The Holly and the Ivy

The Holly and the Ivy, a Christmas carol dating from the 17th - 18th Century, is one of my most favorite.  The concept of Holly and Ivy has come to symbolize different things over time, from the original pagan festivities of the Winter Solstice, or emerging as a homage to Jesus Christ and his Virgin birth, to even being a representation of the Battle of the Sexes.

The dreaded Pagans - Holly was sacred to the Druids.  To alleviate the dreariness of winter they would decorate their dwelling places with it, allowing the greenery and the berries to recall the Springtime to come, the hope and promise of rebirth.  Pagans fashioned Holly and Ivy into wreaths and garlands for the Winter months; Ivy had a close association with the idea of Bacchus, the Roman God of wine, Holly with Saturnalia (upon which the Christmas holiday was based)  Holly and Ivy were accepted decorations during Roman times, and despite the disapproval of early church fathers, they gradually found their way into our Christmas traditions.

The Church - Early English Lyrics by Chambers and Sidgwick, published in 1926, mentions a broadside of 1710 with a version of the carol which begins

The holly and the ivy

Now are both well grown

Of all the trees that are in the wood

The holly bears the crown

The holly bears a blossom

As white as lily flower

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

To be our sweet Saviour.

The holly bears a berry

As red as any blood,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

To do poor sinners good.

The holly bears a prickle

As sharp as any thorn,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

On Christmas Day in the morn.

The holly bears a bark

As bitter as any gall,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

For to redeem us all.

The holly and the ivy,

When they are both full grown

Of all the trees that are in the wood

The holly bears the crown.

Here the Pagan symbols for life and rebirth, Holly and Ivy, are captured in lyrics that possess a definite Christian meaning.   The blossom, 'white as lily flower,' recalls the purity of the Blessed Mother and the innocence of the birth of Jesus.  The red berry recalls the blood of Christ, the prickle of the leaves as sharp as the Crown of Thorns, the bark bitter as the gall given to Christ to drink as he died on the cross.  'Of all the trees that are in the wood, the Holly bears the Crown."

The Battle of the Sexes - Everyone's favorite bitter/sweet battle.  Supposedly, in ancient English village life, men and women would hold singing competitions in midwinter with the men praising Holly for its masculine strength and disparaging the Ivy for it's femininity.  Of course, women took the opposite viewpoint (remember, the battle between men and women is as old as time).  Women would praise the Ivy for its feminine qualities and scorn the Holly for it's manliness.  Not surprisingly, more 'Holly' songs survived, as this example below.

Holly stands in the hall, fair to behold:

Ivy stands without the door, she is full sore a cold.

Nay, ivy, nay, it shall not be I wis;

Let holly have the mastery, as the manner is.

Holly and his merry men, they dance and they sing,

Ivy and her maidens, they weep and they wring.

Nay, ivy, nay, it shall not be I wis;

Let holly have the mastery, as the manner is.

Ivy hath chapped fingers, she caught them from the cold,

So might they all have, aye, that with ivy hold.

Nay, ivy, nay, it shall not be I wis;

Let holly have the mastery, as the manner is.

For me - The Holly and the Ivy reminds me of watching old black and white Christmas movies on television late at night, the English ones especially, like A Christmas Carol - every year my brother and I would watch the Alastair Sim version on TV (NEVER the Reginald Owen one).  I also think of midnight mass for which I could never seem to stay awake.  As the choir sang carols I would fall asleep leaning on my mom's arm or snuggled in my father's lap.  

Happily, the carol continues as popular as always, bringing me so many happy memories of Christmas past.  When I was younger I never understood when old relatives would become melancholy on such a wonderful day!  I loved Christmas and the gifts and the family joy.  But then time took its toll on me as well. I got to be an old crank like my aunts and uncles before me.  As you age you sometimes lose your grasp on the holiday you loved as a child; worse yet, you lose the very people who made it special.  

It is then that the real meaning of Christmas, hopefully, recharges your spirits.  This is a holiday of hope and rebirth; after all, the salvation of the world is at hand.

Hold your loved ones near and never let them go

And have a very Merry Christmas
God Bless Us, One and All.

Karen V. Wasylowski is the author of two books, 'Darcy and Fitzwilliam' a rollickingly funny continuation of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice'
and
'Sons and Daughters', a rollickingly funny continuation of 'Darcy and Fitzwilliam'
(The Family Saga of Mr. Darcy)

Purchase either book here, at Amazon.com

Visit her blog, as well

THE LEAGUE OF BRITISH ARTISTS

800 years of Plum Pudding

By Maria Grace

"Hallo!A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper [boiler]. A smell like washing –day! That was the cloth [the pudding bag]. A smell like an eating house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding. like a speckled cannon ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top." "Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage..."

