The Rest Is History - 10. Christmas

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

Is Christmas an ancient ritual or was it invented by Dickens? Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland discuss the transformation of Christmas from public to private event and decide when it became a commercial rather than spiritual celebration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. It's the depths of the winter solstice. We're taking down the Saturnalia decorations. We've got Yule coming as well. And of course, it's Christmas. And we thought that here on The Rest Is History, we would give it a festive touch.

Did we not? Dominic Sandbrook, who is with me, Tom Holland. We did indeed. Dominic, are you in a festive mood? Do you like Christmas? Yeah, I love Christmas. Do you have, I mean, we have, so my son and I always watch The Box of Delights.

Do you remember The Box of Delights? The 1980s BBC adaptation of John Maysfield's Christmassy novel. We watch that every year. God, that is, What a touching thought. My wife refuses to watch it, but we watch it. We've got Patrick Trout on it. Why does she refuse to watch it?

She says, you know, I've seen it once. It wasn't very good. I've seen no reason to waste my life watching it again. She's Christmassy that way. And then, obviously, on Christmas Day, because my son is nine,

we spend the entire day arguing about making gigantic Lego models that he's received from Father Christmas. And basically what happens is my wife and I end up spending, you know, sort of three o'clock the next morning, we're still arguing about which is the lost piece and all this kind of carry on. So that's our Christmas tradition.

But you still like Christmas? I love it. I love all that, yeah. It's that or talk to you. So, I mean, you know... Yeah, well love it. I love all that. Yeah. It's that or talk to you. So, I mean, you know. Yeah, well, when you put it like that. Let's crack on. What about you? You must have Christmas traditions.

Didn't you have your turkey stolen out of the back of your car once? Am I right? Yeah, we did. Yeah, we did. We did. Well, we had a very small fridge. And so we couldn't fit the turkey in the fridge. So we thought we'll put it in the back boot of the car.

And some bastard came along and nicked it. So we had all the trimmings, but we didn't have turkey. Wow. That's a terrible story, isn't it? I just thought you'd love to share that with the public. Yeah, but I said that since then we've stopped eating dinosaurs. We have, of course. Birds are. But we do have the festive tradition.

We've got a large plastic tyrannosaur, and we've made a little kind of Santa outfit for him. He joins the nativity scene. Oh, that's nice. So you've got the wise men, you've got the shepherds, and you've got... And got the dinosaur. You've got a tyrannosaur in a got the shepherds, and you've got... And got the dinosaur. You've got a tyrannosaur in a Santa Claus outfit.

How should we start? Should we start by discussing how historical are the gospel accounts? Okay. So, yes. So they're different, aren't they, the gospel accounts? So I think I'm right in saying you'll know more about this than me because you never miss an opportunity to plug your book about this in Christianity. Dominion, available from all good bookshops christmas coming up rush out and buy it folks well people are people have missed it i mean people have done their christmas shopping they

don't want to i mean maybe it's it'll be in the sales who knows um bookshops yeah isn't there a difference some gospels say uh he was born jesus was born in in Bethlehem and some say Nazareth. Is that right? No, so there are four Gospels and there are only two that give us accounts of the nativity. Both of them have him being born in Bethlehem. One of them, St. Matthew's Gospel, gives us the account of the three wise men coming and the massacre of the innocents. And the other one, Luke, gives us a story about the shepherds. Right.

And so the Christmas story is a fusion of the two. So there's no story in which you get both the shepherds and the wise men. No, no. And there are huge issues with it as history. The obvious one would be that the dates are all over the place. So obviously, we, you know, we date our years from the birth of Christ, but we've got no idea really when the birth of Christ is. Because in one of them, we've got King Herod is alive, and Herod dies in 4 BC. And then in the other one, we've got a decree going for from Caesar Augustus. And we're told that this is when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. And Cyrenius is holding his census in

AD 6. So you can't square the two. Okay, that's a pretty big range. Did that census actually happen, Tom? Is that a real thing? Well, there was a kind of census, but it certainly wasn't a census in the way that it gets described in the New Testament. And what's absolutely certain is that Joseph would not have been required to go to Bethlehem. And it's pretty clear that that whole story is an attempt to get Jesus to Bethlehem in trying to be born, because prophecy says that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. So they've retrofitted the story, basically. They've retrofitted the story.

