Award-winning Author of the Sister Frevisse Mysteries and the Joliffe Player Mysteries 

 

A MEDIEVAL YEAR IN ENGLAND:
DECEMBER

A warm Christmas -- a cold Easter.
A green Christmas -- a white Easter.

For those living on the land, this is a time of settling in with the winter.  If the frost is not yet deep into the soil, more plowing in preparation for spring may be doe.  If the cold is not yet too great, the geese, sheep, and cattle that have survived last month’s slaughtering are let out to graze the stubble fields.  If they cannot be loosed to graze, especial care must be kept of them in their barns.  Beekeepers should be sure their hives have food enough and supply them with honey and water if need be.

Women can be threshing what grain is needed for now, not more than can be used, since grain keeps best in the head.  All the stored food supplies should be checked regularly from now through winter to be sure they are keeping well.  Now is a goodly time for sharpening and mending tools.

For hunters, the roedeer and hare are still in season and bird-netting is allowed.

But beyond all else this is not only Winter Month but Heligh monath – Holy month.  The holy season of Advent begins somewhere near its beginning and there are special holy days all through it.

Dec. 6 is St. Nicholas day, when in schools – especially choir schools attached to cathedrals – boy bishops are elected to rule from now to Childermas (Dec. 28), allowed to robe themselves as bishops, do mass with boys for priests, and go through town asking for food gifts for the school boys or the poor.

Dec. 13 is St. Lucy’s day and followed by Ember Days of fasting and abstinence on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after it.

Dec. 20 is another fast day, and Dec. 21 – St. Thomas the Apostle’s day – is for almsgiving and dole to the poor and servants who give holly and mistletoe in return.

Dec. 24 as Christmas Eve is another fast day, but full of preparations for Christmas on the morrow.  Mistletoe is forbidden in churches but all other evergreens are welcome everywhere in church and home.  The Yule log, cut last winter and left to season these twelve months, is brought in tonight and lighted, preferably with a bit of last year’s log, saved until now.  Once lighted, the log should burn for 24 hours at least, for good fortune, but the last of it should of course be kept for next year.

Dec. 25 is Christmas, the celebration of the Nativity of Christ and the beginning of twelve days of festival.  Among other sports, the lord of the manor will organize a great feast in the manor hall for all his manor folk, with himself and all his people contributing to it.  Caroling, partying, games, and mummers make Christmas and its twelve days merry.  A Lord of Misrule is chosen to direct the revels through the holidays, with his own officials and foolish dress and license for mischief.

Dec. 26 is St. Stephen’s day, called Boxing Day because of boxes in the churches to receive alms for the poor today especially.  It is said to be a good day for blood-letting of horses to keep them healthy for the year.

Dec. 28 is Holy Innocents day, called Childermas.  By tradition, children are supposed to be whipped today to remind them of the massacre of the babies of Bethlehem.  IT is supposed to be the most unlucky day of the year, a very ill time for any enterprise.

Dec. 31 is the eve of the New Year.  Though the official year of church reckoning and government documents and records does not start until Lady Day in March (so that the year runs officially from March 25 to March 24), today is the popular end-of-year and late revels are a long-held custom.

Play of Treachery

Winter 1436

- Margaret