Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain - Ronald Hutton - Paperback Book

The book is a scholarly survey of holidays in Britain, going in order from winter to spring. This may sound incredibly dull, but it's not: it's a fascinating study of customs we take for granted, exploding myths on practically every page. There are some chapters where the "exclamation-of-'holy-shit!'-to-paragraph" ratio is dangerously close to 1:1, like the chapter on Christmas.

Hutton, a professor of history at the University of Bristol in the UK who specializes in the English Civil War, has a simple method, but one that's still having to fight for traction in the world of folklore: he demands proof for assertions about history.

This may seem elementary, and in the world of history it is, but in folk studies it's practically revolutionary, although less so now than 30 years ago.

Hutton looks at the history of common holidays and customs and trashes the urban legends about pagan origins, pre-Christian survivals, and even cynical businessmen forcing us to exchange presents on December 25. Instead, he looks at the documentary evidence for everything from Christmas carols to Valentine's cards to present a fascinating picture of how we've come to celebrate holidays the way we do.

Although the histories of most holidays vary considerably, Hutton does draw some broad conclusions. First, most holiday customs are much more recent than people think, dating mostly to the 19th century rather than some fanciful pagan past; and Second, most of the fitting, pithy explanations for certain customs have no evidence to support them whatsoever.

His lengthy history of Christmas is perhaps the highlight of the book (so far, anyway; I'm only up to Shrove Tuesday). Hutton demolishes so many myths about the celebration of Christmas that there's no way I'm going to avoid feeling like a tool when putting a wreath on my door this year. One of the best parts about his take on Christmas is tracing widespread laments over the death of "a traditional Christmas"; Hutton finds evidence to show that people in England have been complaining that they don't celebrate Christmas like they used to since before the Reformation.

In fact, most of the things we take for granted as part of an "old-fashioned Christmas" - turkey, greeting cards, presents, stockings, trees, carols, Santa Claus - were all inventions of the 19th century British middle class, particularly journalists and writers like Charles Dickens (assisted by American writers like Washington Irving, and the guy who invented Santa Claus).

In some cases, these were foreign imports, like Christmas trees, while in others, they were products of the new social realities of the 19th century. Until then, it had been unheard-of outside aristocratic circles for parents to give children presents. But as the rise of the nursery and a professional child-rearing class instituted a degree of formality between children and parents, it became conceivable to add the heretofore strictly adult pastime of gift-giving to the family relationship.

If all this sounds like a tremendous slog, it isn't. Hutton demonstrates his contentions with evidence drawn from contemporary records, and manages to turn up countless rich anecdotes about the way British people have celebrated holidays over the centuries. The book is bursting with great details, like how in Northern England it was common at Christmas time to decorate tree branches with the bodies of dead wrens, or how teams of boys with blackened faces and white shirts would travel through villages, performing a "plough dance" for money during February.