And after
him came next the chill December;
Yet he through merry feasting which he made,
And great bonfires, did not the cold remember;
His Saviour's birth his mind so much did glad.
Upon a shaggy-bearded goat he rode,
The same wherewith Dan Jove on tender yeares,
They say, was nourisht by th' Idaen mayd;
And in his hand a broad deepe bowle he beares,
Of which he freely drinks an health to all his peeres.
Spenser
Dark December has now come,
and brought with him the shortest day and longest
night: he turns the mist-like rain into ice with the
breath of his nostrils: and with cold that pierces to
the very bones, drives the shivering and houseless
beggar to seek shelter in the deserted shed. He gives
a chilly blue steel-likecolour to the shrivelled hops
and haws, and causes the half-starved fieldfares to
huddle together in the naked hedge for warmth; while
the owl, rolling himself up like a ball in his
feathers, creeps as far as he can into the old hollow
tree, to get out of the way of the cold. Even the
houses, with their frosted windows, have now a wintery
look; and the iron knocker of the door, covered with
hoary rime, seems to cut the fingers like a knife when
it is touched. The only cheering sight we see as we
pass through a village, is the fire in the
black-smith's forge, and boys sliding as they break
the frosty air with merry shouts�on the large pond
with its screen of pollard-willows, broken now and
then by the report of the sportsman's gun, and the
puff of smoke which we see for a few moments floating
on the air like a white cloud in the distant valley.
We see the footprints of the
little robin in the snow, and where it lies deep, the
long-eared hare betrays her hiding-place by the deep
indentments she makes in the feathery flakes. The
unfrozen mere looks black through the snow that lies
around it, while the flag like sedges that stand
upright appear like sharp sword-blades frosted with
silver. The trees mirrored deep down seem as if
reflected on polished ebony, until we draw nearer and
look at the cold gray sky, that appears to lie
countless fathoms below.
When the wind shakes the
frosted rushes and the bending water-flags, they seem
to talk to one another in hoarse husky whispers, as if
they had lost their voices through standing so long in
the cold by the water-courses, and forgotten the low
murmurings they gave utterance to in summer. We pity
the few sheep that are still left in the fields,
burrowing for the cold turnips under the snow, and
almost wish their owners had to procure their own food
in the same way, for having neglected to fold them.
The falling snow from some overladen branch, under
which we are passing, makes us shake our heads as we
feel it thawing about the neck.
Now the mole is compelled to
work his way deeper underground in search of food, as
the worms he feeds upon are only to be found beyond
the reach of the frost, below which he must penetrate
or starve, for his summer hunting-grounds are now
tenantless. During a severe frost, myriads of fish
perish for want of air in our ponds and rivers, and
those who value their stock will not neglect to make
holes through the ice, and throw food into the water,
for unless this is done, they will devour one another.
Cattle also gather about their usual drinking-place,
and wait patiently until the ice is broken for them.
That lively little fellow, the water-wagtail�the
smallest of our birds that walk�may now be seen
pecking about the spots of ground that are unfrozen in
moist places, though what he finds to feed upon there,
unless it be loosened bits of grit and gravel, is
difficult to ascertain.
Many a shy bird, but seldom
seen at any other season, now draws near to our
habitations in search of food; and sometimes, when
entering an outhouse, we are startled by the rush of
wings, as the pretty intruder escapes by the open
doorway we are entering. The black-bird dashes out of
the shed as the farmer's boy enters to fodder the
cattle, frightening him for the moment, so unexpected
and sudden is the rush; for cattle must now be
attended to early and late, and the farmer finds
plenty to do, although there is but little labour
going on in the fields. Sometimes he has to hurry out
half-dressed in the night, for there is a cry of
'murder' in the hen-roost, and he well knows that the
fox has broken in someway, and will not retire
supperless in spite of the loud outcry. The housewife,
when she counts her chickens next morning, and reckons
up her loss, wishes the old earth-stopper had been
laid up with rheumatism instead of being out all night
as he is, blocking up the fox-holes, while Reynard is
out feeding, to prevent him from running in when he is
hunted. Poor old fellow! we have often felt sorry for
him, as we have passed him on a cold winter's night,
with his lantern and spade, making the best of his way
to some fox's burrow, to block up the entrance, and
have often wondered what the fox thinks when he
returns home, and finds the doorway filled in with
thorns and furze, over which the earth is shovelled.
