Christmas Songs

[longeared]

I watched the Christmas Day episode during the week, and skipped the Ladbaby nonsense. I couldn't work out whether or not there was a studio audience present, there looked to be some people in the background and clearly there was applause but was unsure if that was all just production staff. I also enjoyed them playing the "big Christmas hits of the past", bet da yoof of today weren't expecting to see the Human League among all the modern stuff. Haven't braved the NYE show yet.

In other festive song news I see that almost all of the top 27 of the singles chart this week is Christmassy, the exception being abcdefu by Gayle at number 14.

[San Bernardhinault]

Yes. My understanding was that the decorations had to be down by twelfth night (although there was always a little dispute about which day twelfth night was) rather than on twelfth night itself.

And if the decorations weren't down by 12th night, then it was bad luck to take them down before, I think, Candlemas

[DCI Harry Batt]

Isn't the confusion whether they need to be down by Twelfth Night or before Twelfth Night? Rather than when Twelfth Night is?

[DCI Harry Batt]

Oh, it seems to be both.

[San Bernardhinault]

There's also confusion about whether twelfth night is the 5th or 6th, depending on whether the 12th night is the night of the 12th day (epiphany - 6th Jan) or the night before the 12th day, the first night therefore being the night of the 25th. (Also, occasionally my parents decided that 1st night was in fact Christmas Eve night as that was when midnight mass was, so therefore 12th night was the 4th, but that's just my parents rather formal tradition).

[G-Man]

Liturgically, a new day used to be counted as of sunset. So Christmas Eve is already Christmas Day (which is why some countries have their whole shebang on December 24). How that affects the night-counting, I don't know.

[Hot Pepsi]

When did we stop marking days like that? I haven’t read about it at all, except that it used to be different and that Jews still start days the night before for the purposes of holidays and ceremonies.

[Sits]

Ours are coming down on the 2nd or 3rd.

[Jon]

My decorations go up relatively late (around mid-December) and come down relatively early (new year's Day).

[The Bean Counter]

I had a fascinating book on the history of Christmas out from the library pre-Christmas. As I recall, the first Christmas "decorations" in England was the putting up of assorted bits of greenery, which may originally have been a general winter custom, but over time became associated with the Christmas holiday to the extent that the greenery itself became referred to as Christmas. By around the 16th century, Twelfth Night was for partying and celebration (and, in some cases, gift giving), while greenery stayed up until the night before Candlemas, i.e. 1st February. With all the various saint's days and feast days over Christmas, the partying and celebrations, drinking (especially this!) and games really did last from Christmas Eve until Epiphany. I suspect that, with little farming to be done, the rest of January was then spent recovering.

It was with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution that the Christmas holiday started to become a lot shorter, basically. One early product of the Industrial Revolution was mass produced Christmas decorations - these actually came surprisingly early, with the first Christmas baubles etc starting to be manufactured in Germany in the 1820s, though they took a little longer to spread to England. It's only around early Victorian times (in time for Dickens's A Christmas Carol) that people started to decorate their houses in the manner we know today. In England, it was customary to take the decorations down by Twelfth Night. I don't know but I expect it was different on the Celtic fringes - in Scotland, Christmas was not celebrated to the same extent (it wasn't even a public holiday in Scotland until the mid 1950s) while in Ireland, 6th January was traditionally known as Nollaig na mBan, or Women's Christmas, and a fairly important date in the season in its own right, so it seems unlikely there would have been any tradition of taking the decorations down before this.

So in summary, just take em down whenever.

[Sporting]

Our tree went up on Christmas Eve and will probably come down around the 9th.

[G-Man]

Well, the liturgical Christmas season begins on December 25 and ends on the feast of the Epiphany (or strictly speaking, in the RCC at least, with the Baptism of the Lord a week later). So it makes sense that Christmas decorations would be taken down only after the feast of the Epiphany.

[Jah Womble]

My decorations go up relatively late (around mid-December) and come down relatively early (new year's Day).

Mid-December is ‘relatively late’?

[ad hoc]

I had a fascinating book on the history of Christmas out from the library pre-Christmas. As I recall, the first Christmas "decorations" in England was the putting up of assorted bits of greenery, which may originally have been a general winter custom, but over time became associated with the Christmas holiday to the extent that the greenery itself became referred to as Christmas. By around the 16th century, Twelfth Night was for partying and celebration (and, in some cases, gift giving), while greenery stayed up until the night before Candlemas, i.e. 1st February. With all the various saint's days and feast days over Christmas, the partying and celebrations, drinking (especially this!) and games really did last from Christmas Eve until Epiphany. I suspect that, with little farming to be done, the rest of January was then spent recovering.