I mean, I think it's pretty clear that Jesus was born in Nazareth. But having said that, I think that you can see that there are kind of enduring themes that will run probably over the 2,000 years that have followed and which are part of the christian tradition to this day one is the idea that um jesus son of god the messiah is is essentially i mean he's he's the son of um travelers who can't find room in the inn famously he's laid in a in a manger and the contrast is something that is fundamental to the Christmas story, that God himself has become this tiny baby laid in a stable. So that's that's crucial. The contrast between greatness and smallness. And that's, I think, why the references to Caesar Augustus and to the Roman governorship and everything and to Herod is so important,

because you're counterpointing that you're counterpointing um the Christ child to the apparatus of state power um and the other thing is the is the preaching of the message of peace which the angels tell to the shepherds um yeah and again this is placing the birth of Jesus in the context of Roman power, again, the kind of apparatus of Roman power. And again, it's the kind of counterpoint between the peace of heaven that Christ is bringing, counterpointed to that of the earth that can't. And again, that is a theme that runs throughout Christian history, the idea that Christmas properly should be a period of peace, should be a truce. And we may come to that later on. And during all this, so well, during the first couple of hundred years, so when Christianity is not, you know, a state religion or anything like that, did Christmas loom as large

to the early Christians as it does to us? Or was it Easter that was the big deal? No, Christmas does not seem to have been marked or celebrated in the certainly first two centuries. It's probably late third century, beginning of the fourth century. And it's fixed on the 25th of December, as we all know. And we've had a couple of quite a few questions on this, actually. So Josie Wells speaks for many and says, how much influence did Saturnalia have on Christmas? Right, so Saturnalia, you know all about this. So this is this big Roman jamboree, isn't it? Yeah, so that's the Festival of Saturn,

and that is celebrated on the 17th of December. And then there are festivities that last kind of two, five, seven days after it. And it's often said that Christmas is is a kind of christianization of this festival or it's said that um the god mithras was born on the 25th of december or sol invictus the unconquered son of celebrated on the 25th of december yeah um i don't think that any of those reasons are adequate to explain why the church fixes on the 25th of december and it's again it's to do with this idea that the calendar is a fraction of the kind of divine purposes

and it is actually determined by the date that the church arrives for the death of christ which is the 25th of march okay church fathers work out by the end of the second century that this is the likeliest date the 25th of march and as a tolkien fan you will remember that is that when the ring is the ring is thrown in on the 25th of march because tolkien knew that this was this was the holy day and everything comes back to tolkien doesn't it in history ultimately well so and the rabbis and christians both kind of thought that um things that begun and things that end happen on the same day so um the world begins the world will end on the same day and so christians assume that the day of christ's birth sorry the the day of christ's death must also have been the day of the incarnation, the day in which

the Spirit enters Mary and Jesus is implanted in the womb. And then you take nine months from the 25th of March and you get to the 25th of December. But Tom, I'm going to press you on this. This seems a little bit... I can understand. Okay, I can buy all that stuff about dating back, but it's a remarkable coincidence, very convenient, that it happens to coincide with this huge Roman blowout. And also, I think I'm right in saying with the big day of Sol Invictus, which is one of, you know, it's one of Christianity's big rivals, isn't it? At the point where Christianity is sweeping its way through the Roman Empire,

that basically Christianity, you know, it sort of steals the, I mean, you can't tell me this complete coincidence that it steals the big day of one of its competitor religions. Well, on Sol Invictus, it's unclear exactly whether it was celebrated on the 25th of December, because as you all know, the sources for these kinds of things are incredibly complicated. And there is actually, there's a kind of an amazing account that says very boldly that the Christians moved it on to 25th December because they wanted to appropriate the feast of the unconquered son and it was thought that this came from the 4th century but it's subsequently been shown that actually it dates from the 12th century and it's written in the margins of an