Though a thief, he is a beautifully formed animal, and
I like to see him trailing his long bush through the
snow, and to hear his feet stirring the fallen leaves
as he steals through the wood.
How few and apt are the words
Shakspeare has used to paint a perfect picture of
winter in Love's Labour's Lost! He begins by
describing the icicles hanging down the wall, and Dick
the shepherd blowing his nails to warm them, with the
same breath that he blows into his porridge to cool
it. Next he tells us how Tom drags huge logs to the
great hall-fire, which he would rear on the andirons,
for grates and coal were not in use in Shakspeare's
time; then follows Marian with her red, raw nose, the
milk frozen in the pail she carries, pitying the poor
birds she saw outside shivering in the snow. Neither
do matters mend at church, where there is such a noise
of coughing as to drown the parson's 'sixteenthly,'
one aisle answering to another, as if the congregation
were playing at catching colds instead of balls, for
as soon as one has ceased to cough, it is taken up by
another, until it goes the whole round of the church.
Outside, at night, the owl keeps crying, 'To-whit,
too-whoo,' hidden, perhaps, among the ivy of
centuries, which has overgrown the picturesque and
ornamented gable.
Every line here of the great
poet is a picture of winter, though only painted in
words; and so distinct is each outline, that any
artist, with a poetical eye, might transfer every
figure, with such action as Shakspeare has given to
each, to canvas. Now is the time to sit by the hearth
and peruse his immortal works; and few, we think, will
read a page attentively without discovering something
new�some thought that assumes a fresh form, or
presents itself to the mind in a new light. For
out-of-door pleasure, at times, is not to be found, as
the days are short, cold, comfortless, and almost
dark; lanes, fields, and woods naked, silent, and
desolate; while the dull gray sky seems, at times, as
if sheeted with lead. What a brave heart the pretty
robin must have to sing at such a season! and if
anything can tempt us out of doors, it is a hope that
we may hear his cheerful song.
Beside the song of the robin,
the green ivy gives a life to the nakedness,
especially when we see it clambering up a gigantic
tree, whose branches are bald. In summer we could not
see it for the intervening foliage, though it was then
green with young leaves. We love to see it romping
about our gray old churches, and old English
manor-houses; sometimes climbing up the old square
tower of the one, and burying under its close-clinging
stems the twisted chimneys of the other, forming a
warm shelter for the little wrens and titmice from the
biting frosts and cutting winds of winter. Then there
are the bright holly-bushes, with their rich clusters
of crimson berries, which throw quite a cheerful
warmth around the places in which they grow, and
recall pleasant visions of the coming Christmas, and
the happy faces they will flash upon when reflecting
the sunny blaze from the snug warm hearth. Here and
there, though never very common, we see the
mirth-making mistletoe, generally growing on old apple
and hawthorn trees, and very rarely on the oak; and it
is on records which have been written from ancient
traditions, that wherever the Druids selected a grove
of oaks for their heathen worship, they always planted
apple-trees about the place, so that the mistletoe
might be trained around the trunks of the oaks.
The black hellebore, better
known as the Christmas-rose, is one of the prettiest
flowers now seen out of doors, though but seldom met
with in the present day, excepting in old gardens,
which we much wonder at, as it is a large, handsome,
cup-shaped flower, sometimes white, but more
frequently of a rich warm pink colour, and quite as
beautiful as any single rose that is cultivated. But
few gardens are without evergreens, and the
winter-blooming laurustinus, mixed with other shrubs,
now make a pretty show, though a noble, old, high
holly-hedge is, after all, one of the grandest of
green objects we now meet with.