Charles Dickens~A Christmas Carol  

Origins of the Plum Pudding

Few foods can trace their history back through multiple centuries. Plum pudding stands out as one of those few. It began in Roman times as a pottage, a meat and vegetable concoction prepared in a large cauldron. Dried fruits, sugar and spices might be added to the mix as well.

Another ancestor to the plum pudding, porridge or frumenty appeared in the fourteenth century. A soup-like fasting dish containing meats, raisins, currants, prunes, wine and spices, it was eaten before the Christmas celebrations began. By the fifteenth century, plum pottage a soupy mix of meat, vegetables and fruit was served to start a meal.

As the seventeenth century opened, frumenty evolved into a plum pudding. Thickened with eggs, breadcrumbs, and dried fruit, the addition of beer and spirits gave it more flavor and increased its shelf life. Variants were made with white meat, though gradually the meat was omitted and replaced by suet. The root vegetables also disappeared. By 1650, the plum pudding had transformed from a main dish to a dessert, the customary one served at Christmas. Not long afterward though, plum pudding was banned by Oliver Cromwell because he believed the ritual of flaming the pudding harked back to pagan celebrations of the winter solstice.

George I, sometime called the Pudding King revived the dish in 1714 when he requested that plum pudding be served as part of his royal feast to celebrate his first Christmas in England. Subsequently it became entrenched as part of traditional holiday celebrations, taking its final form of cannon-ball of flour, fruits, suet, sugar and spices, all topped with holly in the 1830’s. In 1858 it was first dubbed the Christmas Pudding, recorded as such in Anthony Trollope's Doctore Thorne.  

Preparing plum pudding

Many households have their own recipe for Christmas pudding, some handed down through families for generations. Two sample recipes from different centuries show remarkable similarity in ingredients.

A boiled Plum Pudding (18th century)

Take a pound of suet cut in little pieces, not too fine, a pound of currants and a pound of raisins storied, eight eggs, half the whites, half a nutmeg grated and a tea spoonful of beaten ginger, a pound of flour, a pint of milk. Beat the eggs first, then half the milk. Beat them together and by degrees stir in the flour then the suet, spice and fruit and as much milk as will mix it well together very thick. Boil it five hours ~Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery made plain and easy,

Rich Plum Pudding (19^th Century)

Stone carefully one pound of the best raisins, wash and pick one pound of currants, chop very small one pound of fresh beef suet, blanch and chop small or pound two ounces of sweet almonds and one ounce of bitter ones; mix the whole well together, with one pound of sifted flour, and the same weight of crumb of bread soaked in milk, then squeezed dry and stirred with a spoon until reduced to a mash before it is mixed with the flour. Cut in small pieces two ounces each of preserved citron, orange, and lemon-peel, and add a quarter of an ounce of mixed spice; quarter of a pound of moist sugar should be put into a basin, with eight eggs, and well beaten together with a three-pronged fork; stir this with the pudding, and make it of a proper consistence with milk.

 Remember that it must not be made too thin, or the fruit will sink to the bottom, but be made to the consistence of good thick batter. Two wineglassfuls of brandy should be poured over the fruit and spice, mixed together in a basin, and allowed to stand three or four hours before the pudding is made, stirring them occasionally. It must be tied in a cloth, and will take five hours of constant boiling. When done, turn it out on a dish, sift loaf-sugar over the top, and serve it with wine-sauce in a boat, and some poured round the pudding. The pudding will be of considerable size, but half the quantity of materials, used in the same proportion, will be equally good. ~Godey's Lady's Book, Dec. 1860

 After cooking, Christmas puddings were often dried out on hooks for weeks prior to serving in order to enhance the flavor. Once dried, they were wrapped in alcohol-soaked cheese cloth and stored earthenware/crockery and placed somewhere cool for the duration. More alcohol may have been added during this period. The puddings might also have been sealed against air with suet or wax to aid in preservation. Click here for a modern recipe and instructional video.  

Plum pudding traditions

 With a food so many centuries in the making, it is not surprising to find many traditions have evolved around the making and eating of plum pudding.

The last Sunday before Advent is considered the last day on which one can make Christmas puddings since they require aging before they are served. It is sometimes known as 'Stir-up Sunday'. This is because opening words of the main prayer in the Book of Common Prayer of 1549 for that day are:

"Stir-up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." 

Choir boys parodied the prayer.

 "Stir up, we beseech thee, the pudding in the pot. And when we do get home tonight, we'll eat it up hot." 

