Kicking the Concern and Other Curious Christmas Customs

Newfoundland has some strange Christmas customs.

From one corner of the island to the other, the season is celebrated with colourful, meaningful and occasionally downright weird Christmas traditions. If the customs the island has held on to are a bit strange, you should hear about the ones that have fallen to the wayside — some of those are downright bizzare.

The following are some (more) of my favourites.

A Word About Weird

As I’ve said before, weird is in the eye of the beholder. I don’t think any of these old practices are necessarily any stranger than a lot of things we do today. Spending a month watching an elf toy, hanging glass balls on trees and choosing to wear an ugly sweater will, one day, sound odd to someone too.

Admittedly, none of those things sound quite as dangerous as this first tradition…

Blowin’ The Christmas Pudding

I will readily admit that I love a good steamed pudding. My mother makes a cherry pudding for Christmas that may be single favourite dessert of the entire year.

For all my love of Christmas pudding, it’s never occurred to me to announce my dessert to the neighbourhood, and certainly not with firearms, but that’s exactly how things used to play out in Horse Island.

It was customary for the gentleman of the house to stand outside and fire a single gunshot into the air just as his wife lifted the steamed pudding from the pot. They called it ‘blowing the Christmas pudding’.

I’m not sure if it served any particular purpose beyond offering a one gun salute to a tasty seasonal treat. Though, I like the idea of letting people know that I’m about to eat dessert and don’t want to be disturbed... and even more certainly don’t want to share, and am serious about that. Shotgun serious.

The Christmas Block

Christmas block (aka back junk, black junk or back log) was a local term for the yule log.

On Christmas Eve a large log was placed at the back of the fireplace where it was left to burn. In some parts of the island the lighting of the block (much like the lifting of the pudding) was celebrated with a gunshot into the sky.

At midnight, some people would remove a flaming piece of the block (a ‘live brand’) and throw it over the roof of the house. This odd and, frankly, dangerous, custom was believed to confer a blessing on the house.

I’m delighted this one has fallen by the wayside. I don’t want my neighbours throwing around burning wood in the middle of the night. I’m sure the fire department would agree.

The Christmas Loaf

In as much as throwing a piece of the back-junk was a form of supernatural insurance, so was beating up the Christmas Loaf.

In some parts of the island it was customary to break up a crusty loaf of bread on Christmas Eve. It was broken by throwing it against the wall/doors. Sometimes the pieces of bread were eaten.

I suspect this is a regional variation on an Irish New Year’s custom (in which the same thing was done, but on December 31). The idea was to drive off hunger for the coming year.

Hauling

In many parts of Newfoundland the entire 12 days of the Christmas season was respected as a holiday — people put all non-essential work aside and dressed in their Sunday best. In the 19th century there was a fair amount of social pressure to encourage the tradition — especially on St. Stephen’s Day.

In some communities (like Port de Grave, Fogo) the citizens took it upon itself to ‘punish’ any person who dared work on St. Stephen’s. The did this by ‘hauling’.

On December 26th if any man was caught working, it was customary for his neighbours to forcibly place him on a catamaran, ladder or gate, then drag him around town. After the impromptu parade, the ‘victim’ was taken back home where he was expected to provide a glass of ‘Christmas Cheer’ to the group.

Kicking the Concern

Bull, Public Domain, Community Archives.

Games were an important Christmas pastime. One popular holiday game in the Eastport area, was called kicking the concern. It was a fairly typical kick-the-ball type game — players attempted to keep the ball in the air. Where it differed was the type of ball used.

The ball was made by taking the, ahem, scrotum of a bull. Thankfully, for the bull and ball-maker alike, the animal was already dead at the time. The scrotum usually came from a hide that had been saved. The scrotum was stretched, dried then filled with a pig's bladder that had been brined. The bladder was blown up, and the ball was drawn together with twine.

The ball was practically indestructible and could be used again and again. Players kept the ball in motion until they grew tired. It sounds like a nice way to spend a chilly December afternoon… for everyone but the pig and the bull, anyway.

More Christmas Traditions

If these Newfoundland Christmas customs have been interesting be sure to check out the following posts:

• Sources & Further Reading

  1. Christmas, Encyclopedia of NL

  2. More Than Mummering, P. Hiscock, Newfoundland Quarterly

  3. A Newoundland Outport in the Making, Harold Squire, 1974