Twelve Days of Christmas – Day 3 – Mike Shevdon

It’s hell at this time of the year – trying desperately to fight your way through the crowds, grasping for the last decent gift on the shelf. A couple of years ago, when a friend suggested I do my Christmas shopping earlier, as it would be easier, I thanked them for their advice, and did so. I did mine a whole twelve months earlier, and it didn’t make a blind bit of difference! He doesn’t get a Christmas card any more.

Anyway, over to Mike Shevdon, Esquire – he knows a thing or two about Christmas traditions…

The Revels of Sober Men

It is said, each year, that Christmas starts earlier and go on ever longer than it did before. No sooner is November done than the Christmas lights go up and the shops begin playing seasonal music, and they stay like that until the January Sales.

“It didn’t used to be like that!” goes the cry. Well, no. It used to go on far longer.

Those of you who read my blog will know that I’ve been researching the origins and history of the Honourable Societies of the Inns of Court – Inner Temple, Middle Temple, Lincoln’s Inn and Gray’s Inn. Each one has a rich history, but they share in the celebration of the Christmas Revels, a festivity which starts at All Hallows Eve, which is the last day of October and we now call Halloween, and continued until Candlemas, on 2nd February – a solid three months of plays and parties, poetry and music.

This included the period of Advent, which the secular now incorporate in Advent Calendars, but which still forms the critical lead up to Christmas in the church year. If you attend church during Advent you will note that the priest’s vestments are sober, that there are few flowers or decoration in the church and that music is sombre and plain. Advent is a period of fasting and of reflection, similar to the fast of Lent in the weeks before Easter. For the church, it is time to put your affairs in order in preparation for the birth of Christ.

The Revels continued throughout Advent and picked up these themes in the masques and plays, often presenting more serious work, with performances intended to provoke reflection in the audience. This might have included Edmond Spencer’s The Faerie Queene, an epic poem first published in 1596 that explored the holy virtues of Chastity, Temperance, etc. and was considered flattering of Queen Elizabeth I, a patron and sponsor of the Revels. The poem remains unfinished, but is still the longest in the English language, and the Queen obviously liked it because she granted Spencer a pension of fifty pounds a year. It includes the Queen herself in the role of Gloriana, the Faerie Queene, but also as Lucifera, whose Court of Pride hides a dungeon full of prisoners, and which may have been a (not very) coded message for any dissidents in the audience.

Christmas itself included the appointment of a Lord of Misrule, called the Prince of Purpoole in Gray’s Inn and The Prince of Love in Middle Temple, whose job it was to oversee the revelry and ensure that it included wild partying and drunkenness. This was a carry-over from the Roman feast of Saturnalia which preceded Christmas as the winter festival and is one reason why Christmas is celebrated in December.

Shakespeare’s plays were performed at the Inns of Court during the revels. At Gray’s Inn in 1594, A Comedy of Errors was performed to an assembly of notables whose riotous behaviour was so poor that a mock trial was held afterwards to prosecute the culprits. It became known as the Night of Errors as a result. In 1602, a troupe called the Chamberlain’s Men performed Twelfth Night for the first time in the Main Hall of Middle Temple, with several references made in the play to life in the Inns of Court. It is rumoured that Shakespeare himself was among the players.

And when the revelries were finally over, it seems that not everyone had done with celebrating. In the main hall of Middle Temple are two double-leaved doors which were added in 1671. These were placed to allow the assertion of the authority of the Inn after some young members had occupied the Hall without permission and ‘kept Christmas’ for several weeks.

It seems that, for some, Christmas just can’t go on long enough.