Thursday, January 28, 2021

The History of Old Christmas Day – with Giveaway -- By Donna Schlachter


 

In my family, which hails from England and Ireland, one of our Christmas traditions was that the tree stayed up until Old Christmas Day, January 6th. We never understood why, simply that such was the rule. Gifts were opened on Christmas Day but stayed under the tree unless being played with or shown to visitors, of which there were many during that three-week period. While relatives came to our home on Boxing Day (December 26th), friends and close acquaintances knew that their invitation began after that, and on many evenings and Sundays, we’d either visit their house to see their decorations and gifts, or they’d come to our home.

 


Old Christmas Day, or Little Christmas as it’s known to Irish and Amish celebrants, is also called The Feast of the Epiphany by Catholics, the day to remember the wise men bringing gifts to Jesus. Christmas Day originally was celebrated on January 6th. The change came as a result of calendars and problems with them.

 

Pope Gregory XIII

Gregorian Calendar

The original calendar in popular use, the Roman calendar, used the phases of the moon as its basis. However, it wasn’t very accurate since they didn’t have a great understanding of our solar system at the time. So along came Julius Caesar, who agreed with astronomers of the time that the calendar should be based on our revolution around the sun. A calendar based on 365 1/4 days—the time it takes for Earth to travel around the sun one complete turn—was introduced. He divided this calendar into twelve months.

However, not everybody agreed on this new calendar, and indeed, a lot of confusion reigned in the known world because different countries followed different calendars. Plus, the Julian calendar wasn’t accurate, either. It was short by around eleven minutes. While that might not sound important, every 128 years there was an extra day.


Julius Caesar


In 1545, Pope Paul III began a project to find a solution to the problem. Almost eighty years later, using past experience and much research, astronomers and scholars calculated the true length of the solar year, reducing the new calendar by more than ten days. Due to these changes, the Spring Equinox was moved to March 21st, and the New Year on January 1st would finally standardize the beginning of the year. This new calendar was called the Gregorian calendar, but was still not universally accepted. For example, London was ahead of Paris by ten days because of the use of different calendars in the different countries. However, simply lopping eleven minutes off the solar year and changing the date wasn’t enough. Particularly because Protestant Europe wasn’t about to do anything Catholic Europe said.

In fact, it wasn’t until the mid-eighteenth century that England fully adopted the Gregorian calendar. Since England was still days ahead of the rest of Europe, to make the switch, the British were told that on September 2nd, 1751, they should call it September 14th, and forget the days in between. Many protested, believing the Papists were trying to steal days from them. Part of their protest included continuing to celebrate Christmas Day on what was now January 6th. Many rioters flooded the streets, demanding their eleven days be returned.

For many years, December 25th was called New Christmas Day and January 6th was known as Old Christmas Day. The song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” begins on the first day of Christmas, December 25th, and ends on January 6th, the twelfth day.

Thankfully, our celebration of Old Christmas Day today can be more pleasant, but it’s a note that people haven’t really changed much in 250-plus years. We will want what we want, and are willing to speak up for changes we don’t agree with.

Giveaway: Leave a comment about your family’s Christmas traditions, and I will draw randomly for a print (US only) or ebook copy of Christmas Under the Stars, a western historical novel about mysterious accidents, mistaken identities, and the promise of Christmas. Check it out here



Resources:

https://christmas.365greetings.com/christmas-history/history-of-old-christmas-day.html

https://christmas-time.com/cp-old.html

https://www.theguidewnc.com/events/the-history-of-old-christmas/article_68c1f3ea-e4f6-11e7-83ce-9353a5558624.html



About Christmas Under the Stars:

November 1858, Utah Territory: Edie Meredith strives to keep her temper and her tongue under control as she heads west with her brother to California. Raised in an itinerant preacher family, she promises she will never marry a man of the cloth. Tom Aiken, drover of the wagon train, longs to answer his true calling: to preach, and while he realizes not every woman would choose a preacher for a husband, he hopes to soon find his help-meet. Suspicious ‘accidents’ plague their journey. Is someone trying to keep them from reaching their destination? Or will misunderstanding and circumstances keep them apart?



 

 

About Donna:
Donna writes historical suspense under her own name, and contemporary suspense under her alter ego of
Leeann Betts, and has been published more than 30 times in novellas, full-length novels, and non-fiction books. She is a member of ACFW, Writers on the Rock, SinC, Pikes Peak Writers, and CAN; facilitates a critique group; teaches writing classes; ghostwrites; edits; and judges in writing contests.

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12 comments:

  1. Haha!!! Thanks for the post. Now I'm so confused! Not really, but I can't imagine having someone tell me to ignore certain days and call it a different date. I don't blame the people for grumbling about that! In my childhood it WAS common for relatives to visit at Christmas and for us to display our gifts for a day or two before putting them away but it was never really a tradition and it fell away. I never practiced this with our own family, probably because we were the ones who always went visiting family on that special day.
    You have my contact info.

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    1. Thanks, Connie. Yes, traditions change over the generations. Sometimes it's good to know why we follow a particular tradition to make it more relevant to us. For our family, Christmas lasted a lot longer!

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  2. I go to my daughter's on Christmas morning and visit with my grandchildren.
    Theresa Norris
    weceno at yahoo dot com

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  3. We always decorate with our kids artwork and items passed down from generations. Thank you for this post. It was very interesting. moma3homeschool(AT)gmail(DOT)com

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for stopping by, Michelle. All of this makes we wonder what traditions our children and grands might keep.

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  4. We go to our daughter’s to see what Santa left the grandchildren. Presents are opened and a delicious breakfast is served.
    mauback55 at gmail dot com

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  5. We used to always get together for Christmas Eve but as time goes by and all of our kids having kids, grandkids having kids, and family all over the country it seems like we are celebrating Christmas sometimes a week ahead of time and my husband and I are having Christmas Eve and Day by ourselves. My how time changes things!

    Thank you for the chance to win a print copy of this book! I went and checked it out and it sounds great.

    wfnren at aol dot com

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Wendy. Spending time with family is always a gift. I think we've all learned that lesson this year.

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  6. Thank you for this post. This was very interesting to me and made me aware of things I didn't know. My family celebrates Christmas Day and opens presents in the morning, and usually takes the tree down on New Year's Day. Growing up I did not know what Epiphany was. t
    teshawATsbcglobalDOTnet

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  7. Thanks, Tammie. Yes, funny how one denomination celebrates one day and others don't. I think the important thing is that every day should be like Christmas Day -- peace on earth, goodwill to all as we celebrate Jesus' birth.

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