This
December, our theatre has been filled with the sounds of Christmas music as our
actors perform ASC’s version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Our
production illustrates the Cratchit family having Christmas dinner, and you
might wonder, as you sit in the Shakespeare Tavern Playhouse, how people in
Shakespeare’s day celebrated Christmas.
French scholar Francois Laroque wrote a very informative book, Shakespeare’s Festive World: Elizabethan
Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage, which explains how
Shakespeare’s contemporaries celebrated Christmas. In the Elizabethan era, Christmas festivities
often began on the twenty-first of December, Saint Thomas’ Day, which ushered
in nearly four weeks of celebrations. The
majority of the Christmas celebrations were held during the twelve days of
Christmas, which began on Christmas day and extended to Epiphany on January
sixth, and people enjoyed various celebrations on Christmas Eve, New Year’s
Eve, and the eve of Epiphany.
Some
traditions in the Elizabethan era were not that different from modern
traditions. Before Christmas Eve, people
decorated their homes with holly and ivy.
Christmas trees did not gain popularity until the nineteenth century in
England, but people in Shakespeare’s day brightened their houses for Christmas
by burning a large piece of wood called a Yule log or Yule block. On Christmas Eve, people sung Christmas
carols, which in the Elizabethan era included festival songs. Christmas Eve was a time to visit neighbors
and join in village or communal celebrations.
As people celebrated with their neighbors, girls brought a wassail-bowl,
or a large jug of beer and roasted apples, to each house, and actors called
mummers performed plays about Saint George or Old Father Christmas. The time between Christmas and Epiphany was
filled with religious and secular celebrations.
Even
Christmas songs from Shakespeare’s era were not that different than they are
today. George Wither’s song “Christmas
Carol,” written in 1602 encourages merriment and holiday cheer:
“So, now is come our joyfulst feast;
Let
every man be jolly;
Each
room with ivy leaves is drest,
And
every post with holly.
Though
some churls at our mirth repine,
Round
your foreheads garlands twine;
Drown
sorrow in a cup of wine,
And
let us all be merry.
Now,
all our neighbours’ chimnies smoke
And
Christmas blocks are burning...” (Laroque 149).
Happy holidays!
Submitted by Samantha Smith