Christmas pudding is prepared with 13 ingredients to represent Christ and the 12 apostles then it is "stirred up" all family members who must take a hand in the stirring, using a special wooden spoon (in honor of Christ's crib). The stirring must be done clockwise, from east to west to honor the journey of the Magi, with eyes shut, while making a secret wish.

After the family stirred the pudding, tiny charms might be added to the pudding to reveal their finders’ fortune. The trinkets often included a thimble (for spinsterhood or thrift), a ring (for marriage), a coin (for wealth), a miniature horseshoe or a tiny wishbone for good luck, and an anchor for safe harbor.

 When the pudding was served, a sprig of holly was placed on the top of the pudding as a reminder of Jesus' Crown of Thorns that he wore when he was killed. Flaming the pudding, as described by Dickens was believed to represent the passion of Christ and represent Jesus' love and power. It is also a key part of the theatrical aspect of the holiday celebration.

 Why is it called plum pudding?

 And the answer to the most burning question: Why is plum pudding called that when there are no plums in it? Dried plums, or prunes, were popular in pies in medieval times, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth century they began to be replaced by raisins. In the 17th century, plums referred to raisins or other fruits. The dishes made with them retain the term plum to this day.  

Resources

  An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002
 The Art of Cookery made plain and easy, Hannah Glasse.  
The Customs and Ceremonies of Britain by Charles Knightly. London:Thames and Hudson, 1986 Godey's Lady's Book, Dec. 1860
 The Folklore of World Holidays, Robert H. Griffen and Ann H. Shurgin editors, Second Edition [Gale:Detroit] 1998
 Food and Cooking in Victorian England: A History, Andrea Broomfield [Praeger:Westport CT] 2007 Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2000
 Plum Pudding History - Plum Pudding Recipe
Christmas Pudding PLUM PUDDING - CHRISTMAS PUDDING RECIPE
Christmas Foods
The Christmas Pudding Sarah Lane Traditions & History




Maria Grace is the author of Darcy's Decision and The Future Mrs. Darcy. Click here to find her books on Amazon. For more on her writing and other Random Bits of Fascination, visit her website. You can also like her on Facebook or email her.

A Victorian Christmas Carol

By Karen V. Wasylowski

I have always thought of Christmas time…as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they were really fellow-passengers to the grave and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

- Nephew Fred from 'A Christmas Carol'

There is nothing in this world that evokes Christmas more for me than Victorian England and Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.  How many times have I seen this movie, and in how many versions?   Well, it's hard to keep track - the story is similar to Pride and Prejudice in that Hollywood feels the need to keep retelling the tale, change the locale, modernize the message.  My brother and I watched and waited each year for it, hoping for the 1951 version starring Alastair Sims and complaining bitterly if it was the 1938 Reginald Owen film.  In 1970 Albert Finney starred in 'Scrooge' but I never did take to his performance.  It was like Tom Jones on crack cocaine or something and then in 1988 Bill Murray got 'Scrooged' and that just made me nervous.  I never for one moment believed Scrooge was reformed in the end.  I mean, it was Bill Murray after all. 

The Christmas festivities described in A Christmas Carol were a good deal different from the old Puritan Christmas that had been the norm for years.  Puritans, Quakers and others strongly disapproved of the mingling of liquor and merriment with a sacred holiday, were disturbed by some of the tradition’s origins in pagan ritual. Writing in 1871, G.K. Chesterton provides an insight into the mid-19th century mindset with his claim that

...in fighting for Christmas [Dickens] was fighting for the old European festival, Pagan and Christian, for that trinity of eating, drinking and praying which to moderns appears irreverent, for the holy day which is really a holiday.

In spite of its detractors, the New Christmas gradually took hold, and the Victorians established many of the customs that are at the center of today’s traditional Christmas celebration. In 1840, when Prince Albert celebrated the holiday at Windsor Castle by presenting his family with the “German” Christmas tree, all of England followed suit. The festival began to focus predominantly on the family, particularly on children. The first Christmas cards appeared in 1843, the year that A Christmas Carol was published. The originally pagan ritual of caroling was revived, gift giving grew in importance, and the traditional Christmas dinner began to take shape.

And still it grows - there are new traditions added every year, cultural preferences, family blending.  Christmas itself remains the same though, a blessed time of peace, family and remembrance.   I pray you have a joyful day, but remember others less fortunate.  May you help the poor, love your neighbor, forgive your enemies. 

And settle in for another year of "A Christmas Carol."

Preface to A Christmas Carol 

        "I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

 Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D. "

 Merry Christmas, and God Bless us,

One and All

Hope you take a moment and visit my other blog -
"The League of British Artists"

'Darcy and Fitzwilliam' By Karen V. Wasylowski

"It is absorbing.  It is Intoxicating.  It is excellent..."  Jane Austen's World and Jane Austen Today

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