Old Christmas will start this week. There will be no minstrels singing, no bells will be ringing. In another age, back when a changing world walked ever so slowly in the hidden hills – many a mountain family celebrated January 6th as the day of Jesus’ birth.
These were frontiersmen and the sons and daughters of frontiersmen who remained in the high coves and the secluded valleys after the frontier had passed by. They came of English or Pennsylvania Dutch stock and they passed on to their children some of the ballads and folklore their forebears fetched over from the Old Country.
Among their customs was that of celebrating Christmas on the Sixth of January. Unlike “new” Christmas with its gaiety and feasting, Old Christmas was celebrated with prayer and choral singing. When Old Christmas arrived, the folks assumed quiet, prayerful calm, putting aside the fiddle and banjo. They gathered around the hearth fire and sang the Cherry Tree Carol which foretold the birth of Jesus in these words “On the Sixth Day of January, His birthday shall be, When the stars and the mountains, Shall tremble with glee, As Joseph was a walking, Thus did the angels sin; And Mary’s son at midnight, Was born to be our king.
To the folks of that long ago era there were 12 days of Christmas, beginning December 25 and ending January 6. And throughout the Twelve Days of Christmas, or until Old Christmas Eve, there were frolics and lay games, maybe a quilting bee.
During this period they sang an ancient culminative carol enumerating the gifts sent by a lover to his lady on each of the 12 days.
The voices would ring out: Twelve days of Christmas, My true love sent to me, A partridge in a pear tree, Two turtle doves, Three French hens, Four calling birds, Five gold rings, Six geese a laying, Seven swans a swimming, Eight maids a milking, Nine ladies dancing, Ten lords a leaping, Eleven pipers piping, Twelve drummers drumming.
On Old Christmas Eve, just before the clock scratched for midnight, the family gathered about the hearth. There was the telling of The Story and talk of the night when miracles come closest to earth. With the arrival of Old Christmas, many a family brought out a jug of sweet cider and sang: Love and joy come to you, And to your wassail too, And God bless you and send you, A happy New Year, And God send you a Happy New Year. And then they would burn a piece of cedar or other fir in the fireplace.
So here on Lake Santeetlah, January 6th will be the time when we take down our tree and feed it piece by piece into the fire. And we will sit and listen to the balsam pieces crackle and watch the flames turn blue and smell the unforgettable fragrance.