Yule VS Christmas: Origins

Tis' the season for stuffing your body into your special suit and fancy dress, eating way too much, and howling Silent Night over the church choir. Or at least that's what I recall as a child. The festival of Christmas has changed over the years for me. Now it means family and friends, good food, and making crochet gifts for nieces and nephews. (Watch out guys for that tea cozy you always wanted)

Historyminion wise, I'm going to celebrate by posting a lot on the history of Christmas, traditions, and terrors.

Let's start with Yule versus Christmas. Is it really the same thing?

The Scandinavians in the 1500s getting ready to burn the Yule log and get wasted! Imp included.

Yule goes back, way back, to the 700s. The word is from the Old English geol, geola "Christmas Day, Christmastide," from Old Norse jol (plural), a heathen feast, later taken over by Christianity, as a lot of things were. The priests wanted to con everyone into falling for their new fangled religion by adopting already know traditions. They were assholes like that.

The Old English giuli was the Anglo-Saxons' name for a two-month midwinter season corresponding to Roman December and January, a time of important feasts but not itself a festival. After conversion to Christianity it narrowed to mean "the 12-day feast of the Nativity" (which began Dec. 25), but was replaced by Christmas by the11th century. However, the northern areas of Danish settlement it remained the usual word and festival. Across Scandinavia, great yule logs were burned, and people drank mead around the bonfires listening to minstrel-poets singing ancient legends. It was believed that the yule log had the magical effect of helping the sun to shine more brightly.
 
Yule was revived in the 19th century by bored writers to mean "the Christmas of Merrie England." probably because it sounds sort of old and cool. Now neo-pagans like followers of Wicca, who I think like to pretend to be spell casters and like to run nude in the woods, celebrate Yule. For them, it's part of the Winter Solstice. 

Very few people today would shout out "Happy Yule Tidings" or "Merry Yule" though.

Christmas, on the other hand, is not as old as Yule, but is up there. It's Middle English for Christemasse, which is from Old English Cristes mæsse, literally, Christ's mass. It was used before 12th century.

Early Roman texts and calenders (about 360 CE) mentions the celebration on December 25 of a Christian liturgical feast of the birth of Jesus. In Eastern Christianity, the birth of Jesus was celebrated, and still is on January 6th at the Epiphany. (When they figured out Jesus was god born as man). The Donatists of North Africa celebrated Christmas may indicate that the feast was established by the time that church was created in 311.

Roman carving of celebrating the God of Light, which the Christian god stole a lot of ideas from. Check out the halo.

And was Jesus actually born in the winter? Most scholars agree that the presence of shepherds and their sheep suggest a spring birth. When church officials settled on December 25 at the end of the third century, they likely wanted the date to coincide with existing pagan festivals honoring Saturn (the Roman god of agriculture) and Mithra (the Persian god of light). Again, the Christians knew how to piggy back on someone elses good time. And because of that religion's ability to change and adapt everything around it like the borg, (geek reference), it beats out Yule. How do we know? I don't hear Have Yourself a Merry Little Yule, do you?

Next Time: How did they celebrate Christmas in Medieval Times? If you're expecting any gifts, you're going to be disappointed.

Lobster People! A Short History of Vacations

This week´s post comes from a question from Dan in Calgary, AB. He asked since I was on vacation, where did this concept come from? How and when did people start to take vacations? He cited the Romans get-away of Pompeii as a well known vacation town. Where they knew how to get down.

Apparently.

Let's follow Dan if he was alive and on vacation throughout history, sort of a Doctor Who of lazy days.He'll pack his shorts and make sure to wear his hikers.

The word vacation comes from the Latin vacare, meaning freedom or exemption. We use vacation and holiday as interchangeable terms now, but originally these are two completely different concepts. Dan in most countries around the world would celebrate a holy day - proclaimed for a saint or some battle commemoration. In a very Christian Europe, he'd head to mass on St. Joseph's day and think about how sucky it would have been for him as a step-dad. It also meant a day off of work for Dan from toiling in the fields to worship at his local church/temple, rest, or just sleep in.

