The Curious Customs of Old Christmas Day
Cartoon mummer in Trinity, Newfoundland
January 6th is Old Christmas Day. For a long time, it was a day of celebration, and a fair amount of wonder, in Newfoundland. In modern times, it would probably be a stretch to call it a celebration but it is a day of significance and, alongside Tibb’s Eve, a bookend to the Christmas season.
Why is it called Old Christmas Day?
Snow-covered Church of the Most Holy Trinity, Trinity, NL
January 6th is called Old Christmas Day because calendars changed. The Julian calendar, which was in use from 46BC, was based on an incorrectly calculated solar year. The error only amounted to about 11 minutes annually, but over hundreds of years those minutes added up. By the time the error was detected — and they had decided how to fix it — it was the 16th century and the calendar was off by 10 days.
The solution was the system we use now, the Gregorian calendar. Part of the fix was to eliminate the 10 days that had ‘built up.’ In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII decided October 5 would be followed immediately by October 15. The date changed everywhere governments were inclined to listen to a pope.
Britain, and its colonies, were not among those places.
It wasn’t until 1752 that Great Britain moved to the Gregorian calendar. By that time an 11 day jump was required to fix the error — so they decided that in 1752 September 2nd would be followed immediately by September 14th.
Snow-covered clock.
This meant December 25th came 11 days earlier. Some people didn’t like that and wanted ‘Old Christmas Day’ back. So, they continued to mark Christmas on the Julian calendar which, at that time, had it falling on January 5th but, because the Julian calendar is based on a different solar year, it keeps moving relative to the Gregorian calendar and eventually Old Christmas fell on January 6th. Today the Julian Christmas is January 7th, and that’s when some contemporary orthodox churches celebrate it.
In Newfoundland we’ve sort of fastened Old Christmas to the 6th. We probably do that, at least partly, out of tradition. And we probably do it because January 6th is Epiphany (the day churches mark the arrival of the wise men described in the Christmas story. Epiphany/Epiphany Eve has long been celebrated as Twelfth Night and what some Newfoundlanders do under the name of Old Christmas is definitely an evolution of that.
Regardless of origin, Old Christmas Day is a special occasion for many Newfoundlanders. The day comes with a set of customs, superstitions and even miracles or magic. Some of these traditions are alive and well, others have fallen by the wayside.
Talking Old Christmas Day in the media.
Check out this CBC article from 2024 about Old Christmas Day Traditions.
Twelfth Cake and Twelfth Buns
Traditionally, Old Christmas was marked with festivities. In fact, in some Newfoundland communities the events of Old Christmas rivalled those of Christmas Day itself - big meals were shared, there was visiting and in some places cakes were baked. Some of this, no doubt, goes back to old world celebrations of Twelfth Night.
Dark fruitcake.
In this account from the South West Arm Historical Society, the custom of making ‘twelfth cake’ in the community St. Jones Without, is recounted. Late on the evening of Old Christmas young people would gather. Each person would bring something for a cake (berries, pork fat, dried fruit, etc.). The cake was baked and shared, sometimes alongside a hot beverage of steeped berries called berry ocky. I don’t know how they drank it in St. Jones Without, but elsewhere berry ocky was often spiked with rum.
Sounds like a nice way to cap off the Christmas season to me.
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Harry Potter fans may be interested to know a drink called berry-ocky rot appears in the Wizarding World. Berry-ocky rot was one of Professor Slughorn’s drinks of choice in the film Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince.
Tea buns
Twelfth cake is an old British custom. I’m not sure that’s true of twelfth buns, which were baked on some parts of the island. Twelfth buns were a sweet bread bun made especially for Old Christmas night. Traditionally 12 buns were baked, then taken house-to-house. A bun being given to each home called upon.
Visiting continued until all 12 buns were gone.
I’m completely in support of reviving this tradition. Fresh baked goods delivered on a cold January evening sounds delightful… I wonder if the berry ocky people make deliveries?
Perhaps they can ask a cow or sheep to do it.
