The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., December 01, 1925, Page 26, Image 26

Page Twenty-six
THE UNITED AMERICAN
and suet. According to Seldon, mince pies were
originally baked in a coffin-shaped crust intended to
represent a crated manger or crib like that in which
our Lord was lain. In early English cookery books
the crust of a pie was always known as the coffin.
Pie thieves evidently had made their appearance
for in Herrick’s time they set a watch over the pies the
night before Christmas “lest a thief purloin them.”
To the Puritan ear nothing was more obnoxious than
a reference to Christmas pie. They liked the pie too
well to conceal that for their fanatical religious
scruples they would be participating in the pie-eating.
The Cavaliers in the days of Cromwell sang de­
risively :
All plums the Prophet’s sons deny;
And spice-broths are too hot,
Treason’s in December pie
And Death within the pot.
Another roundelay ridiculing the Roundhead taste
in victuals ran:
The high-shoe lords of Cromwell’s making
Were not for dainties-roasting, baking;
The chiefest food they found most good in
Was rusty bacon and bag pudding.
Plum broth was roguish, and mince pie —
Oh, that was flat idolatry.
When the Quakers showed a like prejudice some
years later, Bickerstaff thus remonstrated with them:
The Christmas Pie is in its own nature a kind of con­
secrated cake and a badge of distinction, and yet it is often
forbidden by the Druid of the family. Strange that a sirloin
of beef, whether boiled or roasted, when entire is exposed to
the utmost depredations and invasions, but if minced into
small pieces and tossed up with plums and sugar, it changes
its property and, forsooth, is meat for his master.
The plum pudding of our day originated from
plum porridge which was the pride and glory of the
earlier English people, particularly during their Christ­
mas celebrations, as much as the plum pudding has
been for more than a century among the English people
of a later day. As plum pottage it was the first
course of the Christmas dinner and was made by boil­
ing beef or mutton with broth thickened with brown
bread. When this was half boiled, raisins, currants,
prunes, clove, mace and ginger were added, and when
this was thoroughly boiled it was served with the best
of the meats. Plum broth is referred to in Poor
Robin’s Almanac of 1750 as an item of Christmas fare.
In the “Whole Body of Cookery Disected,” pub­
lished by Rabisha in 1675, the author gives a receipe
for plum pudding, which was to be boiled in a basin and
which, in its ingredients, was practically the same as
our modem Christmas pudding. English lexico­
graphers have overlooked this author, and the first
record they have of a plum pudding is that of 1711.
Christmas bay, holly, laurel, rosemary and mistle­
toe, have been synonymous with religious ritual since
the earliest days of England. Mistletoe was held in
mystic honor everywhere. It was worshipped as the
very soul of the forest trees. Likewise it was closely
knit to the special spirit or being who symbolized the
soul of the woodland. Mythology abounds in tales of
persons who could be killed only when a certain ever­
green bough was plucked from a tree. Only a shaft
of mistletoe could give mortal wound to Balder, the
Norse god of Summer sunlight. The awful priest of
DECEMBER 1925
the grove of Diana at Aricia (“the priest who slew
the slayer who shall himself be slain”) could be
attacked only after his foe had plucked from the
sacred grove he guarded a bough of mistletoe, emblem
of the soul of the forest. If he conquered, the foeman
became the new Rex Nemorensis, and fresh mistletoe
grew on the denuded bough.
When the winter solstice was upon them, the
Druids gathered mistletoe with great ceremony. Five
days after the new moon a grand procession was
formed. First came the bards, then a herald who
bore the cutting implement, a golden scythe or reaping
hook, oftentimes a golden knife blade or bill attached
to a shaft. The priests followed, succeeded by the
Prince of the Druids. All were clad in white. The
people brought up the rear.
When the oak on which the mistletoe grew was
reached, two white bulls were bound to the tree. The
Prince, taking the knife from the herald, climbed the
tree and cut the mistletoe, which was caught in a
white mantle held by one of the priests. The bulls
and sometimes even human beings were then sacri­
ficed. The mistletoe was divided into small portions
and distributed among the worshippers. They hung
the sprays over the entrances to their homes as a pro­
pitiation and an offer of shelter to the sylvan deities
during the season of frost and cold. Early Christian
churches were decorated with mistletoe, bay, laurel,
holly and rosemary for Christmas festivals. There
was a song to the holly:
Here comes holly that is so gent,
To please all men is its intent.
Hallelujah!
Whosoe’er against holly doth cry
With a rope shall he hung full high.
Hallelujah!
Whosoe’er against holly doth sing,
He shall weep and his hands shall wring.
Hallelujah!
Mistletoe was finally banished from the churches
as savoring of heathen, Druidical rites. But it
flourished in the servants’ halls at Yuletide and there
was inaugurated the custom which allowed the man
to kiss the maid he caught under it.
SHAVING HIS WAY THROUGH COLLEGE
“Haircut 25 Cents, Shave 15 Cents. Razors Honed for a
Quarter,” reads a notice on the bulletin board at the School of
Theology, Boston University. It indicates the unusual method
a theological student has taken to earn his way through college.
Customers are attracted by the low prices, it is said, but they
are held by the dexterity and the pleasant personality of the
amateur barber, Lotus Reneau. He was graduated from Birm­
ingham South College and later spent a year at Oklahoma City
University.
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