In the 17th Century, Christmas Day was more than just a religious date – it marked the beginning of the traditional ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ between Christmas and Epiphany Eve, commonly called ‘Twelfth Night’ – we know it from the much later song, but for people in Stuart England this period was a highlight of the year, while also being a flashpoint in the political and cultural turmoil of the English Civil Wars. Over a series of twelve posts, we explore just some of the Christmas customs and history from the middle of the seventeenth century…
One of the joys of Christmas-tide is the playing of games and, with an absence of TVs and video games to occupy the family, a 17th Century family would indulge in pursuits of chance and skill as part of their Twelve Days of Christmas celebrations.
‘Games played by the family have long been another feature of the season’, wrote Steve Roud in The English Year and these ranged from what we’d still consider innocent parlour games to gambling, even for children!
But what were the kind of games you’d see played in a Jacobean or Stuart house during the Twelve Days of Christmas? Some you might recognise even today, while others have disappeared or been deemed too dangerous…
Snap-dragon
Also known as Flap-dragon, Snapdragon, or Flapdragon, Snap-dragon was popular from about the 16th Century. Played during the winter, particularly on Christmas Eve, it involved taking a wide, shallow pan of brandy in which raisins floated, setting it alight, and challenging the players to pluck the raisins out of the flames and eat them.
The name was already in wide use by the 1640s – Shakespeare alludes to the notion in Henry IV and Loves Labours Lost, and in the 1607 play Lingua, whose author is unknown, the practice is said to come from antiquity: “when Hercules had killed the flaming dragon of Hesperia with the apples of that orchard, he made this fiery meat; in memory whereof he named it Snapdragon.”
Although evidence for it comes from after the 17th Century, there was supposedly a poem or song to accompany this potentially lethal game:
Here he comes with flaming bowl,
Don’t he mean to take his toll,
Snip! Snap! Dragon!
Take care you don’t take too much,
Be not greedy in your clutch,
Snip! Snap! Dragon!
With his blue and lapping tongue
Many of you will be stung,
Snip! Snap! Dragon!
For he snaps at all that comes
Snatching at his feast of plums,
Snip! Snap! Dragon!
But Old Christmas makes him come,
Though he looks so fee! fa! fum!
Snip! Snap! Dragon!
Don’t ‘ee fear him but be bold —
Out he goes his flames are cold,
Snip! Snap! Dragon!
Hot Cockles
Not for those who are unaccustomed to physical pain or who have mightily annoyed any of their fellow players, Hot Cockles involved blindfolding one player, who is made to kneel on the floor with their head in another player’s lap. Their hands are held, with their palms outwards, behind their back. They then call out ‘hot cockles hot’ and the other players then take it in turns to strike the hands of the kneeler, who then has to guess which of the other players has hit them.
Cross and pyle
This is a similar game to heads and tails – you spin a coin and guess what side it will be facing up when it falls, all the players betting on the outcome.
Hood-man Blind
Now known as blind-man’s buff, in Hood-man Blind one player is blindfolded and gropes around attempting to touch the other players without being able to see them, while the other players scatter and try to avoid the person who is “it”, hiding in plain sight and sometimes teasing them. Robert Herrick, the 17th-century English lyric poet, mentions it in his poem A New Yeares Gift Sent to Sir Simeon Steward:
That tells of Winters Tales and Mirth,
That Milk-Maids make about the hearth,
Of Christmas sports, the Wassell-boule,
That tost up, after Fox-i’ th’ hole:
Of Blind-man-buffe, and of the care
That young men have to shooe the Mare
Mould-my-Cockle-Bread
According to the writer John Aubrey, Mould-my-cockle-bread was a ‘wanton sport’ that was once played by young women in northern England. Aubrey explains the women would ‘get upon a table-board, and then gather up their knees and their coats with their hands as high as they can, and then they wobble to and fro with their buttocks, as if they were kneading of dough with their arses.’
Card games
Playing cards was already very popular by the 1600s, having been introduced to England in the 14th or 15th Century. Usually played for money, but just as often for fun, cards became increasingly popular amongst
All Fours is among the oldest card games in England – Its first known description was in Charles Cotton’s Compleat Gamester of 1674. Also known as High-Low-Jack or Seven Up, it is a trick-taking card game where each player is dealt six-three cards. In trick play, players are allowed to trump instead of following suit. The title refers to the possibility of winning four game points by being dealt both the highest and the lowest trump in play, capturing the Jack of trumps and winning the greatest number of card-points.
Lanterloo is a modification of the game All Fours and is supposed to have reached England from France most probably with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Players replenish their hands after each round by drawing each fresh new cards from the pack.
According to John Aubrey, Cribbage was created by the English poet Sir John Suckling in the early 17th Century, as a derivation of the game Noddy. The objective of the game is to be the first player to score a target number of points, typically 61 or 121. Points are scored for card combinations that add up to fifteen, and for pairs, triples, quadruples, runs and flushes.
Bibliography
Steve Roud – The English Year (2006)
Royal Museum Greenwich – Stuart Christmas fun and games
Jamestown Settlement – Christmas in 17th-Century England and Virginia