Another curious shrub that now
occasionally flowers, is the
Glastonbury-thorn, which our forefathers
believed never bloomed until Christmas-day. It may
sometimes be found now covered with blossom, although,
like the rest of the thorns, it had bloomed before in
May, as will be seen by the berries hanging on it at
its second time of flowering, though this after-crop
of bloom is not general. All we can see in the
kitchen-garden is a little green above the ridge,
where the celery is earthed up; a few savoys and kale,
with a refreshing rim of parsley here and there, if it
has been protected from the frost; and these,
excepting the autumn-sown cabbage plants, are about
all that now look green.
Still there are occasionally
days when the sun comes out, and a mild south wind
blows, shaking the icicles that hang from the gray
beard of grim old Winter, as if to tell him that he
must not sleep too sound, for the shortest day has
come, and the snow-drops will soon be in flower, and
then a flush of golden crocuses will be seen, that
will make his dim eyes dance again as he rubs the
hoary rime from his frosted eyelashes. And on these
fine December days, great enjoyment may be found in a
good bracing country-walk, which will send a summer
glow through the system, and cause us to forget the
cold. The sky appears of a more brilliant blue, and
looks as if higher up than at any other season, while
the winter moon, often seen at noonday, appears to
have gone far away beyond her usual altitude. We see a
new beauty in the trees which we beheld not before�the
wonderful ramification of the branches as they cross
and interlace each other, patterns fit for lace,
nature's rich net-work�scallop and leaf, that seem as
if worked on the sky to which we look up; and we
marvel that some of our pattern-drawers have not made
copies of these graceful intersections of spray and
bough as seen amid the nakedness of winter. Sometimes
the branches are hung with frost, which, were it not
of so pure a white, we might fancy was some new kind
of beautiful shaggy moss, in form like what is often
seen on trees. The bushes, sedge, and withered grasses
are covered with it, and look at times as if they were
ornaments cut out of gypsum or the purest marble;
while some portions of the hedges, where only parts of
the branches are seen, look like the blackthorn, which
is sheeted with milk-white blossoms long before a
green leaf appears.
We often wonder how, during a
long and severe frost, the birds contrive to live.
That many perish through cold and want of food, is
well known through the number that are picked up dead
and frozen, though a greater number are eaten by the
animals that prey upon everything they can find. Many
pick up insects in a dormant state from out the stems
of decayed trees, old walls, and the thatched roofs of
cottages and outhouses, and they also forage among
furze-bushes, the underneath portions of which being
dead, form a warm shelter for such insects as the
gnats, which maybe seen out in every gleam of
sunshine; for there are numbers of birds that never
approach the habitation of man, no matter how severe
the winter may be.
But most mysterious of all is
the manner the waterfowl manage to subsist, when every
stream, lake, and river is frozen, which has happened
at times, and lasted for several weeks. It is very
possible that they then leave our inland waters, and
have recourse to the sea, though many naturalists have
come to the conclusion that they then return to the
countries from whence they came. There is but little
doubt that birds feed on many things we are ignorant
of. We have startled them, many a time, from some spot
where they were pecking at something as fast as their
little heads could go up and down; but even with the
aid of a powerful magnifying glass, we were unable to
discover anything but small grit, sand, and portions
of fine gravel on the spot. Wood-pigeons, we know
well, eat the eyeshoots out of the tops of turnips,
and devour the tenderest portion of winter-greens.
Larks and other birds find a living in the autumn-sown
corn-fields, and make sad havoc among the seed. Other
birds tear the thatch off corn-stacks, and eat until
they are hardly able to fly. Country lads know that
there is good shooting to be found in places like
these. Nor does the farmer care so much about what
they devour, as the injury they cause to what is left;
for where the thatch is off, the rain penetrates, and
runs down to the very lowest sheaves in the rick,
which, after getting wet, soon become black and
rotten. One thing we must consider, birds require less
food during these short, dark days than they do at any
other season of the year, as they are asleep more than
double the time they pass in slumber in summer, nor
when awake do they exert themselves so much on the
wing as during the long days.
