Backwards Advent

I was listening to a podcast the other day on HistoryHit about Christmas at the court of Henry VIII. It was jolly interesting, as most of Dan Snow's history presentations are. Henry VIII was such a larger than life king who had a profound impact on the history of the world. His dissolution of the monasteries was truly a great crime against Christianity in England, but regardless of what one thinks of him and his policies, one cannot argue his fingerprints that are still in evidence on the world (particularly England) to this very day.

While I did not quite agree with all the points this historian made, particularly about the so called pagan origins of Christmas (which I think is a bunch of ahistorical tommy rot that has virtually no primary evidence to back it up), the historian did know her stuff about what went on in the Christmas court of Henry VIII. He would spend millions of British pounds on Christmas court celebrations every year. One year in particular the historian noted he spent a staggering £13,000,000 pounds for his 12 days of feasting and gifts spectacular.

To put this in perspective, if you made £10 a year doing a normal day to day job in AD 1540, you were doing pretty well as a common laborer. The fictional Bob Cratchit in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol was said to be making about £40 a year as clerk nearly 300 years later. I ran Henry VIII's Christmas budget through a few inflation calculators and that is roughly £10,161,234,493.86 in today's money. A bit over 10 billion quid! For one massive Christmas blow out, that dwarfs even most Washington DC Federal spending largesse.

In Henry VIII's defense, virtually all monarchs in the 1500s spent money in this way. Your claim to power was how magnificent you could portray yourself to your court and the world, and the bigger the better. To put this in perspective, Henry VIII as a very young monarch long before the Reformation flap had a massive diplomatic soiree party with the King of France in the summer of 1520 that became known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold that was quite possibly the biggest display of monarchical wealth and opulence in the history of Europe that dwarfed Henry VIII's later Christmas bashes. (Do listen to the In Our Time Podcast I linked...it's truly mind blowing and a jolly good listen.)

But one point the historian makes in the History Hit podcast that I thought was very on point was the reference to Advent. They have a short banter on how Advent and Christmas customs today as to then are completely inverted. Advent was a little Lent, a time of fasting and penance to prepare for the 12 days of Christmas. Nowadays we have that completely backwards. We have our Christmas parties and fun leading up to December 25th, and by December 26th, the Christmas tree is little more than kindling out on the sidewalk to be taken away with Christmas now in the past.

Not so with the time of Henry VIII. Christmas feasts did not begin until December 25th and went for the 12 days of Christmas. Each night was as big as the one before. Presents were not even exchanged before January 1st. The biggest and grandest blow out of all probably came of 12th Night, before the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th. 

Nowadays, we have inverted Advent with the 12 Days of Christmas. We just right to the feasting and caroling in November, only to forget that Christmas is 12 days, beginning on December 25th and not ending on December 25th. Thankfully, we don't engage in riotous gluttony and spend billions on 12 days of Christmas gluttony any more. Although, in some ways we do. We just kick it off in November with Black Friday.

But there is something to be said for quietly waiting and fasting for Advent. Quietly waiting with patience before the true festival begins. We have lost something as a culture by jumping right to Christmas cheer come November.

This Advent, try waiting a bit. Maybe Jesus might speak to us better from a manger than a November Christmas parade.