The Animals Pray or Talk
According to custom, it is possible to hear animals talk or maybe witness them praying around Old Christmas. It’s a pretty widespread belief that animals can talk at Christmas time. It seems to have spread from Europe.
Sheep, Bonavista Newfoundland
In some parts of the world the power of animal speech is said to come on Christmas Eve, in Newfoundland it’s Old Christmas. Research collected for the Dictionary of Newfoundland and Labrador English from Hant’s Harbour indicates that on Old Christmas Day cows would kneel down and pray.
Similarly in a 1925 edition of Among the Deep Sea Fishers there is a reference to children in St. Anthony believing the animals would talk at midnight on Old Christmas Day. If the children believed it, it may have been their parent’s doing.
According to some accounts, children were told of the midnight animal talk and encouraged to stay awake. Inevitably the children dozed-off too soon. The following morning they had to content themselves with their parents’ tales of what the animals said.
This kind of mischievous parental behaviour has been, sort of… umm… shelved(?) these days.
The Willows Will Bloom
Willow in Gander, NL. January 6th, 2022
It wasn’t only animals, plants got in on the Old Christmas magic too.
Legend has it that willows will bloom on Old Christmas morning. The silvery buds will stay visible for the day but disappear with the evening sunset.
According to an article in The Evening Herald (St. John’s March 10, 1893) written by Rev. A.C. Waghorne of New Harbour, the willow in question is likely the one most of us know today as the pussy willow (Salix discolor). It was called, somewhat more grandly, the Holy Thorn of Christmas — at least when people describing its Old Christmas bloom.
Rev. Waghorne claims to have been an eye witness:
“I am told that it was looked at on Old Christmas Eve, and there appeared no sign of flower. It was certainly out in its silvery buds (not in full flower I believe) on that day, as some were brought to me, picked late in the day, when seemingly the buds were shutting up again, and the next day (as I myself saw), and to the best of my belief, ever since, they have quite disappeared.”
Waghorne connects the phenomenon to a piece of English folklore concerning the similarly blooming Glastonbury Thorn.
UPDATE (January 6, 2022): I decided to check the willow in my own backyard today and… wait… is that a single, half-hearted bloom? That doesn’t convince me of anything. It’s 8C and rainy today, and I don’t know, but I feel like that could fool any bud into thinking it was spring. Check the picture above. Draw your own conclusions.
The Last of Christmas
Like the willow that hid away it’s Christmas finery after the sixth, so too does a lot of Newfoundland — for many it’s the end of the holiday season.
Red and Yellow Christmas lights.
Mummering, which involved going house-to-house in disguise, usually started on Boxing Day and continued until January 6th. It was a generally celebratory affair with music, dancing and drink, and people weren’t always pleased to stop. In fact, one description I read suggested it ended on Old Christmas Day out of exhaustion, rather than lack of enthusiasm!
My ancestors knew how to have a good time.
Old Christmas Day On The Radio
I discussed Newfoundland Old Christmas Day Customs on CBC on January 6, 2023. You can hear the conversations at the following links.
Even if mummering has largely subsided in recent years, many Newfoundlanders still see January 6th as the end of the Christmas season. Christmas lights and trees stay up until Old Christmas Day but that’s it. They disappear immediately after and all visible signs of Christmas retreat. In some quarters it’s considered bad luck to continue ‘christmassing’ after January 6th.
I’m not sure if there were any specific consequences to, say, turning on your Christmas lights on the 7th of January or if you were just setting yourself up for a year of poor fortune.
Either way, given how 2022 has started, I’m not sure I’m willing to take the risk.
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1 . Christmas in St. Jones Without, Southwest Arm Historical Society
2. Twelfth Cake, British Food History.
3. Twelfth Buns, Dictionary of NL English Word Slip
4. Knucks, Dictionary of NL English Word Slip
5. Christmas 1924 at St. Anthony, Among the Deep Sea Fishers
6. Folklore of NF-land, Evening Herald, March 10, 1893
7. A Newfoundland Outport in the Making, Harold Squire, 1974
It’s Christmas and there are mummers throughout Newfoundland, but there’s more to mummering than meets the eye — it’s a surprisingly diverse tradition.