, or “Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella!” All these France to English carols were huge hits and even more profitable because there were no royalties to pay. In music circles this whole sale theft from dead writers is referred to as “adaptation”. 

And it took a politician, Davies Gilbert to recognize the legal advantages of that. In 1822 he published a collection of previously French carols, and the flood gates were opened.  Over the next decade “The First Noel” and “Hark the Herald Angles Sing” were rescued from France to be published in English for free. 

And then in 1840 the young Queen Victoria married Prince Albert from Germany, revealing to English “adapters” a new source. In fact, German sources became so popular that the original Protestant Martin Luther was credited with writing “Away In A Manger”, but that was just a marketing gimmick. And by the end of the 19^th century, German “adaptations” had been sucked dry, and tune hungry carol composers were forced to look farther east.  And, it turned out, to the west, as well.

Katherine Kennicott Davis was born on the cusp of this shift in searching, in 1892 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was raised a Methodist, and composed her first piece of music at 15. She studied at Wesley College in Massachusetts, and in Paris with the extraordinary Nadia Boulanger. She then made Massachusetts her home, teaching music at the girl's Concord Academy. And in 1939 Katherine Davis  “adapted” the traditional Welsh hymn called “Ash Grove”, originally written in 1802. She wrote new lyrics and relabeled it. “Let All Things Now Living”, AKA ” The Thanksgiving Song”. It proved to be a minor hit, encouraging her to continue looking. In a collection of traditional Czech carols, she found the rhythmic “Rocking Carol”. ( All Things Living), and her skills and talents discovered in this intricate melody the core of her next hit, a lead soprano with an alto harmony tenor and base - with keyboard for rehearsal only – which Katherine titled “The Carol of the Drum.”

I need to mention here, that Katherine appears to have been, as she was raised, a perfect Victorian lady. She humbly listed her name on the published sheet music as “C.R. W. Robinson”, since even in 1941 women were not expected to have public achievements. She had published “Let All Things” under the name “John Cowley”. In fact most of the 600 songs she wrote were originally published under various false names, to disguise her sex. I get the feeling Katherine was always more comfortable in hiding, and she would later claim that the melody for “Carol of the Drum” came to her while she was trying to take a nap. Just as if she had not stolen - er, adapted - it.

And it was now that the economics of the music industry took Katherine's song out of her hands. In 1955 “The Carol of the Drum” was recorded by the Von Trapp Family Singers, of “Sound of Music” fame. But the Austrian immigrants retired shortly there after, and the song went no where.

And there, Katherine's little song might have remained if 20th Century Fox Records had not been looking to cash in on the Christmas music market, by contracting with a Julliard trained musician and arranger, Harry Moses Simeone (above).  Harry had been working at CBS records for Big Band leader, Fred Waring, but that music era was coming to an end, and Fred was looking for something else. He took the contract from 20th Century Fox Records to put together an album of choir music, in case it led to something more substantial. Now,  Simeone liked Katherine's tune, but he felt he could improve it. And getting paid to do so, encouraged him to include it in the new album. He did enough of a re-write that he felt the song should be renamed, and just before Christmas of 1958. when the Harry Simeone Choral group released the album “Sing We Now of Christmas”,  the new title of Katherine's adapted carol was “The Little Drummer Boy”.

It literally rocketed to the top of the charts, the “single”, a sort of vinyl MP3 download (for those of you born after 2000)  went number one with a bullet. - for those of you born before 1968.  As Katherine herself put it, her little song was “done to death on radio and TV".  In 1963 Fox re-released the album but re-titled it “The Little Drummer Boy; A Christmas Festival”.  Again it went to number one. The song was covered by everybody from Bing Crosby to Marlene Dietrich and the Royal Scots Guards. (In Bag Pipes!)   By 1962 it had been one of the top 40 Christmas songs, and it has remained there ever since.  Quite an accomplishment for a shy lady like Katherine. (Little Drummer Boy)

Come they told me, pa rum pum pum pum

A new born King to see, pa rum pum pum pum
Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum
To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

So to honor Him, pa rum pum pum pum,

When we come.

Little Baby, pa rum pum pum pum

I am a poor boy too, pa rum pum pum pum
I have no gift to bring, pa rum pum pum pum
That's fit to give the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum,

On my drum?

Mary nodded, pa rum pum pum pum

The ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

Then he smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum

Me and my drum.

