by MITA Q. SISON-DUQUE
IN THE NEW WORLD, traditions and customs celebrated during the period of Christ’s birth have been handed down generations from days of pioneers and early settlers all over. It was a season for celebration whether feast was known as “Christmas” or prior to His birth, “Epiphaneica”. While we Filipinos observe Christmas day with our own customs, it would be good to visit how othe people during earlier times celebrated Christmas that established and evolved traditions for all.
In America, Christmas celebration started with American Indians even before the European white man arrived. Indians had what they called ‘potlatch’ feast held sometime in early January. “Potlatch” or what is believed as ‘potluck’ today, is a stew made of moose and bear meat and was served to each family from a common pot, serving size of which included portions for absent men.
After dinner, there was dancing and festivities. When Columbus and his ship “Sta. Maria” ran aground off coast of Sto. Domingo, he and his men were served by Indians and partook of dinner with the Indian chief on what was in the voyager’s calendar, Christmas day. In honor of that first Christmas, Columbus built a fortress for the Indians and named it “La Natividad”. However, the first notable celebration of Christmas in the U.S. was celebrated by Jamestown settlers in Virginia. Fare was simple as food was scarce.
Another interesting footnote was that there were quarrels, mutiny and diminishing number of settlers. At the meeting, Capt. John Smith was captured and his companions were slain during a corn expedition with Indians. While provisions of colonists was overdue by a month and there was no food not even for holidays, they still assembled before their church, and during that Christmas, communion wine was preserved intead of passed around. Christmas message however was delivered to one and all, “For unto you is born this day in the City of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord.”
Prayers for preservation were included in the worship. Providentially, the colonist’s prayers were answered when Indian Chief Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas, interceded for the life of Capt. Smith to be spared.
When Smith returned to Jamestown in 1608, his return coincided with the arrival of the long-awaited supply of men and provisions of food and clothing in new settlement. And only then had settlers enjoyed their first real Christmas feast courtesy of the Indians. As expected it was a bountiful feast. In later years in colonial feasts, such festive table was referred to as a ‘groaning table’.
Although December 25 was celebrated as Christmas by Jamestown settlers, for sometime after, Christmas was not observed by other religious sects. But nowhere was Christmas abolished than in Massachusetts which passed laws forcing men to work on Christmas day stating that “anybody who is found observing by abstinence from labor, feasting or any other way any such day, shall pay for the offense - five shillings.”
Public celebration of Christmas led to arrest and whippings of anyone suspected of celebrating Christmas, called “Christ-mass keeper”. A feast was instead substituted among Puritans where they counted their blessings and gave thanks to them. Feast was later known as Thanksgiving Day. Possibly, Puritans hated Christmas because it reminded them of Troy establishment which opposed them in return. Puritans erroneously identified Church of England with the Tories.
Years later, the anti-Christmas law was repealed, but December 25 remained a working day. Greatest change came about in 1671 when U.S. Constitution contained in law separating chruch and state, making December 25, Christmas Day, a holiday. Elsewhere, other places like New York, considered Christmas, a Holy Day, and there was church-going and quiet family gathering and feasting.
There was some good that came out of the opposition. Many colonists who opposed anti-Christmas laws left and found other states like Connecticut, with the exception of New Haven where Puritans were strong.
In states of Maryland and Virginia, Christmas was celebrated not for political or religious reasons, but because colonists came to better their fortunes. Puritans maintained their distance from Cromwell, and were able to defy his and anti Christ stand. In the Far East, earlier than Jamestown settlement in 1608, in April 1521, Magellan with his Spanish fleet arrived in the Philippines, in Cebu. Nine months later, first Christmas Mass was celebrated by Spain on Philippine Soil. Christianization of the Philippines by Spanish friars may have started the direction of the faith today, with that first Christmas day in Cebu.
Birth of Christ may have been celebrated with Christmas masses also in thanksgiving and feasting with provisions as only a Spanish fleet can bring, considering Chinese merchants also brought goods and foods in boats, from the Orient to trade with Spaniards. One can imagine the first Christmas night when it was first celebrated on our shores. High Mass, and that year’s Christmas dinner tables laden with roasted suckling pig, coal-broiled fowls stuffed with aromatic spices and wrapped in banana leaves, sweet rice cakes, must have been comparable to Chief Pocahontas’ which according to one pilgrim there were plenty of oyster, fish, flesh and wild fowl and good corn and rye bread. Suffice to likewise imagine, that early Filipino converts to Christianity celebrated Christ’s birth for the first time, awakened early in the mornings to go to Simbang Gabi and dined to rich media noche, derived from Spanish traditions.