Vacations could have holy days in them, but a lot of time there was no real reason for it other that rest and relaxation. In the Western world, the Romans were the first to go on vacations to get away from it all in a busy, crazy and often over-heated city. Dan, in his best straw hat, palanquin, and servants, would head for his villa in Sicily.

A little drafty now though

Roman Dan might have also taken the first actual tours. Scholars, Emperors, and other elite members of society would pack up their families and head to the Mediterranean and hit all over Italy, Greece, Turkey and Egypt hell bent on pleasure. One of the first guidebooks, called The Description of Greece, was written by Pausanias around 160 CE. He spent ten years travelling in Greece partying and seeing the sites.Dan would have travelled along with the P-man, working on poems, eating local cuisine, and making comments about how the locals were hot.

Pictured - a party animal

Not to be left out, we have tons of records of Chinese and Japanese people taking vacations, off to coastal regions or just going to see friends. Chinese scholars of the Song dynasty (960-1279 CE) wrote many travel notes and guides, detailing inns and places, sometimes women of pleasure. Dan - you dirty dog. But he could have taken a vacation as personal discovery was more the poet's path for Matsuo Basho, the famed Haiku master. For years he walked all over southern Japan in the late 1600s and chronicled his journeys in multiple poems and books. (On a personal note, I am a devote apostle of Basho and went to Ueno specifically to see the sights as well.) My favourite of his works remains the travel journal Record of a Weather-Exposed Skeleton. It's not really a modern guide to Japan. But he did have travel buddies, including the monk Sora.

More pilgrims than party animals - but Basho did drink a lot of wine

Back in Europe, the idea of taking a lot of time off just to bum around became in vogue with the young, rich elite. Grand tours all over Europe started in the late1600s and continues to this day with crusty backpackers. The tour would have been a must for a young, well-off Dan, usually with his tutors, as a tour would complete his already classical education. He'd hit France and Italy first, as they were the two biggest destinations for the Dutch gad-about. For a British travelling Dan, he'd hire horses, carts and supplies to take him to the Netherlands, then France, Italy, the Alps, the Rhine, Switzerland, Italy and a swing by Germany on his way home.On a great website The Grand Tour, you can really get into the spirit of their excursions. There are some female traveller's tales as well, such as Lady Hester Stanhope and Elizabeth Craven.

What you would have seen on the Grand Tour in the 1800s. Dan is sitting and trying to be a gentleman and not staring at all the naked chicks

However, these travel journals are cleaned up so much that a lot of what went on of a questionable nature, like a young man sowing his wild oats as it were, are left out. Where we get some gleams of what the rich did on vacation is from literature. I directed Dan to read A Sinner's Grand Tour for some meaty stuff, like the 1880s belle époque fantasy brothel Le Chabanais, the lost “sex chair” of King Edward VII.

Which leads Dan to his current vacation location, the beach.

The English and Welsh came up with the modern concept of going to a seaside resort to bathe, or take in the waters, stay overnight, and for Dan, eat entirely too much cheese. In the 19th century, a middle class was emerging and these people along with the upper class families would escape from the city heat and head to places like Blackpool, Brighton. There Dan could enjoy a music-hall with dances and variety shows, pleasure gardens and exhibitions. More informal seaside town would pick up in the summer months, such as Lyme (mentioned in Austen´s Persuasion as a seaside destination in the 1800s CE) where fishing and farming predominated and visitors entertained themselves. The reason? The modern industrial era was placing a huge strain on people, and doctors were actually prescribing time off for the rich to get away from it all.

Blackpool, not really getting away from anything.

Thanks to the invention of the train and creation of the railways,seaside vacations became possible for the middle and working class. Since the 1840s, cheap and affordable fares to fast growing resort towns in the UK and American made thousands of sun seekers head to the sands. Entrepreneurs (con-men) would build accommodation and create new attractions, leading to more visitors like Dan to cough up their money just to stay and get some sun on their white bodies. Hence the beginning of the Lobster People.

But it took a while.

Wear SPF 5000, Dan!