account by a Syrian bishop. And essentially it's an attempt to explain why the Western Church celebrates Christmas on the 25th of December, whereas the Eastern Church celebrates it quite later. And so essentially we have we don't really have any solid evidence at all that the birthday of Solomon Victus was on the 25th of December. Certainly none that the birthday of Solomon Victus was on the 25th of December certainly none that the birthday of Mithras was on the 25th of December okay having said that having said that it is clear that the the solstice the winter solstice the dead of of the year is clearly a time when people do want to cheer themselves up I mean we see that at the moment the debate over whether to celebrate Christmas in the midst of the pandemic or not yeah and it's clear as well so there's a there's that we have a question here from um rob landy who says what's the connection to yule given that apparently primary sources

don't go into detail absolutely right and can we really claim that santa is actually odin or is it just speculation based on a couple of common attributes we might come to santa later but there are these kind of feet you and um i guess the kind of you know going right the way back the alignment of stonehenge to the winter solstice that kind of thing um it's evident that the desire to celebrate a festival of light in the depth of darkness is a kind of universal thing i guess the the church fathers would have said well this is purely providential this shows yeah i've got a remarkable accident what a lucky coincidence yes and then so for the first what what are we looking at the first 1500 years even

of christmas's existence as a festival it's basically you know people always moan now or have lost the true spirit of christmas which is sort of silent contemplation and thinking about peace and sort of you know living you know living Jeremy Corbyn's life in a day and um and actually that's never really been what Christmas is about has it because for most of that sort of first 1500 years it was about stuffing yourself with food getting drunk having a party messing about the sort of the mis, the carnivalesque element of Christmas. I mean, that, in a weird way, is what we've lost, actually. Yeah, but it's also about, I think that it's about the idea of the wealthy, those with power, offering generosity to those who lack it.

So one of my favourite Anglo-Saxon charters is issued by Athelstan. You have a favourite Anglo-Saxon charter. That's great. Of course you do. I would expect nothing else. Of course. And it's issued by Athelstan on Christmas Eve to one of his noblemen, issuing a grant of land, and specifies that you can have this land, but if you get anybody coming into your land who needs shelter, you have to provide them with shelter and it's pretty clear that um Athelstan has been contemplating the Christmas story and that's what's at the back of his mind and that's kind of incredibly moving because suddenly you get a kind of you know shaft of light into the way that this otherwise um very obscure king

I mean we have no kind of insight into the way that he thinks. But suddenly we do with this and it's very moving. And I think that the traditions of celebration at Christmas, where the halls are opened up and, as you say, kind of feasting and merrymaking, the crucial aspect of the merrymaking from the Christian point of view is that it is a shared celebration. It's the rich hosting the poor. And that, again, I think is a theme that runs right the way through into the present day. I mean, it is a kind of, I mean, as a kind of modern historian, wouldn't you say that the idea of giving does actually remain pretty fundamental to the way that Christmas is understood. A little bit though actually I mean we're sort of leaping ahead here because I wanted to sort of save all this for when we got to the Victorians but I mean I think the big shift in

Christmas is actually from the collective to the private so I think you're right that the that the sort of open the public nature of of um going all the way through to you know basically to a Christmas carol and then I think with well I mean we're going to come to this later but I think what's happened with Christmas is Christmas has retreated behind closed doors and become a much more privatized sort of domesticated um festival and actually the sort of you know the giving to the poor and the sort of sense of community has become diminished over time but anyway we'll get into this a little bit later i just wanted to bring up a question from greenshaw classics and latin and greenshaw says they want to ask about the use of christmas for sort of non what it called they call non-christmassy reasons so you

mentioned athelstan i wanted to ask about the coronation of people at william the conqueror or charlemagne so they're both crowned on on Christmas Day on the 25th of December. And is that just a fluke? Or is that a deliberate choice to identify their regime with the birth of Christ? I'm going to be absolutely honest, I have no idea. But I would guess so. But I would guess so. This is a great moment in history. I would guess it because I think that the feast days of the church have a salience in kind of pre-modern times that we can barely comprehend now. Yeah.

And in a sense, the significance of Christmas for us is the kind of one ghostly remains of that world where your whole life was structured by these festivals yes you measure out the seasons by you measure out your own life by their passage and so what happened the sense that um the calendar is reflecting a kind of cosmic drama and so what happens on christmas day has this incredible significance i would guess it must do but let's let's put that that out and uh yeah people that's people who know more than I do to answer that question. Well, I suppose if you're a politician and you're going to be crowned at some point in the mid-20s December, you're going to choose the 25th, aren't you?

