As I write this on New Year's Eve, another significant day in the round of annual dates, one more Christmas has been and gone. This one has been the first Christmas for two years that has been the familiar, known and recognisably 'Old Normal'. In the UK in 2020 Christmas was 'cancelled' (as if you could genuinely cancel a thousands of years old seasonal celebration by the simple act of deplatforming, something that Oliver Cromwell memorably did not achieve) due to us being in Lockdown 2.0, or 3.0, or whatever - it is easy to lose count, as it seems we were in some form of lockdown, as in restricted life for most of 2020 and 2021 anyway. Christmas in 2021 was 'allowed' to go ahead, provided you were jabbed and/or tested, and stayed away from granny. The Christmas of 2022 was therefore the first one in two years where we had no restrictions, exhortations or fear-mongering - if you discount the small matter of an imploding economy and concomitant cost of living crisis, that is.
All of which has led me to ponder what it is about the modern Christmas that is a) problematic anyway, and b) different from a medieval one.
Let's start with the ups and downs of the contemporary Christmas. What we are celebrating in the early 21st century in the westernised world is in essence a bundle of romanticised and mythologised Victorian sentimentality, with a hefty dose of consumerism layered on top (although the Victorians would no doubt have gone in for massive consumption at a population-wide level too, given half a chance). The focus of Christmas in all European countries is essentially the family, and the consumer family at that. I'll explain.
Since the 19th century Christmas has retreated from the religious sphere into a purely family affair, even if a lot of folk who wouldn't set foot in a church any other time feel the need to attend Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, for example, but this seems to be out of sentimentality for 'the meaning of Christmas', whatever that may be. Christmas is primarily for kids these days, and loses its 'magic' once you realise that Santa Claus is just an underemployed student or impecunious pensioner stuffed into fake beard and fat belly costume. Older members of the family traverse a wary negotiation of family expectations, insults, traditions, vendettas (who to invite, who sits next to whom, his or her relatives this year). You are supposed to see members of the family at Christmas with whom you would not cross paths with any other time of year, ignoring previous arguments, disagreements and downright hatred, yet simultaneously descend into a joyful spirit of festive cheer. Slight variations abound in the modern European traditions. In Germany, Christmas is celebrated on the Eve of the 24th, and is a deathly serious family affair, with carols round the tree and a more Olde Worlde touch, and most definitely no going out or enjoying yourself with non-family members (not that you could since everything is shut anyway). In the UK the Eve on the 24th is the last moment for letting rip, and at least retains a bit of a party atmosphere reminiscent of the ancient Saturnalia, from where of course Christmas is descended historically, but then you pay for it dearly with the enforced family jollity the next day.
If you think my admittedly somewhat exaggerated and cynical view of the family Christmas is bad enough, then it is an even worse situation for those people who have no family to go to at Christmas. Never mind the arguments with Great Uncle Harry, or your older sister, at least you are sat in the (reasonably) warm dining room able to stuff your face on food that admittedly you wouldn't voluntarily touch any other time of the year. There are people who cannot moan or gripe about family Christmases - the ones excommunicated from theirs, the ones without relatives, the homeless, the friendless and so on. In the strictly family affair that our contemporary Christmas has become there is no place for the outsider, who is literally locked out with nowhere to go since all the usual places of refuge from loneliness and the cold (day care centres, shopping malls, libraries, pubs etc.) are firmly shut. Christmas is for accredited family members only.
The medieval fast of Christmas differed in a number of ways. First and foremost, the religious element was of course much stronger, which almost goes without saying, hence little need for me to dwell on it here. Combined with the Christian religious element were vestiges of older, pagan, pre-Christian traditions, from Roman, Celtic and Germanic cultures. The Christmas tree so central to our sanitised family affair is derived from a Victorian garbling of the ancient Yule Log, with the Middle Ages literally as intermediary. Other medieval traditions derived from older, ancient celebrations do not survive so well in a modern consumerist context, such as mumming (dressing up in fanciful, sometimes apotropaic [warding off evil] costume), which these days is practically only found in 'backward' rural areas as a quaint folkloristic entertainment. Nonetheless, the medieval feast around Christmas probably had more in common with the modern British 'let it rip' approach to Christmas Eve than the German seriously Protestant and dour one.
Overall, I am more interested in the sociology of Christmas and its cultural meaning. And here there is one striking difference between medieval and modern: the definition of family. The medieval family came on two levels, namely a family of relatives by blood and marriage, and a family of household members. The word family itself, 'familia' in Latin, was often used to denote the household. And a household, even the smallest and poorest, comprised more than just relatives. Even lowly peasant farmers had landless labourers working for them, and hence living with them. Provided the family unit as we think of it (husband, wife, kids and possibly a small number of extended relatives like grandparents or a maiden aunt if you hark back to Victorian times...) had a roof over their head to call their own if they lived in a town, and a strip of land to farm if they lived in a rural area, then the family household would include more unrelated members than just the 'nuclear family unit' we consider to be 'family' today. At the top end of the spectrum great lords had a 'familia' consisting of dozens of unrelated folk, the servants, retainers, workers, who were all the guests of the lord on the feast days. Hospitality (from Latin 'hospes' the guest) meant hosting all and sundry.
In an earlier post I introduced the ancient Greek word 'oikoumene', which shares its etymology with 'oikonomia', from which we derive 'economy'. Both words include the element 'oikos' meaning house. 'Oikonomia' combines 'oikos' house and 'nemein' manage, giving us oikonomia, hence household management. 'Oikoumene' means the inhabited house, and can mean anywhere where people are: in the house(hold), as a family, and peopling the inhabited world. This all-encompassing idea of community of the household finds its greatest expression of course in the Christian idea of hospitality to strangers. But not just Christian, in many cultures the honoured guest has a special status, becoming temporarily a bona fide member of the household that hosts the guest. Far from the popular stereotype of the medieval world being closed off and inward looking, full of exclusions and ostracisms of the undesirable, we need to counterbalance this with the openness of the household and its extension beyond the nuclear family unit.
And here we come to the distilled and necessarily abbreviated summary of why Christmas just isn't Christmas anymore. Not just because for me, as a grown-up, the 'magic' of Christmas has evaporated from the consumerist faux sentimental smorgasbrod of multi-cultural pick-and-mix your 'traditions'. But because after two years of lockdowns I have come to realise that each and every Christmas has been, and will continue to be, a form of mini-lockdown, albeit mercifully brief in duration. Instead of opening the house to the stranger at the darkest (and in Britain the wettest, greyest and generally most miserable) time of year, we hunker down in the 'bubble' of our official family units, making it clear to the excluded that they are persona non grata, unwelcome, unclean, and unfit to be accorded a place in 'our' family.
Happy New Year 2023!
In years gone by, because our nuclear family was only three people, we would make it a point to invite coworkers and acquaintances who were alone on Christmas. It made for some really fun times.