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Newspaper
Alpine Avalanche
Location
Alpine, Texas, United States of America
Date
Dec 26, 1947
Page
12
The later Christmas plays followed St Francis tableaux as forerunners and served to teach scriptural lessons to an illiterate populace. Clergy singing between scenes became popular, and villagers enjoyed vocal interludes. Enthusiasm grew to marches through town as wagons carried the scenes and people joined in carols.
The article notes that Christmas was not early in church calendars, with Irenaeus and Tertullian omitting it and Origin saying births are celebrated only by sinners. The first evidence appears in Egypt around 200, with later shifts in timing and the final December 25 date. By 1038 the term Christes Maessi appears, giving rise to the word Christmas.
A hybrid Spanish Indian Christmas ritual in San Antonio unfolds as an intimate house to house performance. Amateurs stage the Nacimiento with a Christ Child on a platter, devils in a bonfire scene, Ermitano and Archangel Gabriel as comic and spiritual figures, then a dramatic vanquishing of devils and a benediction as households witness. The article also notes the Wassail as an ancient English carol linked to festive feasts.
Christmas lore shows divination with five grain piles named Hope Ring Money Thread Charcoal. A drowsy hen chooses a pile to signal fortunes from weddings to wealth or death, amid old songs and merchants’ seasonal greetings in this issue.
In a tradition recounted by William Auld the Christmas story marks Christ’s birth and Satan’s end as bells toll from midnight to a joyful peal. Amid turmoil, the Apostles of Peace dwell in dark chambers, whose welcomes shine during the great winter feasts.
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