It just sort of makes sense that it's a feast day already. We save money. Yeah, exactly. Two feasts where you can have one so let's fast forward a little bit um because we've obviously talked about the sort of public nature of christmas and the merrymaking and all the rest and this inevitably brings up the you know you get to the period of the reformation and the puritans who basically look at now i think people got completely the wrong idea about them banning Christmas. I mean, what they want, I think they want to clamp down on Christmas because, you know, because it's not Christian, because it's not Christian enough.

Because basically they look at what people are doing and they say, well, all they're doing is they're getting hammered and sort of dancing inappropriately and, you know, groping people and disgracing themselves. And actually, the interesting thing, though, is that they think Christmas should just be an ordinary day, don't they? They want people to go to work. Well, yeah, but also, interestingly, the whole idea that Christmas is a kind of takeover of pagan festivals actually begins with the reformers, it begins with the Puritans. It's something that they're incredibly anxious about and so again and again in um you know puritan screeds against christmas you get lists of what people are doing kind of playing cards i think eating nuts seems to be a particular i've seen excess with people eating nuts yeah um maybe they've got allergy kind of merry making masking mumming caroling dicing all

that kind of stuff um and they say this is the kind of stuff that the pagans did so they're through and reading up accounts of what happened at the saturnalia and so on and saying you know we we are allowing the pagan gods to creep back in and when people celebrate christmas in this way actually what they're doing is they're celebrating Saturn or Bacchus or whoever. And that's the anxiety. And so again, and I think that this year has really sharpened our understanding of that. Because actually, we are back to a kind of tension where do you privilege the celebration, the festive aspects of it? Or do you focus on kind of saving life, the kind of core message, which for Puritans, you know, it was all about life and death.

It was about whether you were going to be redeemed from hell. And so that debate in 2020, I think it is suddenly much easier for us to fathom what was going on in the, well, you know, aspects, particularly the protectorate and the, it is the notorious example. Yeah. Well, there's all these stories, aren't there,

about Parliament working on Christmas Day. Have you ever worked on Christmas Day, Tom? I've never worked on Christmas Day. I really love Christmas. Yeah, me too. I'm a real sucker for Christmas, actually. I really buy into all the, you know, Morecambe and Wise Christmas special,

all the great time-honoured traditions. Absolutely. I know I've never but whereas my wife is a midwife she so she does um yeah so uh this year she's got to go out and do uh do shift at five so oh very impressive but that baby's been born that's that's that's what Christmas is as well so yeah um let's go back to the Puritans though so Oliver Cromwell everybody thinks Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas but of course Oliver Cromwell, everybody thinks Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas. But of course, Oliver Cromwell wasn't even in power. I mean, he was out in the field somewhere riding around with his ironsides at the point that Parliament banned Christmas, wasn't it? Because it was Parliament that banned it, not the Cromwellian Protectorate.

And the interesting thing is that, you know, there are all these accounts of sort of people going to work as normal and actually arguments about whether you know so so irate apprentices who want to have christmas are trying to force people to shut their shops and enjoy themselves when they don't want to um so sort of yeah as you're trying to imagine kind of um covid you know lockdown deniers roaming the land trying to force shops to open to well not shops to open on christmas day but trying trying to force people to meet their families and to watch more TV and eat more Turkish delight. Yeah, and that's the kind of, obviously, the great inner struggle going on in Boris Johnson's heart between Charles II and Cromwell. Yeah.

You know, who's he going to side with? And I think that, you know, as I said, I think that this whole crisis does focus for us what the significance of Christmas was back in the 17th century as well. And that kind of the tension that has always existed between it being marking this incredibly holy moment in the Christian calendar with all due solemnity. And yet people feeling that perhaps the best way to mark that solemnity is to have a great time. Yes. And then, of course, the restoration happens and Christmas returns. So, you know, the festivities restart and all the rest of it.