- 30 - 

BATTLE OF THE NATIVITY

 

I am tempted to call it a primeval struggle, drenched in antiquity and destined to feed future conflict until judgment day, whenever the heck that may  be. Except it was much simpler than that. The day after Christmas 2007, two rival gangs, "The Jets" (AKA the Greek Orthodox Priests), and "The Sharks" (AKA the Armenian Apostolic Priests) got into a turf dispute inside the Church of the Nativity, the traditional birth place of the Prince of Peace in Bethlehem, Israel, Palestinian Territories. And mostly I blame the long dead French Emperor Napoleon III for most of this mess.

First, a word about all that antiquity – it does not appear to have happened where or when everybody now thinks it did - assuming it happened at all. Roman census or no census, there was no reason for a pregnant Mary to be making a 90 mile donkey ride from Nazareth, on the Galilee plain of northern Israel, to Bethlehem in the mountains just south of Jerusalem, in the west center of Israel.

Being the man, Joseph was expected and qualified to speak for his entire family. He would have been the only one required to travel. But why require anybody to travel? The Romans census takers counted people where they were. That would be where their property was, and where their money was. Why disrupt business all across a rebellious province, in the name of counting people where they were not? It makes no sense.

And there is another problem, an archaeological problem. There is no archeology in Bethlehem from that period. The ground under today's Bethlehem contains Iron Age artifacts and Byzantine artifacts, but nothing in between, nothing from the age of Jesus. The village outside of Jerusalem did not exist on the night that Jesus was born.

However, there was another Bethlehem, “Bethlehem Ha Galilit”, Bethlehem of Galilee, just about 7 miles to the west of Nazareth. It seems far more likely - I am tempted to say logical -  that Jesus of Nazareth was born in Bethlehem Ha Galilit, than in Bethlehem Judea. But because Bethlehem Ha Galilit no longer existed in the fourth century of the common era, when the Byzantine Christians came looking for Jesus' birthplace, they picked the wrong Bethlehem.

So did the followers of Islam, when they first captured the region in year 627 of the common era.  After all, Jesus is one of their prophets, too. But after that little mix up, things got really complicated.

See, after the Crusaders were driven out of the Holy Land in 1187 the Muslim rulers were willing to protect the Christian holy sites, and, of course, tax them. But they did not trust the Roman Catholic Crusaders who had invaded them and now made up a majority of Bethlehem Judea’s population.  So the Muslim rulers split control of the profitable tourist sites in Bethlehem Judea between the Greek and Armenian Orthodox churches, in particular, ownership  of the church built upon the “traditional” site of the birth of Jesus. 

The Greek Orthodox were given control of one part of the building, the Armenian Orthodox control of another part. This allowed the Muslims rulers to play the two Christian sects one against the other, and to play them both off the Roman Catholics, who were now the poor relations in town.

And thus some calm was achieved in a region not famous for calm, at least until 1852, when a “firman” (or edict) was issued by Abdulmecit I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of the Muslim World (above). Abdulmecit issued his edict because…

...well, because first, in 1847,  some thug stole the silver star which marked the “traditional” spot of Jesus’ birth, in the floor of the Church of the Nativity in  Bethlehem Judea.  

And, more importantly, because the Sultan was weak and because Louis Napoleon III of France was a pompous political hack, who believed that he had been chosen by God to fix, first France, and then rest of the world, by making it more French.

Louis Napoleon III (above) was elected to a ten year term as the first President of the Second Republic of France in December of 1848. He immediately started plotting to follow in his uncle’s imperial boot prints. 

By early in 1852 Louis had helped to restore the Vatican’s independence in Italy (which pleased French Catholic voters), but he had also insisted that the new Papal government be drawn up along “liberal” lines, to placate the liberal (meaning non-Catholic) French voters. But no Church ever likes to be lectured about liberal policies from secular politicians. Try it some time and see.

In an attempt to placate the now angry French Catholic voters, Napoleon III suggested that the theft of the star from the Church of the Nativity (five years earlier) proved that the Church of the Nativity was no longer “safe”, and control should be handed over to the Roman Catholic Church for protection - yet another politician declaring a crises which needed his genius to solve. 

This particular crises pleased Pope Pius IX. (above, center), who had come to the conclusion that Czar Nicholas I of Russia was intent upon wiping out Catholicism in his country - which Nicholas was, the Czar being the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Napoleon's demand also pleased Abdulmecit I (above), because Albdulmecit had the distinct feeling that Czar Nicholas was about to invade Turkey - which he was. 

