When I was a kid, I loved midnight mass. I would watch Carols by Candlelight on TV then Mum would give us a snack and we would head out into the night. When we got home, we would leave out a beer and a plate of biscuits for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph, all of which would be gone by the morning, replaced by a sleigh-load of gifts under the tree.
On Christmas Day my family would gather, tell the terrible jokes from the Christmas crackers, wear the paper crowns and eat, eat, eat. Mum would cook all morning, while my dad made his annual trifle, layers of sherry-soaked sponge and jelly topped with custard.
I no longer belong to a church, so I don’t go to midnight mass. Without the larger meaning that God used to bring to the proceedings, shopping for presents makes me feel slightly sick. I walk the aisles of the local shopping centre and every bright bauble and Christmas sale sign makes me feel like I have eaten too much sugar. How can I reclaim some of the meaning of this time of year without having to hand over all my money or sign up to a creed I no longer believe in?
To find a version of Christmas that I can get behind, I looked to its roots. As a northern hemisphere seasonal tradition, long before Christianity, December was a time of year to celebrate the midwinter milestone. Meat was available (the animals that would not make it through to the end of winter were slaughtered), as was ale, which had fermented long enough to be ready.
For five days during Saturnalia, ancient Romans turned all the usual rules upside down. Slaves were served by their bosses, everyone swapped out their usual white togas for colourful party clothes, and gifts, poems and jokes were passed around. Medieval Britain echoed these Roman traditions, with a Lord of Misrule in England and an Abbot of Unreason in Scotland presiding over court festivities. English “waits”, men who called the hour throughout the night, formed bands and wassailed their way around villages, demanding payment for songs (“now bring us some figgy pudding”).
The Dutch were a little classier, honouring Sinterklaas, a fourth-century CE bishop who gave away his inherited wealth to the poor. They brought this tradition with them to America, where an American pastor wrote the poem ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, depicting Sinterklaas as a jolly fellow who delivered gifts to children via a flying sled. In the late 1800s Thomas Nast, an American political cartoonist, drew Santa Claus as a pipe-smoking, round-bellied fellow bedecked in red and white and laden with toys. Coca-Cola later picked up on this image in an effort to grow its winter sales, illustrating Santa pausing, in his tireless efforts to bring joy to children, for a refreshing drink.
What branding benefits was Coca-Cola trying to borrow from Christmas? Kindness, gift-giving, spending money? Throughout its history, the December festival has been typified by a key theme: generosity as transgression. The poor were treated with respect and could get away with making fun of those in power. Choristers would sing, unbidden, outside people’s houses, and then demand – and receive! – payment for their efforts. Sinterklaas was a man who renounced his class and wealth and defied social convention by dropping gold coins down chimneys to land in the drying stockings of impoverished women so they would have sufficient dowries to marry.
The December festival traditionally celebrates the shift from winter to summer, from darkness to light: the coming of Saturn, the Sun God, the Son of God. I live in Australia, so in December I am experiencing the midsummer solstice, a seasonal shift from radiance to reflection. But I can still celebrate Christmas, Yule, Saturnalia: each one a festival of hope.
I make plans to see my family members, including the ones I don’t like. I make time to visit the cemetery, leave a beer for Dad and a flower for my sister. I teach my child the carols I know by heart, from all those years of watching the Christmas Eve TV special, so she and the neighbourhood kids can wassail the street. I research volunteering activities that I can do with my child over the school holidays. I am pretty hopeless at craft, so I won’t subject anyone to handmade gifts. But wherever I can, I buy presents from local makers, artists and social enterprises.
On the battlefields of the first world war, men entered into an unofficial truce on Christmas Day in 1914. Soldiers played sport in the “no man’s land” between the trenches. They exchanged gifts and held joint services to bury their dead. If they can live for a day as though peace is possible, then so can I.
Jackie Bailey is the author of The Eulogy, which won the 2023 NSW Premier’s Literary multicultural award. When she is not writing, Bailey spends her time helping families navigate death and dying. She is an ordained interfaith minister with a master’s of theology. This article includes an excerpt from her forthcoming non-fiction book about spirituality in a post-religious world