And yet, to me, the interesting thing about Christmas is what happens to Christmas in the next hundred years because that's a part of the story just never gets told. And actually, the interesting thing looking into it is that often people barely mention it in their diaries. It's a feast day and it's a festival, but there's something slightly backward about it.

It's basically a relic of the past that they're kind of clinging on to, particularly in the countryside. And there's a, you know, Christmas is a sort of old fashioned thing, but it's not a massive deal. Nowhere near as big a deal as it is today. Yeah, I think it's a kind of,

we, the English export the traditional celebration of Christmas to America. And I think it then gets brought back to England from America. And I think that the American traditions of celebrating Christmas, I mean, basically they stem at least from the early 19th century. So it's kind of almost the first example of Americanization. And that will bring us on very neatly to Santa Claus and whether indeed he is a reincarnation of Odin. But let's have a break before we get onto that

fascinating topic. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest of the entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com welcome back to the rest is history we are talking father christmas or santa claus tom are you a santa claus man or a father christmas man i'm a father christmas man i hate santa claus

a true born englishman i'm also a father christmas man good i knew you would be i knew you would be i like to think that our listeners are all father christmas uh maybe some nick maybe a few nick diehards yeah so say nick is is big i mean that's how it starts so we were talking about whether a question from rob landy is is um father christmas um actually odin no yeah i i don't think he is um and it it goes back to uh this washington irving the america short story teller beginning of the 19th century who is a sucker for christmas and he laments what you were talking about the fact that um the festival seems to be going into decline that it's associated with baronial halls and things like that. And obviously you don't have those in America.

And so is Christmas doomed if you don't have a baronial hall? Yeah. And he's very worried about this. But he's part of a circle that are actually very interested in kind of resurrecting old European traditions. And St. Nicholas is actually associated with the coming of the Dutch. Yeah, so Nicholas is Dutch, right? I mean, he's a Dutch adoption of a Greek-Turkish saint. So Irving writes the history of New York in 1809,

and he notes that the very first Dutch ship to moor off Manhattan had St. Nicholas as its figurehead. And this then gets picked up by a friend of his called Clement Clarke Mooreore who is um night before christmas the night before christmas and writes about saint nicholas saint nick coming and he does describe saint nick as as an elf so there is perhaps a kind of uh invented sense of continuity with those scandinavian traditions or whatever that also give you Odin. But Moore is a lecturer in a theological seminary. So he's very, very...

It's always Christianity with you, isn't it? Yeah, it's always Christianity. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. And so it's clear that the purpose of St. Nick is an attempt to re-import this kind of medieval tradition of giving gifts, of open hospitality, of decking the bowels with holly and all that kind of thing tradition of giving gifts, of open hospitality, of decking the bounds with holly and all that kind of thing. And it proves incredibly successful. But he's not Father Christmas, though. Father Christmas is somebody else, right?

Father Christmas is English. So Father Christmas is this sort of English personification of Christmas, of jollity. And St. Nicholas is slightly different. Am I right that St. Nicholas has come, you know, they're not dissimilar, but they've come from different sort of, from different origins?

Yeah, so that tradition of St. Nicholas gets exported back to Britain and merges with the tradition of Father Christmas, rather as grey squirrels merge. I was just about to say that. Santa Claus is a grey squirrel of a man. So not for the first time an English tradition gets blotted out by the American tradition.

Yes. And then obviously, go on, you go. Well, I was going to ask you, because then, of course, also, then there are German imports, aren't there? Yes. And I think there had been... So I think George III's wife, Queen Charlotte, had brought a Christmas tree and people had sort of looked at it and said, golly, a tree, whatever next. But obviously Prince Albert is the key figure.

So he's Queen Victoria's husband, the prince consort. He's very into his sort of Germanic, you know, traditions. And he brings over a Christmas tree and people get very excited because of course people are modeling themselves on the on the sort of royal family and i think that's actually the key to christmas and christmas's reinvention in the 19th century is this idea i mean victoria and albert rebranded the monarchy as an idealized family as this little family unit and the sort of cosiness and the gemütlichkeit kind of aspect of Christmas. So we have a question from Culture Carrot who asks, was it our German royal family who basically did that? So you're saying it is?

