The experience of a Christmas in many countries today owes a great deal to the modern era. The Christmas tree, Christmas cards and the image of Santa Claus as a portly bearded gentleman in a red suit with white trimming all date to the 1800s and 1900s. However, there are other festive traditions that go back much further in time.
A remarkable account of medieval Christmas celebrations can be found in an English letter dated to Christmas Eve 1459. It was written by Margaret Paston, a wealthy Norfolk gentlewoman, landowner and prolific letter writer, to her husband, John. The original letter is now in the British Library and a modern transcription can be read online.
Christmas in the Middle Ages was a religious festival rather than a secular holiday, and as such it was considered less significant than Easter. In England, as in many places, the Christmas festivities began with vespers, or evening prayers, on Christmas Eve, the day of Margaret’s letter.
In 1459, the Paston family very likely attended their parish church of St Peter Hungate in Norwich. The festival lasted until Twelfth Night in the first week of January, or sometimes until Candlemas in early February.
Advent, the 40 days leading up to Christmas, was a period of fasting, abstinence and penance. Yet, from the autumn, Margaret would have been preparing for the banqueting that lay at the heart of the festival, ensuring that enough food and drink would be available for the duration.
Turkey wasn’t yet on the menu – it only became a staple in the 20th century. But goose or a boar’s head might form a suitable centrepiece, or even swan (we know Margaret kept a herd of her own). This would be served alongside a wealth of other provisions including beef, pork, mutton and game, herring and eel, bread and cheese and pies, puddings and cakes. Ale and wine would accompany the food.
Some of this largess would be shared with the poor in the parish, as charity was seen as an important Christian virtue.
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Homes would be adorned with ivy, holly and mistletoe, as well as laurel, conifers and bay. Yule logs burned and tapers were lit.
Carolling was a popular activity that involved dancing as well as singing. Gifts would be exchanged during the festive season, but more typically at New Year rather than on Christmas day.
However, in 1459, the Paston family’s revels were muted and their home may well have remained undecorated. This was because only the previous month, Margaret’s wealthy relative, Sir John Fastolf, had died. Her husband was his principal beneficiary, and the family were in mourning.
Margaret found herself in a quandary. How to combine a suitable period of grief with the seasonal festivities? Conscious of the family’s sudden elevation in social standing owing to Sir John’s death, she consulted more elevated friends. Her letter to her husband, outlining the advice she has received, makes for interesting reading.
Margaret was warned there should be no “harp nor lute playing, nor singing, nor any loud pastime”. She was also instructed to avoid “dressing up”, which may refer to the amateur theatrical performances known as “mummers’ plays”, or to performances put on by members of the household. We know from later family correspondence that the family and their servants put on plays featuring St George, Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Instead, Margaret’s connections recommended that the family’s entertainments should be restricted to boardgames – namely chess, “tables” and cards. Chess has its origins in India and Persia over 1,500 years ago and was extremely popular in Europe by the later Middle Ages. Tables was a version of backgammon.
The family are likely to have also played “triumph”, an early ancestor of whist. Remarkably, Margaret’s reference to playing cards is the earliest recorded reference to the activity in England.
In its list of prohibited as well as permitted activities, her letter provides a unique insight into seasonal domestic recreations for the wealthy gentry class in medieval England.
Yet if Margaret was preoccupied with ensuring the correct etiquette was followed, her own celebrations were overshadowed less by the death of her kinsman than by the absence of her husband, who was either in London or at his newly inherited castle in Caister on the Norfolk coast. She signs off her letter to John Paston: “I consider myself half a widow because you shall not be at home.”
Diane Watt has received funding from the AHRC, British Academy and Leverhulme Trust.
