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Unlike the lacy carols of today, the wassail songs of yore were flagrantly unreligious. Unlike the church choirs of today, the roving wassailers were rascally and unpredictable. Nor did they confine themselves to the one day of Christmas, but roamed throughout the season.
Youngsters in early modern and pre-World War Europe viewed every special day of the season as a chance to cruise the streets, sing, drink, and ask for handouts, whether “soul-cakes” on All Soul’s, November 1, St. Martin’s goose and horseshoe pastries known as Martin’s horns on November 11, or coins on St. Catherine’s Day, November 25. The practice went by many names: thomasing (after St. Thomas’s Day, December 21), clemencing (after St. Clement’s Day, November 23), mumming, a-mumping, and a-gooding. Rovers knocked on doors with rods (a gerte), threw lentils and peas at the windows, and bellowed loudly to get attention and to get someone to open up the house or the shop. They sang and danced and held out hands and tin cups for money and if not money, ale, and if not drink, victuals. The residents of southern Germany came to dub this time of year Knöpflinsnächte, the “Knocking Nights.” Carousers incorporated the demand for payment into their song.
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do;
If you haven’t got a ha’penny, then God bless you!
Along the coast of North Carolina in the early 1800s, it became custom among slaves to perform a similar routine at Christmastide. The so-called “John Canoe” bands of men dressed elaborately, went to the doors of white citizens performing song and dance, and expected payment in return. There is some connection between the John Canoe bands of the 1800s and the Afro-Caribbean Junkanoo processional bands of today.
Former slave Harriet Jacobs recorded the words of blessing and good fortune bestowed on those who contributed freely as well as the tongue-in-cheek response to any individual too stingy to donate:
Poor massa, so dey say;
Down in de heel, so dey say;
Got no money, so dey say;
Not one shillin, so dey say;
God A’mighty bress you, so dey say.51
In the “so dey say” one should hear the sounds of freedom and dissent. The John Canoe bands used and subverted the traditional forms of wassailing and thomasing as vehicles for subtle protest. In the same way, one should hear in the “God bless you” of the two tunes quoted above a clang of sarcasm and feigned piety. The ironic blessing appears in both the traditional wassailing song of the British and the John Canoe songs of North Carolina as a barb. The miserly listener who refused to give should feel the sharp stab of shame and chastisement.
Love sometimes needs a prod and a push. Love sometimes needs to be put on the spot. And when push comes to shove, love sometimes needs the shame of youthful catcalls. The lesson of the wassailers is the lesson of accountability for words and deeds of love.
10. DK 22 B110, 85, 123, 53.
11. Ibid., B 91.
12. Ibid., A1.
13. Ibid., B 89.
14. Ibid., B 41.
15. For the most part, Heraclitus believed that the organizing pattern of the cosmic logos would forever elude human effort and human knowledge. Even “though all things come into being in accordance with this logos,” he recognized that people “always fail to comprehend it, both before they hear it and when they hear it for the first time.” Ibid., B 1. Robinson, Early Greek Philosophy, 94.
16. 1 En 14:24; Wis 9:4, 18:15; Sir 15:2, 24:3, for instance. See Keener, Gospel of John, vol. 1, 343–63.
17. See the work of the “John, Jesus, and History” SBL group. For example, Anderson, and Thatcher, eds., John, Jesus, and History, vol. 2.; Thatcher, ed. What We Have Heard from the Beginning.
18. Henri Cazelles, “Johannes: Ein Sohn des Zebedäus,” Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift Communio 31 (2012), 479–84; cited in Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth, 224–25.
19. Albinus, Didaskalikos 11, in The Platonic Doctrines of Albinus, 47.
20. Hannah’s jubilant prayer over the birth of her son Samuel makes sense of the topsy-turvy logic of divine action expressed in Isaiah. Hannah exults that while the bowstrings of the mighty snap, the feeble strap on shoes for battle. While she who has given birth to many children goes about forlorn, the barren maid pops them out like corn from a popper (1 Sam 2:4–6)—“for the Lord is a God of knowledge” not of appearances or expectations or privilege. “By him actions are weighed” (1 Sam 2:3). Theologically speaking, the logos is the ultimate knowledge of the Lord and in it the final action weighed.
21. Milbank, Being Reconciled, 196.
22. Ibid., 197.
23. Ibid., 196.
24. Francis Church, “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus,” The New York Sun, September 21, 1897. For an online reprint, see http://www.newseum.org/exhibits/online/yes-virginia/ (accessed July 28, 2015).
25. Ibid.
26. Nissenbaum, Battle for Christmas, 88.
27. Lewis, “Introduction,” in Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 6.
28. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 25.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 26.
31. Lash, Holiness, Speech and Silence, 66.
32. Saint Benedict’s Rule, 6.1.
33. de Lubac, Exégèse Médiévale, II.1, 196–7. This passage translated by Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery,
