Most English people who can afford it eat more than is good for them on Christmas Day, and consider it more or less of a religious duty to do so, even though they shrink from the ordeal. It is an interesting tendency, and at the same time one readily explained. Primitive men, and our own remote ancestors, had few, if any, joys greater than those afforded by an abundant meal of roasted meat. When a great beast such as a mammoth was taken in a skilfully-prepared pitfall, and slaughtered, the whole tribe of palaeolithic huntsmen assembled and gorged themselves with its flesh, which, it seems fairly certain, they cooked on open fires. The strongest seized the most and ate the most, and were able to bear up the longest in something like full vigour until such time as another big beast should be killed, and another opportunity for “gorging” should arise, when they would naturally again get the largest share, having eaten most on the previous occasion, and so being least famished. Hence the belief that a great appetite is a fine thing, and that the more you can eat, the stronger and better you are, is one of the deeply-laid traditions of humanity which civilised men have inherited from barbarians, and are only slowly commencing to criticise and to put aside. The negroes who accompany European sportsmen in Central Africa gorge themselves when elephants are killed, and a recent account tells of the serious illness and danger to an expedition caused by the whole countryside flocking to the carcasses of twenty-three elephants killed by an ivory-hunter. The blacks continued to eat the flesh of the elephants for three weeks, when it had become decidedly “high,” and many died, whilst others took weeks to recover, in consequence. The notion of “festivity,” which, especially in England, has been, even in recent times, that of eating and drinking to excess, is prehistoric and barbaric. Serious physiologists and medical men have expressed the opinion that we shall never arrive at a satisfactory mode of nourishing ourselves so as to take neither too much nor what is in itself injurious to health, until the practice of seeking gaiety and celebrating a memory or honouring a friend or friends by means of profuse eating (often followed by wearisome speeches) has given place to a mode of rejoicing which is more likely to produce hilarity and lightness of heart, and less certain to be followed by painful and injurious results. We certainly eat less and drink less of intoxicating liquors than we did, but there is, it seems, still room for improvement.

To connect heavy feeding with Christmas, the third in rank of the great festivals of the Church, is not a universal custom, and is, in fact, a peculiarity of our own country, arising from the rearing and management of cattle in early times, when English pasture land furnished a splendid means of enriching its owners by the production of “hides” and leather. Large numbers of cattle had to be stalled during winter and fed on stored herbage, and a great many were at this season killed and the meat “salted down,” since it would not pay to keep them on stored food. It was not until the introduction of “root-crops” that oxen could be kept in any number through the winter months. Hence there was an excess of fresh meat and fat about Christmas time, and the “roast beef,” plum puddings, and mincemeat of Christmas fare were abundant. The true Christmas pudding and mince-pie had meat as part of their components, and, of course, beef-suet enters largely into their composition at the present day.

The practice of eating sweet fruits and preserves with meat (as in the true mince-pie) still lingers in this country, but has become less general than it is in Germany. We still eat red-currant jelly with roast mutton, and also with hare, and apple sauce is considered appropriate to roast pork and to goose; but pickled plums and cherries and sugared crab-apples, which are usually taken with meat in Germany, are not known to us. I have heard a schoolboy express indignation at being given plums with roast meat. Mincemeat, for mince-pies, was originally (like a “Cornish pasty,” in which raisins are mixed with meat) one of these combinations of sweetness and strength—of sugar and meat—the taste for which has unaccountably disappeared in these days of mechanical uniformity and lack of “homely cheer.”

The introduction of the turkey as a Christmas dish dates from the early time of the importation of that bird into Europe, namely, about 1550. It is already spoken of in connection with Christmas fare in 1570. The “turkey-cock,” as its full name was, is an American bird, and was brought originally from Mexico to Europe, though it is possible that the more northern American species may have been also introduced by the navigator, Jean Cabot. There is a very gorgeous turkey-cock of iridescent bright blue and green, with orange-red warts on his head and neck, found in Honduras. But he has never been acclimatised. He is on view in the Natural History Museum. The turkey belongs to the pheasant family, and is compared by old writers to the peacock, and also to the guinea-fowl (Numida meleagris of ornithologists). Indeed, there was great confusion when the turkey first arrived between it and the guinea-fowl, and it appears to be owing to this mixing up of the two birds that the American bird was called a turkey-cock, since the guinea-fowl is an African bird, and came into the hands of Europeans through Mussulman traders or “Turks.” So far did the confusion go that the great LinnÆus applied the Latin name Meleagris, which was that of the guinea-fowl, to the “turkey” of America! Some people think that the turkey-cock established his misleading name by his cry, which they say is represented by the words “Turk-turk-turk.” Probably the turkey-cock, though an American bird, was imported by traders who were called “Turkey merchants” because their chief business was with the Levantine and Morocco ports. Another mistake or vagueness as to the native home of the turkey was hit upon by the French, who called it the Poule d’Inde, whence their modern name for it, Dindon; and the same error is found in an old German name for it, Kalkuttisch HÜn (from Calicut, on the Malabar coast of India, where the turkey was introduced from America in the seventeenth century, and has flourished ever since). The Swedish name for the turkey is Kalcon, and is only a modification of this old German name. Probably few animals or birds have been so persistently misrepresented by the names given to them as the American bird which we call the turkey.

