Bad but by no means the worst

By the standards of our lifetimes this will be one of the more unusual Christmases we have ever experienced. Large parts of Europe are living under lockdown conditions and many millions of people will be separated from their extended families, in many cases not having seen them since last Christmas. Undoubtedly many of us have been inconvenienced but spare a thought for those who have lost loved ones during the year. Spare a thought, too, for those in front line service jobs who have worked to look after us and provide the services that have kept the economy afloat. Health professionals (doctors, nurses and the ancillary staff who keep the system running) have had a tough year and they will continue to work over the holiday season. Special thanks are also due to those who have kept the lights on, delivered the goods to our doorstep and the countless other services which have allowed us to maintain a semblance of normality in 2020.

All of this did get me wondering how badly this year’s Christmas stacks up against past years. It certainly will not be the worst in history. The outbreak of bubonic plague in Europe between 1346 and 1353, which is estimated to have killed 60% of the population, would have made for a truly frightening experience. In a forerunner of today's social distancing, cities such as Venice and Milan put emergency public health measures in place to limit personal contact whilst the Adriatic port city of Ragusa (modern-day Dubrovnik) was the first to pass legislation in 1377 requiring the mandatory quarantine of all incoming ships and trade caravans in order to screen for infection. Well-documented outbreaks of bubonic plague afflicted large European cities over the next 300 years with outbreaks in London in 1563 and 1665 particularly noteworthy. Ironically, plague outbreaks tended to subside during the winter months as the disease vectors (rats and their fleas) retreated in the wake of colder weather. Christmas may thus have seemed a miraculous interlude in an otherwise endless cycle of misery.

Christmas during periods of war are also dreadful. We have been regaled over the decades with stories about how bad Christmas was in the UK during World War II with 1944 described as “the most joyless Christmas of the war.” One amusing anecdote from that period is that such was the lack of alcohol that year “that, of the half million inhabitants of Kensington, Hammersmith, Fulham and Chelsea, in London, only one woman was arrested that year for drunkenness over the holiday.” There was nothing to laugh about in Germany in 1944. Supply shortages were almost intolerable in cities which were ruined shadows of their former selves whilst weekly working hours had recently been increased to 60 hours to free up labour for the war effort.

Of course, war and disease were not the only dampening factors on Christmas celebrations. Before the Reformation in 1560, Christmas in Britain was celebrated as a religious feasting day. But the rise of the Puritan movement in the seventeenth century meant that the season was increasingly frowned upon as a frivolity associated with Roman Catholicism. In 1640 the Scottish Parliament passed a law that made celebrating ‘Yule vacations’ illegal. In 1643 the English parliament followed suit, passing a law calling on the people to treat the mid-winter period 'with the more solemn humiliation because it may call to remembrance our sins, and the sins of our forefathers, who have turned this feast, pretending the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights'. In 1644, parliament followed this up by abolishing the feasts of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun altogether. From this point until the Restoration in 1660, Christmas in England was officially illegal. Even after the law was repealed in Scotland, Christmas celebrations were frowned upon for a long time afterwards. It was not until 1958 that 25 December became a Scottish public holiday.

Many of the non-conformist Puritan movements which left Europe for the New World in the seventeenth century carried this attitude with them. The Plymouth Pilgrims in 1620 spent their first Christmas Day, in what later became the United States, building their first structure. The following year new arrivals, who spent Christmas Day celebrating rather than working, found themselves at odds with the original settlers. It was not until 1681 that laws forbidding the celebration of Christmas were repealed. But “as late as 1870, classes were scheduled in Boston public schools on Christmas Day and punishments were meted out to children who chose to stay home beneath the Christmas tree.”

However inconvenient this Christmas will turn out to be, for the most part it pales into insignificance compared with past privations. Stay safe and enjoy the festivities as best you can – even if is only via Zoom. All the best to you and yours at this very unusual time.