I live in a place which is still largely pre industrial revolution and this rings fairly true. In fact in a place like this you can really see where the seasons fit together and the connection to the Christian calendar. Once the winter kicks in and everything you harvested in the autumn is in whatever form of storage (pickles, jams, zakuszka, potatoes etc) then the family kills the pig in mid December which supplies all the meat for the next few months. The period from Christmas on is basically the holiday. The fields are frozen and the animals are in the barn, so it's just a time for being home and meeting friends and drinking (so much drinking - the fruit brandies tend to get distilled in December too). Farsang, which is the Hungarian word that equates to Carnaval, actually refers to the whole period from New Year until the beginning of Lent, and it's basically a two month period of debauchery (to make up for the rest of the year which is as tough as hell)

Then you get Lent, which of course coincides with the time when there is the least food, so people are observant both by faith and by necessity, and then the cycle starts up again around Easter

[DCI Harry Batt]

So in summary, just take em down whenever.

Oh absolutely. Up whenever you want, down whenever you want. We get ours up so that when we have friends over in early December for a pre-krismas thing, the tree is up and decorated. As for taking down - could never be doing with worrying about twelfth night, which wasn't a thing for us anyway. So stuff will come down when it does, sometime in early Jan.

[San Bernardhinault]

Here in the US I've noticed what feels like a weird tendency (as someone who grew up in the British tradition) to start stripping away the decorations on the 26th or 27th. Many trees are already out of houses. It's not completely denuded - a bunch of lights are still up and I think the general tendency would be to take them down today, the second of Jan. But clearly there are some people who're absolutely done with Christmas by the day after Christmas Day. I think that's because most decorations go up the weekend after Thanksgiving (Thanksgiving delays the onset of commercial decorations, but means domestic ones start earlier), and therefore the (unofficial) Christmas Season runs much earlier than in Europe: from the first weekend in December (or even last in November) through to the day when the last of the family visitors leaves, which is more than long enough and people are desperate to be done with it.

It's definitely unusual - and looks tardy - to leave them up all the way to twelfth night, whether that's the 4th, 5th or 6th.

[ad hoc]

Over there you have to make space for the Martin Luther King decorations.

Oh..

[San Bernardhinault]

Over there you have to make space for the Martin Luther King decorations.

Oh..

That does remind me that I have seen a handful of "African American Nativity" decorations on Christmas Trees that look very, very unfortunately like lynching scenes.

[elguapo4]

That does remind me that I have seen a handful of "African American Nativity" decorations on Christmas Trees that look very, very unfortunately like lynching scenes.

In our crib when I was young, one of the three wise men was black, I don't know if that's a regular thing.

[elguapo4]

To answer my own question, looking at illustrations online, it seems to be.

[Ray de Galles]

Balthazar, wasn't it?

[ursus arctos]

Yes

The Gospel of Matthew does not give the names of the Magi (or even how many there were), but their traditional names are ascribed to a Greek manuscript from 500 AD translated into Latin and commonly accepted as the source of the names.^[2] In this original manuscript, Balthazar is called Bithisarea, which later developed into Balthazar in Western Christianity.^[1] Balthazar was described in the 8th century by Saint Bede as being "[of] black complexion, with [a] heavy beard" with the "myrrh he held in his hands prefigured the death of the Son of man".^[3]

[Jon]

Balthazar, wasn't it?

Although, when I was living in Madrid the part of Balthazar was played, once at least, in the Parade of the Reyes Magos by Christian Karembeu.

[ursus arctos]

Seen as a social advance at the time given the long-standing tradition of it being a white guy in blackface.

[G-Man]

In the Eastern Churches, there can be up to 12 magi. But the tradition of three goes back to the three gifts. The whole thing might connect to Psalm 72: "Let the kings of Tarshish and the faraway lands bring him gifts. Let the kings of Sheba and Seba bring their presents to him. Let all kings bow down to him."

In tradition, the names of the magi probably refer to kings of Arabia (Balthasar), Persia (Melchior) and India (Gaspar).