How dreary must have been the
winters through which our forefathers passed, no
further back even than a century ago! But few of our
towns were then lighted at night; here and there an
oil-lamp flickered, which the wind soon blew out; and
these cast such a dull light, and were so far apart,
that few old people ventured through the streets on
dark nights without carrying lanterns in their hands.
Those who could afford it, followed their servants,
who were the lantern-bearers. Then the roads were
almost impassable in winter, and a few may still be
found in the remote corners of England, bad enough, to
tell what the generality of highways were in those old
days. Coaches were almost unknown, and unless people
rode on horseback, there was only the slow-paced
stage-wagon, which even a cripple might pass on the
road; for the great lumbering tilted vehicle, when it
did not stick fast, seldom crept along at the rate of
more than two miles an hour. All the miles of villages
and roads that went stretching away from the little
town, were in darkness; for when the last dim lamp was
left behind at the town-end, no more light was to be
seen, unless from the window of some solitary
farmhouse, where they had not retired to rest, until
you reached your own home in the far-away hamlet; and
fortunate you were if you did not lose your shoes in
the knee-deep muddy roads.
Men have been known, in those
old winters, to stick fast in the roads that run
through clay lands, where they were sometimes found
dead, or if they survived, were unable to move when
pulled out in the following morning, until warmth was
restored to the system. On lonesome moors, wide
unenclosed commons, and hedgeless heaths, wayfarers,
unable to travel along the deep-rutted and muddy
roads, lost their way, trying to find a firmer footing
elsewhere, and wandered about until the cold gray dawn
of winter broke, fortunate if in the night they
stumbled upon some dilapidated field-shed or
sheepfold.
Goods were carried from one
town to another on the backs of packhorses; and the
mounted traveller who had to journey far, carried all
his necessaries in his saddle-bags, considering
himself very fortunate if he had not to give them up,
with all his money, to some daring highwayman, who
generally rode up, pistol in hand, demanding without
ceremony 'Your money, or your life!' Any one glancing
over the files of country newspapers that appeared
about a century ago, would be startled to read of the
number of high-way robberies that then took place, and
the many wayfarers that perished through cold on the
roads during those old hard winters. We, who travel by
rail, and live in towns lighted by gas, are not
subject to these calamities.
We have, in our day, seen men
compelled to cross the wide fens and marshes when snow
has fallen after a hard frost, and it was impossible
to tell where the water-courses lay in places that
drained these wide low-lying lands, as all appeared
alike a level waste buried under a white snowy pall.
For safety they bestrode long leaping-poles, which
they used for clearing the dikes in summer, and now
employed in throwing themselves across the trenches,
so that if the ice broke with them, they were seldom
immersed above the legs. And across those long, wide,
white windy marshes, where there was neither hoof,
wheel, nor footmark to guide them, would these hardy
men travel on their errands, with nothing to guide
them but some bush or embankment or taller tuft of
sedge, whose forms were so altered by the fallen snow,
that they went along in doubt as to whether they were
the same landmarks they were accustomed to trust to.
And sometimes they fell into deep hollows, where the
snow drifted over them in the night, and were not
found again for weeks after they were lost, when their
bodies were borne back for burial.
From some of these old
newspapers now before us, describing the winters a
hundred years ago in the country, we find such
passages as the following: ' The frost was so severe,
the street-lamps could not be lighted on account of
the oil being frozen; many people were found frozen to
death in the fields and roads, and thousands of birds
were picked up dead.' �'So severe was the weather,
that only eight or nine people came from the country
on market-day; none of the carriers arrived, nor any
sheep or cattle; the town has been without water three
weeks, except what is got through melting down the ice
and snow. Many people have been found dead in the
stackyards and sheds without the town.' �And during
this severe weather, the quartern-loaf was selling for
1s. 4d., and wheat fetching �6 and �7 a quarter, and
that was no longer ago than the first year of the
present century. Another of these old papers says:
`The weather was so severe, and the snow so deep, that
the judges were detained on the road, and could not
come in time to open the assizes.'