Well, I think they personified it and they drove it forward. But would it have happened without them? I think it would have happened. And we talked earlier about the change from what i think is a big change of christmas which is a change from the public ceremony to the private family-based one and i think what you have there is you've got an industrial urban society so in other words people aren't living in these rural communities where they gather in the baronial hall and the sort of the lord of the manor gives them presents they They are in their, you know, terraced house, their Victorian terraced house in London. They work in the factory and Christmas becomes this oasis of sort of family time. And that's why the figure of Saint Nicholas of Santa Claus is so perfect for it because he's a figure dispensing generosity coming down a chimney.

Down the chimney. They've got chimneys. You've got a chimney in your little living room. And the spirit of Christmas exactly comes into the family home. And obviously, it's precise at this point. So you get the crucial year for Christmas, I think, is 1843. Because two things happen. You get the first Christmas card and you get a Christmas carol. Right. OK, so Dickens.

So Dickens. So how does he fit in? I think Dickens is absolutely crucial. I mean, I think Dickens, his spirit suffuses the 19th century and 19th century popular culture. And with the Christmas Carol, I mean, so many of the ingredients are bound up with the Christmas Carol. You know, you described him in one of the podcasts recently as contrarian. And this is one thing that you just can't be contrarian about because Christmas Carol so clearly creates the template for Christmas. It's a brilliant story.

I think, you know, it's become a myth, hasn't it? I mean, it really has become a modern myth. I think we all agree that the best interpretation of it is the Muppets' Christmas Carol. We are. Michael Caine is by far,

you know, his performance, his singing has screwedrooge is first class um and i and all the different aspects of it the you know the turkey i mean it's an interesting question actually we had from harry wallop online he said on christmas day at the climax of a christmas carol scrooge sends a boy out to buy a turkey i.e the shops are open and and actually that's a an interesting reminder that actually at that stage, Christmas wasn't, you know, it wasn't this sort of period of peace and contemplation. Things were open, things were going on, there was still a public element to it. But obviously, what you

get is that that scene of the Cratchit family, they're all sitting around having their turkey. And this sort of, you know, they work so hard, and this is their one oasis of peace and happiness in an otherwise kind of grim, you know, Victorian sort of, you know, they've got 364 days of drudgery, and this is their one moment. And clearly a lot of people in mid-19th century Britain, and indeed around the industrialised world world really bought into that. They loved the idea of having this one little oasis. And, you know, thanks to Dickens with all his sort of brilliance of his creations and the ghosts and all the rest of it, you know, it caught on. There's a kind of classic Dickens tension, though, isn't there? That you've got Marley's ghost who arrives and he has this great chain of ledger boxes and things. So the idea that the process of making money is a chain and it dries

you out and it leaves you kind of huddled over a candle inspecting your ledger book on Christmas Eve. But at the same time, it's precisely that that enables Scrooge to buy turkeys and everything and hold the festivities. Tom, you know what you're doing here? You're channeling your inner Margaret Thatcher, because this is your Margaret Thatcher, you know, no one will remember the Good Samaritan. Oh, right. I thought I was being Marxist there. Yeah, no, you're being, this is pure Thatcherism that, you know, no one would remember the Good Samaritan unless he'd had money as well. God, I'm being attacked by left-wing historian Dominic Sambra here. Exactly. You're basically saying, you know, Scrooge, if Scrooge hadn't been such a successful

businessman, he wouldn't have been able to buy all this turkey. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that there is a tension there in Christmas Carol, as you get throughout Dickens's novels, where basically all the problems of industrial society are solved by benevolent philanthropists who pop up. Yeah so that's always the way Dickens is. I mean there is Dickens has absolutely zero interest in how you actually make money at all but clearly he is focusing in on something that is still very much present with us now which is that in a way Christmas is cast as a kind of an escape from the grind of

making money, you know, it's sacred and celebration of family and everything and all the things that really matter. But you celebrate it by spending enormous amounts of money. And so that's why people, it seems to me, are always kind of very anxious about the commercialisation of Christmas, even as actually you can't have Christmas without lots of money and spending. No, no, no. The complaints about the commercialisation of Christmas, even as actually you can't have Christmas without lots of money and spending. No, no, no. The complaints about the commercialisation of Christmas, I think, always makes the point that Christmas is by definition a commercial festival. Well, it has been since the emergence of capitalism and industrial society, which again, is the kind of Washington Irving thing. You know, why can't we get back to medieval

baronial halls and things? I mean, we can't. No. And if we hadn't, Christmas would be dead. I think that's fair to say that Christmas was only, Christmas reinvented itself as an industrialised urban capitalist festival in which people would buy things and people would buy a lot of food and they would celebrate the kind of the family. Initially, a kind of extended family and increasingly more and more a kind of nuclear family. And more and more a kind of nuclear family.