So, under Abdulmecit's edict, the keys to tiny "door of humility" the Church of the Nativity were now handed over the priests of the Roman Catholic Church. 

They would unlock the door every day so the Greek and Armenian Orthodox priests could enter the building, and then lock them out every every night.   At the same time the edict also required the Vatican to maintain the church of the Nativity “in statu quo res errant”, or, “as it was before”. 

This edict is linguistically important because it popularization the Latin phrase “status quo”, so that it became a regular part of the English language and is used by people who never heard about any of this stuff.

Now, while growing up Russian Czar Nicholas I (above) had been told that Russia was a military superpower and protector of the true faith, that faith being Russian Orthodoxy. And Nicholas was not about to allow a mere “politician”, least of all a trumped up “Bonaparte”, to usurp his regal and holy authority. 

Nicholas demanded the keys to the Church of the Nativity be returned to the Armenian and Greek priests, who would, he was certain, be controlled by him. And when the keys were not handed over,  he declared war on Turkey. He had - of course - been planning on doing that anyway.  Britain and France then came to Turkey’s defense. And thus we come to the Crimean War, 1853 to 1856. 

And so Napoleon's gambit to impress French Catholic voters led directly to 118,000 dead; of whom 20, 000 were French, and 73,000 were Russian.  And, as part of the peace treaty that ended that war, the keys to the Church of the Nativity were returned to the Greek and Armenian priests, to share.  Which is where they had started.

In his rise to power Napoleon III (above) had shamelessly played one political faction off another, and eventually abolished democracy in his own nation, created a throne for himself, and invaded Algeria and Vietnam and made them colonies - both of which actions came back to haunt France a century later. 

Finally, in 1870, Napoleon was goaded into the Franco-Prussian War,  which resulted in his humiliating defeat, the creation of a unified Germany,  and Napoleon's own overthrow and his death. This guy was the Donald Trump of 19th century French diplomacy.

The Crimean War also cost Czar Nicholas I his life. While on campaign against Turkey he caught a chill and died of pneumonia on 2 March, 1855. And that postponed Russia's rise as a superpower, until the 20th century. The Ottoman Sultan, Abdülmecit, lived long enough to see his nation plunged into debt by that same war.  By the time Abdulmecit's died of tuberculosis in 1861, Turkey was flat broke. His successor was dethroned.

Amazingly, the same war left Pope Pius IX (above) alive but very frustrated. 

Because France had been distracted by the Crimean War, they offered no assistance when, in 1860, Victor Emmanuel took control of Italy from the Catholic Church and established the modern semi-secular nation of Italy, leaving Vatican City as a tiny fig leaf to placate the Pope's ego.    

But Pius achieved a measure of revenge when, in 1869 he issued the decree of Papal Infallibility and declared the dogma of Immaculate Conception. Together these meant that Mary, mother of Jesus, was born without sin because the Pope said she was without sin. And the Pope was never wrong, because he said he was never wrong. These are not ancient concepts, but industrial age justifications to make up for recent political humiliations.

Neither of these were official Roman Catholic dogma until 1869, but it has been church dogma ever since. Only two American Presidents have claimed a similar divinity. One was  Richard Nixon, and he was forced to resign, and Donald Trump. So, claiming divinity seems to only work for religious leaders.

But, let us finally return to the Church of the Nativity on 27 December, 2007. According to the Associated Press; “....dozens of priests and cleaners came to the fortress-like church to scrub and sweep the floors, walls and rafters ahead of the Armenian and Orthodox Christmas, celebrated in the first week of January...  

"But the clean-up turned ugly after some of the {Greek) Orthodox faithful stepped inside the Armenian church's section, touching off a scuffle between about 50 Greek Orthodox and 30 Armenians. Palestinian police, armed with batons and shields, quickly formed a human cordon to separate the two sides so the cleaning could continue...Four people, some with blood running from their faces, were slightly injured.”

Traditionally both the Greek and Armenian Orthodox churches have recruited their priests for this sacred post in the Church of the Nativity, from tiny isolated villages scattered across Greece and the Armenia, where Christians (and Muslims) have been slaughtering each other for a thousand years.

These niave young men now suddenly found themselves working in intimate contact and sharing the most precious artifacts of their faith with heretics. Nothing in their lives or their training prepared them for any kind of peaceful coexistence. Politics may make you a jackass, but religion stands a stronger chance of encouraging you to kill somebody .

And the whole thing was Louis Napoleon III’s idea.  But try explaining that to a bunch of uneducated foreigners.

- 30 -