the Christian era. Over a millennium after Chrysostom’s death, the Reverend Increase Mather and his son the Reverend Cotton Matter made their own stand against the familiar debaucheries of the season.
In a noteworthy sermon delivered on Christmas Day, 1712, the American preacher Cotton Mather (1663–1728) warned of the moral and spiritual dangers of Christmastime frolicking. For shame, people “dishonour Christ more in the Twelve Days of Christmas, than in all the twelve Months of the Year besides.”38 Mather made an appeal based on the vulnerable innocence of the children: “My Concern is now with our own Children.”39 He might well protest for the sake of the children and the impressions that a liquored and debauched Christmas might make on their souls. Throughout pre-twentieth century American history, Christmas Day was punctuated—and punctured—by firecrackers and gun pops, unrehearsed songs sung loudly by ragtag gangs of boys. Gentlemen chortled at “rough jokes,” convivial tavern keepers offered samples of alcohol and food free of charge, the constables made arrests for disorderly behavior. Women drunk their fill and children were served eggnog and toddies fully loaded.40
Here we beseech hope to enter the picture. The unspoken anxiety of many well-intentioned believers is this: is becoming a Christian the end of fun? When Jesus washes our hearts of sin, are they also washed of all color and texture and personality? The gospel commands that we live free of sin, but must we also live free of frivolity? Some Christians believe as the early Lutheran Pietists did. In a 1689 rule book for the “protection of conscience and for good order” we read: “All laughter is forbidden. . . . Joking does not please God; why then should it please you?”41 This verdict did not originate with these long-faced ancestors. We can trace it all the way back to the 200s and the Egyptian teacher of Christian faith, Clement of Alexandria (150–215): “laughter must be kept in check.”42 He instructs us not to “laugh before all and sundry, nor in every place, nor to every one, nor about everything.”43 The early saints of the church often received praise and recognition for their mastery over emotions and their Zen-like equipoise. Rarely were they caught by surprise and never did they snort and guffaw, cackle and hee-haw, or even, we must presume, smirk.44 The Rule of Saint Benedict warns against “laughter that is unrestrained and raucous.”45 Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274) cautions us to avoid “inordinate laughter and inordinate joy in excessive play” as mortal sin.46
The caution is well-intended; prudence judges correctly that anything taken to excess, even humor, can demean and denigrate. Proverbs 25:28 says, “Like a city breached, without walls, is one who lacks self-control,” and Ephesians 5:4 permits “neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting.” These wise words should be taken to heart. Yet we should also remember, as G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) says, that “seriousness is not a virtue. . . . [Seriousness] flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.”47 The reason that lightness is hard and laughter a leap is that they both require the person to disarm and drop guard. The person who throws back his head, opens his mouth, and laughs out loud is made vulnerable in every sense of the word: physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Only the most confident and self-assured can risk laughter—only those who have had a foretaste of eternity. Martin Luther is often quoted (at least on the Internet) as saying, “If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.” That sounds like something he would have said, and if he didn’t, he should have. It’s not a ham-fisted ultimatum to his heavenly hosts but an expression of the very nature and essence of heaven. It is an expression of hope. What else can Scripture mean when it says “he will wipe every tear from their eyes” (Isa 25:8; Rev 21:4) than that the Lord will replace those tears with an uncontainable gladness—the kind that cannot help but erupt in laughter (Isa 25:9)?
The virtue of hope contests the pseudo-seriousness of our own selves and the world. Once a person has been brought face-to-face with the ultimate concern of eternal life in the good news of Jesus Christ, the concerns of the world lose their luster. Once a person has experienced the earth-swallowing grace of Jesus Christ, all else feels hollow. From the perspective of heaven, the affairs of earth appear as little more than the scuttling of ants. Hope would have us put things in perspective. Hope does not ask that we discard all festivities and seasonal celebrations. Hope would have us celebrate with greater purpose and fervor, knowing finally what we are celebrating and what we have yet to anticipate. The false seriousness of “serious partying” turns out to be a form of escapism in which the person escapes from the stresses of life by drinking and carousing to “forget the world,” if only for a little while. Christian hope does not make merry in order to escape and forget but in order to cheer on the good and make way for the world to come.
Love
Having considered faith and hope, we now turn to love. The conviction that we are people of the Word means that we are committed to words of love and works of love. Words and works must always link arms; words are deemed lovely only if attended by works and works commend themselves to love by way of words. And so we return for a third time to the history of Christmastime revelry and make a circuitous route to Christian love by way of wassailing. The word wassail means more than a hot drink of spiced ale; it derives from the Anglo-Saxon expression for good health. It is to drink to someone’s health and well-being. The practice provided a way of cheering good friends and honoring good neighbors. Singing accompanied wassailing. Perhaps the oldest vernacular Christmas carol preserved for us dates to the thirteenth century, the Anglo-Norman Seignors, ore entendez à nus. To our blushing chagrin and consternation the carol says nothing of religion but instead sings of strong drink and tipsy companions.
Lords, by Noël and the host
Of this mansion hear my toast—
Drink it well—
Each must drain his cup of wine,
And I the first will toss off mine:
Thus I advise.
Here then I bid you all Wassail [Wesseyl]
Cursed be he who will not say, Drinkhail [Drincheyl]!48
The folklore scholar Clement Miles reminds us that the word carol had strong secular and even pre-Christian connotations in its first usages. “In twelfth-century France it was used to describe the amorous song-dance that hailed the coming of spring; in Italian it meant a ring- or song-dance; while for the English writers from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century it was used chiefly of singing joined with dancing.”49 The tradition of caroling, dancing, imbibing, and carousing spread far and wide. Troops of young men and boys would go house to house at night singing, stamping, and playing instruments with the brash expectation that hearers would pay them for their performances. Robert Herrick preserved this wassail song from the mid-seventeenth century:
Come bring, with a noise,
My merrie, merrie boys,
The Christmas log to the firing;
While my good dame she
Bids ye all be free
