Medieval Christmas Traditions

The festival of Christmas is all about happiness, hope and enjoyment. The Christmas festival season gives an individual a chance to spend quality time with friends and family. Families clean house and decorate it with twigs of holly and mistletoe, and with Christmas wreaths. The Christmas tree is brought and decorated with Christmas lights, ornaments and tinsel. The Christmas is associated with feast, parties and family get together. Kids enjoy the gifts from elders as well as wait for Santa Claus and his gifts. The entire atmosphere is filled with festive fervor and gusto. There are a lot of traditions that are related to Christmas.

The Christmas celebrations during medieval times were grand and many traditions that we follow today can be traced for their origin in medieval times. The word "Christmas is derived from the medieval usage "Christ's mass". The Christmas during those days had religious significance and nativity scene was given importance in decoration. The church had three masses on Christmas day during medieval times. The first mass was organized at the midnight, second was at the dawn time and the last one was seen during day time. St. Nicholas was an important figure during these times. His feast was celebrated on December 6 i.e. during the advent.

The medieval Christmas had a huge banquet. The banquet had variety of soups, roasted birds, cooked animals, breads and desert in form of puddings. The special dish was Yule boar, an animal. The common man, who could not afford real boar, prepared a pie in shape of boar. The homes and churches were cleaned and decorated with evergreen twigs of holly, mistletoe and so on. These decorations were taken down on the last day of celebration i.e. January 6. Gifts were exchanged on New Year day. Families went out and watched mystery plays that had Christmas themes staged in the cities during the festival.

The Christmas festive season ended with the feast of Epiphany. On this day, the three wise men come after visiting Jesus. The families came together and had grand feast. The Monday that comes after Epiphany was used to plough the land and therefore, it was called as Plough Monday. The Candle mass was organized on February 2. On this day, there was a procession that had parishioners bringing penny and candles and offering it to the priest. The candles were blessed and then given back. These candles were used to help the sick, needy and poor people in bad weather conditions like storm, rain, etc.

The food served during Medieval Christmas was turkey, goose, humble pie and pudding. Mince pies were another food dish served. The minced meat was cooked in oblong shape and had three spices namely nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. These were the common treats offered during the Christmas festival. A lot of Christmas traditions in medieval period have their origin in pagan society.