And Dickens played his part in that, but Dickens is often, I mean, the interesting thing, tension with Dickens is that he's simultaneously a very radical writer and also a conservative one. So, you know, his solution is philanthropy, which is a kind of great bulwark of the sort of status quo, isn't it? You make yourself feel better about being a rich capitalist by one day a year buying someone a turkey but i think i think it works actually because it does

go with the grain of the christian story and the way that it's been understood right from the very earliest years and of course the the other one that we talked about at the beginning is this idea that uh you know the angels preach peace um peace on earth, goodwill to men. And that also has generated in the 20th century, a very famous myth. And we've done the First World War, so I know you know everything about the First World War, Dominic. So let's come to... I'm dreading this because I know that First World War buffs are poised, they're poised to write in with complaints about inaccuracies. Yeah, because this is probably the most famous, I guess it's even more famous than the Angel of Mons, isn't it?

The idea that the Bowmen of Agincourt appear to marshal the British in the retreat. So this is the Christmas truce, isn't it? Yeah, which is also 9-14, 25th December. The British and Germans come out of their trenches, meet in the middle and supposedly play football. As far as I understand, multiple organised games of football with referees, VAR, penalty shootouts. I've just said that to annoy the war enthusiasts.

So there's a lot of disagreements among historians about this. There's a historian who gave a presentation recently in the National Archives, and he said there are lots of games of football. And then there are others who say, well, actually, some of the sources are dubious. And, you know, soldiers embellish their accounts later on because they knew they would be rewarded if their stories appeared in the newspapers. So you would be paid if you're, you would get a small fee if your story appeared in the newspaper, and it's better if there's football in it.

But it's clear that there were, let's say there was one, two definite games. Germans against English? I think they were Germans against English, yeah. And I think they're sort of jumpers for goalposts. I mean, obviously, it's very rutted kind of terrain. So I don't think it's a sort of a car a footballing carpet i don't think they're playing ticky tacker man city style kind of short passing game yeah i think it's very much the sort of traditional british long ball um and losing losing on penalties is the traditional joke isn't it

which absolutely we're required to make at this point i I mean, I think there was, you know, it's easy to lose yourself in a bit of a generalisation because in some places there was still fighting. And of course, you know, it wasn't, a lot of the officers were very uneasy about the idea of a truce. Understandably, you know, they want to kill the Germans the next day. They don't like the thought of it.

Actually, the interesting thing that doesn't often get talked about is on the Eastern Front. So on the Eastern Front, there's a huge siege in a place called Przemysl, which I hope for Polish listeners I've pronounced beautifully. So there's this colossal fortress where the Austro-Hungarians are besieged by the Russians. And of course, it's not Christmas. No, different dates. Different dates. But the Russians, and the Eastern Front is a horrible campaign. You know, there's a lot of ethnic cleansing

and there's a lot of sort of bitterness and bad blood. This is in the First World War. It's in the First World War. Yeah. And the Russian besiegers leave cards and indeed presents of sausages and things for the Austrian patrols to find outside the walls of the city and they say you know we know this is Christmas for you um so we've left you a few

nice treats and whatnot and you know we look forward to besieging you again tomorrow that is a lovely that is a lovely note on I think on which to end I can't see how we could top that. That is a truly festive note. Yeah. The thought of starting the bombardment again on Boxing Day. Well, yes. You know, we'll have Christmas and then we'll be back to Tier 3. Anyway, Dominic, you know, happy Christmas. Happy Christmas to all the, to everyone who's listening to this.

And we will speak to you again i hope in the new year by humbug thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early early access, ad-free listening and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.