Keeping alive ancient customs (From The Oxford Times)

Keeping alive ancient customs

2:18pm Friday 30th December 2011 in Limited Edition By Chris Koenig

Boars’ heads have been much on my mind, and not only because of that famous one served up at The Queen’s College, Oxford, during December, but also because of the opera by Gustav Holst (of whom I wrote last week) called At the Boar’s Head. Holst based the one-act opera to a large extent on English folk melodies which Cecil Sharp had discovered at Christmas 1899, when he first saw the morris dancers of Headington Quarry, Oxford, dance to the music of concertina player William Kimber. Some say that it was his subsequent notations of the tunes that kept the morris dancing tradition alive; adding that without him the dancing and tunes would have been lost for ever.

Such is the way with customs and traditions, not to mention superstitions: over the centuries they evolve, change, die out, and revive themselves in slightly different forms. At no time are there so many old customs about as at Christmas and New Year and during the strange interregnum that comes between the two.

For instance, the habit of present-giving was from Roman until Victorian times performed on New Year’s Day rather than at Christmas, with courtiers giving sumptuous gifts to the ruling monarch and, further down the social scale, subordinates being required to give presents to bosses on a scale that suggests not a little flavour of currying favour, even bribery. Diarist Samuel Pepys records New Year gifts between himself and his wife during the 1660s, and also his astonishment at the amount he was expected to fork out for gifts associated with his work at the Navy office.

On the other hand, St Stephen’s Day was (is) the day for giving and receiving Christmas boxes. The name Boxing Day first appears in the 1620s when apprentices and servants are recorded as receiving their annual tips. These were placed in an earthenware box with a slot for coins, which had to be broken in order to get the money out — a little like a piggy bank. Anyone who served anyone else — such as delivery people — could expect a tip.

James Woodforde, that bon viveur parson of whose exploits in Oxford I wrote a few weeks ago, recorded that in 1782 he gave two shillings and sixpence to the bell ringers and a shilling each to the butcher’s boy, the blacksmith’s boy, and the maltster’s man. This followed the practice of the time, with the money not going to the tradesman himself but to his employees. But as the industrial revolution gathered pace, the question of who paid whom and how much became far more complicated in large towns.

Also on St Stephen’s Day many people thought they had the right to enter forests — such as Wychwood or Shotover — to hunt squirrels. Superstitions — such as the one about luck being brought by a dark stranger crossing the threshold at New Year — abound at this period. For instance, nothing was allowed to leave the house during the 12 days of Christmas. This was a particular nuisance before the advent of matches, since neighbours often used to borrow a light to keep their home fires burning, but it was deemed bad manners to do so at Christmas.

Curiously, both the luckiest and unluckiest days upon which to be born fall close to each other. Christmas Day was the luckiest day of all, but December 28, Holy Innocents Day, was the unluckiest. Any enterprise started that day was doomed to end in failure. No washing of clothes was allowed either, since it was believed you would wash one of the family away. Also children were never chastised and, in some villages, were allowed to play in church. On that day, sometimes called Childermas, King Herod began murdering boys under two in a desperate attempt to hit lucky and kill the infant Jesus — as 13th-century wall paintings at the church of St Mary’s at Black Bourton, near Witney, graphically attest. They are some of the best frescoes in the country of this horrific happening, and also of the Holy Family’s subsequent flight into Egypt.

As for the Boar’s Head that has been brought into the hall at The Queen’s College, Oxford, since the 14th century, the story goes that long ago a student was wandering about Shotover Forest, reading his Aristotle, when he was attacked by a wild boar. Being a brainy sort of fellow he rammed the book into the poor boar’s mouth and killed it. A boar has been devoured in December at the college every year since in order to commemorate that event.