Fashions are a-changing in festive era

The stars are now at their brightest, having taken their positions not long after dusk on this bitterly cold late December day, clear skies hinting at Jack Frost's inevitable icy embrace.

The village, with its silent deserted streets echoing only to the occasional rustle and creak as the creatures of the night going about their errands, suddenly spring to life. A car's headlights appear in the lane. The beam catches a rabbit, which immediately freezes and then, thinking better of it, he bolts into the hedgerow.

Further up School Street, a door clicks open. Shafts of light pierce the gloom followed by the sound of voices. The Greyhound Inn has regurgitated its contents and a crowd has been instantly created out of the inhabitants of bar and snug.

There is much foot-stamping and blowing on hands as their owners try to keep warm on this bitterly cold Christmas Eve.

Cigarette ends glow in the darkness, clouds of blue smoke and condensation shrouding the street lamp by the inn sign, barely creaking on this windless night. Next to the wall running past Swift Cottages, the vicar can be seen draining the last drops from his tot of whisky.

The landlady takes his empty glass, and then, as if by some invisible signal, this Festive Pied Piper leads his congregation up the hill and to the church, where yet another Christmastide is about to be ushered in...

Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve used to be a tradition in my home village and I am told the custom still thrives in settlements great and small throughout Worcestershire. This should give us heart, these oases of spirituality in a soul-less age.

For the ritual of Midnight Mass is an echo of slower, gentler times, when neighbours weren't locked away in their red-brick castles with the drawbridge firmly raised. A lost era before electronic entertainment and when pop-music-produced-by-machines didn't pulverise and anaesthetise our senses so completely.

This annual trek in the middle of the night to Holy Trinity Church was, however, merely a fragment from a myriad of customs and beliefs that were associated with the Christmas season.

Many of these rituals and superstitions were also common throughout Worcestershire until the outbreak of First World War sounded the death-knell for rural England. So... sit back, charge a glass and hear about a few.

For example, it was considered lucky for every member of the family to stir the pudding at Christmas. And each mince pie eaten in a different house between Christmas Day and Twelfth Night brought a happy month in the coming year.

But it was bad luck to take holly into the house before Christmas Eve, or hawthorn, blackthorn and gorse at any time, perhaps with their supposed connection with the Crown of Thorns.

To prevent misfortune, the Christmas decorations were burned on Candlemas Day February 2 and this idea persists until the present, although it is advised that the streamers and so on are taken down on Twelfth Night. Any decoration that escapes the clear-out must remain hanging in its place or bad luck will visit the house.

There was a widespread belief in the Midlands that the farm animals knelt on Christmas Eve at midnight in adoration of the Christ Child. It was also customary at the same time to go down the garden to the beehives to hear the bees singing their Christmas carols.

At Aston Hall, near Birmingham, there was a unique ceremony after supper on Christmas Eve. A table was brought out, and on it were placed a brown loaf with 20 silver threepenny bits on top, a tankard of ale and pipes of tobacco.

The oldest servants sat by the table, to act as judges. The rest of the servants were then brought in by the steward, one at a time, covered by a sheet. The judges had to guess who they were from their shape, and a hand stretched out beyond the sheet to touch the loaf.

The judges were allowed three guesses, and, if they were right, the person was led away empty-handed. Otherwise, he or she received a silver coin. A footnote to this custom is provided by the Gentleman's Magazine in 1795 which recorded "when the money is gone, the servants have full liberty to drink, dance, sing and go to bed when they please".

In villages, an enduring custom was to watch the Yule Log being drawn into houses by a horse as a foundation for the fire on Christmas Day. According to the superstition of the times, for the 12 days following "the said block was not to be entirely reduced to ashes till that time had passed by".

Kindle the Christmas brand and then

Till sunrise, let it burn

When quenched, then lay it up again

Till Christmas next return

Part must be kept

Wherewith to tend

The Christmas log next year

And when 'tis safely kept, the fiend

Can do no mischief here.

To ensure good fortune for the year, it was believed that carol singers should ideally be let in at the front door and out of the back. Today, of course, they are not allowed in at all.

Wassailing was also popular, until earlier in the last century, in parts of Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The drink in the bowl - and it's been suggested that the "gossip's bowl" mentioned in A Midsummer Night's Dream was a wassail bowl - was made of ale, nutmeg, ginger, toast and roasted crabs or apples. This intriguing liquor was sometimes known as "lamb's wool".

The people would wend their way by the light from a candle placed inside an improvised lantern, usually a swede, carved in the shape of a man's face, to the farm houses, and after knocking at the door would enter to sing the wassail carol.

Wisselton, wasselton who lives here?

We've come to taste yer Christmas beer

Up the kitchen and down the hall

A peck of apples will serve us all.

All these old customs were before my time and had certainly died out long before most of you were born. In these days of pseudo sophistication and perpetual cynicism, they would, of course, be regarded as nothing more than quaint superstitions from a lost rural idyll.

Mass communications have drawn us all closer in one sense, yet they have abolished isolation and cultural identity far more efficiently than any conquistadore in the land of the Incas. In many ways, we are the poorer for it.

For all we have left are the crumbs from a larger cake that has now gone forever. Which is why I will think of the old village this Christmas Eve and imagine the locals once again trudging up the hill to the church. If not in body, I will certainly be there in soul.

Oh yes, and one more thing. A Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to you all.