Our farmyard names for him are far better. In Scotland they call him the “Bubbly-jock,” which vividly suggests his airs and graces, whilst in Suffolk we call him a “Gobble-cock.” I know an old farmhouse near Woodbridge, in Suffolk, which bears the delightful name of “Gobblecock Hall.” “The squire of Gobblecock Hall” would have furnished Randolph Caldecott with inspiration for a Christmas picture story; and so, indeed, would the country round the “Hall,” with its vast sandy tract, ten miles long, known as Hollesley Heath, ending on the seashore near Orford Castle.

The misleading indication as to the native land of an animal—due to the name commonly applied to it—is remarkable in the case of the guinea-pig. Though the guinea-fowl is correctly so called, since it comes from the Guinea Coast of Africa, the guinea-pig has nothing to do with that coast, but comes from South America! It is not a pig, but a rodent, and it does not come from Guinea. It appears that the ships of the “Guinea merchants” of this country established trading relations with South American ports, and hence the little “pig” (Shakespeare calls the hedgehog “hedge-pig”) which they brought home was called a “guinea-pig,” just as the big “cock” imported by Turkey merchants was called a “Turkey-cock.” The guinea-pig suffers other “indignities of appellation.” The Germans call him Meerschweinchen, that is, “little sea-pig.” Apparently “sea” pig, because he was brought over the sea. But this leads to unjustifiable suggestions as to the guinea-pig’s character. For the Germans call the porpoise Meerschwein, which would seem to mean “pig of the sea”; and those imperfectly acquainted with the German language have been known to take allusions made by German writers to the former animal as intended to apply to the young of the latter. Thus one reads in an English medical book of a number of “young porpoises” being fed upon carrots when it was really “guinea-pigs” which consumed this nutriment. The German physiologists, who often make use of guinea-pigs in their investigations, now call them Cobayas, so as to avoid any further misunderstanding. The French word for a porpoise, marsouin, is a corruption of the German name Meerschwein.

I have pointed out above the origin of heavy feeding at Christmas. Whether it is necessary or not to continue that precise mode of celebration, the sentiments of peace and goodwill which belong to Christmas, the meeting of kinsmen,—and, above all, the dedication of many of its customs to children,—are things to be cherished and treated tenderly. The 25th day of December was fixed by the Church for the celebration of the birth of Christ, but it is fairly certain that the period of the year indicated in the Gospel as that when the shepherds were watching their flocks and saw the star of Bethlehem, was not December, but October. It is also certain that the children owe their share in Christmas to the combination with it of customs proper to the Epiphany, which celebrates the bringing of gifts to the child Christ by the wise men of the East. It appears that the greatest and gayest of the feasts of pagan Rome—the “Saturnalia”—was held at the end of December, and that the early Church in this, as in many other cases, adapted a pagan custom to its own uses, and fixed the feast of the Nativity at this date expressly in order to take over, as it were, the gaiety of the Saturnalia. The brilliant foliage and berries of the holly-tree were used for decorations at the Saturnalia, and thus became a Christmas emblem. The fun and frolic of the Saturnalia were transferred to the name of Christmas, and thus it comes about that the Yule Log and the Lord of Misrule and the Abbot of Unreason, and also snapdragon and clown, harlequin and columbine, are found in full swing at Christmas-tide. Later St. Nicholas, who took the place of Neptune, and was the patron saint of sailors, became associated with Christmas celebrations as Santa Claus or Father Christmas. His regular day was at the beginning of December, and so it was easy to postpone his festivities to three weeks later.

Mistletoe is not a Christmas decoration. It comes to us from the Druids, and belongs to the New Year. It is not allowed to appear in church, and should not be hung up in private houses till Christmas is over and the New Year has come. The hanging up of the mistletoe is in itself a beautiful survival of an ancient worship, and should be associated in our minds with Stonehenge and the prehistoric star temples, whose priests were astronomers. On New Year’s Day they solemnly distributed branches of the mistletoe to the people as a charm ensuring fertility. In December there are many hundredweight of mistletoe cut down and despatched from the ancient Druidical haunts of the Welsh border, and from over-sea Brittany, to all-devouring London, where it is heedlessly nailed up in doorways, and made the excuse for much giggling and embracing. May those who read these lines treat it with due reverence, and when they kiss beneath the beautiful strange branch with its white berries, think of our ancestors—the noble youths and lovely maidens of prehistoric days, who kissed three thousand years ago, and sent this living token of their happy lives down the long ages—to us, distracted hustlers of the motor-car. Prehistoric feeding may not be good for us, but the prehistoric rite of the mistletoe must not be neglected in these days of strange political aspirations on the part of those who have not discovered its sedative virtue.