Flocks of sheep perished in
the snow-drifts during these hard winters, and
shepherds who went out to look after them, were
sometimes lost, nor were their bodies found until
spring came and all the snow had melted away. We were
shewn a deep dell in the wild wolds, where one of the
shepherds was found, after the snow had gone, and all
around where he had so long lain dead, there were
thousands of primroses in bloom. Even in the present
day, when winters are generally milder, we have often
with difficulty climbed some hill, that we might look
over the snow-clad country at our feet. The cottages
in the distance seem half-buried, as if the snow stood
as high as the window-sills and reached half up the
doorways, and you wonder how the inhabitants can get
out, and make their way over those white untrodden
fields, so deep as they are covered with snow. The
rick-yard looks like mounds of up-coned snow, yet so
smooth and equally distributed that no human hand
could pile flake above flake in such level and
beautiful slopes, so unindented and unbroken, out of
any material mechanical art can contrive; and yet so
lightly do the flakes lie on one another, that the
first gust of wind shakes them loose, and disperses
them on the air like full-blown May-blossoms. One
might fancy that the long rows of level hedges were
thick marble walls, and that the black line far beyond
which marks the river, was the deep chasm from which
all those miles of upheaving marble has been quarried.
We look behind, where hills
ascend above hills, with level table-lands between,
telling where, for unknown epochs, the ocean spread
and sank in desolate silence; and we seem as if
looking upon a dead country, from which everything
living has long since passed away, and nothing could
find sustenance on those cold terraces and bald high
uplands of snow, to whose sides the few bare trees
that lean over seem to cling in agony, as the wind
goes moaning through their naked branches. But, like
the blue of heaven seen through the rift of clouds
beyond, there is hope before us, for the shortest day
is passed, and soon some little hardy flower will be
seen here and there, and far across the snow we shall
hear the faint bleating of new-born lambs, and the
round green daisies will begin to knock under the
earth to be let out, and so frighten grim old Winter
in his sleep, that he will jump up and hurry away,
looking with averted head over his shoulder, for fear
he should be over-taken by Spring.
HISTORICAL
December, like the three
preceding months, derives its, name from the place
which it held in the old Roman calendar, where the
year was divided, nominally, only into ten months,
with the insertion of supplementary days, to complete
the period required for a revolution of the earth
round the sun. In allusion to the practice of lighting
fires in this month for the purpose of warmth, and the
consequent inconveniences which resulted, Martial
applies to it the epithet of fumosus or smoky. He also
characterises it as canus or hoary, from the snows
which then overspread the high grounds. By the ancient
Saxons, December was styled Winter-monat or winter
month; a term which, after their conversion to
Christianity, was changed to Heligh-monat or holy
month from the anniversary, which occurs in it, of the
birth of Christ. Among the modern Germans, December is
still, from this circumstance, distinguished by the
epithet of Christmonat.
CHARACTERISTICS
OF DECEMBER
On the 22nd of December, the
sun enters the sign of Capricornus or the Goat. The
idea thus allegorised by a climbing animal is said to
be the ascent of the sun, which, after reaching its
lowest declination at the winter-solstice, on the 21st
of this month, recommences its upward path, and
continues to do so from that date till it attains its
highest altitude at the summer-solstice, on the 21st
of June.
The average temperature for
the middle of December, throughout the British
Islands, is about 39�. On the 1st of the month, in the
latitude of London, the sun rises at 7:57 and sets at
4:30. As regards meteorological characteristics,
December bears in its earlier portion a considerable
resemblance to the preceding month of November. Heavy
falls of snow and hard frosts used to be of normal
occurrence at the season of Christmas, but in recent
years Britain has witnessed such a cycle of mild
winters, that, as a general rule, snow rarely descends
in any quantity before the commencement of the New
Year.